Today -100: November 21, 1915: Of fires, uncultivated literary taste, locusts, and careless pedestrians

Pennsylvania State Fire Marshal Joseph Baldwin says several recent fires at munitions plants were all started deliberately.

Headline of the Day -100 (NYT Magazine):  “Do Women Lack Cultivated Literary Taste?” Harry Leon Wilson, author of Ruggles of Red Gap, thinks so, and the pandering to them by publishers is dragging American literature down.

Palestine has been hit by a plague of locusts. As was the custom.

Francis Hugo, NY secretary of state, warns the NY State Automobile Association that public opinion has been hardening against reckless drivers. It’s true; since I’ve started these posts I’ve seen a shift away from viewing the running down of pedestrians as the inevitable price of modern life. In today’s auto news, Treasury Secretary McAdoo denies that his wife (Woodrow Wilson’s daughter Eleanor) had been summoned for speeding - it was her chauffeur. And Prince Paul Troubetzkoy, the sculptor, escapes the workhouse for reckless driving because there’s only one witness. However, the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce says that 90% of New York City street accidents “are due to carelessness or other fault of the injured”. Of course many of those the Chamber is blaming are children, who account for 45% of fatalities.

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