Today -100: July 13, 1910: Of Cuban conspiracies and women’s suffrage in Britain

In Cuba, Col. Jorge Valera, who is, the NYT insists on informing us, a mulatto, is arrested along with his associates for allegedly planning to blow up bridges, railways and property owned by foreigners in a fake uprising intended to get the US to intervene militarily, which would break the Cuban stock market and the conspirators would clean up. And they’d have gotten away with it if not for Bruce Willis. Or something.

The British House of Commons passed the second reading of a women’s suffrage bill 299-190. It’s a pretty conservative measure, extending the property-based municipal franchise to parliamentary elections. If this passed, women would make up a small percentage of the electorate. Not that it matters, since the government won’t give the bill parliamentary time to go any further. Prime Minister Asquith gave a strong speech opposing women’s suffrage (the majority of his cabinet supports it), raising the prospect that if women got the vote, next they’d demand to be MPs or even Cabinet positions, gasp horror.