Today -100: November 6, 1910: Of elections, Crippen, co-eds, the true protector of Islam, and fertilizer wars

The Arizona Constitutional Convention is fighting over whether to include the local option for prohibition.

Dr. Crippen loses his appeal against the death penalty for killing his wife (or whoever that torso was), and will be hanged in a couple of day.

A few days ago, Henry L. Stimson, Republican candidate for governor of NY, spoke to several campaign rallies in NYC, driving from one to the next, while Roosevelt did the same 20 minutes later, so that if people wanted to hear TR, they’d have to sit through Stimson. Yesterday, the Saturday before election day, Stimson repeated the performance, but without TR as his closing act, so that the audiences were rather smaller, in one case so small that he refused to speak. There was a large audience at a Cooper Union meeting which amounted to “a grand testimonial meeting in favor of Theodore Roosevelt,” whose name was repeatedly cheered and who was praised to the skies by all the speakers, who “accepted the charge that he is the issue in this campaign”. Gov. John Franklin Fort of NJ said TR was at least as great as Lincoln and “as great as any man that ever lived and wrought in this land”. A man in the audience who called for him to “keep to state issues” was threatened by members of the audience until he left.

Pope Pius X has instructed the papal nuncio of Munich to order ecclesiastics under his authority not to read newspapers.

H.B. Hutchins, president of the University of Michigan, urges women students to study only subjects that would fit them to become homemakers and mothers. “Deliver me from the woman who comes to the university to prepare for a career.”

And a NYT editorial declares that women’s suffrage is unnecessary and that women themselves “do not favor suffrage for their sex, for very good and sane reasons”.

A meeting of Muslims in Constantinople acclaims Kaiser Wilhelm the “true protector of Islam” and appeals to him to save Persia from Anglo-Russian aggression.

Judge Simeon Baldwin, Dem. candidate for governor of Connecticut, says he will sue Roosevelt for slander for misrepresenting his views on labor law.

Roosevelt gives a speech in Cleveland, although since his progressives are not in charge of the Ohio Republican Party, he didn’t have much to say about the actual candidates. This is the sum total of what he said about gubernatorial candidate Warren G. Harding: “If Mr. Harding is elected you will have a governor who will put through a public utilities bill.” I don’t think they’d invented the bumper sticker yet but wouldn’t that be a great one?

State prohibition amendments will be up for vote by the electors in Florida, Missouri, Oregon and Texas, while Oklahoma will vote on substituting local option for the current state-wide prohibition.

Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Washington’s male voters will vote on women’s suffrage and Oregon’s on granting suffrage to all taxpayers, regardless of sex. Oregonians will vote on 32 initiatives and referenda, including two on liquor and one for a constitutional convention.

One place there won’t be elections any time soon is Nicaragua, where members of the regime of self-proclaimed Nicaraguan President Estrada sign a convention keeping him in power another two years. The US Special Commissioner Thomas C. Dawson also signs, although with what authority is unclear.

In Britain, suffragists will begin a “suffrage demonstration week” in favor of the women’s suffrage bill. So was the NYT headline “Votes for Women Weak” a typo or a pun or what?

A war between the US and Germany seems inevitable, says the NYT (although Germany thinks the US is bluffing). A tariff war. Over potash. That is, fertilizer.