Today -100: November 8, 1911: Of elections, boodle, campaigns, anti-Mormon silver services, lynchings, and Nobel prizes

The 1911 elections:
-Socialist mayors elected in 10 cities in Ohio, 2 in Pennsylvania, and Schenectady, NY. The Socialists also account for 10% of the vote in Chicago and Cook County.
-Republicans take control of the NY Assembly, reversing the D victory of 1910, and both houses of the NJ Legislature, seriously damaging Woodrow Wilson’s chances of ever becoming president (perhaps if he’d stayed in his own state instead of touring the country...).
-Massachusetts Gov. Eugene Foss (D) re-elected despite what he calls “the most scandalous boodle campaign ever waged in this state.”

Woodrow Wilson refuses to give his opinion on women’s suffrage.

The battle of the silver trays: A few months ago Mormons presented a silver service to the battleship Utah with images of Brigham Young, creating much dismay, presumably because there were too many tea cups for each saucer. Now, the National Anti-Mormon Committee has presented the same ship’s mess with an alternative silver service (122 pieces) which they hope will be used instead, featuring the image of a young girl who evidently symbolizes Utah.

British Prime Minister Asquith announces that instead of a women’s suffrage bill, his government will introduce one for universal male suffrage (no, they didn’t have that yet), which might be amended by Parliament to add women, if Parliament really wanted to do that. The suffragists are furious, rightly seeing this as a trick, and the Women’s Social and Political Union announces that it is resuming militancy.

“Judge” Moseley, a black man and therefore almost certainly not an actual judge, is lynched in Meridian, Mississippi, after hitting a white man with a stick.

Marie Curie wins the Nobel Prize for chemistry.