Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Today -100: March 19, 1924: We deserved to be shot if we had any other intention

The Soldiers’ Bonus Bill passes the House 355-54. It would provide $50 for short-termers and $1 a day for longer-serving soldiers for each day of home service and $1.25 overseas, to a maximum of $625, in the form of a 20-year endowment policy. It would cost $2 billion with a b over 20 years. Coolidge is expected to veto it.

In the Senate, Pres. Coolidge is accused of, among other things, watching a screening of the Carpentier-Dempsey fight at the home of WaPo publisher Edward McLean, which is a crime.

Questions are asked in the House of Commons about the Prince of Wales’s habit of falling off horses. The subject has also been much discussed in the papers.

At the Beer Hall Putsch trial, Hitler proudly proclaims that his intention was to march on Berlin and overthrow the Republic. Co-defendant Ludendorff denies having had any such plans. The prosecutor upbraids Hitler for the serious consequences of the putsch, to which he responds, “Naturally it had serious consequences. That was the idea. We deserved to be shot if we had any other intention.”

Eugene O’Neill complains about the “irresponsible gabble of the sensation-mongers and notoriety hounds” complaining about his play “All God’s Chillun Got Wings,” which hasn’t opened yet but will star Paul Robeson and Mary Blair as an interracial couple. He asks for a fair hearing by people who’ve actually seen it performed and says it will offend no one. He is wrong about that, of course.

The Senate votes 63-7 for a constitutional amendment to move the presidential inauguration to January from March.

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Monday, March 18, 2024

Today -100: March 18, 1924: Of finks, goats, and scab dinners

Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty accuses Roxie Stinson, the witness against him at the Senate committee, and her representative A.L. (ahem) Fink, of trying to blackmail him He says they wanted $150,000, later dropped to $50,000, to hand over incriminating documents & leave the country so she couldn’t be forced to testify.

Former Justice Dept special agent Gerald Holdridge accuses William Burns, head of the Bureau of Investigation, of undermining the investigation of the bribery involved in the illegal distribution of Carpentier-Dempsey fight films in 1921, which he says involves Daugherty. Asked if he believes Burns & Daugherty are both crooks, he says, “I do.” Holdridge says he and other agents were reassigned and transferred (one to Haiti!) to stop their work. The scheme involved “goats,” men who would be arrested in each state for the showing of the film and pay a small fine, with the collaboration of the local prosecutor and judge.

Sen. Frank Willis (R-Ohio) proposes limiting presidents to a single term. The vote is 70-4 against.

Walter Cohen, a black man twice rejected by the Senate for the post of controller of customs at the Port of New Orleans and twice recess appointed, is confirmed in a closed-door session. He’ll get back pay for all the months he worked without pay.

Headline of the Day -100:  


 

Premiere of the film The Thief of Bagdad, starring Douglas Fairbanks, so shirtless it’s almost sarcastic, with a surprise appearance by Anna May Wong

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Sunday, March 17, 2024

Today -100: March 17, 1924: Of raw materials

Commerce Sec Herbert Hoover calls for legislation to prevent foreign monopolies on imported raw materials. He thinks such monopolies exist in sisal, potash, raw rubber, tin, mercury, quinine, etc.  He wants to create joint buying organizations, which will certainly pass along their savings to the consumers, why would you doubt it?

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Saturday, March 16, 2024

Today -100: March 16, 1924: If you are elected, it will be quite unintentional

Aviator-poet Gabriele D’Annunzio is named Prince of Montenevoso, coinciding with Fiume being formally annexed to Italy.

The Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII) falls off a horse, twice, or possibly two different horses, as was the custom. The second time his horse kicks him in the head. He “was winded and dazed.” And then the horse kicked him in the head.

And the German former crown prince attends a screening of Fritz Lang’s film Die Nieberlung, which is being considered some sort of nationalist signal.

F.C. Quimby, head of a film company, testifies to the Senate committee investigating the DOJ that half the profits for the illegal showing of films of the Carpentier-Dempsey boxing match in 1921 went to 3 men representing themselves as friends of Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty: “Jap” Muma, who works for Edward McLean, publisher of the Washington Post; William Orr, former secretary to Gov. Charles Whitman; and Ike Martin, owner of a Cincinnati amusement park.

George Bernard Shaw writes to Fenner Brockway, the Labour candidate standing in the Westminster by-election against, among others, Winston Churchill: “Westminster once elected John Stuart Mill, but it has never recovered from the shock of finding that it had elected a really good man. If you are elected, it will be quite unintentional.”

Gen. Otto von Lossow is fined for storming out of the Hitler-Ludendorff trial and refusing to return to the witness stand.

The Federal Council of Churches says there were only 28 lynchings in the US last year, taking place in only 9 states. So, um, yay? 26 of the victims were black.

China and Sweden establish diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia. (Update: er, possibly not for China).

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Friday, March 15, 2024

Today -100: March 15, 1924: Of vicious piffle and truly royal sports

Gaston Means, a former Bureau of Investigation agent, con man, forger, blackmailer, probable murderer, and so much more (he will die in prison after conning a millionaire out of a huge sum of money because he said he could get the Lindbergh baby back), who is currently under indictment for fraudulently selling glass coffins through the mail, as one does, testifies to the Senate committee investigating Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty. He says Dirty Harry received $100,000 from a Japanese bank. He says that his agents broke into and searched Sen. Robert La Follette’s office after the latter began investigating Teapot Dome. He says he conducted an undercover investigation of Treasury Sec Andrew Mellon at Pres. Harding’s request, something about permits for whisky. Oh, and so on. Some of it may even be true.

Treasury Sec Andrew Mellon calls Gaston Means’s testimony “vicious piffle,” which is the worst kind of piffle.

Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty denies all the charges against him made by Roxy Stinson. He says she blames him for her dead ex-husband Jess Smith having failed to make her his sole beneficiary.

Richard Halsey, the immigration director for Hawaii, commits suicide after being accused of complicity in the smuggling of Chinese into the territory.

A teacher in Grant, Colorado writes Pres. Coolidge inviting him to a lion hunt, which she calls a “truly royal sport.” But Coolidge, filthy commoner that he is, declines.

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Thursday, March 14, 2024

Today -100: March 14, 1924: Of dissolutions, injunctions, and bumpers-and-friends

German Chancellor Wilhelm Marx dissolves the Reichstag after a fight over the government’s special powers. And since no Reichstag means no parliamentary immunity, the police arrest 17 Communist deputies.

Coolidge appoints Curtis Wilbur, the chief justice of the California Supreme Court, as secretary of the Navy. This is his first appointment, the rest of the Cabinet still consisting entirely of holdover Harding appointments.

The federal court for Wyoming issues a temporary injunction against drilling at Teapot Dome by Harry Sinclair’s Mammoth Oil Company, in response to a government petition asserting that the lease was made after bribes to Interior Sec. Albert Fall and false claims by Fall to Harding.

The Teapot Dome Committee questions Teddy Roosevelt Jr. about sending in marines in 1922 to eject trespassers of the oil-extracting variety  from the Teapot Dome region when he was assistant Navy secretary. He says it was done at the insistence of Interior Sec Albert Fall, allegedly with Harding’s approval. Sen. Thomas Walsh suggests they sent troops rather than go through the courts because that would have brought legal scrutiny to the lease. Col. Roosevelt admits having asked Harry Sinclair to give his brother Archie a job.

Roxy Stinson, ex-wife of Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty’s “bumper and friend” (whatever that means), Jess Smith – the bagman who had no government job but had a desk outside Daugherty’s office and who committed “suicide” in mysterious circumstances last May – spills the beans to the Senate committee investigating Dirty Harry: secret meetings, oil speculation, payoffs to facilitate the illegal circulation of films of the Carpentier-Dempsey boxing match, bribes for pardons, illegal withdrawal of liquor from government-bonded warehouses, etc. Some of it may even be true.

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Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Today -100: March 13, 1924: More tempest in a Teapot Dome

The House of Representatives authorizes an investigation of the Chicago federal grand jury charge that two congresscritters took bribes to facilitate pardons from Daugherty’s super-corrupt Justice Dept.

At the Senate Teapot Dome Committee, Washington Post publisher Edward McLean admits that last December his friend Interior Secretary Albert Fall asked him to say that he’d lent Fall $100,000 as a cover for the bribes Fall had taken from oil companies, though Fall told him it had nothing to do with Teapot Dome. McLean did tell the lie he was asked to do, evidently without asking what was going on if it wasn’t Teapot Dome.

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Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Today -100: March 12, 1924: Utterly impossible

Coolidge asks Congress to cut federal taxes 25% by March 15th so people filing on or by that day can take advantage of it. Congressional leaders say it’s impossible to do it by then.

The Dictator of Bavaria at the time of the Beer Hall Putsch, Gustav von Kahr, insists at the Hitler-Ludendorff trial that neither he nor Gen. Otto von Lossow could possibly have worked with Hitler because “We considered Hitler, Hitler’s followers and Hitler’s plans as utterly impossible.” Says he took Hitler showing up at the Bürgerbräukeller with a revolver and a mob as a comedy over which he was laughing secretly.

The German sense of humor is a mysterious thing.

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Monday, March 11, 2024

Today -100: March 11, 1924: Of peculiar and natural functions and swashbuckling little ward politicians

Government lawyers will, finally, file suit for an injunction against Harry Sinclair operating the Teapot Dome oil leases and Doheny for his leases. The lawyers will have to travel first to Cheyenne, then to LA to do so.

The US Supreme Court upholds the NY law banning night work by women in restaurants (except as singers, actors or cloakroom attendants). Justice George Sutherland says the law is not unreasonable or discriminatory because it’s hard to sleep in the day in large cities, which is more dangerous for women because of their “more delicate organism,” and night work “threatens to impair their peculiar and natural functions, and... exposes them to the dangers and menaces incident to night life in large cities”.

Gen. Otto von Lossow, the former illegally appointed chief of the Reichswehr in Bavaria, testifies at the Beer Hall Putsch trial, calling Hitler a “swashbuckling little ward politician”.

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