Today -100: April 9, 1916: Of hips, u-boats, helpless and ignorant housekeepers, and hardings

The US is now claiming that Villa has a hip wound, rather than an amputated leg. Or maybe it just grew back.

Britain denies a Dutch report that a captured German u-boat was spotted in the Thames.

During a Senate discussion on military preparedness, Sen. Reed Smoot (R-Utah) calls for spending on Home Ec to bolster women’s preparedness to be good housekeepers. “Tens of thousands of homes are ruined by helpless and ignorant housekeepers”. Why, do you know that women’s colleges don’t even teach domestic science? Latin yes, but how to manage a home, “the one thing every girl should be taught,” no.

Sen. Warren G. Harding gives a preview of the keynote address he will give as temporary chairman of this year’s Republican convention in a speech at the Appomattox Day dinner at the Hamilton Club. He says the key issues in the presidential race will be tariffs, preparedness, and Americanism. Some people think that the RNC’s choice of Harding as chair signals the determination of the party old guard to keep control of the convention and thwart Progressives and Roosevelt. I think they just want to hear another speech like Harding’s hilariously alliterative one at the 1912 convention. In fact, his talk now of “the protective policy and preparedness” is reminiscent of that speech’s... oh, I just have to repeat it: “Progression is not proclamation nor palaver. It is not pretense nor play on prejudice. It is not of personal pronouns, nor perennial pronouncement. It is not the perturbation of a people passion-wrought, nor a promise proposed.”

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