Today -100: March 6, 1912: Of primaries, retired presidents-for-life, and raids

Both houses of the Mississippi Legislature pass a resolution asking US Senator Leroy Percy (D) to resign, which he had promised to do if he lost the primary, which he did, last August, to racist pig and former governor James Vardaman. Of course, this is before the 17th Amendment, so the primary was entirely advisory, and Percy had proposed holding it in the first place. There was only a primary, no general election, so only the Democrats – the white Democrats – were asked to express their opinion.

The chairman of Roosevelt’s campaign committee, Sen. Joseph Dixon, challenges Taft’s chair (William McKinley, evidently no relation to the president) to primaries in every state to see just which candidate Republicans in the country actually prefer. McKinley asks whether Dixon has authority from TR to issue such a challenge.

Former Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz, in... retirement... on the French Riviera, denies that he plans to return to take a role in the ongoing revolution: “I have no intention of intervening in the strife of the parties, especially while they have not recovered their reason.”

London police raid the headquarters of the Women’s Social and Political Union, the suffrage organization responsible for all the window-breaking, and arrest all the leaders they can find (including Christabel Pankhurst, the NYT mistakenly reports). Public buildings, including the British Museum, have been closed, because who knows what the suffragettes will break next. Insurance companies are issuing special window-breaking-by-suffragettes policies (damage from riot is not ordinarily covered by insurance, so those department stores are shit out of luck). The London Times suggests that the government seize the WSPU’s funds. The Daily Express says, “We are all tired to death of the Suffragists.” One of the 150 or so suffragettes apprehended for window-breaking is American sculptor Alice Wright. The NYT asks a class-mate of hers at Smith if she’s pretty. Yes. As pretty as Inez Milholland (American suffragist pin-up)? No.

Oh, and today is evidently the 100th anniversary of the Oreo.