Today -100: October 24, 1913: Of vetoes, coal mines, withering militancy, and plague rats

Anthony Comstock, head of the NY Society for the Suppression of Vice and puritan wannabe, applies for warrants to arrest sellers of the British newspaper The Suffragette (one of the issues which discusses venereal disease and its relationship to women’s rights). Local suffragists head off possible prosecution by saying they’ll sell the remaining issues out west.

Woodrow Wilson issues his first veto, of a Congressional joint resolution to reinstate a West Point cadet who flunked out, and issues his first proclamation, designating Nov. 27 as Thanksgiving Day.

Tammany candidate for mayor of New York Edward McCall refuses to answer accusations that he paid Boss Murphy $35,000 for his nomination to the state Supreme Court.

Speakers of Esperanto protest the ritual murder trial in Kiev, because why not.

Another coal mine explosion, this one in Dawson, New Mexico. 261 dead, of whom 238 not yet recovered.

Huerta still claims not to be seeking election to the presidency, although he’s been trying to expel candidate Felix Díaz from the country (candidates for the presidency have to be on Mexican soil at the time of the election).

The Wilson administration blames Britain for Mexican dictator Huerta’s supposed new lease on life (the new British ambassador presented his credentials the day after the coup). Coincidentally, Britain is seeking a concession to build an oil pipeline in Mexico.

The Bishop of Winchester appeals to militant suffragists and the government for a “Truce of God” entailing the end of militancy, an amnesty and a suffrage bill or referendum. Even the non-militant leader Millicent Garrett Fawcett tells him where to stuff his Truce of God. Annie Kenney of the Women’s Social and Political Union replies in a letter the London Times didn’t print, saying that while the bishop claimed that if the vote was won by militant methods its benefits would be impaired, suffragettes “believe that if women get the vote by militancy, which means both fighting and self-sacrifice, it will bring with it a special blessing and a special power.”

In other pompous-British-male-lectures-suffragists news, Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George tells a deputation from the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies that militancy has “ruined” this Parliament as far as women’s suffrage is concerned, although he thinks the spirit of militancy is “withering.” In other words, he met with the non-militant suffragists and the only thing he talked about was militancy. Meanwhile, the withering militants set fire to the Bristol University Sports Pavilion. Bristol students will return the favor tomorrow against the furniture of the Bristol WSPU office.

Headline of the Day -100: “War on Plague Rats.” Seattle would like to point out that although it has many rats with bubonic plague, there has been no case among humans in six years.

Blind Senator Thomas Gore is being sued for (sexual) assault and slander.

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