Today -100: April 1, 1914: Ask not for whom the canal tolls...

The bill repealing the exemption of American ships traveling between the coasts from Panama Canal tolls passes the House 247-162. Speaker “Champ” Clark (D-Missouri) gives a speech denying that his opposition to the bill has anything to do with planning to run against Wilson in 1916. He says “I can be happy without the presidency,” which (spoiler alert) is just as well. Incidentally, the 1912 Democratic platform opposed removing the exemption, but D’s voting for doing so cite another plank against subsidizing businesses, and so have been calling the toll exemption a “ship subsidy.”

A particularly popular sentence in Champ Clark’s speech: “I’d rather see the canal walled up than give the English any control of it.”

The Mexican rebels have been issuing not one but two currencies to compete with the federal government’s. Carranza hq now bans “Villa currency,” which has proven to be easy to counterfeit.

Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “Lynched With Knives.” In Santa Fe, Adolfo Padilla, accused of cutting his wife’s throat, is dragged out of jail by masked men who stab him to death.

A black woman, Marie Scott, is lynched in Muskogee, OK. She had stabbed a white man who’d been fresh with her in the negro section of Wagoner.

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