Today -100: May 3, 1926: In which is revealed what cannot be tolerated by any civilised Government

The British General Strike™ is on after negotiations between the Trades Union Congress and the government fail. The government says there will be no further negotiations until the strike order is withdrawn. Also, they require as prerequisite for resuming negotiations the “sincere acceptance” of the Coal Commission report, including restructuring of the industry and interim increases in miners’ work hours and reduction in pay. Sincere acceptance! Sincere acceptance! Sincere!

In the coal fields, this is more a lock-out than a strike. The government doesn’t seem to be saying anything about that being called off.

The government claims that troop movements have nothing to do with smashing striking coal miners, they’re just there to provide “protection.” Why, if things kick off, they’ll probably primarily be protecting miners’ wives (sorry ‘bout all the alliteration, sometimes that just happens). “To suggest that they are partisans is absolutely unworthy and untrue.”

A Daily Mail editorial says “a general strike cannot be tolerated by any civilised Government” and that some of the miners’ leaders “are under the influence of people who mean no good to this country” and that a general strike “is not an industrial dispute; it is a revolutionary movement”. Or the editorial would say all that except the printers objected to it, so the newspaper is not printed today. Or for a while.

The government will use this as an excuse to end negotiations, citing “overt acts, including interference with the freedom of the Press.”

Texas Attorney Gen. Dan Moody, running for governor against “Ma” Ferguson (and impeached former governor James Ferguson) calls “Fergusonism” (their term, not his) “the plundering of the public treasury through extravagance and mismanagement of the public revenues, and the diversion thereof to the benefit of political friends. I charge that ‘Fergusonism’ means political quackery and political fakery.”

Edith Wilmans, the first woman in the Texas Legislature (1923-5) is also running for governor. Since Wilmans was not re-elected in 1924, there are currently no women in the Lege. Responding to “Ma” Ferguson being an obvious sock puppet for her husband, Wilmans promises not to marry while in office.

The Austrian and Italian football teams break off relations with each other, the former objecting to Mussolini’s recent remarks about the South Tyrol.

A witness puts Al Capone at the scene of the murder of Assistant State’s Attorney William McSwiggin. The witness (unnamed) was in a Cicero restaurant when Capone, his brother Frank and some cronies burst in and got weapons out of a secret panel in the wall. The cops now fully understand the crime, including that McSwiggin was not the target, so I’m sure they’ll be wrapping the whole thing up quite soon.

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Today -100: May 2, 1926: Sordid capitalists are the worst kind of capitalists

Florida is boycotting Ohio industries because Ohio bans the sale of Florida land in Ohio, presumably because so much of it is fraudulent.

The British General Strike™ begins tomorrow, Monday. The coal strike, which was inevitable given the ending of government subsidies and the mineowners’ insistence on miners working longer hours for less money, is being joined by railroad workers, steel workers, newspaper pressmen, and a bunch of other unions. It’s not a true general strike as the Trades Union Congress (TUC) plans to escalate it by stages. The unions affiliated to the TUC give it the authority to negotiate with the government on their behalf. TUC General Secretary Ernest Bevin says, “We have no quarrel with the people. We are not declaring war on the people. War is being made by the Government, pushed on by the sordid capitalists.”

Italian newspapers say this could never happen in Fascist Italy (they didn’t do May Day yesterday, either).

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Today -100: May 1, 1926: Nobody has ever worked harder at inactivity

The Spanish government exiles students and a Madrid U. professor of penal law, among others, to the Chaferine Islands, and suspends the newspaper Atalya for 8 days “for having published an article regarding the grazing grounds of the city.”

Fritz Rausenberger, the professor of ballistics (!) who invented the long-range gun Big Bertha, dies at 58.

Mussolini’s fat face will go on Italy’s banknotes, which is a very Trumpian move.

Walter Lippmann, “Puritanism De Luxe in the Coolidge Era,” Vanity Fair, May 1926 issue:

Mr. Coolidge’s genius for inactivity is developed to a very high point. It is far from being an indolent inactivity. It is a grim, determined, alert inactivity which keeps Mr. Coolidge occupied constantly. Nobody has ever worked harder at inactivity, with such force of character, with such unremitting attention to detail, with such conscientious devotion to the task. Inactivity is a political philosophy and a party program with Mr. Coolidge, and nobody should mistake his unflinching adherence to it for a soft and easy desire to let things slide. Mr. Coolidge’s inactivity is not merely the absence of activity. It is on the contrary a steady application to the task of neutralizing and thwarting political activity wherever there are signs of life. ... There have been presidents in our time who knew how to whip up popular enthusiasm. There has never been Mr. Coolidge’s equal in the art of deflating interest. ... He has discovered the value of diverting attention from the government, and with an exquisite subtlety that amounts to genius he has used dullness and boredom as political devices.

As a nation we have never spent so much money on luxury and pleasure as we are spending now. There has never in all history been such a widespread pursuit of expensive pleasure by a whole people. The American people can afford luxury and they are buying it furiously, largely on the instalment plan. And in the White House they have installed a frugal little man who in his personal life is the very antithesis of the flamboyant ideal that everybody is frantically pursuing. ... At a time when Puritanism as a way of life is at its lowest ebb among the people, the people are delighted with a Puritan as their national symbol. ... The Coolidges are really virtuous people in the old American sense, and they have provided this generation, which is not virtuous in that sense, with an immense opportunity for vicarious virtue.”

 

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Today -100: April 30, 1926: Of duels, series of molds, and aigoing

German Prez Hindenburg forces the Reichstag to change a proposed law requiring the sacking of  soldiers and civil servants guilty of dueling to one merely allowing them to be fired.

The French Academy of Science rejects the theory of Prof. Tissot of the Paris Museum of Natural History that “every living thing is but a series of mold”.

Japanese police in occupied South Korea have been suppressing Aigo gatherings mourning the former emperor/king Sunjong, who the Japanese dethroned in 1910 and died last week (the internet tells me that “aigo” means “oh dear” or “geez”). Another form this mourning takes is the stabbing of two Japanese aldermen in Seoul, one fatally.

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Today -100: April 29, 1926: Such a distinction is foreign to our soil

Chicago police think Assistant State’s Attorney William McSwiggin was machine-gunned by killers imported from New York by, as they call him, “Al Brown, alias ‘Scarface Al’ Caponi” and John Torrio. They don’t know Capone was actually there.

Democrats in the House of Representatives filibuster (for a few hours, anyway) a bill to erect a monument to the 93rd Infantry Division, a segregated black unit that included the Harlem Hellfighters, in France. The bill is sponsored by the Hellfighters’ wartime captain, Rep. Hamilton Fish.

New York Supreme Court Justice William Carswell refuses a certificate of incorporation to the Colonial Association of Russian Workers and Peasants of America, because there are no peasants in the US: “Such a distinction is foreign to our soil.” The petitioners, naturalized citizens, “need education in Americanism,” Carswell says.

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Today -100: April 28, 1926: Of gangland killings, begging taxes, spas, and lepers

“Chicago gangsters” shoot up a car in Cicero with machine guns, killing Assistant State’s Attorney William McSwiggin. McSwiggin, a “hanging prosecutor” (7 executions in a 10-month period!) had unsuccessfully tried to prosecute Al Capone in the past, and Capone is one of the gunmen (well, he was there, he may or may not have personally wielded a Tommy gun), but McSwiggin wasn’t the target here. In fact, they didn’t know he was in the car; he was just heading to play cards with a couple of members of the O’Donnell Gang, one of whom, William “Klondike” O’Donnell, owned the car they were driving through Capone territory, when the Capone-ettes spotted it.

Capone’s involvement is not yet known.

The House of Representatives votes 196-4 to put Prohibition enforcement under the Treasury Dept.

German prohibitionists are pushing local option. The US is worried that local booze bans would reduce Germany’s national revenue, endangering its ability to pay reparations.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill is proposing to tax betting 5%, and his fellow Tories are not happy. It will end racing as we know it! It will force punters into back-alley wagers! It will legitimize betting! Will no one think of the farmers who grow the oats the race horses eat! 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who has “been in Georgia for his health,” buys the Warm Springs, Georgia spa he thinks is helping his polio.

The racial violence in Carteret, NJ has led to some arrests: not the angry white dudes, of course, but some news photographers who tried to get some local men & boys to brandish sticks and clubs for the camera. In Red Bank, 20-some miles away from Carteret, arson destroys a public school attended only by black students.

Ford Motor Comp. made a profit of only $29 on each car produced in 1925, down from $40 in 1924. Production difficulties are claimed to be the problem, and certainly not the declining popularity of the Model T.

The NY City Health Commissioner Louis Harris warns hospitals and dermatologists to be on the lookout for Antonia Ramoa, a woman with leprosy who escaped as she was being forcibly removed to the leper colony at Carville, Louisiana.

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Today -100: April 27, 1926: Sex!

A white mob burns a black Baptist church in Carteret, NJ and forces 100 black families out of the town after a couple of white guys are stabbed, one fatally, during a fight.

Mae West’s Sex opens, er, so to speak. It’s her first starring role. She also wrote and is directing it. The NYT calls it “A crude, inept play, cheaply produced and poorly acted”. So it will run for 375 performances.

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Today -100: April 26, 1926: He was against abuse of power before he was for abuse of power

Paris police investigate the story in a magazine that a ballerina, unnamed but obvious, bathes in 300 quarts of milk every day, which her valet then sells back to milk traders. They conclude that the story is made up.

Headline of the Day -100:

Zip the Pinhead, chief freak at Barnum & Bailey’s & Ringling Brothers Circus, has died at... 83? 69? Also known as “Zip - What Is It?”, a name supposedly bestowed upon him by Charles Dickens.

Sidney Barrett of Mahopac, NY and Hazel Williams marry despite a Ku Klux Klan warning to them not to (she may or may not have some negro blood). They’re supposed to be living with his uncle, but he got a gentle request from the Klan to allow the couple to live in his spare rooms but to admit any kluxers who happen to drop by.

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Today -100: April 25, 1926: Then make the most of it

Texas governor “Ma” Ferguson issues her re-election platform, including a defense of “the administration of the Fergusons.” Taxes are down and there hasn’t been a single lynching under her administration. She calls for a tax of 1¢ a cigar. “If Feargusonism is treason, then make the most of it” is her rather odd motto.

Poland: the government of Aleksander Skrzyński resigned last week after its finance minister resigned. He will try to form a new cabinet, this time with... wait for it... a Jew. An actual Jew. The way the article is written, it’s hard to tell if he’s got a specific Jew in mind or just figures that Jews are good at that finance stuff.

Princess Mary of Britain denies – vehemently – that she has bobbed her hair, after an unfortunate portrait made it look like she had.

German judges will no longer be allowed to snooze at the bench. For a century the criminal code has held that a judge’s physical presence, awake or otherwise, is sufficient to ensure a fair trial. However, the new rule only considers it sleep if it’s, like, really deep; light dozing and snoring are still acceptable.

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Today -100: April 24, 1926: Practical temperance rather than theoretical prohibition

The Illinois State Democratic Convention calls for modification of the Volstead Act to allow states to permit light wines and beer. “We favor practical temperance rather than theoretical prohibition.” The Republicans also meet, but fail to take any position on booze.

Germany & Russia agree a neutrality treaty.

Austria will change its army uniforms from green to grey, like the German uniform. They’re hoping for Anschluß by incremental stealth, hoping no one notices, or something.

Italy’s Interior Minister Luigi Federzoni creates a committee to combat birth control information or, as he terms it, “insidious, practical, pseudo-scientific neo-malthusian propaganda.” Italy’s greatest riches, Federzoni says, “is in the multiplication of its children, which is the strongest investment for invincible world expansion.”

The furniture of former French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, 84, is seized because he refused to pay the fine for delaying paying his taxes. He buys back the furniture before it’s carted away.

New Jersey Gov. Harry Moore does indeed refuse to meet the textile strikers’ rep Albert Weisbord and cancels an arbitration meeting, insisting that Weisbord should have had the “tact” not to show up.

Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot will premiere tomorrow at La Scala. Puccini died in 1924. Arturo Toscanini, who also premiered La bohème, will conduct.

In other opera news, Eduard Künnecke is adapting Dickens’s Little Dorrit. Almost finished, he says. He won’t finish it. I guess the next musical Dickens is Oliver.

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Today -100: April 23, 1926: Of gratification, trying English, and collapsible beds

Failed Headline of the Day -100:

“Ratification Gratification” was sitting right there.

Headline That... They Have To Have Known What They Were Doing, Right? of the Day -100:

That’s not the English language, which is tried but rarely in the US Senate to this day, but judge George Washington English of the District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois, a Wilson appointee, accused of, and now impeached for, various abuses of power.

The Passaic textile strikers pick Albert Weisbord to represent them, despite Gov. Harry Moore’s attempt to veto him. Will the guv refuse to meet with him?

The London production of Harlan Thompson & Harry Archer musical “Little Jessie James,” a big hit on Broadway a couple of years back, is banned by the Lord Chamberlain because there is a bed in one scene. Thompson points out that it is only a collapsible bed, “but the censor declined to regard it as less objectionable for that reason.”

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Today -100: April 22, 1926: Of unmistakable Communists, territorial limits, and princesses & jixes

NJ Gov. Harry Moore intervenes in the Passaic region textile strike by talking with mill owners and some random strikers but he refuses to speak with the actual strike leaders because they’re “unmistakably Communists.” Albert Weisbord, a strike leader who is totally a Communist, calls Moore, who is totally a bad egg, “a bad egg.”

A Circuit Court rules that the US has no jurisdiction to seize foreign rum ships beyond the 3-mile limit, treaties or no treaties.

British Home Sec Sir William Joynson-Hicks (Jix to his friends, if any) was present at the birth of Princess Elizabeth, presumably not actually in the birthing chamber, or whatever they call it, following the ancient custom that a government official attend a royal birth to ensure there’s no hanky-panky with the line of succession.

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Today -100: April 21, 1926: Of princesses and child marriages

Disney Princess Elizabeth of York is born. Although she’s third in line to the throne, she isn’t expected to ascend to the throne unless... well, just unless.

The NY Legislature passes a ban on marriages of children under the age of 14. A provision to also ban marriages between 14 and 16 without judicial approval disappeared mysteriously along the way. By the by, there is only one woman member of the Assembly, Rhoda Fox Graves. There are no women in the NY Senate; the first, Graves, will be elected in 1934.

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Today -100: April 20, 1926: Of courts and fasts

Secretary of State Kellogg rejects US participation in a conference of World Court members to discuss US reservations.

Two German hunger artists beat Jolly’s fasting record, quitting at 46 days. One of them is named Max Fastello, supposedly.

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Today -100: April 19, 1926: We cannot afford revelries

Turkey calls military recruits to the colors, worried about Mussolini’s speech in Tripoli and a suspected deal between Greece & Italy for each to grab chunks of Turkey, with Italy in the meantime building up Greece’s military.

Gen. Theodoros Pangalos is installed as president of Greece and will give up all the dictatorial powers he seized in January (suuuure he will).  He will free all the political prisoners & journalists he had arrested.

Headline of the Day -100:

“We cannot afford revelries,” Michael Stalin says (the NYT thinks that’s his first name. I say Russian history would have been very different if everyone had called him Mike).

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Today -100: April 18, 1926: Of poles, desire, and lightning

Roald Amundsen’s Arctic expedition, using an Italian airship, will drop Fascist flags and whatnot on the Pole.

The  Desire Under the Elms trial in L.A. ends in a mistrial.

The radio section of the Sunday NYT explains how not to get electrocuted through your antenna in a thunderstorm.

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Today -100: April 17, 1926: Air piracy is the geekiest kind of piracy

District Court Judge James Wilkerson rules that Commerce Sec. Herbert Hoover has no legal power to regulate radio broadcasting and acquits Zenith Radio Corp’s Chicago station, WJAZ, which changed its frequency without authorization to one assigned to Canadian stations in an act of “air piracy.”

Federal Prohibition Cracker-Downer Gen. Lincoln Andrews says he can stop all bootlegging if he’s given $3,000,000 and left alone. The money could come from taxing bootleggers.

The Los Angeles trial of 17 cast members of Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms concludes. Their actors’ lawyer quotes the Bible and Shakespeare to show that they had dirty words too. The prosecutor claims that the performance given to the jury was “a parlor version,” with the actors slurring the naughtier lines.

The Royal Geographic Society spells the Baltic nation “Estonia,” but the US is sticking with “Esthonia.”

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Today -100: April 16, 1926: Thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!

Note to New York Times -100: must you refer to the king of Swaziland as “ebony ruler”? Sobhuza II tried to assert his rights to prevent an Englishman evicting Swazis; the Privy Council in London decides that he, while ostensibly ruler of a protectorate rather than a colony, has retained fewer rights than he thought he did.

British Home Sec Sir William Joynson-Hicks (Jix to his friends, if any) says the anxiety in the Cabinet over a possible coal strike is greater than that experienced during the war. PM Stanley Baldwin is personally intervening, but he doesn’t bring much to the table.

Mussolini, described as “radiant” and whose nose is no longer painted with iodine, leaves Libya after a speech explaining the importance of the colony to Italy: “Italians are people who reproduce rapidly and they are going to continue to do so. Italy is hungry for land and here is the opportunity to satisfy her.” What’s the Italian for lebensraum? He suggests to Italian colonists that “You cannot build a great colony by dancing at the Grand Hotel. You must learn the technique of colonization.”

Britain’s chief theatrical censor, the Lord Chamberlain, insists that American actor Frances Carson, playing Salome in Leonid Andreyev’s Katerina at the Barnes Theatre (alongside John Gielgud), wear more clothes, but she refuses the offer of a shawl.

An owl invades Calvin Coolidge’s White House bedroom, quietly perching on his bedpost.

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Today -100: April 15, 1926: Of rioting thomases, no relations, beer without saloons, and ladies being good

Norman Thomas, the Socialist who ran for NYC mayor & NY governor and will run for president a bunch of times, is arrested in Garfield, NJ (next to Passaic) for testing whether the reading of the Riot Act by cops at one small meeting bans all gatherings of strikers forever. He’s brought before Justice of the Peace Hargreaves, who refuses to allow him to have legal counsel.

Sen. William McKinley loses his bid for re-election in the Illinois Republican primaries in a campaign that largely focused on his support for the US joining the World Court. Some people criticize Coolidge for not coming to McKinley’s support given that he was backing Coolidge’s World Court policy.

Gen. Lincoln Andrews, head of federal Prohibition enforcement, says that allowing low-alcohol-content beer while still keeping saloons closed would make enforcement easier. Light wines he’s not so sure about. He will get a lot of shit for these comments.

France and Germany agree to allow each other’s planes overflight rights.

“Lady, Be Good,” the musical written by George & Ira Gershwin, starring Fred and Adele Astaire, is received with enthusiasm in London.

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Today -100: April 14, 1926: We call it contempt of court in New York

Herrin, Illinois, which we haven’t heard from for a while, again experiences Klan-related rioting, this time at the polls where the office of Williamson Country sheriff is up for grabs. Klan dude John Smith is attacked while he’s challenging the votes of Italians. Yadda yadda yadda, 6 dead, 3 kluxers and 3 anti-kluxers, the latter all sheriff’s deputies.

The NY Lege removes the Motion Picture Censorship Commission’s ability to censor newsreels.

British coal mine owners and the miners’ union meet, but fail to come to an agreement. This is coming to a head with the scheduled end of the government subsidy of the industry on May 1st. If affiliated unions also come out, we’re looking at a General Strike™.

The sheriff in Passaic County, New Jersey is to take over breaking the textile strike in the town of Garfield, invited by its mayor, William Burke, who happens to work for the Botany Worsted Mills. The sheriff will bring 150 deputies with riot guns and will read the riot act, which would ban public meetings and speeches and, of course, picketing. ACLU lawyer Arthur Garfield Hayes, correctly pointing out that “a striker cannot get justice in Garfield” after Justice of the Peace Hargreaves sets a $5,000 bail for newspaper owner Robert Wolfe, charged with not obeying quickly enough an order to move along. The JP threatens to arrest Hayes for disorderly conduct; Hayes points out “We call it contempt of court in New York.” Cheeky! Hargreaves also stops Hayes’s stenographer and a reporter from taking notes because “This is not a court of law, it is a court of martial law.” Hargreaves complains about “outside agitators.” I wonder when that phrase was first used?

Yale University forgives the freshmen who rioted against compulsory chapel attendance.

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