Today -100: March 22, 1911: Of suffrage, veterans, and un-American Arizonans

The NY State Senate’s Judiciary Committee kills women’s suffrage 8-3 (and they refuse to make public who voted for and against).

A Texas group of Confederate veterans offer their decrepit services for duty as US soldiers on the Mexican border. Secretary of War Dickinson responds that there is no need as “We are at peace with all the world” and it’s extremely unlikely that that will change; “there would have to be some unjustifiable wrong perpetrated upon us by another nation.”

Teddy Roosevelt recently said that Arizona should be allowed to become a state despite some people’s objections to its proposed constitutional provisions for the initiative, referendum and recall (including recall of judges), which he said were a matter for Arizonans to decide. The NYT disagrees, likening those provisions to polygamy in Utah. Indeed, “It is a pretty serious question whether polygamy or the principle of the recall of Judges is the more detestable and un-American.” The Times suggests leaving Arizona a territory until its people “come to their senses” and that Taft “advise the people of Arizona that they must become American before they can be admitted to the American Union.”