Today -100: July 4, 1914: Of vice consuls, idle children, more plane crashes, chamberlains, fusions, and stabbed mayors

The Mexican rebels arrest the British vice consul at Zacatecas, George St. Clair Douglas, for allegedly assisting the federales.

Headline of the Day -100: “Law Makes Children Idle.” In response to the New Jersey law requiring the silk factories of Paterson, NJ not to employ children under 16 more than 8 hours a day, the mills fire 500 of those children out of fear that older employees might demand the same hours.

A couple of French, and one Dutch, military aviators are killed in two separate accidents. One of the French ones is a Corp. Gabriel Godefroy, which seems like a very French-military-aviator sort of name.

Figures from the first income tax returns show that 19.1% of the federal income and corporate taxes came from one New York City internal revenue district, the one including Wall Street. New York state residents are paying 44% of the nation’s individual income taxes.

Joseph Chamberlain, an MP and former mayor of Birmingham and the most important British politician of the late 19th century who never became a prime minister, dies at 77. Both his sons (each of whose mothers died in childbirth) would lead the Conservative Party. Not at the same time, obviously.

Theodore Roosevelt resigns as a contributing editor of The Outlook in order to devote all his time to politics, including an unlikely plan to unite Progressives and dissident Republicans behind a fusion candidate for governor of New York who would be an independent (that is, non-Tammany) Democrat who could somehow unite these disparate forces. Or possibly a unicorn. (Update: oh, another article says that one name put forward as a possible Fusion Unicorn Party candidate is Assistant Navy Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt.)

The Mexican rebels’ alternative currency is printed in the US. The rebel junta files suit in a US federal court, trying to prevent express companies delivering any of this money to Villa instead of Carranza.

Disappointing Headline of the Day -100: “Miner Stabs Butte Mayor.” Well, it’s disappointing mostly because it doesn’t say where the Butte mayor was stabbed and I was hoping it was the Butte mayor’s butt, because I’m twelve. The mayor shoots the miner, who later dies. The dispute was over the mayor’s refusal to deport a reporter for a Finnish-language newspaper which sided with the Western Federation of Miners. Before he died, the miner said that the mayor shot him before he stabbed the mayor).

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