Today -100: February 12, 1912: Of electrocutions, bucks, and undesirable Hungarians

The Maryland Legislature is considering a bill to change the method of execution from hanging to electrocution, but the warden of the state pen suggests chloroforming prisoners to death.

The Treasury Dept. plans to start printing the money using power printing-presses. The unions are fighting these plans.

The governor (self-proclaimed) of rebel Chihuahua state, Aurelanio Gonzales, says “Mexico must rise en masse and resist the invaders.” He means the United States, which hasn’t actually invaded but is mobilizing troops on the border.

Gov. Woodrow Wilson is having some difficulty getting Hungarian-Americans behind his presidential campaign, due to a passage in his History of the American People describing Hungarian immigrants as a “coarse crew, bred in unwholesome squalor,” “less desirable than the excluded Chinese.” Wilson writes a letter of apology, which seems to say that he likes Hungary, just not Hungarians, or something.

Followers of this feature might be interested in a BBC radio program, available here for the next 6 or 7 days, about the British suffragettes of the Edwardian period, featuring interviews of suffragettes recorded in the 1970s by historian Brian Harrison (1 hour).