September 27, 1923. Disaster at Cole Creek.

Today In Wyoming's History: September 27: 1923  Thirty railroad passengers were killed when a CB&Q train wrecked at the Cole Creek Bridge, which had been washed out due to a flood, in Natrona County.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

It was a horrific event.

Flooding had taken out the railroad bridge over Cole Creek near Casper Wyoming, which was unknown to the railroad.   The night train to Denver approached the bridge on a blind curve, and the headlights detected its absence too late to stop the train.  Half of the people on the train were killed.

It's the worst disaster in Wyoming's railroad history.

Italian forces withdrew from Corfu.

Bulgarian troops took Ferdinand, ending the September Uprising.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court allowed a referendum to proceed to recall the legislature to take up impeachment.

German Army Maj. Bruno Buchrucker sent out an order directing 4,500 men of the paramilitary Black Reichswehr to assemble to overthrow the government on September 30.

The Soviet Union deported anarchists Senya Fleshin and Molly Steimer to Germany after they went on a hunger strike.

Col. M.C. Buckey & Laddee Buck, the the half-brother of President Warren Harding’s Laddie Boy, who belonged to the Coolidge family. Mrs. Coolidge changed his name to Paul. September 27, 1923.

Wednesdsay, September 26, 1923. Extreme right wing coup attempt. . .

 in 1923.

In a way, it's nice to know that political extremists have attempted to subvert democracy under cover of political legitimacy before.  It makes today's headlines less wacky.

Bulgarian troops attacked Ferdinand and Boychinovtsi to put down a rebellion.

German Chancellor Gustav Stresemann suspended seven articles of the German constitution and declared a state of emergency over the upset caused by the abandonment of German passive resistance n the Ruhr.

Lothar Witzke, German intelligence agent who was apprehended and sentenced to prison by the US in 1918, was pardoned by President Coolidge and deported.

Tuesday, September 25, 1923. German resistance ends.

The German government ended its campaign of passive resistance to French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr.  The move enraged the far right, which then began to organize towards more radical action.

Locally, there was some interesting news.

Mostly I posted this as the thought of a bond election with only one no vote is simply stunning. That wouldn't occur now.

And the Governor of Oklahoma was calling out the Guard to resist a racist impeachment attempt.

Sunday, September 2, 1923. Japanese Choas

Admiral Yamamoto Gonnohyōe was installed as Prime Minister of Japan for the second in the wake of the death of Katō Tomosaburō, who had died on August 24.

The Kantō Massacre (関東大虐殺) of non-Japanese minorities began in Japan in the aftermath of the earthquake of hte prior day. Vigilantes targeted Korean on the island of Honshu, at first with the encouragement of local police, and then with the participation of police and the Imperial Japanese Army. Approximately 6,000 people of Korean, Chinese or Ryukyuan descent were killed following rumors that minorities were seeking to overthrow the Japanese government during the chaos following the earthquake.  The violence would continue through the 16th with the Army turning on left wing groups.

100,000 German nationalist gathered in Nuremberg for "German Day", comm orating the German victory over the French at Sedan in the Franco Prussian War.  In Stuttgart, German Chancellor Gustav Stresemann suggested that passive resistance to French occupation should end.

Tuesday, August 27, 1923. 37 Hours.

Former Governor of Pennsylvania, William Cameron Sproul, opined that Prohibition helped kill William G. Harding, noting:

He was accustomed to an occasional drink of scotch. I was his personal friend and I know, and in that laborious task of a trip to Alaska, I'm sure he missed it.

U.S. Army pilots Lowell Smith and John Richter broke an aviation endurance record by staying aloft for 37 consecutive hours over Rockwell Field in San Diego, a feat made possible by air-to-air refueling. The accomplishment is impressive, if frankly, pointless.

German offered to end passive resistance to French occupation of the Ruhr in exchange for the release of deportees and prisoners, and the guarantee of the "safety of life and subsistence of the Ruhr population."

Japanese Crown Prince Hirohito, the future emperor, moved into Akasaka Palace.  The intended temporary state would end up bing a period of five years due to an earthquake destroying housing in Tokyo.

The patent for Lincoln longs, applied for on August 31, 1920, was granted.

Cohen in arrest after murder.

Louis Cohen, aka Louis Kushner, mob hit man, killed Nathan Kaplan, gangster, while the latter was being transferred by a police car in New York City.  

Kaplan was likely killed under orders of rival Louis Buchalter, aka Louis Lepke, aka Lepke Buchalter, who would rise up to be head of Murder Incorporated.  Buchalter would later receive the death penalty and be executed in 1944. Cohen was gunned down in a mob hit in 1939.

Of interest, these figures were all Jewish gangsters, something we've forgotten about over time, mostly remembering the Sicilian Mafia.  Indeed, Murder Inc. tended to use Jewish and Italian hitman in their role for the Mafia, which insulated the Mafia from direct involvement.

Saturday, August 25, 1923. Involuntary population exchanges.

The Greek government ratified the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, following the Turkish ratification two days prior.

1.5 million Orthodox Christians from Turkey were accordingly involuntarily sent to Greece and 500,000 Greek Muslims involuntarily sent to Turkey.

Violence broke out in Carnegie Pennsylvania when 10,000 Ku Klux Klansman held a rally on a nearby hill and moved towards the heavily Catholic town.  Town residents threw rocks and ultimately a Klansman was shot dead.

Sometimes missed, the Klan was not only racist, but nativist, and anti-Catholic.

Memories of Klan violence still echo in Carnegie today

Bob Podurgiel: When the Klan came to Carnegie

Germany put workers on the gold basis rate in an attempt to stem inflation.

The government was trying to stave off coal labor problems again.

And a lecturer declared Woodrow Wilson's idealism too advanced for the world.

Thursday, August 23, 1923. Trotsky schemes, Turkey votes yes, Bluebeard's 8th Wife, Nancy Hayes Green dies, Fr. Giovanni Minzoni assassinated.

The Grand National Assembly of Turkey ratified the Treaty of Lausanne.  British, French, and Italian troops were withdrawing from Istanbul in accordance with the treaty.

Germany announced that it was introducing heavy taxation in order to address the country's economic woes.

Trotsky persuaded the Politburo, in a secret meeting, to finance the German Communist Party, the KDP, in order to overthrow the Weimar Republic.  A revolution in October was the goal, which planned for a Communist Germany to develop the agricultural Soviet Union, demonstrating how Communism, at the end of the day, always has an industrialized corporatism view of things, posters of smiling buxom peasant girls aside.

Bluebeard's 8th Wife was released.

Nancy Hayes Green, born in 1834, died after being hit by a car as a pedestrian. The car had hit a laundry truck.

Born into slavery in Kentucky, Green was already a widow by the end of the Civil War, having suffered the loss of her children as well.  Relocated to Chicago, she was employed in the household of Charles and Amanda Walker, transplanted Kentuckians.  Upon the Walkers recommendation, she was hired to portray "Aunt Jemima" for the RT Davis Milling Company.   The role was frankly demeaning by modern standards as it portrayed a happy picture of the antebellum south, including the status of slaves.  She continued to play the role for twenty years until replaced by Agnes Moodey, as Green would not travel to the 1900 Paris Expedition.  She used her fame from the role to advocate for the poor and for equal rights.

Portrait of Green, maybe, in character.  This could also be successor model Anna Robinson.

The depiction used for the pancake mix changed over the years as society became awakened to its inherent racism.  There was no real way, in the end, to disassociate it with its racist past, however, and Quaker Oats, the then owner of the brand, discontinued the image in 2020, during which time a variety of such depictions of brands were taken out of use by various companies.

Horrifying 1909 advertisement using the Aunt Jemima theme.

1935 Quaker Oats advertisement using a more familiar theme.

The name of the brand was changed completely to Pearl Milling Company, but interestingly minor use of the name and its branding continues by current owner, PepsiCo, so as to not have it become abandoned and become public domain.  Descendants of Robinson, it might be noted, protested the change in branding on the basis that ignored the history and heritage of the brand and American society, for good or ill.

Fr. Giovanni Minzoni, age 38, a Catholic Priest who opposed the fascist rule of Mussolini, was murdered in Argenta.  It is widely assumed that fascist Italo Balbo ordered his murder.

Balbo briefly resigned from office, but would return and was the Governor General of Libya when World War Two broke out.  He died in 1940 when an airplane he was a passenger in was shot down by friendly fire while trying to land at Tobruk.

Monday, August 20, 1923. Shenandoah launched.

The Kimes-Terrill Gang and the Al Spencer Gang robbed a train on the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railorad near Okemah, Oklahoma.

It was one of the last train robberies in the U.S.

The USS Shenandoah was launched for the first time, but was tethered and not under power.  It was the first US rigid airship to use helium.

Strikes broke out in the Ruhr and Rhineland.  German inflation, it might be noted, was now massively out of control.

Stretching a decline in public morals, Broadway began a 312 performance run of Artists and Models which featured nude and seminude female subjects.  Rather obviously, going to peep at the nude subjects was the only purpose to go to the "review".

It's sometimes noted that The Roaring Twenties was as prelude to the 1960s in lots of ways.  More accurately, the 1930s and the Great Depression interrupted trends started in the 20s which revived in the 60s, including this one.

Monday, August 13, 1923. The US recognizes the Mexican Government.

The Bucareli Treaty was signed between the US and Mexico.  In exchange for Mexico compensating US companies that had sustained financial losses during the Mexican Revolution, the US recognized the government of Álvaro Obregón. 

Obregón.

Gustav Ernst Stresemann became Chancellor of Germany, and the country's Foreign Minister.  He was a member of the German People's Party (Deutsche Volkspartei), a centrist political party.  Stresemann is its best known member.

The party was dissolved in 1933 and has no legal successor today.

Sunday, August 12, 1923. Cuno resigns.

Wilhelm Cuno, who had been under heavy criticism in Germany, resigned as Chancellor.

The Tribune reported on the ongoing concern over gasoline prices, a perpetual American concern.

Thursday, August 9, 1923. The Third Dáil dissolves, Berlin shopkeepers strike, Casper mournes.

Wyatt Earp, Los Angeles, California, August 9, 1923.  He would have been about 75 years of age at the time this photo was taken.  Again, while people are probably tired of this theme, it's interesting to note that at age 75 he looks more fit than Harding did at 20 years his junior.

The Third Dáil, which had been in session since September 9, 1922, as the Provisional Parliament of Southern Ireland, was dissolved by King George V at the request of Prime Minister W. T. Cosgrave. 

Elections were scheduled for August 27.

Berlin shopkeepers went on strike in an attempt to force Wilhelm Cuno from office.

The nation was still in mourning for the late President Harding.

Wednesday, August 1, 1923. Cheerful reporting for Harding.

President Harding was reported to have a slight improvement in his lung condition.

The Press took the report and ran with it.

A Ku Klux Klan rally drew 100,000 people in Lima, Ohio.

Another racist, Adolph Hitler, delivered a speech, in which he stated that the German people comprised 1/3d heroes, 1/3d cowards and 1/3 traitors, in a surprising admission that his support was thin, at that time.

Little Old New York was released.

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Sunday, July 29, 1923. Ptomaine poisoning?

President Harding's physician reported his condition had worsened and that the rest of the Voyage of Understanding was cancelled.  He was checked into a hospital in San Francisco.

The press was still reporting the incident as an instance of food poisoning.

Benito Mussolini received thousands of letters congratulating him on his 40th birthday.

A German Communist called Red Sunday failed to bring out much of a turnout.

Monday, July 16, 1923. Summer session.

Wyoming's second, in its history up to that point, special legislative session convened in Cheyenne to address its state farm loan provisions.

Magnus Johnson of the left-wing Minnesotan Farmer-Labor Party was elected to the U.S. Senate in a special election.  This meant that both of Minnesota's senators were members of the party.

The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party was a hugely successful third party in that state, coming to control the legislature during the Depression, as well as providing the bulk of Minnesota's Congressional representation.  During the Depression, however, the American Farm Bureau became the primary representative for farmers, and it was hostile to the party.  In 1944 Hubert Humphrey took the party into the Democratic Party, and it ceased to exist.  Humphrey, moreover, expelled the Communists from the organization, whose presence showed how radical it actually was.

The Democratic Party in that state is technically the Democratic Farmer Labor Party

The Depression arrived for farmers in the U.S. before the rest of the general public, which likely explains the rise of the Farmers Labor Party in Minnesota, which was heavily agricultural and also heavily influenced by the left wing politics of Scandinavia where many of its residents had roots.

Johnson was Swedish born and had a semi successful political career, winning and losing.  He was also a farmer.

Italy and the UK agreed to call an international conference on German reparations, irrespective of whether France would participate or not.

Fairbanks, Alaska presented President Harding with a special collar for Laddie Boy.

Saturday, June 30, 1923. Bombing the Hochfeld Bridge.

A bomb detonated on the Hochfeld railway bridge in the German city of Duisburg, Westphalia while a Belgian troop train was crossing the bridge, killing eight Belgian soldiers and two German civilians.  Forty three others were injured.  The bomb was in a toilet of the train itself.

The mayor of Hochfeld and twelve others were arrested as suspects.

A new bridge would be built nearby, using parts of the old bridge structure, being completed in 1927.  It was rendered inoperable on May 22, 1944, by an Allied aerial bomb.  The Germans in turn would blow the bridge again on May 4, 1945, but the American Army built a temporary structure to repair it on May 8, 1945, which was dubbed the "Victory Bridge".

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A new bridge span was completed in 1949.  It still uses parts of the original structure.

The Country Gentleman had an illustration of a Civil War veteran Zouave cleaning his Civil War era rifle, a bittersweet illustration as the war was now some sixty years in the past and Civil War veterans were disappearing daily.

The Saturday Evening Post featured a Leyendecker of a corpulent British soldier saluting a child patriot.

Sometimes the news from a century ago reads an awful lot like today's.

Harding was in Gardiner, Montana and Yellowstone National Park on his Voyage of Understanding.

Wednesday, June 6, 1923. Defeat, no, explosion.

The Red Army defeated the Whites at Okhotsk in the last major battle of the Russian Civil War, although at least one more engagement would occur.  The results, at this point, were a foregone conclusion.

France and Belgium released a joint statement refusing to consider the new reparations proposal of Weimar as long as passive resistance to occupation was ongoing in the Ruhr.

The Army's TC-1 hydrogen filled dirigible was destroyed in a storm when winds blew it into a steel mooring tower.

Tuesday, June 5, 1923. North Casper to become part of Casper

It is simply unimaginable to me that North Casper was not always part of Casper.  I had, truly, believed it was.

Not so, apparently.

Weimar asked for a new reparations conference with the Allies, seeking to transfer 2.5 billion, in gold marks, of materials over a five-year period, and then 1.5 billion of the same for a period of time after 1928.

A huge Shriner's convention was in Washington, D.C.

This seems almost impossible to imagine now.

I don't know much about the Shriner's, other than that they are somehow associated with the Masons.  At one time, Protestant male membership in the organization was extraordinarily broad.  Indeed, while Catholics were and are precluded from being members of the organization, by way of Catholic Canon law and tacit preclusion, I know one devout Catholic locally who was.

The organization was hugely influential at the time.

President Harding, it would appear, was a member.

President Harding opened the national convention of the Shriner's, whose parade this was, with a speech that, in veiled form, criticized the Ku Klux Klan.

Secret fraternity is one thing. Secret conspiracy is another. In the very naturalness of association, men band together for mischief, to exert misguided zeal, to vent unreasoning malice, to undermine our institutions. This isn't fraternity. This is conspiracy. This isn't associated with uplift; it is organized destruction. This is not brotherhood; it is the discord of disloyalty and a danger to the Republic.

Harding's reviewing Shriner parade.

On the same day, the White House released Harding's Voyage of Understanding tour itinerary, featuring nineteen stops by train in the U.S. and Canada. The itinerary was to have been:

June 20 Washington, D.C.

June 21 St. Louis, Missouri

June 22 Kansas City, Missouri

June 23 Hutchinson, Kansas

June 24 Denver, Colorado

June 25 Cheyenne, Wyoming

June 26 Salt Lake City, Utah

June 27 Cedar City, Utah Visiting Zion National Park

June 28 Pocatello, Idaho

Idaho Falls, Idaho

June 29 Butte, Montana

Helena, Montana

June 30 Gardiner, Montana Visiting Yellowstone National Park

July 1 Gardiner, Montana

July 2 Spokane, Washington

July 3 Meacham, Oregon

July 4 Portland, Oregon

July 5 Tacoma, Washington Boarded the USS Henderson

July 6-25 Alaska Via the USS Henderson

July 26 Vancouver, British Columbia Via the USS Henderson

July 27 Seattle, Washington Via the USS Henderson

July 28 Portland, Oregon

July 29 Merced, California Visiting Yosemite National Park

July 30 El Portal, California

July 31 San Francisco, California

August 1 Los Angeles, California

August 2-3 Santa Catalina Island

August 4 San Diego, California

Harding would not complete the trip.

Tuesday May 22, 1923. Baldwin rises, Cavalry Bandits caputured, Bryan Anti Evolution Measure voted down, Mark falls, D.C. Golf.

 

Stanley Baldwin became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom following Bonar Law stepping down due to rapidly failing health.

The Distillery Bandits, who were apprehended after a gun battle, were all veterans of the U.S. Army's cavalry branch.

William Jennings's Bryan's motion that the Presbyterian General Assembly cut off financial support for any Presbyterian body teaching evolution was voted down.

The Mark dropped enormously.

The President played in a newspaper golf tournament.

Friday, May 4, 1923. Trends of the 20s.

Canada banned Chinese from entering the country unless they were diplomats, children born in Canada, merchants, or university students.

The law was repealed in 1946. Between 1923 and 1946 only 15 Chinese immigrants were accepted into Canada. The effect of the law, which precluded familiar ties and lead to an imbalance of genders, resulted in a decrease in the Chinese population in Canada.

On the same day, this baseball game was played in Toronto's Bayside Park.

Hitler, on the rise, delivered this speech in Munich attacking war reparations, something obligated by the Versailles Treaty, and also urging rearmament.

Friday, April 20, 1923. End of the Irish Civil War.

The Irish Civil War ends with the elevation of Frank Aiken to Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army and the vote of the Executive Board to halt further action.

Prohibition failed to secure passage in Parliament.

The pro Nazi journal Der Stürmer was first published.