Today -100: February 7, 1914: Of splits, what Swedish peasants want, smuggling over the ice, Fords, poultry trusts, and kid auto races

The US Senate is discussing an amendment that some of the funds for “farm demonstration” should go to negro agricultural colleges. During the debate, James K. Vardaman (D-Miss.) regales the Senate with his views on race: negroes should be disenfranchised in every state, women in the South are living in state of siege with more dread than in the days when the wild man and wild beast roamed the frontier, etc.

Sylvia Pankhurst and her East London Federation of the Women’s Social and Political Union break away from the WSPU (actually, her mother Emmeline and sister Christabel expel her for her working-class and Labour Party sympathies and her preference for mass tactics over the WSPU’s individual acts of militancy, which mostly means arson at this point). There weren’t a lot of Pankhurst family get-togethers after this. The view that Sylvia was too much of a radical left-winger would later be shared (and expressed publicly) by Lenin.

Headline of the Day -100: “SWEDISH PEASANTS WANT BIGGER ARMY.”

Disappointing Headline of the Day -100: “SMUGGLING OVER THE ICE.; Canadian Merchants Ask Their Government to Stop It.” It seems goods are being smuggled using the ice bridge over the St. Lawrence River. I was wondering who would be smuggling ice over into Canada.

Reason Trigg (that’s a person’s name, Reason Trigg, really), stricken by conscience, confesses to having participated in a lynching 27 years ago in Monticello, Illinois. The grand jury releases him.

Turkey will allow women into universities.

The Progressive (Bull Moose) Party in Michigan asks Henry Ford to run for governor. He says no.

13 members of the Poultry Trust are sentenced to jail for 3 months for actions in restraint of trade, the first time anyone has actually gone to jail for this particular crime. The article reminds me that there was a Bathtub Trust, so the Poultry Trust was not quite the funniest trust, but thanks for playing the home game.

The release of the short “Kid Auto Races at Venice,” Charlie Chaplin’s first appearance as the Little Tramp.

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