Sunday, April 27, 1924. Weimar warns.

The German government issued a warning against extremist opposing the Dawes Plan, noting that its rejection might lead to a second World War.

Last prior edition:

Friday, April 25, 1924. Denver Colorado receives 24" of snow, Jilted "Girl" lawyer turns killer.

Location: Denver, CO, USA

Friday, April 25, 1924. Denver Colorado receives 24" of snow, Jilted "Girl" lawyer turns killer.

16th Street, 1924.

Belgium accepted the Dawes Plan.

Of the two, at the time, Casper newspapers, the Herald leaned on sensational headlines, but there was plenty to be sensationalist about.

The "Girl Lawyer" was Wanda Stopa, who must have been both brilliant and unstable.  The story reminds us of the Biblical warning that "the wages of sin is death", quite literally in this instance.  Stopa

startred down the path that lead to her own death through adultery.

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Thursday, April 24, 1924. Protecting the Icons.

1920s, 1924, Communism, Joseph Stalin, Russian Orthodox Church, Russian Renovationist Church, St. Petersburg Russia, The 1922 Confiscation of Russian Orthodox Wealth

Wednesday, April 16, 1924. Flyer forced down.

Germany accepted the Dawes Plan.

Romania announced that it had settled its debts with Italy.

Senator Warren was reported as having voted against the Japanese Exclusion Act.

And an aircraft went down in the Around the World flight.

Henry (Enrico) Mancini was born.  He enlisted in the Army upon turning age 18 in 1943 and interestingly served in the 28th Air Force Band before being reassigned overseas to the 1306th Engineers Brigade in France.  He was the writer of many famous movie scores.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, April 15, 1924. Opening day.

1920s, 1924, Army, baseball, Calvin Coolidge, cavalry, Equine Transportation, Sports

Saturday, April 12, 1924. Madeline Blair and the USS Arizona.

The Chief Radio Operator of the USS Arizona discovered 19 year old prostitute Madeline Blair on board the ship when she lingered too long on deck at a water cooler, called a scuttlebutt, while the ship was off of Balboa, Panama, getting ready to pass through the canal.

She had been allowed to stow away and hide on board by sympathetic sialors who bought her sad tale of poverty and the need to go to California.  On board she was hidden in an unused genetaror compartment and charged $10.00/day for lodging and meals, a huge sum at the time, by ship's cooks and she plied her trade at $3.00 per trick.

Going on deck only at night, and dressing in dungarees and blue sailor's work shirt, she'd been earlier discovered by a sailor while watching a movie from a searchlight platform when he'd reached into the breast pocket of the shirt she was wearing and detected her correct anatomy.  While shocked, that sailor had kept his discovery to himself.  The Chief Radio Operator did not.  She was put ashore and then returned to New York on hte Panama Railway Company SS Cristobal, which charged the Navy for her fare.

Twenty-three sailors would be court-martialed and Blair would write her story for The San Francisco Examiner in 1928.

Dawes met with Mussolini, who expressed support for the Dawes Plan.

The House passed the Japanese Exclusion Act.

Friday, April 11, 1924. Closing borders.

920s, 1924, Asia, Blue Laws, Casper Wyoming, German Weimar Republic, Government, Immigration, Japan, Monarchy

Wednesday, February 20, 1924. Non au plan Dawes.

"Let 'em have their fling" Washington Post, Feb. 20, 1924.

The French military objected to the draft Dawes Plan on the basis that it would return the Ruhr's railroads to German control.

The Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created in the USSR for Russian ethnic Germans.  The capital city was the ironically named Kosakenstadt, which is now called Engels.  Ethnic Germans had been a feature of the Russian demographic map since Catherine the Great, who was of course German, had invited them in. They were not all of one uniform background, however, as they varied by religious confession considerably.

The German invasion of Russia in 1940 resulted in the Republic being eliminated.  Ultimatly the German population of the USSR was subject to heavy repression, with many people deported to work camps for being ethnic Germans. Some ethnic Germans of military age joined the German forces.  While the heavy repression ended following the march of time and the death of Stalin, remaining German populations in Russian heavily immigrated to Germany starting in the 1980s, before reunification, even though by that time they tended not to be even able to speak German.

Gloria Vanderbilt, socialite, actress and fashion figure was born.  As I don't know much about her and frankly care even less, that's about all I'll note.

The President met with the Good Roads Association, something that relates to something we posted yesterday.

He also met with the Gold Star Mothers.

Thursday, February 19, 1924. The Dawes Plan and Lee Marvin.

Actor Lee Marvin was born on this day in 1924.

Marvin was a descendant of early and significant early American immigrants, including the founder of Hartford, Connecticut.  He was named after Robert E. Lee, as was his older brother Robert, the Confederate General being his first cousin, once removed.  A poor student growing up, he suffered from dyslexia and ADHD.  He tended to spend his school year spare time hunting. He attended Christian Socialist boarding school Manumit in New York in the late 30s, as well as Peekskill Military Academy, and Catholic St. Leo College Preparatory School, doing poorly at all of them.  He joined the Marine Corps in August 1942, which was hugely significant in his later life.  He was wounded during the wear, and turned to acting shortly after the war, almost by accident, when he was asked to fill in for an actor when he was working as a plumbers assistant.  His first screen appearance was in 1951's You're In The Navy Now, which was also the first appearance for Charles Bronson and Jack Warden.

Marvin passed away in 1987 at age 63, his early death not being surprising due to a lifetime of heavy drinking and smoking.

Marvin was a great actor, appearing in a surprisingly wide range of screen roles.  In military movies, and Westerns, his performances were natural and commanding, something that is a bit surprising when it's considered that he frequently reported to sets drunk or badly hung over.

He is buried at Arlington National Cemetary.

Eleftherios Venizelos resigned as Prime Minister of Greece because of bad health and was succeeded by Agriculture Minister Georgios Kafantaris.  He had served for only four weeks.

The Dawes Plan for German reparations was presented to French Prime Minister Poincaré.

A legislative committee of Pueblo Indians met with Indian Commissioner Charles Burke and President Coolidge

Assembly with Burke.

Wednesday, April 9, 1924. Dawes Plan released.

The Dawes Committee released its plan for the Allies to restructure the method of reparations payments being made by the Germans.

Pope Pius XI canceled plans to leave the Vatican in order to dedicate a new building for the Knights of Columbus in Rome, which would have made him the first Pontiff since 1870 to travel outside of the Vatican's walls.

Cancelled on thirty minutes notice, Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Gasparri, appeared in his place. The cancellation was over the issue of Vatican sovereignty, but was spurred on due to this intended departure of the place being a major matter in the local press.

Senator Smith of South Carolina in 1924.  He'd serve until 1944, when he was defeated for reelection.  He took the news on his farm and stated: Well, I guess I better go out and look at the pigs."  He died several days later, in the same bed in which he'd been born.  His Senatorial career had spanned from 1909 to 1944, the same span as our look back posts today.

Senator Ellison Smith delivered his "Shut The Door" speech.

It seems to me the point as to this measure—and I have been so impressed for several years—is that the time has arrived when we should shut the door. We have been called the melting pot of the world. We had an experience just a few years ago, during the great World War, when it looked as though we had allowed influences to enter our borders that were about to melt the pot in place of us being the melting pot.

I think that we have sufficient stock in America now for us to shut the door, Americanize what we have, and save the resources of America for the natural increase of our population. We all know that one of the most prolific causes of war is the desire for increased land ownership for the overflow of a congested population. We are increasing at such a rate that in the natural course of things in a comparatively few years the landed resources, the natural resources of the country, shall be taken up by the natural increase of our population. It seems to me the part of wisdom now that we have throughout the length and breadth of continental America a population which is beginning to encroach upon the reserve and virgin resources of the country to keep it in trust for the multiplying population of the country.

I do not believe that political reasons should enter into the discussion of this very vital question. It is of greater concern to us to maintain the institutions of America, to maintain the principles upon which this Government is founded, than to develop and exploit the underdeveloped resources of the country. There are some things that are dearer to us, fraught with more benefit to us, than the immediate development of the undeveloped resources of the country. I believe that our particular ideas, social, moral, religious, and political, have demonstrated, by virtue of the progress we have made and the character of people that we are, that we have the highest ideals of any member of the human family or any nation. We have demonstrated the fact that the human family, certainty the predominant breed in America, can govern themselves by a direct government of the people. If this Government shall fail, it shall fail by virtue of the terrible law of inherited tendency. Those who come from the nations which from time immemorial have been under the dictation of a master fall more easily by the law of inheritance and the inertia of habit into a condition of political servitude than the descendants of those who cleared the forests, conquered the savage, stood at arms and won their liberty from their mother country, England.

I think we now have sufficient population in our country for us to shut the door and to breed up a pure, unadulterated American citizenship. I recognize that there is a dangerous lack of distinction between people of a certain nationality and the breed of the dog. Who is an American? Is he an immigrant from Italy? Is he an immigrant from Germany? If you were to go abroad and some one were to meet you and say, “I met a typical American,” what would flash into your mind as a typical American, the typical representative of that new Nation? Would it be the son of an Italian immigrant, the son of a German immigrant, the son of any of the breeds from the Orient, the son of the denizens of Africa? We must not get our ethnological distinctions mixed up with out anthropological distinctions. It is the breed of the dog in which I am interested. I would like for the Members of the Senate to read that book just recently published by Madison Grant, The Passing of a Great Race. Thank God we have in America perhaps the largest percentage of any country in the world of the pure, unadulterated Anglo-Saxon stock; certainly the greatest of any nation in the Nordic breed. It is for the preservation of that splendid stock that has characterized us that I would make this not an asylum for the oppressed of all countries, but a country to assimilate and perfect that splendid type of manhood that has made America the foremost Nation in her progress and in her power, and yet the youngest of all the nations. I myself believe that the preservation of her institutions depends upon us now taking counsel with our condition and our experience during the last World War.

Without offense, but with regard to the salvation of our own, let us shut the door and assimilate what we have, and let us breed pure American citizens and develop our own American resources. I am more in favor of that than I am of our quota proposition. Of course, it may not meet the approbation of the Senate that we shall shut the door—which I unqualifiedly and unreservedly believe to be our duty—and develop what we have, assimilate and digest what we have into pure Americans, with American aspirations, and thoroughly familiar with the love of American institutions, rather than the importation of any number of men from other countries. If we may not have that, then I am in favor of putting the quota down to the lowest possible point, with every selective element in it that may be.

The great desideratum of modern times has been education not alone book knowledge, but that education which enables men to think right, to think logically, to think truthfully, men equipped with power to appreciate the rapidly developing conditions that are all about us, that have converted the world in the last 50 years into a brand new world and made us masters of forces that are revolutionizing production. We want men not like dumb, driven cattle from those nations where the progressive thought of the times has scarcely made a beginning and where they see men as mere machines; we want men who have an appreciation of the responsibility brought about by the manifestation of the power of that individual. We have not that in this country to-day. We have men here to-day who are selfishly utilizing the enormous forces discovered by genius, and if we are not careful as statesmen, if we are not careful in our legislation, these very masters of the tremendous forces that have been made available to us will bring us under their domination and control by virtue of the power they have in multiplying their wealth.

We are struggling to-day against the organized forces of man’s brain multiplied a million times by materialized thought in the form of steam and electricity as applied in the everyday affairs of man. We have enough in this country to engage the brain of every lover of his country in solving the problems of a democratic government in the midst of the imperial power that genius is discovering and placing in the hands of man. We have population enough to-day without throwing wide our doors and jeopardizing the interests of this country by pouring into it men who willingly become the slaves of those who employ them in manipulating these forces of nature, and they few reap the enormous benefits that accrue therefrom.

We ought to Americanize not only our population but our forces. We ought to Americanize our factories and our vast material resources, so that we can make each contribute to the other and have an abundance for us under the form of the government laid down by our fathers.

The Senator from Georgia [Mr. Harris] has introduced an amendment to shut the door. It is not a question of politics. It is a question of maintaining that which has made you and me the beneficiaries of the greatest hope that ever burned in the human breast for the most splendid future that ever stood before mankind, where the boy in the gutter can look with confidence to the seat of the Presidency of the United States; where the boy in the gutter can look forward to the time when, paying the price of a proper citizen, he may fill a seat in this hall; where the boy to-day poverty-stricken, standing in the midst of all the splendid opportunities of America, should have and, please God, if we do our duty, will have an opportunity to enjoy the marvelous wealth that the genius and brain of our country is making possible for us all.

We do not want to tangle the skein of America’s progress by those who imperfectly understand the genius of our Government and the opportunities that lie about us. Let up keep what we have, protect what we have, make what we have the realization of the dream of those who wrote the Constitution.

I am more concerned about that than I am about whether a new railroad shall be built or whether there shall be diversified farming next year or whether a certain coal mine shall be mined. I would rather see American citizenship refined to the last degree in all that makes America what we hope it will be than to develop the resources of America at the expense of the citizenship of our country. The time has come when we should shut the door and keep what we have for what we hope our own people to be.

South Dakota experienced floods on the Belle Fourche.