Today -100: November 5, 1919: There is nothing like the stubbornness of the American men in such matters, is there?

Today -10 years ago, I wrote the first of these posts.

Calvin Coolidge easily wins re-election as governor of Massachusetts, helped by his hardline stance against the Boston police strike. Coolidge attributes his victory to “all who have supported the great cause of the supremacy of the law.”

Rep. Fiorello La Guardia (R) is elected president of the NYC Board of Alderman. Tammany Hall has been slaughtered this election.

Although Socialists have been gradually disappearing from US elected offices, Lackawanna, New York elects John Gibbons mayor, defeating an incumbent backed by both the D & R parties, evidently because he banned strike meetings.

Samuel Gompers explains that striking coal miners just want more regular employment than they’ve been getting, but owners don’t want the miners working full-time because the price of coal would soon come down. He also points out that the restraining order barring the United Mine Workers’ leaders from directing the strike also means they can’t negotiate an end to it.

Supposedly, Soviet Russia bans babies being given Christian names. Henceforth, they will be... numbered.

The NYT has been covering Nancy Astor’s parliamentary campaigning every day, because she knows how to give good quote. She is asked by AP whether women will get a better reception in British politics than in the US; the Virginia-born Lady Astor says “There is nothing like the stubbornness of the American men in such matters, is there?” She says she is willing to abide by Commons rules banning hats. Thanks, AP, for the penetrating questions on the important issues of the day. To be fair, a lot of what she’s doing in response to electors’ questions sounds like evasion, like telling a woman who asked about old-age pensions that she was too young & pretty to worry about that. She offers fortune cookie slogans like “You cannot say the world is at peace unless we ourselves are at peace.”

Incidentally, the Liberal candidate running against her, Isaac Foot, was the father of future Labour Party leader Michael Foot, and of Dingle Foot, future solicitor-general and famous possessor of the name “Dingle Foot.”

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