Today -100: January 7, 1910: Of federal income tax, negresses, fair fights and no fouling, and Starnright. Poor, poor Starnright.

NY Governor Charles Evans Hughes opposes the proposed 16th Amendment to the US Constitution, allowing the federal government to collect income taxes, largely because it will affect income from state and municipal bonds, placing “the borrowing capacity of State... at the mercy of the Federal taxing power”.

Headline of the Day -100: “Say Mrs. Horton’s a Negress.” William Horton, a plumber contractor in Harlem, is suing his 19-year-old wife for an annulment on the grounds that she told him she was of French and Spanish ancestry but is actually the daughter of a mulatto. She claims her father ran off when she was so young that she can’t remember him or what his skin color might have been. Testimony from her maternal grandmother, who says Edith Horton did know her father was a mulatto, has been taken.

British election meetings have continued to see rowdy behavior. One Tory MP, Sir William Bull, threatened to punch a heckler’s head. The heckler suggested he come done from the platform and try it. Bull did, and they had to be separated by the police. He said later, “This affair may clear the air, as Englishmen like a fair fight and no fouling.” Lloyd George called Balfour’s alarmist references to the possibility of war with Germany as the last resort of a desperate man, almost as bad as the sort of thing you’d expect from American politicians.

President Taft has bought a new horse, Starnright, which at 16 hands is believed capable of bearing the weight.