Sunday, May 4, 1930

Madrid:  Students shouting “Viva el rey!” enter a theater where Republicans have gathered and start hitting the meeting’s leaders over the head with sticks, sparking a riot.  From there, the fighting spreads outside, and eventually to the street in front of a hotel where the meeting’s speaker is staying.  Several are injured and arrested.

Rome:  Benito Mussolini reviews 25,000 fascist youth who have been participating in a camp.  Mussolini praises their morale and discipline.

Austria:  Chancellor Johann Schober, who had just promised the League of Nations he would disarm the country’s militarized political factions as a condition for receiving financing to improve Austria’s infrastructure, returns home to find a 10,000-man march being held by the nationalist Heimwehr paramilitary in Vienna, and 16,000 uniformed socialists gathering in St. Polten.  Police with machine guns keep the peace.

Washington:  More than 1,000 economists sign a letter to President Herbert Hoover, asking him to veto the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill pending in Congress.  The bill would raise tariffs on more than 20,000 import products to record levels, in hopes of protecting domestic producers during the economic depression.  The economists say it will have the opposite effect, provoking reprisal tariffs from other countries and worsening the depression.

Manchuria:  Warlord Zhang Xueliang, de facto ruler of Manchuria, is reportedly acquiring a small “air force” of bombers and scout planes after suffering under Russia’s air superiority during the Soviet incursion into Manchuria (see Nov. 17, 1929).