Today -100: December 4, 1925: Of loans, indemnities, borders, and textbooks

Belgium is negotiating a major loan in New York to pay off its war debt, and Belgians will be asked, under a proposal by the president of the Bank of Brussels, to work free for a half hour per week at overtime rates, the money going to service the debt.

A League of Nations commission determines that Greece is entirely to blame for the recent War of the Stray Dog and must pay Bulgaria an indemnity of 20 million levas, which is the equivalent of some money, for material losses; it also recommends an additional 10 million levas for injuries and deaths of soldiers.

The Irish Free State, Northern Ireland & Great Britain come to an agreement on the Irish border, which is not to change it and indeed to suppress the report of the boundary commission. Ulster intransigence wins again, I guess. As part of the overall agreement, Britain will stop trying to get the Free State to pay any of Britain’s war debt (disputes over how to calculate it means the Free State has never actually paid any of it), and Ireland will take over payment of compensation for the Civil War, which means it has to pay for its own oppression (as was the custom).

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson’s opponents have another potential ground for impeachment: a possibly corrupt deal for elementary school spelling books, which was made after she appointed her husband to the Textbook Commission, which then mysteriously awarded the contract to the highest bidder.

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Today -100: December 3, 1925: We don’t want hats!

Gen. Miguel Primo de Rivera supposedly gives up the dictatorship of Spain and dissolves the “Directorate” he set up in ‘23. He does not restore the Cortes or the Constitution or end press censorship. 

Dueling is still a thing in Germany, or at any rate Prussia. Junker aristo Bogislav von Somnitz is sentenced to 2½ years in prison for having killed a duelee in one of four (4, count ’em, 4) duels he held in a single day. The other 3 duelists will get 6 months in prison and the seconds 1 month. Somnitz had been assaulted at a hunting party by the baron who hosted it and the other 3 because of his refusal to participate in monarchist plots and to hide insurgents on his property. Naturally he challenged them. The first 3 duels were bloodless, mostly because the sun hadn’t come up yet, but it had by the time he faced Lt. von Kohl, who bled to death. The judge rules that Somnitz was not guilty of premeditated murder because he shot at his opponents’ legs and anyway the insult to his honor required a duel in response. 

A Turkish man who put up posters objecting to the government’s ban on fezes is hanged. Elsewhere, a mob demonstrates in front of the governor’s house in Marash shouting “We don’t want hats!”

Young Kip Rhinelander’s lawyer, retired NY Supreme Court justice Isaac Mills, sums up. Some quotes:

You might as well bury this young man six feet deep in the soil of the old churchyard where his early American ancestors sleep as to condemn him to be chained for eternity to this mulatto woman.

There is not a father among you – and I tried to fill this jury box with fathers [The jury is all-male, as was almost always the case in NY until jury duty became mandatory for women in the ‘70s] – who would not rather see his son in his casket than wedded to this mulatto woman. There is room in this fair county for blacks as well as whites, but the decent blacks object to this marriage, as do the decent whites.

He will hail your verdict if you find a verdict for him, as a person on the steps of the scaffold welcomes a reprieve from the governor.

He admits Alice was humiliated by “that indecent exhibition in the jury room,” but 

with the buoyance of her race she will regain her spirits. ... Let her gain a husband of her own race and find happiness with him [like her sister Emily,] who without vaulting ambition wed within her own color and kind.

Vaulting ambition is the worst kind of ambition.

Mills says Kip had the intelligence of a 14- or 15-year-old when he met Alice and a “physical infirmity” – is that how he’s referring to stuttering? – so he fell under her spell, and “mind you, women of her race mature earlier.”

He calls on the jury to free poor Kip “from this horrid, unnatural, absurd, terrible union.”

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Today -100: December 2, 1925: Of occupations and research

British troops evacuate (finally) the North Rhineland (Cologne and environs). Unlike the French when they de-occupied the Ruhr, the British are doing it without making any triumphalist fuss.

Commerce Sec Herbert Hoover complains at the lack of spending in the US on fundamental scientific research. He claims we spend ten times as much on cosmetics.

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Today -100: December 1, 1925: They must think I’m a bird

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson refuses to call a special session of the Legislature, calling those requesting it “wolves” who “want to gather here and tear me apart.” “They tried to camouflage [the special session] as an inquiry into the foot and mouth disease and tick eradication. They must think I’m a bird. It’s my feet, my mouth, and my eradication they want.” Her feet? Her mouth?

Today the governor – Jim, not Ma, who quit for the day at noon – sat in the governor’s chair and talked to reporters, “using language in reference to the anti-Ferguson group that no lady Governor would think of, let alone use.”

The lady governor demands that Amon Carter, publisher of The Fort Worth Star Telegram, resign from the Board of Directors of the Texas Technological College because, she claims, he was drunk at a football game.

Hungary will ban foreign jazz bands after December 31st, not because the government hates jazz, which it probably does, but to protect native jazz bands.

Alice Rhinelander will not testify. Her lawyer Lee Davis, who last week made her strip for the jury, says “It struck me that it was just time the world was through with the slime of this case.” Alice is at the visibly-weeping-all-the-time phase of the trial. Davis, in his closing argument, accuses the opposition of attempting to smear everyone, from Alice’s mother to the chauffeur, who was ordered by a court to pay child support for his illegitimate child, which has what to do with his having told Kip that Alice’s father is black?

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: November 30, 1925: They wish to go as fast as possible along the same road

Coolidge’s Aircraft Board of Inquiry rejects Billy Mitchell’s call for a unified Air Force, continuing the existing system of separate army and navy air services.

Texan citizens create a fund to pay for a special session of the Legislature to investigate Gov. Miriam Ferguson, since it turns out that special sessions don’t have the power to appropriate funds for themselves during the special session.

A day after Gov. Ferguson announces a bounty on rich flouters of prohibition law, George Brady, a black butler at the Governor’s Mansion is arrested for attempting to sell liquor to some white dudes. Brady had a death sentence commuted by a previous governor, but his parole was revoked by another governor “on general principles,” he was then furloughed to work in the Mansion, and later pardoned by Ms. Ferguson.

The NYT op-ed page says it would have more sympathy with Ferguson’s critics if she hadn’t campaigned on a promise to let her husband do most of the governoring, a job divided between “an elected wife who confesses small knowledge of how to exercise it and a husband whose record shows that he knows too much.”

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill says “The Socialist in his folly and the Communist in his malice would undermine and fatally wreck the pillars of our society. They wish to go as fast as possible along the same road, but the Communist thinks he can smash his way by violence and the Socialist believes he can do it by humbug.” I’ve said it before: we just don’t use the word “humbug” often enough these days.

Gandhi is fasting again. The NYT fails to say why, but it’s a “penitential” 7-day fast after “moral lapses” by some kids at the Satyagraha Ashram.

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Today -100: November 29, 1925: Of booze bounties

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson offers a $500 reward for the arrest and conviction of any Texan for violation of prohibition laws – if they’re worth more than $5,000. This is her response to critics of her pardons of poor people jailed for low-level liquor offences, such as certain millionaire newspaper publishers. The press conference does nothing to dispel the notion that it’s her husband who is really running the state, as she turns all the hard questions over to him. The Austin American editorializes, “James E. Ferguson Should Cease to Be Governor.”

The Italian bill currently being debated to punish expatriate Italian critics of Fascism by removal of their citizenship and seizure of their property neglects to specify what actual infractions are covered or how the culprits’ guilt will be determined.

The collapse of the Painlevé government in France halted work on a bill to suppress the French Fascisti.

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Today -100: November 28, 1925: They’ve scraped Hell with a fine-tooth comb and they’ve found nothing

The German Reichstag ratifies the Locarno treaties, 291 to 174, and authorizes the government to apply for membership in the League of Nations. 

Bells are installed under each seat in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, just in case deputies would like to drown out, say, a Communist deputy.

Aristide Briand manages to form a Cabinet.

Reporters who thought they’d be having a press conference with Texas Gov. Miriam Ferguson are instead presented with her husband, former impeached governor James Ferguson, described as “a tall, lean, hard-bitten man of the shrewd farmer type,” who explains that his wife is too tired from shaking hands at the Thanksgiving football game between the U of Texas and the Aggies. In the two-hour presser, Ferguson doesn’t quite dispel the notion that he’s the person really running the state, repeatedly deploying the pronoun “we,” as in “We haven’t decided whether we will run for governor again,” and even saying “I” came second in the first primary. He says the impeachment talk is from a dastardly coalition of the Klan and supporters of other candidates for governor next year. He denies selling pardons. He admits that road contractors have been making huge profits, but attributes it to the good weather. He says “They’ve scraped Hell with a fine-tooth comb and they’ve found nothing.” Ferguson, who during his own impeachment 12 years ago refused to say who had given him a $156,000 loan, now admits it was 3 brewers supporting his anti-prohibition stance.

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Today -100: November 27, 1925: Of cabinets, kings of Siam, lonely Thanksgivings, and hangings

Édouard Herriot fails to form a Cabinet (in bargaining with him, the Socialists rather overplayed their hand), so Aristide Briand is given another shot at it.

King Rama VI of Siam dies at 44. He has no male heirs but a daughter was born 2 days (or possibly 2 hours, I’ve seen both) before he died. The throne will go to his brother. VI went to Oxford, where he was a member of the Bullingdon Club, just like Boris Johnson, and he translated Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice into Thai.

Kip Rhinelander, whose family bullied him into this annulment lawsuit, has no contact with that family on Thanksgiving. He eats his dinner alone in his hotel with the family lawyer/Kip-wrangler. Alice celebrates the holiday with her family.

Two Greek colonels, one of whom was the chief of police at Saloniki, are publicly hanged outside Athens before a crowd of 30,000, for embezzling public funds. It’s a novelty, hanging having only recently been introduced in Greece. Don’t know how they used to execute people.

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Today -100: November 26, 1925: I don’t give a damn if he is

France: Paul Doumer, like Briand, fails to form a cabinet, so Édouard Herriot, who was last prime minister in April, will try next.

Texas Gov. Miriam Ferguson celebrates Thanksgiving by pardoning another 105 prisoners, including 27 murderers. Bribes? Maybe. She is under threat of impeachment for incompetence and waste of government funds, and many are criticizing her profligate issuing of pardons, a lot of them for prohibition offenses but including a bunch of murderers as well. One of her opponents in the Legislature, who the NYT annoyingly does not name, says “The next governor of Texas will be a man.” Speaker Lee Satterwhite says if Ferguson refuses to call a special session, he will. He says normally the chivalric men of the Legislature – and only men, although there was one (1) woman in the previous Lege) – wouldn’t pick on a woman, but she isn’t really governor, just “an accident in the Governor’s office... under the domination of her husband,” former impeached governor James Ferguson. Attorney General Dan Moody has advised the Speaker that he has the power to call a special session and that wanton waste (wanton waste is the worst kind of waste) constitutes a ground for impeachment; Attorney General Dan Moody will be the next governor of Texas.

On the witness stand in Rhinelander v. Rhinelander: a chauffeur who drove Kip around and pointed out to him that Alice’s father was a colored man. “I don’t give a damn if he is,” Kip responded.

Incidentally George Jones, Alice Rhinelander’s British-born father, always insists that he is a colored man (or mulatto, as they say in Britain), not a negro. It’s a very important distinction for him.

5 British Communists (including future general secretary Harry Pollitt) are sentenced to 1 year for conspiracy to utter seditious libels and incitement to mutiny. 7 others get 6-month sentences after refusing to promise not to have anything to do with the Communist Party.

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Today -100: November 25, 1925: First they say she said too much, and now they say she said nothing

France: Aristide Briand fails to form a cabinet. Leon Blum was asking for more ministries for the Socialists than Briand was willing to give. Paul Doumer will make the next attempt.

French Pres. Gaston Doumergue cancels the official reception for the new Russian ambassador, Christian Rakovsky, who has been insisting that the Garde Republicain Band play the Internationale at the event.

Kip Rhinelander’s lawyer asks to amend the charge against Alice Rhinelander from positive fraud to negative fraud. They’re no longer claiming that the Kipster didn’t realize she had negro blood but that she should have told him – nay, was required to tell him – that she was not white. Her lawyer responds, “First they say she said too much, and now they say she said nothing.”

Leonard Kip Rhinelander’s name has been removed from the 1926 edition of the New York Social Register.

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Today -100: November 24, 1925: You loved to have me do that, didn’t you, old scout?

Bryn Mawr College’s Self-Government Association (i.e., the student body) calls for  students to be allowed to smoke. The president agrees, saying the ban no longer rests on “intelligent public opinion.” A questionnaire shows half the students smoke.

50 members of the Texas Legislature sign a petition calling on the Speaker to call a special session (since Gov. Miriam Ferguson refuses to do so) to investigate the highly corrupt highway spending overseen by her husband. They plan to use the session to impeach members of the Highway Commission and, oh yeah, Gov. Ferguson herself. Attorney General Dan Moody last week forced the American Road Company to return $600,000 of excess profits.

French Pres. Gaston Doumergue asks Aristide Briand to form a government and become prime minister for the 8th time. The composition of his cabinet will likely have to move rightward. This sort of instability in French government could never happen today.

Headline of the Day -100:

There has been a series of violent assaults on women recently in Toledo, and this is the police response.

At the Rhinelander annulment trial, those letters from Kip to Alice are read to the court, after the judge orders women spectators to leave the courtroom (he’d just suggested it to them earlier, with limited compliance – then he read one of the letters). After reading the first letter, whose contents the NYT fails to disclose (but they will be available from street vendors the next day), Kip’s lawyer, retired NY Supreme Court justice Isaac Mills, asks him, “You recognize that letter as smut?” Young Kip agrees that the letter he wrote, which wasn’t exactly intended for public consumption, was indeed smut. Mills describes the second letter as “the vilest smut.” So if you’re wondering, the Kipster’s letter was about him going down on Alice. “You loved to have me do that, didn’t you, old scout?”  (Isn’t that the name of the porn version of The Great Gatsby?) Her lawyer asks him, “You had no suspicion inside of you that to put your head between her legs was an unnatural thing?” He didn’t.

It gets grosser from there. Her lawyer asks the justice to clear the court so the jury can inspect her body to determine whether Kip would have recognized her skin color as negroid. She is told to lower her coat, under which she is wearing only underwear, down to her breasts and raise it to her knees. Crying all the time. He then asks Kip if she’s the same color she was when they spent a week fucking in the Hotel Marie Antoinette. He concedes that she is.

(Because things have gotten sooooo much better in the last hundred years, Brigitte Macron, wife of the French president, recently had to provide scientific evidence of not being a man to the court trying her defamation suit against an “influencer” who said she was.)

The federal Bureau of Education compiles a list of 40 books all children should read by age 16. Little Women, Robinson Crusoe, tons of Twain & Kipling, Alice in Wonderland, and, um, Uncle Remus.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court upholds the death sentence on William Cavalier, at 15 the youngest person ever sentenced to death in the electric chair in Pennsylvania. When he was 14 he killed his grandmother with a rifle to steal money to go to the movies. No article I’ve read about the case says what the movie was, but we are informed that he enjoyed it.

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Today -100: November 23, 1925: Of confidence and spirit photographs

France: the government of Paul Painlevé loses a vote of confidence in Parliament, the right wing and the Communists joining forces to defeat it.

An article in Scientific American debunks a “spirit photograph” of St John the Evangelist and some cupids which Arthur Conan Doyle defended as totally real. The article, by Walter Franklin Prince, who actually believes in some psychical stuff, identifies the original on which the fraud is based: a 17th-century painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, with some added “ectoplasm.” “Do London spiritualists never visit the National Gallery?” he asks.

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