Friday, March 29, 2024

Today -100: March 29, 1924: I’d rather be right here in Atlantic City than anywhere else

Pres. Coolidge finally fires Attorney General Harry Daugherty, who writes an open letter defending himself. He warns of “government by slander, by terrorism and by fear” and calls the campaign against him a conspiracy of “powerful individuals and organizations” (which he does not name) responsible for violent strikes and of other “powerful individuals and organizations” he was investigating for graft during the Great War.

Coolidge had been planning to let the investigation play out and letting Dirty Harry having his say, but the final straw was his refusal to turn over documents to that Senate DOJ committee investigation, documents relating to his siccing the Bureau of Investigation on Sen. Thomas Walsh after he started investigating Teapot Dome (I’m not sure, but I don’t think it’s been revealed to the public which documents Daugherty withheld). Bureau of Investigation head William Burns is also expected to be ousted (he will be; incidentally, Burns has continued running his own private detective agency all the time he has headed the proto-FBI).

Where does a disgraced former attorney general go? Atlantic City baby! He tells reporters there that everything said about him was a lie, and anyway the Senate committee didn’t have legal authority to investigate them. He doesn’t use the words “rigged” or “witch hunt,” but you get the idea.

Sen. Kenneth McKellar (D-Tenn.) introduces a resolution for the Judiciary Committee to investigate whether Treasury Sec Andrew Mellon is holding that office in violation of the law forbidding treasury secs to engage in trade or commerce. The law applies to several Treasury positions. They also can’t own a sea vessel. Republicans complain that the D’s are going after the Cabinet one by one by one.

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J. Van Vechten Olcott, former NY congresscritter (1905-11) and current lawyer, tells the Senate DOJ Committee that he was offered a federal judgeship – for $35,000, to be distributed “among the boys.” It’s not clear that the lawyer he spoke with actually had the ability to make him a judge, or who “the boys” might be. Anyway, he turned him down. Olcott is in the witness seat when the news of Dirty Harry’s resignation is heard.

The US Senate Committee on Territories and Insular Possessions is considering holding a plebiscite in the Philippines on independence – in 1935.

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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Today -100: March 28, 1924: Not to prison but to Valhalla

Rep. John Langley (R-Kentucky) is indicted for his part in a large bootleg operation, getting the prohibition commissioner to authorize the release of whisky.

French PM Raymond Poincaré unresigns a day after resigning.

Gen. Erich Ludendorff, giving his closing statement at the Beer Hall Putsch trial: “The world’s history sends me, who has fought for the Fatherland, not to prison but to Valhalla.” He says if the nationalistic movement fails, Germany will face “the menace of enslavement to France.” He is followed by Hitler, who compares himself to Bismarck and Wilhelm I.

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Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Today -100: March 27, 1924: Rules rules rules

NYPD Commissioner Richard Enright puts out a booklet of do’s and don’ts for cops: don’t discuss police business with your family; don’t talk to females except on official business; don’t lean against walls; don’t shoot too many people, etc.

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Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Today -100: March 26, 1924: Of war criminals, impeachments, and tiges

A French court-martial in Nancy sentences a bunch of German military people to death for ordering arson, pillaging and/or assassinations at the start of the Great War.

The Senate votes unanimously for a resolution to impeach Clarence Chase, collector of customs at the Port of El Paso, a day after he took the Fifth before the Teapot Dome Committee. Chase is former Interior Sec. Albert Fall’s son-in-law. Chase tried to get Price McKinney to say falsely that he’d lent Fall $100,000 to cover up Fall’s bribe-taking. While the Senate is debating impeaching him, Chase resigns, but Treasury Sec Andrew Mellon refuses to accept the resignation. (He’ll accept it tomorrow).

The Coolidges’ lost cat Tiger (aka Tige) is found at the Navy Building.

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Monday, March 25, 2024

Today -100: March 25, 1924: Of contumacy, tigers, pretty good-sized navies, and swirrflügers

The Senate votes 72-1 to pursue contempt (contumacy) charges against Harry Sinclair for refusing to answer questions.

The Coolidges’ cat Tiger (aka Tige) has disappeared and the Secret Service has gone on the DC and, for some reason, NYC radio stations to ask for the public’s help. More as it develops.

Curtis Wilbur, the new secretary of the Navy, is asked if he’s a Big Navy man; “Well, I am for a pretty good sized navy.”

Raimund Nimführ, an Austrian inventor, says he’s invented a plane with pulsating wings which can take off and land vertically. Now he just needs someone to finance his giant flying vibrator. It will be started in the 1930s but never completed. It will be pleasingly called Swirrflüger (say it out loud: Swirrflüger, Swirrflüger, Swirrflüger), meaning whirlwings.

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Sunday, March 24, 2024

Today -100: March 24, 1924: Of attorneys generalses, indigestion of immigration, ein volk..., and duels

Coolidge just can’t make up his mind on whether to fire Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty now or wait for Senate hearings to come to some sort of conclusion. At the White House, he consults, yet again, with Republican senators. I think it looks bad to be talking only to Republicans, but no one seems to be commenting on that. The senators want Dirty Harry out because of his nefarious associates and because he’s spending all his time defending himself rather than attorney generaling. Sounds like they don’t also mention that he’s a corrupt weasel.

John Quinn, head of the American Legion, and Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, will publish a statement calling for a halt to all immigration. Gompers says the opposition of alien-born citizens to immigration restrictions just shows why immigration restriction is needed, because their opposition is based on loyalty to the country of their birth and not to the US. Commander Quinn says the melting pot has become impotent, which is an interesting mixed metaphor, and the US is “suffering from indigestion of immigration.”

The German National People’s Party (DNVP or Deutschnationale Volkspartei) adopts the slogan “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Kaiser” for the forthcoming Reichstag elections. The party is calling for restoration of the monarchy, the centrality of Prussia in the German state, repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles. It promises to “fight everywhere against the destructive spirit of the Jews.” Spoiler Alert: it will get 19% of the vote.

The minister of war of Argentina fights a duel with another general, the head of the military in Buenos Aires. The latter was standing in for a major who had criticized the army, but was of too low a rank for the war minister to duel.

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Saturday, March 23, 2024

Today -100: March 23, 1924: Of 75,000 somethings, melting brown eyes, and reckless riding

Harry Sinclair refuses to answer questions before the Senate Teapot Dome committee, saying that since the matter is now before the courts, the committee has lost its jurisdiction. They threaten to have him arrested for contempt.

Will Hays, the current film czar, who was chair of the RNC in 1920, denies that Harry Sinclair gave 75,000 shares to the Republican deficit-elimination fund. 75,000 dollars, maybe.

French PM Raymond Poincaré wants a mutual-protection treaty with Britain, although PM Ramsay MacDonald favors using the League of Nations to control a neutral zone along the Rhine.

The NYT Book Review reviews Ronald Firbank’s “Prancing Nigger,” which is evidently the title suggested by the British author’s publisher for the American edition of “Sorrow in Sunlight.”

Charlie Chaplin has found his leading lady for The Gold Rush, Lita Grey. “She is dark, and, according to enthusiastic information that has reached this department, is the possessor of ‘melting brown eyes, ivory skin and red lips.’ All these features are said to be characteristic of the Spanish race.” Yeah, and she’s also 15 years old, so knock off the perving. Oh, and here’s a quote from Chaplin (who used her as an extra in The Kid) himself: “I was surprised one day to observe how this little girl had bloomed into a beautiful young lady.” She will actually be replaced as leading lady in The Gold Rush after becoming pregnant with Charles Jr.

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Friday, March 22, 2024

Today -100: March 22, 1924: Back to 1920

The Senate Teapot Dome committee will soon hear whether the Republican National Committee’s large deficit after the 1920 elections was made good with 75,000 shares of Sinclair oil stock.

More news from the 1920 election oozing out: Oklahoma oil man Jake Hamon’s attempt to buy the nomination for Harding so he could become secretary of the interior and authorize his own Teapot Dome lease, a scheme thwarted by his mistress shooting him dead. The beans about this are about to be spilled by Al Jennings, the actor, preacher, 1914 Democratic candidate for governor of Oklahoma, and train robber, not necessarily in that order.

At the Senate hearings about Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty, John Gorini of the Alps Drug Company of New York testifies that he paid $200,000 in graft to associates of Daugherty to get permits to withdraw whisky (for medicinal purposes, of course) from bonded warehouses at a rate of $15 a case. The NY Prohibition Director also got a cut.

At the Beer Hall Putsch trial in Munich, Prosecutor Ludwig Stenglein asks for an 8-year term for Hitler, 2 years for Ludendorff, and 1 to 6 for the other 8 defendants. He claims Ludendorff was only let into the full plan at the last moment (bullshit), so he’s just an accessory rather than a full treasonist.

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Thursday, March 21, 2024

Today -100: March 21, 1924: You won’t have Winston Churchill to kick around any more

Winston Churchill loses the by-election in the Abbey division of Westminster, coming in 43 votes behind Conservative Otho Nicholson, who will now succeed his late father. At one point Churchill is announced as the winner; when the returning officer checks his figures and announces that Nicholson had actually won, Winnie drops his cigar. Churchill says he could have won if he’d had two or three more days.

Oscar Underwood blames the Ku Klux Klan for William Gibbs McAdoo’s victory in the Georgia Democratic presidential primary.

Honduran rebels, er I guess they’re the government now, fire on the US bluejackets. The de facto government says it was a mistake but asks that the US remove its troops from the country. The ambassador says no, fuck you very much. He claims the troops are there to protect American lives and property.

Germany doesn’t believe denials that the new French-Czechoslovak Treaty has secret clauses.

A House of Representatives election committee recommends not allowing E.W. Cole to take his seat. Texas should have gotten an extra seat in reapportionment after the 1920 census, but that reapportionment, required by the Constitution, never happened, so Texas just went ahead and held an at-large election in 1922 for the extra seat.

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