Friday, June 28, 1923. Turkey's first election, Hi Power patent, Osage Murders in Oklahoma, Klan in Glenrock, Bert Cole accident.

Turkey's first general election was held, which chose secondary electors who then would choose the Grand National Assembly.  Only the Republican People's Party was allowed to exist, but the number of candidates was unlimited.

John Browning, the legendary and massively influential firearms designer, many of whose designs are still in use, unabated in their utility and not regarded as old, filed for his patent application for the Hi Power.  He would die before it was granted in 1927.

British in Oosterbeek  Left to right Pvt Ronald Philip Walker Pvt John Dugdale 10pin C.co 156 Para L.Cpt Noel Rosenberg 10 pin C.co 156 Para Pvt Alfred J Ward HQ Para Brgd. Driver for Hackett.  Dugdale carries a Hi Power.  Rosenberg might be.  The Canadian manufactured John Ingleiss Hi Powers were adopted for British and Canadian airborne, that introducing the design to British troops.

The design went on to widespread use, seeing military use with every country in the British Commonwealth or which was formerly part of the late British Empire, as well as World War Two use by China and, ironically, Nazi Germany.  Germany produced the pistol in occupied Belgian plants.  It saw very limited experimental use with the US in the 1960s.  I knew a Navy pilot, for instance, who was issued one.

Canadian troops training with Hi Power.

Regarded as obsolete, in recent years it has been phased out of British service, which commenced during World War Two with airborne troops, and most recently out of Canadian service.  Canada chose to take this step as its World War Two manufactured pistols no longer had a reliable parts source.  Ironically, just as they made their decision, a boom in manufacture of Hi Power pistols resumed, starting off a story in civilian, and perhaps military, markets much like that experienced by the M1911, which went through a similar story. The M1911 is, of course, also a Browning design.

Uruguayan marine with Hi Power.

The Hi Power is the pistol the U.S. should have adopted when it went to 9mm (and it shouldn't have gone to 9mm).  The pistol was so widely used that at one time US special forces of various types would carry it on certain missions because, if one was dropped, it was evidence of who had been there.

Osage oil millionaire George Bigheart summoned Pawhuska Oklahoma lawyer W. Watkins Vaughn to his hospital deathbed, where he was receiving treatment for poisoning.  Bigheart died the following day, and Vaughn was murdered on his way home, his body being found in Pershing, Oklahoma.

The Osage Indian Murders are the subject of the recently released movie, Killers of the Flower Moon, which is based on the 2017 book investigating the same.

The Glenrock Gazette reported on the recent KKK demonstration n that town.

The Glenrock Gazette, in its reporting, basically endorsed the racist organization as being one for law and order.

Bert Cole, famous local pilot, but one already known for a tragic airborne death in Evansville, died in an airplane accident himself.

From Reddit's 100 Years Ago sub, the inquiring photographer was out again.  I was surprised how uniform these answers were.

I would not have guessed that there would be uniform answers.  The fact that there is, speaks volumes of how women perceived their status at the time.

Indeed, in much of the US women had only recently received the vote, but it is true that they were highly restricted in what was regarded as appropriate work.  That wouldn't really start changing for another fifty years, although that's probably a topic for a separate entry.  Also clear here, however, social rules bothered some women.  The really fascinating thing here is that it seemed not to be something vaguely in the background, but something that caused a lot of women, all the women in this sample, to hold deep seated resentments.

Saturday, May 26, 1923. The Twenty Four Hours of Le Mans

The first Le Mans automobile race took place.

The French executed some Germans who were committing acts of sabotage and the like against their occupation of the Ruhr.

One of the terrorist was one Albert Leo Schlageter, a former German officer of the Great War and a Freikorps officer who had engaged in acts of sabotage against the French.  He was not a "Red" and would go on to obtain mythic status in the German far right, including the early Nazis, who in fact murdered his betrayer.  The killers of that individual were one Rudolf Höss and Martin Bormann, who would later go on to roles in the Third Reich.  They were first captured and sentenced for their role in the murder.  

Bormann is well known, but Höss less so.  He was Auschwitz's longest commanding officer and was executed in 1947.  Facing execution, he came to see his actions as gravely immoral and wrote this out to his wife prior to his execution:

My conscience compels me to make the following declaration. In the solitude of my prison cell, I have come to the bitter recognition that I have sinned gravely against humanity. As Commandant of Auschwitz, I was responsible for carrying out part of the cruel plans of the 'Third Reich' for human destruction. In so doing I have inflicted terrible wounds on humanity. I caused unspeakable suffering for the Polish people in particular. I am to pay for this with my life. May the Lord God forgive one day what I have done. I ask the Polish people for forgiveness. In Polish prisons I experienced for the first time what human kindness is. Despite all that has happened I have experienced humane treatment which I could never have expected, and which has deeply shamed me. May the facts which are now coming out about the horrible crimes against humanity make the repetition of such cruel acts impossible for all time.

On this same day, a Communist lead strike in the Ruhr expanded.

The British made the Emirate of Transjordan autonomous, but not independent of British oversight. It would achieve full independence in 1946.

Turkey waived reparations claims against Greece at Lausanne in exchange for the Thracian territory.

Wednesday, April 25, 1923. Main Street

It was Warner Brothers first film, and it was released on this date.

Due to nitrate decomposition, all copies of it were tossed out by the company in 1948.

Turkey demanded that the Soviet Union be able to participate in the Conference of Lausanne.

Monday, April 23, 1923. No Dope in Canada.

I continue to be amazed by how the Tribune, in 1923, routinely issued headlines that were largely irrelevant locally.

Cannabis was added to the Canadian list of prohibited narcotics.

Banning marijuana was part of the spirit of the times, just like liberalizing marijuana laws are part of ours.  This act in Canada nationalized a ban long before this was done in the United States.

Hyeongpyeongsa was organized in Korea by merchants and social leaders with the goal of eliminating the Korean caste system.  At that time, Korea had a class of untouchables known as Baekjeong.

Poland opened up the Port of Gdynia on the Baltic in order to attempt to avoid the labor problems the country had been having in Danzig.

Women appeared in Turkish film for the first time.

Kodak introduced 16mm film.

Delaware authorized the Delaware State Police.

Hoover helped break ground for a model house.

Sunday, April 22, 1923. Agrarian rise.

The British commenced their occupation of Rawandiz, in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurdish city is near the Turkish and Iranian borders.  The United Kingdom was occupying the country under a League of Nations Mandate.  The border was contested by the Turks, who had occupied the city only a year prior, which motivated the British to garrison the town.

The Bulgarian Agrarian National Union won the vast majority of the seats of the country's Parliament.  The agrarian party is the only such party to come to power by a majority of votes being cast for it outright.

The party was a founding member of the International Agrarian Bureau and part of a strong rising agrarian movement in Eastern Europe. The movement would eventually spread to Western Europe as well, but the rise of Communism and World War Two would effectively destroy it and its influence waned. The Bureau dissolved in 1971.

The Italian fascists cut 1B lire from the country's budget by cutting civil service jobs, leaving the deficit in the budget at 3B for that year.

A bomb exploded at Comiskey Park in Chicago, but didn't injure anyone.  Nobody was arrested from the explosion, but it was suspected that it was the result of the hiring of non-union labor to point the exterior of the ballpark.  

I don't know if it's related, but owner Charles Comiskey was notoriously cheap.

"Queen of the Pinups" Bettie Page was born on this day in 1923.  Page was a good student, but from a broken home.  After several attempts to get her feet on the ground she turned to modeling in her late 20s and rapidly became, by the early 1950s an infamous pornographic model and actress and one of the few individuals in that line of work whose name was well known.  In 1958, she experienced a radical conversion to Christianity, stopped her pornographic career, and devoted the rest of her life to her conversion, although she ended up marrying and divorcing three times in her life. Her divorces prevented her from being accepted in a new desired career of Christian missionary to Africa.  She was subpoenaed to testify in front of a Congressional committee at the time investigating the pornography industry at a time when there still remained sufficient public will to attempt to do something about it, an era that has now very much faded.

In making her switch, she dropped out of the public eye but oddly was subject to a large scale revival in interest in the 1980s, which is the only reason I've heard of her.  She was the subject of a major biography at the time, and I can recall reading a detailed review of it in The New Republic, which used to have fantastic book reviews.  In the intervening thirty years, all sorts of rumors had spring up about her, even though she remained alive at the time.  About as much as can reasonably be said is that she struggled with her mental health and had abandoned the life that brought her to a certain section of the public eye.  She shares that trait with many in the industry, including many Playboy models, which in fact she was one of.

Dying in 2008, Page is a sad tale of a very smart person whose early life slid into vice with grotesque and tragic results, but also one of recovery and redemption, if not full recovery.  It's interesting that the public focus was on her only when she was deep into depravity, and then again late in life when a pornified culture wanted to focus on her earlier image.

Of some interest, Page and Marilyn Monroe took the same path, at almost the same time, although Monroe's turn to modeling, including nude modeling, happened at a significantly earlier age.  Both women were the products of broken homes, although Monroe's was significantly more broken.  Monroe, moreover, was just a teenager when she was first a true model, and it was not until the late 1940s that she was photographed nude.  Ironically, Monroe was able to start a career in acting before the news of her nude photographs broke, and while she was Playboy's first (unwilling) model, she was able to escape the immediate implications of it due to the intervention of Life magazine, which ran the same photographs before Playboy as glamour photos in order to save her career.  Page, in contrast, began a rapid descent after first consenting to be photographed.  They were almost bookends in a certain story in the evolution of American morality and the portrayal of women.  Neither of them was able to really able to escape their early story, although Page certainly lived a much longer life.

Both of them would suggest that something about the Second World War and the culture that followed, including the release of false "studies" that the public was apparently willing to accept at the time had an impact on the culture, assuming that the war was merely conicidental in this story. That seems unlikely.

Sunday, April 15, 1923. Technological advances.

 It was an interesting day in terms of scientific advances.

April 15, 1923 – A Dramatic Moment in Medical History, Insulin Becomes Available

On the same day, Phonofilm, a talking movie technology, was publicly introduced.  It was revolutionary, but it was not uniquely being worked on, and therefore it would end up a technological dead end.

Turkey issued the Law of Abandoned Properties, allowing the transfer of property of "abandoned property" to the government.  Given the recent expulsion of Anatolian Greeks. . . . 

The Tribune featured a cartoon from the golden age of boosterism:

Released on this day in 1923:

As was this:

Tuesday, January 30, 1923. Forced Relocation of Greeks and Turks

The treaty between Greece and Turkey which resulted in the forcible relocation more than 1.6 million people based on ethnicity and religion, 1,221,489 Turkish-born Greek Orthodox Christians and 400,000 Greek residents of Istanbul and Muslim Turks on the Greek side of the divided area of Thrace, were exempt, although many people relocated anyway.

The treaty was the first of the massive ethnic and religion based movements of peoples that would become a feature of the mid 20th Century, and which were a perversion of one of Wilson's Fourteen Points.  By the end of, and following, World War Two this would be conducted on a massive scale, particularly in Eastern Europe.

All of the imperial powers that had gone into World War One were multiethnic, at least to some degree.  The Germans, for example, had a large Polish population that was not only in what we'd regard as Poland, but also in areas which had a mixed Polish/German, population, and populations of ethnic Germans were present in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, the USSR,and elsewhere.  In what became Poland after World War One, there remained populations of Ukrainians and other peoples, and Ukraine also included populations of Poles.  Ukrainians extended out into what was then and now regarded as Russia.  Finns remained in areas that Russia retained.  And what was left to Turkey of the Ottoman Empire included not only Turks, but Armenians, Greeks and Kurds.  The concept that all nations had to be nation states, a perversion of nations getting states as envisioned by Wilson, was a direct cause of World War Two. 

Exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II visited with monarchist Germans in Nijmegen about a possible return to the German throne, but decided the time was not ripe.  It never would be.

Department of Agriculture Poultry Club.

Monday, January 29, 1923. Colorado Rangers disbanded.

Governor William E. Sweet of Colorado defunded the Colorado Rangers.  

The move was made to thwart Prohibition enforcement, even though Colorado had adopted prohibition (like marijuana prohibition) before the Federal Government had, as well as to prevent its use in mine disputes.  They were officially disbanded in 1927, but thereafter became a reserve police force for Colorado.

Sweet was a Democrat from Chicago who came to Colorado with his parents as a small child.  He was a investment banker by profession, and good at it.  He retired from the occupation before entering politics in 1922 at age 54.  As governor, he was a strong opponent of the Klu Klux Klan, which was strong in Colorado, and which he attributed his subsequent defeat in a reelection bid in 1925.  He later moved to the second variant of the Progressive Party, the one that was formed by Robert LaFollette.

He died in 1942 at age 73.

Of note, my grandmother and grandfather, on my father's side, were married and living in Denver, Colorado at this time.  My grandmother, of Irish extraction, was a lifelong Democrat.

The Colorado Rangers originally formed in 1861, modeled on the Texas Rangers.

To the north of this story:

1923  Casper's legislative delegation proposed moving the capital to Casper from Cheyenne.  Wyoming State Historical Association.

This was still an idea that was threatened, from time to time, when I was a kid.

Edward Terry Sanford was confirmed as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Mustafa Kemal Pasha, Ataturk, married Latife Uşaki.  The marriage lasted only until 1925, although it did see her active in the emancipation of Turkish women.  She lived in Istanbul after their divorce, dying in 1975.

Senate Carpentry Shop, January 29, 1923.

Monday, January 15, 1923. Puebloans in Washington, Noble Acts, Ineffective Peacekeepers, and The Mater Familias.

A group of Puebloans visited Washington, D.C.

Puebloans are an example of a native North American culture which have been able to retain their distinctiveness to a high degree.  Insular in the first place, they have remained very much so and are generally disinclined to have too much outside contact with the larger European American culture, although they do have it by necessity.

About 90% of Puebloans are Roman Catholic, although elements of their original indigenous religions have been incorporated in terms of feast days and how they are celebrated.

The patent for manufacturing insulin was assigned by its inventors to the University of Toronto, in order to make it affordable to the general public.

French troops fired on German protestors at Bochum, killing one. The French responded with threats to occupy more of the Ruhr.

Lithuanian troops captured Memel and forced the surrender of a League of Nations Peacekeeping force.

"The Queen and Princess Elizabeth talk to paratroopers in front of a Halifax aircraft during a tour of Airborne forces, 19 May 1944."

Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and Prince Albert, the Duke of York, a dignified couple whose progeny, or at least some of them, ought to be pondering, announced their wedding date.

Zübeyde Hanım, the mother of Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, died at age 66.

Ataturk on this day in 1923.

Wednesday January 10, 1923. The Klaipėda Revolt.

 Delegates to the Near East Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, voted to accept a Turkish proposal to "exchange" the Greek and Turkish populations of the two countries.

This would result in the expulsion of 600,000 Greeks from Anatolia, where they had been since ancient times, and in which the Turks were originally an invader, for 450,000 Turks in Greece.  An exception was made for 200,000 Greeks in Constantinople, a city identified with the Greeks since ancient times, and 300,000 in Western Thrace.

Irrespective of the inequities, and even barbarism, of the Greek advances in Anatolia following World War One, the result was inhumane and effectively completed a process that the Ottoman invasion had started centuries ago.  Greek overreaching following World War One was responsible for a lot of what occurred, but it's a tragedy by any measure.

Only about 2,500 Greeks remain in Turkey today.

The French staged near Essen in preparation for intervening in the Ruhr.

Participants in the revolt.

Lithuanians rebelled in the Klaipėda Revolt in Memelland.  Lithuanian troops intervened in support of the insurrection.  The goal of the revolt was to join Memelland to Lithuania, and it met with little resistance from German troops, stationed on what had been German territory, and French occupation forces.

Both the French and the Germans had other things to worry about on this day other than Memelland.

The population of the region was about 45% German. The remaining population was Memellandish and Lithuanian.  Having said this, the ethnic composition of Memelland was complex in every fashion, with Memmelandish being a dialect of German, and the Lithuanian population of the region being predominantly Lutheran, whereas in Lithuania the vast majority of the population was Roman Catholic, a trait they shared with the Poles.  It was a mixed border region, in other words, but the border had been stable since 1441.

President Harding ordered U.S. troops withdrawn from Germany.

From Reddit's 100 Years Ago Today.

This was, of course, because it appeared that France was about to enter the Ruhr, which in fact it was.

From Reddit's 100 Years Ago Today.

Sultan Said bin Taimur of Oman was compelled to sign an agreement with the United Kingdom to provide for pre-approval by the British High Commissioner in India of any contracts between oil exploration companies and Oman.

The Sultan Said was born in 1910 and had attended Mayo College at Ajmer in Rajputana, India.  Following that it was suggested that his education be furthered in Beirut, but it was not as his father feared he'd be influenced by Christianity.  He remained in power until 1970, when he was deposed by his son.

His technical rule of the country, arranged by the British, did not happen until 1932.  He died in the United Kingdom in 1972 at the age of 62.

Sunday, November 26, 1922. Peanuts, Colorado's, and Gallipoli.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Charles Schultz, the great cartoonist.

Schultz was born in Minneapolis and grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota.  He was an only child that loved drawing from the beginning.  He was conscripted in 1943 and served as an infantryman, narrowly avoiding killing a German soldier towards the end of t he war as he fogot to load the  M2HB machine gun he was assigned to.

After the war, he first worked for the Catholic comic magazine Timeless Topix.  Peanuts had its first appearance, of sorts, in 1947.

I don't have a clue what this photograph is supposed to depict, and only know that it was taken on this day in 1922.

Opera singer Beniamino Gigli and Paul Longone, general manager of the Chicago City Opera Company.

The first popular election for the position of President of Uruguay was held.  José Serrato of the Colorado (Red) Party won.

Red would indicate, of course, it's left wing ideology, which it holds.  That's because red is the color of the left everywhere in the world, except the US.

Well, it wasn't always that way.  When John Birchers used to state "better dead than red" they didn't mean "better dead than a member of the Republican Party".  But later, some pinhead reversed the colors in the US as an example of moronic American Exceptionalism.  That individual should be sentenced to read Mao's Little Red Book every day for the rest of his life.

Anyhow. . . 

The United Kingdom turned control of the Gallipoli peninsula over to the Turks.

Dr. Jack premiered.

It was one of the most popular films of 1922.

Wednesday, November 22, 1922. Unintended Consequences.

 Tampa Bay Times, November 22, 1922.

A mine explosion in Dolomite, Alabama killed 90 people.

Wilhelm Cuno.

Businessman Wilhelm Cuno was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Friedrich Ebert.  It was an appointment, not an elective, commission.

An independent politician, Cuno would serve in the role for less than a year and then retire from politics.  He'd become an economic advisor to Hitler in 1932, which he didn't do long either, given his death in 1933.

Tuesday, November 21, 1922. The Conference of Lausanne opens, Harding discusses the Merchant Marine.

The Conference of Lausanne opened in Switzerland on the topic of a formal peace between Turkey and Greece, and the respective borders it would result in.  On this day at the conference, Mussolini angered the other Western Ally delegates by stating that Italy would support Turkish demands that Russia participate in the conference, an irony given that in twenty years Italy would be participating in the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union.

The New York Times featured a headline stating: "New Popular Idol Rises In Bavaria", regarding one Adolf Hitler

Military sports were in evidence on the Potomac.

Polo on mules on Camp A. A. Humphreys.  The installation later became Ft. Humphreys and then Ft. Belvoir in 1935.  A current Camp Humphreys is a major U.S. installation in the Republic of Korea.

President Harding addressed the House of Representatives.  His topic was the Merchant Marine.  He stated:

Members of the Congress:

Late last February I reported to you relative to the American merchant marine, and recommended legislation which the executive branch of the Government deemed essential to promote our merchant marine and with it our national welfare. Other problems were pressing and other questions pending, and for one reason or another, which need not be recited, the suggested legislation has not progressed beyond a favorable recommendation by the House committee.

The committee has given the question a full and painstaking inquiry and study, and I hope that its favorable report speedily will be given the force of law.

It will be helpful in clearing the atmosphere if we start with the frank recognition of divided opinion and determined opposition. It is no new experience. Like proposals have divided the Congress on various previous occasions. Perhaps a more resolute hostility never was manifest before, and I am very sure the need for decisive action—decisive, favorable action—never was so urgent before.

We are not now dealing with a policy founded on theory, we have a problem which is one of grim actuality. We are facing insistent conditions, out of which will come either additional and staggering Government losses and. national impotence on the seas, or else the unfurling of the flag on a great American merchant marine commensurate with our commercial importance, to serve as carrier of out cargoes in peace and meet the necessities of our defense in war. There is no thought here and now to magnify the relation of a merchant marine to our national defense. It is enough to recall that we entered the World War almost wholly dependent on our allies for transportation by sea. We expended approximately three billions; feverishly; extravagantly, wastefully, and unpractically. Out of our eagerness to make up for the omissions of peace and to meet the war emergency we builded and otherwise acquired the vast merchant fleet which the Government owns to-day.

In the simplest way I can say it, our immediate problem is not to build and support a merchant shipping, which I hold to be one of the highest and most worthy aspirations of any great people; our problem is to deal with what we now possess. Our problem is to relieve the Public Treasury of the drain it is already meeting. Let us omit particulars about the frenzied war-time building. Possibly we did full as well as could have been done in the anxious circumstances. Let us pass for the moment the vital relationship between a merchant marine and a commercially aspiring nation. Aye, let us suppose for a moment the absurdity that with one $3,000,000,000 experience, and with the incalculable costs in lives and treasure which may be chargeable to our inability promptly to apply our potency— which God forefend happening again—let us momentarily ignore all of these and turn to note the mere business problem, the practical question of dollars and cents with which we are confronted.

The war construction and the later completion of war contracts, where completion was believed to be the greater economy to the Public Treasury, left us approximately 13,200,000 gross tonnage in ships. The figures arc nearer 12,500,000 tons now, owing to the scrapping of the wooden fleet. More than half this tonnage is Government-owned, and approximately 2,250,000 tons are under Government operation in one form or another. The net loss to the United States Treasury—sums actually taken therefrom in this Government operation—averaged approximately $16,000,000 per month during the year prior to the assumption of responsibility by the present administration. A constant warfare on this loss of public funds, and the draft to service of capable business management and experienced operating directors, have resulted in applied efficiency and enforced economies. It is very gratifying to report the diminution of the losses to $4,000,000 per month, or a total of $50,000,000 a year; but it is intolerable that the Government should continue a policy from which so enormous a Treasury loss is the inevitable outcome. This loss, however, attends operation of less than a third of the Government-owned fleet.

It is not, therefore, a question of adding new Treasury burdens to maintain our shipping; we are paying these burdens now. It is not a question of contracting an outlay to support our merchant shipping, because we are paying already. I am not asking your authorization of a new and added draft on the Public Treasury; I am appealing for a program to diminish the burden we are already bearing.

When your executive Government knows of public expenditures aggregating fifty millions annually, which it believes could be reduced by half through a change of policy, your Government would be unworthy of public trust if such a change were not commended, nay, if it were not insistently urged.

And the pity of it is that our present expenditure in losses is not constructive. It looks to no future attainments. It is utterly ineffective in the establishment of a dependable merchant marine, whereas the encouragement of private ownership and the application of individual initiative would make for a permanent creation, ready and answerable at all times to the needs of the nation.

But I have not properly portrayed all the current losses to the Public Treasury. We are wearing out our ships without any provision for replacement. We are having these losses through deterioration now, and are charging nothing against our capital account. But the losses are there, and regrettably larger under Government operation than under private control. Only a few years of continued losses on capital account will make these losses through depreciation alone to exceed the fifty millions a year now drawn to cover losses in operation.

The gloomy picture of losses does not end even there. Notwithstanding the known war cost of three billions of dollars for the present tonnage, I will not venture to appraise its cash value to-day. It may as well be confessed now as at some later time that in the mad rush to build, in establishing shipyards wherever men would organize to expend Government money, when we made shipbuilders overnight quite without) regard to previous occupations or pursuits, we builded poorly, often very poorly. Moreover, we constructed without any formulated program for a merchant marine. The war emergency impelled, and the cry was for ships, any kind of ships. The error is recalled in regret rather than criticism. The point is that our fleet, costing approximately three billions, is worth only a fraction of that cost, to-day. Whatever that fraction may be, the truth remains that we have no market in which to sell the ships under our present policy, and a program of surrender and sacrifice and the liquidation which is inevitable unless the pending legislation is sanctioned, wilt cost scores of millions more.

When the question is asked, Why the insistence for the merchant marine act now? the answer is apparent. Waiving every inspiration Which lies in a constructive plan for maintaining our flag on the commercial highways of the seas, waiving the prudence in safeguarding against another $3,000,000,000 madness if war ever again impels, we have the unavoidable task of wiping out a $50,000,000 annual loss in operation, and losses aggregating many hundreds of millions in worn- out, sacrificed, or scrapped shipping. Then the supreme humiliation, the admission that the United States—our America, once eminent among the maritime nations of the world—is incapable of asserting itself in the peace triumphs on the seas of the world. It would seem to me doubly humiliating when we own the ships and fail in the genius and capacity to turn their prows toward the marts of the world.

This problem can not longer be ignored, its attempted solution can not longer be postponed. The failure of Congress to act decisively will be no less disastrous than adverse action.

Three courses of action are possible, and the choice among them is no longer to be avoided.

The first is constructive—enact the pending bill, under which, I firmly believe, an American merchant marine, privately owned and privately operated, but serving all the people and always available to the Government in any emergency, may be established and maintained.

The second is obstructive—continue Government operations and attending Government losses and discourage private enterprise by Government competition, under which losses are met by the Public Treasury, and witness the continued losses and deterioration until the colossal failure ends in sheer exhaustion.

The third is destructive—involving the sacrifice of our ships abroad or the scrapping of them at home, the surrender of our aspirations, and the confession of our impotence to the world in general, and our humiliation before the competing world in particular.

A choice among the three is inevitable. It is unbelievable that the American people or the Congress which expresses their power will consent to surrender and destruction. It is equally unbelievable that our people and the Congress which translates their wishes into action will longer sustain a program of obstruction and attending losses to the Treasury.

I have come to urge the constructive alternative, to reassert an American "We Will." I have come to ask you to relieve the responsible administrative branch of the Government from a program upon which failure and hopelessness and staggering losses are written for every page, and let us turn to a program of assured shipping to serve us in war and to give guaranty to our commercial independence in peace.

I know full well the hostility in the popular mind to the word "subsidy." It is stressed by the opposition and associated with "special privilege" by those who are unfailing advocates of Government aid whenever vast numbers are directly concerned. "Government aid" would be a fairer term than "subsidy" in defining what we are seeking to do for our merchant marine, and the interests are those of all the people, even though the aid goes to the few who serve.

If "Government Aid" is a fair term—and I think it is—to apply to authorizations aggregating $75,000,000 to promote good roads for market highways, it is equally fit to be applied to the establishment and maintenance of American market highways on the salted seas.

If Government aid is the proper designation for fifteen to forty millions annually expended to improve and maintain inland waterways in aid of commerce, it is a proper designation for a needed assistance to establish and maintain ocean highways where there is actual commerce to be carried.

But call it "subsidy," since there are those who prefer to appeal to mistaken prejudice rather than make frank and logical argument. We might so call the annual loss of fifty millions, which we are paying now without protest by those who most abhor, we might as well call that a "subsidy." If so, I am proposing to cut it in half, approximately, and to the saving thus effected there would be added millions upon millions of further savings through ending losses on capital account—Government capital, out of the Public Treasury, always remember—and there would be at least the promise and the prospect of the permanent establishment of the needed merchant marine.

I challenge every insinuation of favored interests and the enrichment of the special few at the expense of the Public Treasury. I am, first of all, appealing to save the Treasury. Perhaps the unlimited bestowal of Government aid might justify the apprehension of special favoring, but the pending bill, the first ever proposed which carries such a provision, automatically guards against enrichment or perpetuated bestowal. It provides that shipping lines receiving Government aid must have their actual investment and their operating expensed audited by the Government, that Government aid will only be paid until the shipping enterprise earns 10 per cent on actual capital employed, and immediately that when more than 10 per cent earning is reached, half of the excess earnings used must be applied to the repayment of the Government aid which has been previously advanced. Thus the possible earnings are limited to a- very reasonable amount if capital is to be risked and management is to be attracted. If success attends, as we hope it will, the Government outlay is returned, the inspiration of opportunity to earn remains, and American transportation by sea is established.

Though differing in detail, it. is not more in proportion to their population and capacity than other great nations have done in aiding the establishment of their merchant marines, and it is timely to recall that we gave them our commerce to aid in their upbuilding; while the American task now is to upbuild and establish in the face of their most active competition. Indeed, the American development will have to overcome every obstacle which may be put in our path, except as international comity forbids. Concern about our policy is not limited to our own domain, though the interest abroad is of very different character. I hope it is seemly to say it, because it must be said, the maritime nations of the world are in complete accord with the opposition here to the pending measure. They have a perfect right to such an attitude. When we look from their view-points we can understand. But I wish to stress the American viewpoint. Ours should be the viewpoint from which one sees American carriers at sea, the dependence of American commerce, and American vessels for American reliance in the event of war. Some of the costly lessons of war must be learned again and again, but our shipping lesson in the World War was much too costly to be effaced from the memory of this or future generations.

Not so many months ago the head of a company operating a fleet of ships under our flag called at the Executive Offices to discuss a permit to transfer his fleet of cargo vessels to a foreign flag, though he meant to continue them in a distinctly American service. He based his request for transfer on the allegation that by such a transfer he could reduce his labor costs alone sufficiently to provide a profit on capital invested. I do not vouch for the accuracy of the statement nor mean to discuss it. The allusion is made to recall that in good conscience Congress has created by law conditions surrounding labor on American ships which shipping men the world over declare result in higher costs of operation under our flag. I frankly rejoice if higher standards for labor on American ships have been established.

Merest justice suggests that when Congress fixes these standards, it is fair to extend Government aid in maintaining them until world competition is brought to the same high level, or until our shipping lines are so firmly established that they can face world competition alone.

Having discussed in detail the policy and provisions of the pending bill when previously addressing you, I forbear a repetition now. In individual exchanges of opinion not a few in House or Senate have expressed personal sympathy with the purposes of the bill, and then uttered a discouraging doubt about the sentiment of their constituencies. It would be most discouraging if a measure of such transcending national importance must have its fate depend on geographical, occupational, professional, or partisan objections. Frankly I think it loftier statesmanship to support and commend a policy designed to effect the larger good of the nation than merely to record the too hasty impressions of a constituency. Out of the harmonized aspirations, the fully informed convictions, and the united efforts of all the people will come the greater Republic. Commercial eminence on the seas, ample agencies for the promotion and carrying of our foreign commerce, are of no less importance to the people of Mississippi and the Missouri Valley, the great Northwest, and the Rocky Mountain states, than to the seaboard states and industrial communities building inland a thousand miles or more. It is a common cause, with its benefits commonly shared. When people fail in the national viewpoint, and live in the confines of community selfishness or narrowness, the sun of this republic will have passed its meridian, and our larger aspirations will shrivel in the approaching twilight.

But let us momentarily put aside the aspiring and inspiring viewpoint. The blunt, indisputable fact of the loss of fifty millions a year under Government operations remains; likewise the fast diminishing capital account, the enormous war expenditure, to which we were forced because we had not fittingly encouraged and builded as our commerce expanded in peace. Here are facts to deal with, not fancies wrought out of our political and economic disputes. The abolition of the annual loss and the best salvage of the capital account are of concern to all the people.

It is my firm belief that the combined savings of operating losses and the protection of the capital account through more advantageous sales of our war-built or war-seized ships, because of the favoring policy which the pending bill will establish, will more than pay every dollar expended in Government aid for twenty-five years to come.

It should be kept in mind that the approximate sum of five millions annually paid for the transport of ocean mails is no new expenditure. It should be kept in mind that the loan fund to encourage building is not new; it is the law already, enacted by the essentially unanimous vote of Congress. It is only included in the pending bill in order to amend so as to assure the exaction of a minimum interest rate by the Government, whereas the existing law leaves the grant of building loans subject to any whim of favoritism.

It should be kept in mind, also, that there are assured limitations of the Government aid proposed. The direct aid, with ocean carrying maintained at our present participation, will not reach twenty millions a year, and the maximum direct aid, if our shipping is so promoted that we carry one-half of our deep-seas commerce, will not exceed thirty millions annually. At the very maximum of outlay we should be saving twenty millions of our present annual operating loss. If the maximum is ever reached, the establishment of our merchant marine will have been definitely recorded and the Government-owned fleet fortunately liquidated.

From this point of view it is the simple, incontestable wisdom of businesslike dealing to save all that is possible of the annual loss and avoid the millions sure to be lost to the Government's capital account in sacrificing our fleet. But there is a bigger, broader, more inspiring viewpoint, aye, a patriotic viewpoint. I refer to the constructive action of to-day, which offers the only dependable promise of making our war-time inheritance of ships the .foundation of a great agency of commerce in peace and an added guaranty of service when it is necessary to our national defense.

Thus far I have been urging Government aid to American shipping, having in mind every interest of our producing population, whether of mine, factory, or farm, because expanding commerce is the foremost thought of every nation in the world to-day.

I believe in Government aid becomingly bestowed. We have aided industry through our tariffs; we have aided railway transportation in land grants and loans. We have aided the construction of market roads and the improvement of inland waterways. We have aided reclamation and irrigation and the development of water power; we have loaned for seed grains in anticipation of harvests. We expend millions in investigation and experimentation to promote a common benefit, though a limited few are the direct beneficiaries. We have loaned hundreds of millions to promote the marketing of American goods. It has all been commendable and highly worth while.

At the present moment the American farmer is the chief sufferer from the cruel readjustments which follow war's inflations, and befitting Government aid to our farmers is highly essential to our national welfare. No people may safely boast a good fortune which the farmer does not share.

Already this Congress and the administrative branch of the Government have given willing ear to the agricultural plea for postwar relief, and much has been done which has proven helpful. Admittedly, it is not enough. Our credit systems, under Government provision and control, must be promptly and safely broadened to relieve our agricultural distress.

To this problem and such others of pressing importance as reasonably may be dealt with in the short session I shall invite your attention at an early day.

I have chosen to confine myself to the specific problem of dealing with our merchant marine because I have asked you to assemble two weeks in advance of the regularly appointed time to expedite its consideration. The executive branch of the Government would feel itself remiss to contemplate our yearly loss and attending failure to accomplish if the conditions were not pressed for your decision. More, I would feel myself lacking in concern for America's future if I failed to stress the beckoning opportunity to equip the United States to assume a befitting place among the nations of the world whose commerce is inseparable from the good fortunes to which rightfully all peoples aspire.

Sunday, November 19, 1922. The Last Ottoman Caliph

In a move that may be regarded as genuinely confusing, Abdulmejid II was elected to the office of Caliph of the Muslim people by the Turkish Grand National Assembly.

The former Crown Prince accordingly, at least if you agreed with the Grand  National Assembly's religious powers, became head of Islam in a fashion.  He'd last in that role for two years before the Grand National Assembly, apparently also confused as to why it, as a secular body, would do that, abolished the office.

The Ottoman claim to be able to appoint a Caliph was never uncontested, although as it was a large empire the position held weight, even after its expiration.  Islam was itself divided following Mohammed's death in 632 with the division arising over who would lead it.

Abdulmejid II went into exile in Europe following the abolishment of the office in 1924.

Saturday, November 18, 1922. Tragedies near and far.

It was Saturday on this date in 1922, and the Saturday Evening Post went to press with a female golfer, an odd choice for a time of year that's nearly winter in much of the country.

The Naval Academy formed up its midshipmen for a portrait.

United States Naval Academy Midshipmen, November 18, 1922.

On the same day, Greek residents of Gallipoli were being evacuated by sea, their city and region going over to a Turkish government that was not welcoming to Greeks, and which had entered into a treaty of population exchange with Greece.

Greeks being evacuated from Gallipoli.

While a huge tragedy was unfolding in Turkey, a smaller tragedy struck closer to home.

I know the Bolton Creek Road well, but I know of know oilfields on it, although I can think of a fwe abandoned wells.  Bear Creek enters the North Platte near where Bolton Creek does, but I don't know of any place that the Bolton Creek Road crosses it.  Having said that, there is a good modern bridge across Bear Creek, which is normally dry, on an improved road which just recently was the subject of controversy when the current owners of that ranch, the Martons, attempted to sell it to the Federal Government only to encounter the objection of the State.  Hopefully that will be worked out soon.

Anyhow, that would seem to be the probable location of this accident.

Georgetown and Bucknell played a football game.

Georgetown v. Bucknell football game.

Monday, November 6, 1922. Appointment Clerks.

A group of Federal appointment clerks.

This, obviously all male, occupation was exactly what it sounded like.  Clerks who took appointments and handled the same.  Sort of the equivalent of a secretary/receptionist.

As late as the Second World War, in government service this occupation was a male one.  And, as the fine clothing in the photo demonstrates, one that paid a decent living to its occupants.

Indeed, every man here is wearing a three-piece suit of good quality.

Also of note, at least two are smoking cigars, not even taking time out from tobacco consumption to appear without one. When was the last time you were in an office and somebody was smoking a cigar?

A coal mine explosion in Spangler, Pennsylvania, killed 79 miners.

Ali Kemal, age 53, who we mentioned the other day, was lynched on his ways to the gallows by a mob.

By the way, in the long odds category, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a direct descendant of Ali Kemal.  I.e, not a cousin, Kamal is BoJo's Great Grandfather.

Released this day in 1922.

Saturday, November 4, 1922. Ottoman vestiges.

The Country Gentleman appeared on the stands with an election themed issue.

I don't know if women really had to give their ages. They don't know, of course, except I suppose at the time of their registration.

A young maid with kittens made up the sad cover of the Saturday Evening Post in a Rockwell illustration.

Ahmet Tevfik Pasha resigned as Grand Vizar of the Ottoman Empire, there no longer being the post following its elimination by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, and there also no longer being an Ottoman Empire.

The position was essentially that of Prime Minster by power of attorney through the Sultan, who also no longer existed.

On the same day Ali Kemal, former Turkish Interior Minister, was kidnapped from a barbershop in Istambul under orders of the military governor of Izmir.  He'd be murdered two days later.

Colorado was hit by severe weather:

The Colorado killer tornadoes of November 4, 1922

British archeologist discovered the Tomb of King Tutankhamen.

This story has never fascinated me the way it does other people.  This is not to say that it isn't significant, it certainly is, but many people are fascinated with it, which I'm afraid I am not.