Today -100: April 29, 1910: Of trouser-wearing women

A NYT editorial expresses relief that the NY Assembly refused to consider women’s suffrage, which would mean “a radical change in the present structure of society and the relations of the sexes. ... We are willing to admit that the social system at present has its evils, but the home is now the basis of all society, and when the home is destroyed there must be chaos before some new order, of which only the haziest ideas are now entertained, is established.”

But while that danger has been averted in NY, Kansas is moving slowly but inexorably towards that awful new order: a widow wrote to the governor asking if she might be allowed to wear men’s trousers while working at home. He asked the attorney general, “who ruled there was no law prohibiting a woman from wearing men’s trousers, especially if she were the head of the house.”

Don’t burn

Teheran’s police chief is threatening to arrest women with suntans. Where does he think he is, Arizona?

Oklahoma logic

Oklahoma passes two more anti-abortion measures over Gov. Brad Henry’s vetoes. One requires the patient to have an intrusive ultrasound and to be forced to listen to a detailed description of Your Fetus, because they should have all the facts before making a decision, while the other allows doctors to lie to women pregnant with disabled fetuses to trick them into going through with the birth, because women should not have all the facts if they might make a decision of which the doctor disapproves.

If Gordon Brown weren’t so lame, you’d feel sorry for him for being so consistently lame

The British have imported into their election yet another American political innovation, the open-mike incident. Gordon Brown has a nice chat with a voter, gets into his car and starts complaining that they let this “bigoted woman” near him, still with a tv mike on him. And Gordon Brown being Gordon Brown, the hapless sad-sack that he is, she happens to be a grandmother who, before she retired, worked with disabled children.

Today -100: April 28, 1910: Reasonable enough

The NY Assembly voted 87-46 against further consideration of a women’s suffrage amendment to the state constitution. Assemblyman James Shea (R-Essex) said he felt qualified to speak for married men: “I provide a home for my wife and I expect her to do her share in maintaining it, and I think that is reasonable enough. If we give women the vote our wives will soon be absorbed in caucuses instead of in housekeeping. ... When I come home at night I expect my wife to be there, and not in a political caucus or locked up in a jury room with eight or ten men.” Assemblyman Albert Callan (R-Columbia County) said he could speak for unmarried men, and his mother and sister threaten that if he votes for it “they will close the door against me.”

Will this blog sell out?

I just received an unsolicited offer (the first of its kind) from a betting website which wants to put an ad on this blog. They’re offering $500 for one year. Not going to do it, but thought y’all might be interested.

Are mooseburgers kosher?

Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin is evidently not intended as a joke, although its URL is jewsforsarah.com, which... really?

CONTEST: Clearly, Jews for Sarah needs a catchy slogan or possibly a song. Which is where you all come in...

Compare and contrast: Heinz & Butch

Austrian President Heinz Fischer (who was just reelected) refused to attend the funeral of the evil twin in Poland because it was his chauffeur’s day off.

A more, um, hands-on politician, Idaho Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter, was hospitalized briefly last week with some sort of bacterial infection. He “began feeling ill Saturday while helping Lt. Gov. Brad Little brand and castrate calves.”

Today -100: April 26, 1910: Of various judicial matters

Taft did officially nominate Charles Evan Hughes to the Supreme Court, but on the understanding that it not take effect until October (evidently the Supreme Court just took 6 month vacations back then), allowing him to participate in the process of choosing his successor. The whole thing was done by letter: Taft sent a letter on the 22nd offering Hughes the job, without knowing if he’d accept it, and Hughes responded by letter on the 24th. One possible obstacle to Hughes accepting was the small salary of a Supreme Court justice, $12,500.

The Supreme Court is currently considering whether corporal punishment in schools is legal.

The Louisiana Supreme Court rules that Jim Crow laws do not apply to octoroons or quadroons.

Would explain a lot

Obama eulogy for the W Virginia miners: “These miners lived - as they died - in pursuit of the American dream.” The American dream is at the bottom of a coal mine?

Today -100: April 25, 1910: Of Clara Shortridge Foltz

It was a slow news day (on page 1: President Taft invites Sgt Thomas Morley of the Pittsburg police, who looks just like him, to sit next to him at a baseball game), so let’s focus this post on our...

Person in the News -100: Clara Shortridge Foltz (1849-1934), who just became a deputy district attorney for Los Angeles, the only woman deputy DA in the country. Wikipedia and, better yet, this article (well worth reading), say she was the first woman lawyer in California, in 1878 (she was a divorced mother of 5). Since the law had said that lawyers in CA had to be white and male, she herself wrote a new law deleting both disqualifications and got it passed (on the second try). Then she had to sue the Hastings College of Law, a public school, to force it to admit her (reported in the San Francisco Chronicle under the headline “Two Lady Lawyers Who Demand Admission to the Hastings Law College--How They Dress”), and when Hastings appealed the ruling she represented herself again before the state Supreme Court. She helped create both the public defender system and the parole system in California, and got SF to stop putting defendants in iron cages during their trials.


A San Francisco DA once closed a case in which she represented the defendant: “She is a WOMAN, she cannot be expected to reason; God Almighty decreed her limitations ... this young woman will lead you by her sympathetic presentation of this case to violate your oaths and let a guilty man go free.”

She was the president of the California Woman Suffrage Association in her 30s and drafted the suffrage amendment that passed in 1911.

She was a descendant of Daniel Boone and the sister of Sen. Samuel Shortridge (R-CA, 1921-33). She ran for governor of California in 1930 in the Republican primary at 81.

Today -100: April 24, 1910: Of Russian Jews and scouts

Russia will “expel fewer Jews” living outside the pale of settlement.

A paramilitary movement for boys will be established, following the model of a group in Britain. The American version will also be called “Boy Scouts.”

Enough? Not possible.

British Foreign Minister David Miliband’s message to the voters: “Look, you’ve punished us enough about Iraq.”

Cat pictures

Christabel, taken today. Because why not?

Church action

At St Peter’s Square, the Pope Ratz spoke of his meeting with Maltese victims of clerical sexual abuse. He said, “I shared with them their suffering...” No, no you didn’t. That may be the most insulting thing you’ve said yet. “...and emotionally prayed with them, assuring them of church action.” Oh, I think they’ve gotten got enough “action” from the church.

Today -100: April 23, 1910: Of justice delayed, and the return of the comet

Taft is widely believed to have offered the vacant Supreme Court seat to NY Governor Charles Evans Hughes, and Hughes to have accepted, but the nomination probably won’t be official until November, so Hughes can campaign for the Republicans in the elections.

It was dark in Chicago, creating fear among the “more ignorant,” who attributed it to Halley’s comet. “In street cars women became hysterical, and in the foreign quarters policemen were appealed to to put at rest the fears of the nervous.”

Don’t you hate it when one form of xenophobic bigotry gets in the way of another form of xenophobic bigotry?

The Belgian government collapses in a conflict between Flemish and Walloon speakers over one voting district which is (gasp) bilingual, scuttling plans to pass a law banning the burqa.

British leadership debate: Securing our future for the future

Second British leaders’ debate today. Gordon Brown wore a red tie, his party’s color, Nick Clegg wore a yellow tie, his party’s color, and David Cameron came so close, wearing a purple tie.


From Gordon Brown’s opening statement: “Like me or not, I can deliver that plan...” That noise you heard was several million British people all saying “Not” at the same time.

Nick Clegg (LibDem and it’s all his fault) defended the European Union (“Size does matter,” he actually said), while noting that it took 15 years to define chocolate (yummy?). He pointed out (correctly) that the Tories ally themselves in the European Parliament with “a bunch of nutters, anti-Semites, people who deny climate change exists, homophobes”.



Clegg again won the debate, by seeming like a more or less real human being who believed what he was saying. This is the advantage of being the one person there with no chance of being prime minister.


In the first debate, Brown and Cameron tried to go after LibDem voters by starting every sentence “I agree with Nick.” But that just it made it look like they were okay with the possibility of a hung Parliament and a coalition government and that it was therefore okay for people to vote LibDem. So this time, both of them 1) disagreed with Clegg, 2) pointed out whenever the other one disagreed with Clegg about anything. Brown said that Cameron & Clegg reminded him of his two boys “squabbling at bath time.” That noise you heard was several million British people all singing “Rubber ducky, you’re the one, / You make bath time lots of fun” at the same time while picturing Cameron & Clegg naked in a bath together. Later, Cameron said that the more Brown & Clegg quarreled, the more he thought everyone should vote for the Tories. Had he not thought that before?


Cameron and Clegg used the word “proper” a lot.

Brown, who again came with the most prepared (and over-rehearsed) lines, said “David is anti-European [he isn’t, I think, but much of his party is], Nick is anti-American [he isn’t]” and “David’s a risk to our economy, Nick’s a risk to our security,” the latter because Clegg sees no need to spend billions to upgrade the Trident nuclear missile system. Brown told him to “get real.” Cameron said that Trident is necessary for “securing our future for the future.”


Clegg said, “I’m not a man of faith.” That would never happen in the US. That was in response to a question about the pope, who is visiting the UK this year. No one was willing to take up the No Popery banner or say that they’d arrest him on sight.

Brown: “If you’re gay or straight, you have a place in British society.” Which will be news to Americans, who think all you guys sound gay.

All three (sigh) are in favor of the war in Afghanistan, although Clegg kept saying that in the next war Britain should bring “proper” weapons. Brown seemed to want to go to war in Yemen and Somalia. Did anyone even mention Iraq?

The fringe UK Independence Party was not represented in the debate, but I’ve been meaning to mention its election motto: Sod the lot.

Today -100: April 22, 1910: Not exaggerated

Mark Twain is dead. His daughter was with him, and her husband, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, which seems like the sort of name only a humorist could have invented.

A Rev. Thomas Chalmers of the Jewish Evangelical Society wrote to NYC Mayor Gaynor asking for a license to preach Christianity to Jews on street corners in Jewish parts of the city. Gaynor did not provide the license and wrote back, “Do you not think the Jews have a good religion?” and asks “Would you not annoy them and do more harm than good? How many Jews have you converted so far?” If Chalmers ever responded, the NYT doesn’t seem to record it.

The Illinois Supreme Court upheld a law banning the employment of women in factories or shops for more than 10 hours a day.

Headline of the Day -100: “Again Buying Rubbers in London.”

Today -100: April 21, 1910: Of Gay Paree and arbitration

Headline of the Day -100: “Roosevelt in Paris, City is Gay for Him.”

The Journal des Débats says TR is “the representative man of the twentieth century democracy.” Yup, totally gay from him.

Secretary of State Philander Knox believes that disarmament of all the nations of the world is possible through the establishment of a court of arbitration. Why that’s so crazy, it might just work! (Spoiler alert: it didn’t.)