Today -100: June 25, 1912: Of assassins, temporary speakers, and wotherspoons

Headline of the Day -100: “Blease Fears Assassins.” South Carolina Gov. Coleman Blease says that followers of Ira Jones, the former chief justice of the state Supreme Court, who is running against Blease for governor, have threatened to kill him. At a meeting last week, police had to break up a near-fight between the governor and the judge, and Blease has threatened that if Jones again “insults me personally, I shall hold him strictly to account off the platform when no others will be in danger,” which I take to be a promise to challenge him to a duel.

The Democratic convention has two women delegates, Mrs. Hutton of Washington and Mrs. Pilzer of Colorado (the latter is Champ Clark’s sister-in-law).

The fight over the temporary speakership of the Democratic Convention continues. Alton Parker is confirmed in the role by the DNC and there will be a floor fight over it. This wouldn’t have been a big deal except Bryan made it one. Bryan says if he can’t find a progressive candidate to run against Parker, he’ll do it himself. Parker, by the way, is attorney for AFL President Samuel Gompers, but wasn’t in court today when Gompers was sentenced to one year for contempt of the (highly contemptible) DC district court, which had issued an injunction against an AFL boycott.

Name of the Day -100: newly promoted Major General William Wallace Wotherspoon.

British suffragist leaders Emmeline Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence are released from prison one month into their 9-month sentences as a result of their hunger strike (other prisoners are being forcibly fed, Pankhurst was not).