Today -100: December 10, 1913: Of null elections, so-called votes of lack of confidence, lack of sympathy, and hair of Dickens

Theodore Roosevelt’s campaign secretary in the 1912 election says TR expects to win the mainstream Republican Party nomination for president in 1916.

The Mexican Congress declares the last presidential elections null, since 95% of polling districts failed to send in any returns. Huerta will remain “interim” president until new elections in, oh how about July, they say.

German Chancellor Theobold von Bethmann-Hollweg refuses to resign, rejecting the Reichstag’s “so-called vote of lack of confidence” in favor of the undiluted power of the kaiser to name his own officials.

In Britain, a congress called by the Trades Union Congress rejects Jim Larkin’s call for it to support the Dublin strikers with a sympathy strike. Larkin doesn’t like English union leaders and they don’t like him.

The governor of Kiev orders 1,100 Jewish dentistry students expelled from their schools and the city.

British Columbia bans the immigration of all artisans and laborers until March 31. It actually just wanted to ban Hindus, but a court said no.

Brentano, the book store guy, ordered some books from London, including Dickens first editions. His dealer included, as a free extra, a lock of Dickens’ hair. But US Customs is demanding that he pay $70, a tariff of 35% of the hair’s value. Brentano (who doesn’t even want the hair, he already has some Dickenshair) wants to get his books and return the hair, or alternately have the hair allowed in free as an antiquity (anything over 100 years old is allowed in without a tariff, and Dickens was born in 1812, even if this particular hair was removed from his person later).

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