Today -100: April 12, 1911: Will justice be done? What do you think.

The owners of the Triangle Waist Company, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, are indicted on charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter, for having locked the factory’s doors (which was a misdemeanor, making the deaths manslaughter).

Now we know the Mexican government is desperate: it raises soldiers’ wages and may even hold a real election in Sonora.

I mentioned that female Cornell students petitioned against two black students being admitted to the dorms. The Cornell president decided to let the ladies in. The NYT suggests that this may not do race relations any good: “It may... by compelling a closeness of physical association that one of them considers objectionable, lead to a psychical separation much wider than would otherwise be the case. There is as little likelihood of happiness for negroes as for other people when they go where they are not wanted, and there is such a thing as insisting too strongly on rights, even when they are unquestionable. Rights are valuable, but so are voluntarily granted privileges”. The Times says that the two students were “unwise” to press their case, in which case they will effectively have neither. But note the unquestioned assumption that it is for the white students to say who is or is not “wanted.” The paper suggests the black students now “so carry themselves as to overcome the present antagonism to them as near neighbors.”