Today -100: October 20, 1912: Of traditional barbarities

Roosevelt exhausts himself by holding meetings about the campaign in his hospital room; his doctors tell him to knock it off. One problem is that his running mate Hiram Johnson has to leave the campaign trail in a few days, or he will lose the office of governor of California for being out of the state for 60 days in a row.

Woodrow Wilson gives a speech at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Feminist Maud Malone stands up in the audience and demands to know his views on women’s suffrage. He refuses to say, claiming it is a state and not a national issue; she refuses to take “I decline to answer” as an answer, and she is arrested. She will be convicted, but not fined, which would allow her to appeal and to call Wilson as a witness. The judges tell her that she had a right to ask a question but legally was required to sit down and shut up when Wilson refused to answer. They say she provoked the audience to disorderly acts by not sitting down. She responds, “There is no telling about these foolish men. They go around and around like windmills when a woman’s voice is heard in one of their meetings.”


A Bulgarian attack on Ottoman forces is observed by King Ferdinand and “several princes.” It should be noted that Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia are all monarchies (and the Ottoman Empire is an empire, with a sultan and everything), and that a bunch of princes from several of the belligerents are at the front.

I’m avoiding talking about the details of battles because 1) probably no one cares, 2) it’s all rumors and lies and censorship at this point. I do like an LA Times sub-headline: “Turks Engage in Traditional Barbarities.” Massacred three Serbian villages, allegedly.

The Idaho Supreme Court rules that the state doesn’t recognize any such entity as the Progressive Party, so its electors can’t appear on the ballot. And a Nebraska district court allows the Republican state committee to choose Tafty electors, overturning the results of the April primary, which chose Theodores.

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