Today -100: January 22, 1911: Of senators on the run, young FDR, and buffalo

Sen. Thomas Carter (R-Montana) warns that the proposed constitutional amendment for popular election of the Senate is being used “to saddle the disfranchisement of negro voters upon the country by constitutional amendment” by removing the ability of Congress to regulate Senate elections.

The 15 Republican West Virginia state senators are still in self-imposed exile outside the state (having dinner with President Taft’s brother), but the 15 D’s think they can form a quorum without the R’s since 4 of them were never properly sworn in. So they may just go ahead and select the US senators.

An article in the NYT magazine section on a new 28-year-old New York state senator begins, “It is safe to predict that the African jungle will never resound with the crack of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s rifle”, unlike his fifth cousin. There’s not much to say about FDR, because he hasn’t accomplished much of anything yet, beyond leading insurgent D’s unwilling to accept Tammany dictation about who the next US senator should be, but the article, which I imagine is the first real look at FDR in the press, says it at some length.

The US evidently suggested to Ecuador that the US lease the Galapagos Islands from it for 99 years for $15m, I guess for use by the Navy.

The last buffalo: the owner of the last existing herd of buffalo in the United States has sold 500 head to Canada and is killing off the remaining 20, in violation of Montana game laws.