Today -100, November 30, 1909: Of demon rum victorious, presidential prowling, and that despicable creature the New York masher

The prohibition referendum in Alabama failed by a large margin. In Birmingham, “Brass bands stationed around the polling places by the anti-amendment forces were playing lively airs to drown out the prayers and songs and pleadings of the women and children, who gathered early in the morning in an effort to influence votes for the amendment.” There were fist fights at every polling station. Jefferson County, in which Birmingham is located, voted against state-wide prohibition, although the county voted itself dry two years ago. “As an instance of the deep feeling displayed, a clergyman on whose coat a young woman attempted to pin a white ribbon at the polling booth, declined to accept the ribbon, telling her it was improper for young women to speak in the street to men whom they did not know. The girl wept and there was a great deal of excitement until the minister apologized.”

President Taft has taken to “prowling” (surely the correct term is “waddling”) the streets and parks of D.C. at all hours, evidently without Secret Service escort. And yet, oddly, he was never accosted by reality show contestants.

The American consul in Nicaragua (who has been out of contact, presumably due to government interference, for a week) is claiming that Zelaya has threatened him “again.” He also claims that Cannon and Groce were a colonel and lt. colonel respectively in the rebel forces and therefore should have been treated as prisoners of war. And the Red Cross says that, far from attempting to blow up a ship full of soldiers, they were actually lost when captured by the captain of a river boat, who promised not to kill them if they surrendered and who was himself arrested after refusing Zelaya’s orders to shoot them. No particular evidence is given for any of this. The NYT also offers obscurely sourced reports that Zelaya is becoming increasingly unpopular and has considered fleeing. Which may all be true, but the Times is very clearly after Zelaya’s blood.

The Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party has expelled Maxim Gorky for his “tendency to good living and love of comfort”.

A Men’s League for Woman’s Suffrage of the State of NY is formed. George Foster Peabody (of the eponymous award) is president, Max Eastman secretary and treasurer.

A letter from “A Working Girl”: “I rise to ask why I, a girl of 18, only fairly good looking, with the natural feminine love of nice clothes, born and reared in the chivalrous South, should be grossly insulted at least a dozen times a day by that despicable creature ‘the New York masher?’ Unless escorted by a man there is no place day or night (except in my own lodging house room,) that I feel safe from the specimens that pass as men, who prowl your streets... men that I don’t even see until they come smirking up beside me and without encouragement or provocation insult me, and when repulsed slink off to look for another victim. My cheeks even now grow hot with the shame of it all. In New Orleans, where I have lived for eighteen years, I never have been insulted once, no not even by a nigger.”