1927

Some notable events, 1927

January 1: Article 58 of the Penal Code of the Russian SFSR enters into force, giving an expansive definition of “counter-revolutionary activity” as well as harsh penalties for it.

January 11: At the nadir of the Japanese financial crisis, General Tanaka Giichi becomes Prime Minister of Japan.

January 14: Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, King of Hejaz, Sultan of Nejd, passes away. His eldest son, Ali bin Hussein, inherits his titles.

January 31: Mae West’s play The Drag , a bawdy drama highlighting the struggles of homosexuals, opens on Broadway amid controversy.

February 1: Norman Thomas, a former Presbyterian minister and New York City councilman, is elected to the US House in a by-election. A powerful orator and an enthusiastic activist, he quickly becomes a powerful figure in New York labor politics.

February 18: The Bingham Plan for the reconstruction and expansion of the White House is completed.

February 25: Under the leadership of CCP General Secretary Chen Duxiu, union workers begin preparations for an armed uprising against the forces of the Zhili Clique in Shanghai. Similar uprisings launch across China to “prepare the field” for the advance of the National Revolutionary Army.

February 28: Nanjing falls to the NRA’s 6th Army under General Chen Qiang. Little fighting occurs in and near the city, though Chen’s forces continue to nip at the heels of the retreating forces of Zhang Zhongchan.

March 1: In a paper published in the Zeitschrift für Physik , German physicist Werner Heisenberg describes his uncertainty principle (the precision of a particle’s location decreases as the precision of its momentum increases).

March 4: Following the routing of Zhili forces, Chen Duxiu declares the formation of the Shanghai Soviet. At Jiang’s insistence, no moves are made against the Shanghai International Settlement.

March 14: The Imperial Japanese Navy commissions the aircraft carrier Amagi , a converted battlecruiser.

March 23: Fleet Problem VII: the aggressor force, led by the USS Kitty Hawk , conducts a successful simulated raid against the locks of the Panama Canal.

April 3: The Supreme Court rules in Owens v. Randall, 272 U.S. 144 (1927)* that the current presidential election regime violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The 5-4 split ruling is made possible by the New York Republican Party’s admission that the adoption of Congressional-district apportionment of electors was deliberately calculated to disenfranchise certain populations.

April 7: The European colonial powers and the United States establish an agreement to increase troop presence at their trade concessions in China, and for cooperation in the event of of conflict with the Kuomintang.

April 18: Warlord Zhang Zhongshan begins a counter offensive against NRA forces in Nanjing. Utilizing Soviet provided radios, artillery and machine guns, Jiang’s favored lieutenant Zhou Enlai traps Zhang’s forces in a cauldron near Hongze Lake.

April 21: After the heaviest rainfall in the recorded history of the Mississippi River, the new levees and dams constructed by the Corps of Engineers in the Mississippi watershed hold, as thousands prepare for evacuation. The levee breaks in Mississippi tributaries still force tens of thousands from their homes and farms.

April 23: Zinoviev breaks with Stalin, chiefly over the Soviet mandate for the United Front in China.

May 1: The Soviet embassy hosts negotiations between Zhang Zuolin’s forces and the KMT, represented by Li Dazhao. Talks break down when it becomes apparent that the KMT is seeking terms of surrender from the de facto leader of the Beiyang government.

May 6: New York Governor Charles C. Lockwood kills the State Assembly’s Public Decency bill by announcing his intention to veto it on constitutional grounds. In an opinion editorial in The New York Times , he argues that such restrictions on speech violate the state constitution, as well as the federal First Amendment.

May 8: The streets of America’s major cities are filled with protestors holding vigil, as Italian-American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are executed by electric chair at Charlestown State Prison.

May 17: Charles Lindbergh, a daring airmail pilot, is pronounced missing and presumed dead, after his plane fails to arrive in Great Britain.

May 24: Clarence Chamberlin successfully claims the Orteig Prize after piloting the WB-2 “Miss Columbia” non-stop from New York City to Paris.

June 8: Actor William Haines, the number one box office draw of the year, openly discusses his homosexuality and his relationship with his partner Jimmie Shields in an interview with the Daily Worker. The national news attention following is more one of curiosity than condemnation.

June 12: California abolishes school segregation.

June 20: Tanaka Giichi’s “Far Eastern Conference” ends with the attendants resolving that the KMT and the “Red General” Jiang Jieshi are the Empire’s greatest immediate security threat.

July 1 : Elpin Aan (Ahn Usaeng) forms the Orienta Azia Esperanto-Instituto (East Asian Esperanto Institute) in Los Angeles. Following the tradition of learning Esperanto among East Asian socialists, Aan expands education by printing classes in newspapers and organizing committees to make the language more friendly for Sinosphere people to learn. Colloquially this reform effort is nicknamed “Shin Esperanto”.

July 4: Independence Day celebrations across the country suddenly turn very somber, as news spreads of an assassination attempt on President Wood. The lone gunman is killed while attempting escape. Wood, already in poor health, is gravely wounded by two shots to the chest from the assassin’s pistol.

July 5: The Secret Service begins the detention of Workers’ Party members of Congress, as police forces nationwide begin crackdowns against a phantom left-wing coup.

July 6: A nation-wide general strike is averted at noon, as Vice-President Hoover orders the release of arrested leftists, apologizing for the fiasco.

July 7: Newspapers across the US report the name of the assassin, Virginia native William Burke*, a former Democratic paige and KKK member. Extracts of a manifesto he left behind are published, accusing Wood of being in an adulterous relationship with a black woman, a secret agent of the international communist movement, a Jew, and a Freemason, conspiring to Negroize the white race.

July 11: Herbert Hoover is sworn in as President. Due to a miscommunication about President Wood’s death, Hoover is accidently sworn in almost a full hour before the President’s passing. Due to this, and other unsightly coincidences in the affair, conspiracy theories begin to form around the assassination in later years.

July 16: American troops are deployed to China to protect vital American commercial interests.

August 6: US Naval Academy student Philo T. Farnsworth demonstrates his “image dissector”, the world’s first fully electronic television, to faculty.

August 11: Federal law enforcement groups, working in concert with state police, begin a major offensive against the KKK. While the group’s embattled leadership disavowed any involvement in the assassination, President Hoover declares the group “public enemy number one” in his first public radio address.

August 24: The League of Nations adopts a binding resolution condemning waging wars of aggression, requiring of its members to prevent and punish such “crimes against peace.”

August 30: Constitutional concerns from the July Crisis arising from confused chains of command, the Secret Service acting without the authority of either the President or Vice-President, and whether the Vice-President could assume executive authority in the case of presidential disability prompts the House of Representatives to pass a resolution to amend the constitution.

September 9: Soviet film A Kiss from Mary Pickford is released, featuring a cameo from the titular actress and Douglas Fairbanks, both of whom are associated with the WPA allied United Artists Studio.

September 14: Fearing that the US Navy is falling behind in aviation, the US Congress directs the General Board of the US Navy to study converting one of its battlecruisers. The Navy Act of 1927 also directs funding to speed the completion of the USS Ranger(CV-3), and refit her flush deck sister ship, USS Kitty Hawk , with a conning tower and funnels.

September 19: The US Senate passes its own version of the presidential succession amendment, adding clauses to resolve constitutional questions about the selection of presidential electors.

September 25: The Treaty of Jeddah: The Kingdom of Hejaz and Sultanate of Nejd are reorganised as the Hashemite Kingdom of Arabia, with Ali bin Hussein as its first king. While the treaty extends recognition and further trade and support from the British Empire, British negotiators are steadfast at rejecting any missive towards reviving his father’s claim as King of the Arab Countries.

October 4: A joint-operation between the Guominjun and the NRA captures the city of Beijing. The Zhili Clique is destroyed, and with it the tenuous hold the Western recognized Beiyang government had over the Republic.

October 6: The silent film era ends with the release of The Jazz Singer.

October 17: The Soviet government grants amnesty to former White Army officers.

October 28: The Congress passes by joint-resolution a final version of the Executive Succession Amendment.

November 7: Fengtian Clique warlord Zhang Zuolin meets with representatives of the Japanese Imperial Government. Fengtian holdings in Manchuria will be reorganized as the Manchu State (Manchukuo), a protectorate of the Empire of Japan. The IJA deploys to suppress the revolts in Manchuria by communist cells, protecting international business interests.

November 8: Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev and others are formally expelled from the Communist Party. Trotsky and his associates refuse to capitulate, and soon face the prospect of internal exile.

December 6: The Soviet Communist Party, at its Fifteenth Congress, issues an official edict condemning all deviation from the party line. Josef Stalin is effectively undisputed master of the Soviet state.

December 15: For his connections to members of the Joint Opposition, Soviet Military Affairs Commissar Mikhail Frunze “resigns” his post and returns to purely military duties, his friendship with Stalin increasingly strained.

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Excerpts from Michael Parenti, “The American Bonaparte” in The Masses , Vol LXX, No. 6 (June 1981)

It was a bright and sunny day that 4th of July 1927. Americans in the Second Republic turned out in droves to celebrate the anniversary of the country’s independence from the British Empire under the faltering steps of the First Confederation. In his role as first citizen, Leonard Wood dutifully turned out to participate in these celebrations.

The once virile man’s health had been failing from the combinations of advanced age and the strains of the executive office. Sweating under the hot July sun, he endured the heat with military stoicism as he paid homage to the country’s war dead at Arlington National Cemetery. After delivering a speech about the history of the struggle for freedom, he greeted well wishers and aspiring young Republicans.

Enter William Burke, age 26. An average Anglo for the era, standing 170 centimetres. Lean of build, Burke was an avid boxer in his home city of Richmond. He was an inveterate racist, a fanatic in the dying cause of white supremacy and a now forgotten mythology of a “lost cause” of the Second Confederation from the Slavers’ War. Burke had been just barely too young to serve in the Great War, and had instead joined with the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan terrorist group in 1920, which had put on the thin patina of respectability.

The KKK and the Jim Crow regime of white supremacy had been under attack by the proletarian movement and Northern liberals for years now, and Burke blamed his personal failures on the advance of Negro equality and communism. Convinced that the former Secretary of War, who had administered a bloody imperialist war effort, was somehow an active, conscious agent of international communism, Burke smuggled an M1908 Colt Pocket Hammerless into the gala.

He met the old general amid the throngs of people. As Wood extended his hand in greeting, Burke pulled the pistol from his pocket and began firing from less than two metres. His first shot struck Wood in the left lung, the second grazed his side. Subsequent shots went wide, striking a Secret Service agent and the wife of the Arlington County Commissioner.

Burke himself would perish at the scene as he fled, discarding his pistol. As Burke broke free from the crowd, Secret Service agent Vincent Fairfax* fired a snapshot with his M1911 to stop the assassin’s flight. The shot would go high, striking Burke in the brainstem, killing him instantly.

Leonard Wood was the third president to be assassinated while in office. The old soldier clung stubbornly to life, fading in and out of consciousness over the next six days. The assassination revealed the barely concealed tension within the Second Republic.

For the past three years, the Workers’ Party had abided by the Second Period regroupment policy. Opportunism flourished as the party moved towards the centre. But the bourgeoisie had not forgotten the revolutionary challenges made during the tail end of the Great War. With the memory of the Red Summer in mind, the military and police apparatus mobilised against the Workers’ Party. Members of Congress were detained in violation of Congressional immunity, as Congress prepared to suspend the constitution. Local and state police burst into the homes of labor leaders and carted them off.

The bourgeoisie had assumed without proof that this lone gunman was the forlorn hope of a putsch and reacted accordingly. The Workers’ Party, however, had not forgotten the lessons of 1920. The old soviets sprang back to life, as workers walked out en masse, ready to set up the barricades.

This would prove ultimately unnecessary. Vice-President Herbert Hoover quickly asserted his authority, assuming the powers of the presidency on the night of 5 July. The Attorney-General and the Director of the Secret Service were fired the moment he made it to old Washington. He ordered the immediate release of all political prisoners as a show of good faith, and a halt to further arrests. The workers returned to their jobs.

The National Bureau of Investigation, headed by the unrelated J. Edgar Hoover, a man who needs no introduction, took the national spotlight by beating the rest of the competing agencies to identifying the killer and his motive. Before a joint-session of Congress, the NBI’s special task force delivered their preliminary findings, ending the state of emergency.

The constitutional crisis persisted, for in the constitution at the time there existed no provision for disability of the president, nor any provision for another executive officer to assume its powers temporarily. Hoover exercised the needed national leadership regardless.

As for Wood, few men across all three republics have won more acclaim before or since. Once derided as the Butcher from Massachusetts by workers, in his seven years of national leadership Leonard Wood had managed to arrest the class war in America. After his passing, Congress bestowed upon him the rank of General of the Armies of the United States, a distinction shared only with George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant and John Pershing.

Leaders of all the national parties delivered their eulogies before he was interred in Arlington. Hoover praised his even-handed leadership, his commitment to the ideals espoused by Abraham Lincoln, and his efforts to heal a divided nation. John Nance Garner caused a stir by declaring Wood a martyr for America’s national sin of slavery, a father patiently correcting his prodigal sons. Burton K. Wheeler praised his diligent ethos of public service in advancing the cause of democratic republicanism.

Jay Lovestone, once Wood’s bitterest political rival, took the podium last. The leader of American communism compared Wood to Napoleon Bonaparte; who contained within himself the hopes as well as the contradictions of the republic. Lovestone praised his earnest concern for the wellbeing of the citizens and the body politic and not so subtly challenged his successors to live up to his example.

No one man, no matter how Heraklean, can move the wheel of history. But some can make it budge. The bitter factional struggles before 4 July 1927 were momentarily forgotten. Wood’s efforts in preserving the gerrymandering regime and extending its reach to the presidency were forgotten in the haze of momentary national unity. The nine hundred thousand plus who died to secure booty for the imperialists under his tenure were forgotten as well. His domestic surveillance and suppression of Christian pacifist groups, the attempts to break organized labor; they could not be contained within the myth of the People’s General.

Unlike the conspiracy theorists in search of cabals and Illuminatis, we historical materialists know that Wood did more in death to sustain the Second Republic than he could have ever accomplished living out his natural life.

The halo of national unity would not last. The Roaring Twenties could not roar forever.