Today -100: March 1, 1914: Of income taxes, dead ranchers, outrageous, un-called for, ill-advised and dictatorial legislation, honours, and ominous fainting

The first returns for the new income tax are due. The government is expecting a lot of errors. Evidently it’s the government which then determines how much tax is due.

Woodrow Wilson’s presidential salary is exempt from the income tax.

The NYT says a secret report (from whom, it does not say, but presumably some part of the US government)(a day later the Times explains that “the report was prepared in an authoritative way” and “the testimony obtained in it is of a very direct sort,” which isn’t much more informative) has determined that William Benton was shot by a pistol in Pancho Villa’s hq in Juarez and not by firing squad after a trial, and that he was, according to his friends, unarmed at the time.

The Mexican government now claims that it didn’t hang American citizen Clemente Vergara after all, he escaped and joined the rebels. Um, no, he didn’t.

South Carolina Coleman Blease vetoes a bill which he calls “outrageous, un-called for, ill-advised and dictatorial”; he says that rather than sign it “I would resign and go into eternal oblivion.” It’s for medical inspection of schoolchildren in Richland County.

The Portuguese prime minister says there isn’t a revolution going on.

The British House of Lords is considering whether to reform the honors – excuse me, honours – system to make it a bit less dependent on contributions to political parties. So some feminist suggests another reform: not giving honors – excuse me, honours – exclusively to men. In a discussion of this in The Gentlewoman, Viscountess Hawarden says that since the honors – excuse me, honours – would be awarded by men, they would probably go only to young, pretty women. Lady Gainsborough thinks the husband of an honoree – excuse me, honouree – “could not be expected to look with favour on a title, conferred after marriage, independently of him.”

First Lady Ellen Wilson faints.

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