Today -100: November 7, 1917: There is no Hohenzollern here

Ohio: a prohibition referendum narrowly loses, for the 3rd time, and women’s suffrage loses 57-43.

Prohibition very narrowly loses in Iowa but wins 3 to 1 in New Mexico. There are now 27 dry states.

Women’s suffrage loses in Maine 65-35, but wins in New York (54-46). The NYT blames the reversal from 1915 on low turnout as people are too concerned with the war to make the world safe for democracy to bother voting. Or something.

NYC Boy Mayor John Purroy Mitchel is defeated, winning 23% of the vote, not much more than the Socialist Morris Hillquit (22%), while Judge John Hylan gets 46%. Hylan’s plurality is the largest in New York history. Tammany Hall sweeps the municipal elections, and Al Smith (future presidential candidate) is the new president of the Board of Aldermen. The city also elects 7 socialists to the state Assembly.

A sampling of editorials is entitled “Papers in Other Cities Do Not Like New York Election Result.” The Washington Post, for example, says the high socialist vote “confirms fears of a bad situation in which soapbox orators hold an unfortunate power in molding the views of the unthinking Americans.”

Gov. Charles Whitman says that, contrary to everything Mitchel said before the election, Germany should not be encouraged by the Hylan victory. “The people of New York State are patriotic. There is no Hohenzollern here.”

Suffragette Alice Paul goes on hunger strike in the District prison, demanding better food for the suffragist picketer/prisoners. They’ve been getting salt pork and cabbage. (In fact, the issue is that the suffragists are not being allowed to buy outside food like other prisoners).

Leon Trotsky, president of  the Petrograd Soldiers’ and Workers’ Soviet, asks the Petrograd Garrison to ignore orders from the government unless approved by the Soviet’s Revolutionary Military Committee.

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