Evening Star
- G.O.P. TO ORGANIZE CONGRESS THROUGH EYELASH CONTROL
- SEVEN CROWNED HEADS SEE ASTRID AND LEOPOLD MARRIED
- 3,081 TRAFFIC ARRESTS.
The Evening Star's front page of November 4, 1926, read here through three items, led with G. Gould Lincoln's tally of the midterm Senate results: final returns gave the Republicans 48 seats against 47 Democrats and one Farmer-Labor senator, a margin so thin that Vice President Dawes's tie-breaking vote would settle the organization of the Seventieth Congress even if Minnesota's Senator Shipstead sided with the Democrats. An Associated Press dispatch from Stockholm described the civil wedding of Sweden's 20-year-old Princess Astrid to Belgium's Crown Prince Leopold before the crowned heads of four nations, with a church ceremony to follow in Brussels the next Wednesday. A local item reported 3,081 traffic arrests in October, the largest number of them for parking, including one for a horse with no weight and one for a bicycle with no bell.
Translation
G.O.P. TO ORGANIZE CONGRESS THROUGH EYELASH CONTROL
Nominal Republican control of the Senate in the Seventieth Congress is assured by an eyelash margin. Final returns show that there will be 48 Republican Senators [?] 47 Democratic and 1 Farmer-Labor member. Even should Senator Shipstead, Farmer-Labor Senator from Minnesota, vote with the Democrats on organization—which he is not expected to do—Vice President Dawes would cast the deciding vote for the Republicans.
SEVEN CROWNED HEADS SEE ASTRID AND LEOPOLD MARRIED
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, November 4.—In the presence of the crowned heads of four nations, Princess Astrid, 20-year-old niece of King Gustave of Sweden, was married today to Crown Prince Leopold, the Belgian heir apparent. Mayor Carl Lindhagen of Stockholm officiated at the civil ceremony, which will be followed by an ecclesiastical wedding in Brussels, the Belgian capital, next Wednesday.
3,081 TRAFFIC ARRESTS.
Arrests for violations of the traffic regulations during October totalled 3,081, an increase of 523 over the preceding month, according to the monthly statistical report of Inspector E. W. Brown, in charge of the Traffic Bureau, submitted today to Maj. Edwin B. Hesse, superintendent of police. The largest number of arrests were for infractions of the parking regulations. The arrests include one for having no weight on a horse, and one for having no bell on a bicycle.
Context
Senate arithmetic after the 1926 midterms
The 1926 elections cut the Republican Senate majority by seven seats, which is why Lincoln could describe the surviving margin as an eyelash. His count of 48 Republicans, however, included two winners whose seats were in dispute. Frank L. Smith of Illinois was appointed to finish a term and elected to the next one but was seated for neither, and the Senate refused to qualify William S. Vare of Pennsylvania because of charges of corruption and fraud in his election. As a result the Republicans did not begin the new Congress with the 48 the paper projected. The account of the Seventieth Congress records that Republicans gained control of the Senate only at the end of the first month of the first session, and then through a majority that depended on the Vice President's tie-breaking vote. Dawes's deciding vote, which the article presented as a fallback, thus became the actual basis of Republican control, though by a different route from the one the paper's arithmetic assumed.
Progressive Republicans and 'nominal' control
The Republican Senate ranks of the mid-1920s included progressives who kept the party label while opposing the party's presidents. George W. Norris of Nebraska, the best-known of them, routinely attacked and voted against the Republican administrations of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover, and regular Republicans derided him and his allies as one of the "Sons of the Wild Jackass." In such a chamber a party majority on paper did not guarantee that the Coolidge administration's program would pass, and the paper's own choice of the word "nominal" fits that situation. The article's hedge about Senator Shipstead points the same way: the Farmer-Labor member was only expected, not bound, to stay out of the Democratic column on organization.
Astrid's royal ties and her civil and church weddings
Astrid's father, Prince Carl, was a younger brother of King Gustav V, so the dispatch was right to call her the king's niece, and her mother, Princess Ingeborg of Denmark, was the younger sister of King Christian X of Denmark and King Haakon VII of Norway, tying the bride to several Scandinavian thrones. Born on 17 November 1905, she was indeed 20 at the Stockholm ceremony. The marriage took place in two stages: a civil marriage in Stockholm on 4 November 1926 and a religious wedding in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula in Brussels on 10 November, matching the paper's 'next Wednesday.' Astrid had been raised a Lutheran and converted to Catholicism after the marriage, in 1930. The Belgian royal family presented the match as a love marriage, with Queen Elisabeth reported as saying that nothing was arranged and no political consideration prevailed, and Belgians enthusiastically adopted the new princess for her beauty, charm and simplicity. The headline speaks of seven crowned heads and the text of the crowned heads of four nations; the excerpted dispatch does not list who they were.
Washington's 1925–26 fight over horses on the boulevards
The October report's arrests for a horse without a weight and a bicycle without a bell show horse-drawn and pedal traffic still sharing Washington's streets with motor cars in 1926. Less than a year earlier the District had tried to push horses off its main roads: in late 1925 traffic director M. O. Eldridge barred solid-tired trucks and horse-drawn vehicles from Sixteenth Street, Massachusetts Avenue and a handful of other principal boulevards, a regulation the Evening Star itself reported on December 9, 1925. Merchants fought the rule because trucks were expensive and not every small operator could afford one. On May 20, 1926, the Washington Daily News reported a court ruling that horses could travel Sixteenth Street and that the ban was illegal. The police Traffic Bureau's monthly report in this issue, which still counted offenses involving horses, came out less than six months after that decision.
Original
G.O.P. TO ORGANIZE CONGRESS THROUGH EYELASH CONTROL
Nominal Republican control of the Senate in the Seventieth Congress is assured by an eyelash margin. Final returns show that there will be 48 Republican Senators [?] 47 Democratic and 1 Farmer-Labor member. Even should Senator Shipstead, FarmerLabor Senator from Minnesota, vote with the Democrats on organizationwhich he is not expected to do-Vice President Dawes would cast the deciding vote for the Republicans.
SEVEN CROWNED HEADS SEE ASTRID AND LEOPOLD MARRIED
STOCKHOLM ', Sweden, November 4. - In the presence of the crowned heads of four nations, Princess Astrid, 20-year-old niece of King Gustave of Sweden, was married today to Crown Prince Leopold, the Belgian heir apparent. Mayor Carl Lindhagen of Stockholm officiated at the civil ceremony, which will be followed by an ecclesiastical wedding in Brussels, the Belgian capital, next Wednesday.
3,081 TRAFFIC ARRESTS.
Arrests for violations of the traffic regulations during October totalled 3, 081, an increase of 523 over the preceding month, according to the monthly statistical report of Inspector E. W. Brown, in charge of the Traffic Bureau, submitted today to Maj. Edwin B. Hesse, - superintendent of police. The largest number of arrests were for infractions of the parking regulations. The arrests include one for having no weight on a horse, and one for having no bell on a bicycle.
Source: Holding institution