Today -100: September 21, 1913: Of impeachments, whimsical little bodies, general strikes, and mud

William Sulzer says he will not resign and will fight the impeachment to the end. Why, he would no sooner resign than commit hara-kiri. Or to put it another way, his feelers about whether resigning would stop the impeachment were rebuffed. “Mr. Sulzer thumped his interviewer on the chest and gave other evidences of being in a fighting mood,” writes a terrified NYT reporter.

The NYT returns in an editorial to the subject of Christabel Pankhurst’s recent writings, “a book so nasty that even the Pankhurst contingent of British suffragists is dismayed. Christabel has hitherto been looked upon as a whimsical little body, somewhat too fond of inciting riot, perhaps, but decent in speech and behavior.” But now she has “come to the conclusion that they can cause as great a rumpus by talking about things no decent woman used to discuss... as they ever did by smashing the hats of Cabinet Ministers.”

The annual conference of the German Social Democratic Party rejects the general strike as a political instrument, not even to achieve universal (male) suffrage in the state of Prussia (which has an insanely retrograde electoral structure).

Headline of the Day -100 (LAT): “Little Natalie Throws Mud.” In Kharkoff, Russia, the governor of the province was driving through a town when a little girl, aged 5, threw some mud at his car, and some of it... the horror... fell on his coat. Her parents were made to march 8 miles to the nearest police post, then back, where the entire village had been called to adopt a petition craving forgiveness. The police chief wanted the village to present it on their knees, but they refused. The governor came the next day, when the entire village was called out again; he looked ostentatiously in the other direction while they had to shout to get his attention. Eventually they were allowed to go home, but the mother was imprisoned for 15 days.

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