Today -100: August 9, 1916: The men who do these stunts are not the kind who are too proud to fight

Germany claims there was a major food riot in Petrograd last month in which 28 people were killed. Possible.

Theodore Roosevelt adds his support to the federal women’s suffrage constitutional amendment. So does Hughes’s wife Antoinette, who doesn’t really help the cause by saying that she has plenty of views but doesn’t like to talk about them and anyway “I accept Mr. Hughes’s opinion as my own.”

Hughes expresses those opinions in a speech in which he says he’d “stop this pork business” and fill his administration with people chosen for their competence even if not giving out spoils hurts him politically (he’s made untrue charges in recent days that Wilson forced out the director of the census and the superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey to replace them with spoilsmen) (I know; exciting election stuff, huh? Still, for one shining moment the career path of one Otto Hilgard Tittmann became a national political issue, so there’s that.) He also slips in a reference to brothels, which I was not expecting: “You couldn’t get a protective measure [tariff] out of a Democrat Congress sectionally organized any more than you could get a revival meeting out of a disorderly house.”

We’ve previously come across Miroslav Sichynsky, a Ukrainian/Ruthenian who assassinated the Austrian governor of Galicia, Count Potocki, in 1908, escaped prison and lived for a while under an assumed name in the US. The US decided last year not to deport him, ruling that the assassination was a political crime rather than a criminal one. Now he’s suing French-Ukrainian writer George Raffalovich (aka Bedwin Sands) for libel for calling him a murderer, when he is clearly an assassin, and to call him a murderer implies moral turpitude. Sichynsky’s lawyer says a US jury can now decide for the first time whether assassination is murder. I have no idea what happened to this lawsuit.

Headline of the Day -100:

Theodore Roosevelt attending a cowboy show at Sheepshead Bay, of which he says “It will make people better Americans to see it. The men who do these stunts are not the kind who are too proud to fight.” But “I don’t think it’s right for the girls to ride those horses. It makes me feel uncomfortable and a little bit aroused.” I may have added the last five words.

The Senate passes the child labor bill, 52-12. 10 of the 12 were Southern Democrats.

A Mrs. Johanna Thompson of East Orange, New Jersey, who feared being buried alive, made provision in her will that someone lift the lid on her coffin every day for 40 days after her death. Which was in April. She’s still dead. Actually, it would violate health laws to open the lid, but the designated coffin-peeper did look at the outside of the casket every day and collected $200 for the service.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.