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Taft on Roosevelt: “He thinks the job is more than running the government. The job, he thinks, is to introduce social revolution.” He added, in a campaign speech in Maryland: “I am a man of peace, and I don’t want to fight. But when I do fight I want to hit hard. Even a rat in a corner will fight.”
Roosevelt, also scheduled to give a campaign speech in Maryland, had to wait for a fight between two dogs to end.
Half of the Mississippi delegates to the Republican National Convention are black, sounds like by quota. Booker T. Washington is lobbying the black delegates to switch from Taft to Roosevelt.
A big women’s suffrage parade in New York City. 10,000 people (1,000 of them male)(Teddy Roosevelt was invited, but didn’t come), 2 hours. The women wore white. Watched by huge crowds, including some hecklers: “They were for the most part the young men with their hats on the sides of their heads – of the same class that make nuisances of themselves at Coney Island in the Summer.” Banners read Votes for Women and “All this is the natural consequence of teaching girls to read.”
The NYT news coverage of the parade is surprisingly uncondescending, its editorial not so much. It calls the women marchers “obviously healthy and presumably intelligent” (which is restrained when compared to the way the London Times throws around the word “hysteria” when discussing British suffragists), but declares that women’s suffrage would play havoc with society and that men need to be “firm and wise enough and, it may as well be said, masculine enough to prevent them.” The editorial does the slippery slope thing: “Granted the suffrage, they would demand all that the right implies. It is not possible to think of women as soldiers and sailors, police patrolmen, or firemen, although voters ought to fight if need be”.
French Army Lt. Col. Gombault has an article bringing to France’s attention the fact that the army has only 21 dirigibles, while the Germans have 29.
The Italian navy occupies Rhodes.
The Mexican rebels appoint a pretender to the presidency, Emilio Vasquez Gomez.
Secretary of State Philander Knox, traveling through Texas, refuses to see delegates from the Mexican rebels.
War Headline of the Day -100: “Italy Finds Tripoli A Hard Nut to Crack.” According to a lecture by explorer and author Charles Wellington Furlong, who has explored the region, Italy failed to consider that Arabs and Turks are all Muslim and might bond against the Christian colonialist invaders. Also, it’s impossible to live off the land in the desert, so all the Italian army’s supplies have to be brought in and transported, and the Italians don’t have any camels.
Another member of the Coatesville, Penn. lynch mob is acquitted, and the state gives up on the rest of its planned trials (including that of the police chief).
In a Maryland speech, Theodore Roosevelt claims that large sums of money are being used to buy negro votes in Monday’s primaries, and accuses anyone who sells his vote of treason to the Republic and, in the case of negroes, of injuring their race.
Roosevelt, who is in Delaware, refuses to make any speeches in the state: “If you had direct primaries in Delaware I would only be too glad to make a personal appeal to the people. But, as it is bossism, what’s the use?” Indeed.
Sexist Headline of the Day -100: “Women Sputter at Senate.” Actually, the Senate Office Building closed the only women’s rest room, so sputter might actually mean......... (Oh wait, “rest room” seems to have meant waiting room rather than, you know, rest room. Although I still like the last sentence of the article: “women having business with Senators will have to stand up.”)
Sub-Headline of the Day -100: “TAFT TALKS PROSPERITY.; In Southern Speeches He Opposes Doctrines That Would Disturb.”
The Grand Jury in Fort Smith, Arkansas, indicts 23 for the lynching of a black man (hanged on a trolley pole) in March.
Kaiser Wilhelm has bought two farms in German South-West Africa (Namibia) and will raise sheep. Not a metaphor.
Headline of the Day -100: “Challenged by Zeppelin.” Not a flying machine but Count Zep himself, who has challenged the secretary of the failed Zeppelin Arctic Expedition, Theodore Lerner, to a duel. But it’s on hold pending some lawsuits between them. Which seems like the worst of both worlds.
Some IWW types (from the affiliated Italian Socialist Federation) trampled an American flag and put up an IWW flag in Union Square, and evidently there’s not going to be an end to the hand-wringing and outrage any time soon.
Because Theodore Roosevelt lost the popular vote in Massachusetts (74,808 to 71,158), he asks the elected delegates-at-large he won to ignore their pledges and vote for Taft at the Republican National Convention, which is jolly sporting of him (his larger game is to turn around and demand that the will of the people also be respected in the many states throughout the US where the Republican machine is thwarting it, and especially to pressure the 20 Taft delegates from Illinois to follow the overwhelming preference of Ill. voters)(it also seems that many of the votes for Taft delegates were invalidated because there were 9 Taft delegates on the ballot and many people voted for all of them, but were only supposed to vote for 8).
The Mexican ambassador says the current revolution isn’t a real revolution, just a bunch of brigands and Indians, and will be put down within three months.
A Senate resolution asked the president if it’s true that the Japanese are trying to take over the harbor of Magdalena Bay in Baja California, Mexico, as a naval base. The White House says no, but that an American company did try to sell some land in the area to a Japanese syndicate. So the Senate is still bubbling with racist paranoia and muttering about the Monroe Doctrine.
Speaking of conspiracy theories, our Headline of the Day -100 comes from the Daily Mail in London: “The Plot Against Canada: Amazing Revelation.” See, last week when President Taft published his private correspondence with Roosevelt, he included one from January 1911 about the Canadian Tariff Reciprocity Treaty, which later failed in the Canadian Parliament because of fears that the US was secretly planning to absorb Canada. Taft wrote that the treaty would make Canada “only an adjunct of the United States.” He meant economically rather than literally (he told TR that much of Canadian business would move to Chicago and NY), but the Daily Mail, as is its wont, is quite upset.
IWW marchers are still on their way to San Diego, and the LA Times is there with up-to-the-minute unbiased coverage, and an unusual number of sub-headlines: “Mischief Makers / Not Invited, Unwelcome / Shiftless Gang Arrives Here on Its Way South / Is Run Out of Every Town Along the Road / Mobilization at San Diego to Rant and Revile.”
Prince Axel of Denmark is going to take flying lessons.
So Obama went to Afghanistan to celebrate Hey-Do-You-Remember-How-I-Totally-Killed-Bin-Laden-That-Time Day. First he visited with the troops, who may have noticed that their lives were totally unchanged as a result of that killing.
IT’S FRANCE, AND THAT GUY STOLE SOME BREAD, AND THAT OTHER GUY IS CHASING HIM, RIGHT? “And I know that sometimes, out here, when you’re in theater, it’s not clear whether folks back home fully appreciate what’s going on.”
AND YET... “We did not choose this war...”
AND YET... “We don’t go looking for a fight.”
YOU MAKE IT SOUND SO SEXY: “But when we see our homeland violated...”
BECAUSE WHEN YOU’RE THERE, IT’S A TOTAL BUZZ-KILL: “And when you’re missing a birthday or you’re missing a soccer game or when you’re missing an anniversary, and those of us back home are able to enjoy it, it’s because of you.”
CUE PORN MUSIC: “And I want everybody here to know that when you get home, we are going to be there for you when you’re in uniform and we will stay there for you when you’re out of uniform.”
Later, he gave an address to the nation (the American nation, not the nation he was actually in, which was just the backdrop, well Bagram Air Base was the backdrop, so not even really that).
He said that the agreement he signed with Karzai will bring about “a future in which war ends, and a new chapter begins.” A new chapter? So this whole thing was just a chapter? How the fuck long is this book, anyway?
“Where can I get me one of those hats?”
“And so, 10 years ago, the United States and our allies went to war to make sure that al Qaeda could never again use this country to launch attacks against us.” Note that that goal could be accomplished either by destroying Al Qaida or by destroying the country...
FOR A NUMBER OF REASONS: “Despite initial success, for a number of reasons, this war has taken longer than most anticipated.” Basically the only thing he’ll admit went wrong is the time-frame.
THERE’S THAT (UNDEFINED) WORD AGAIN: “We broke the Taliban’s momentum.”
Today’s agreement includes “shared commitments to combat terrorism and strengthen democratic institutions... advance development and dignity for their people... transparency and accountability, and to protect the human rights of all Afghans”. Wow, all that from this particular piece of paper, makes you wonder why we didn’t think of that long ago.
OUT OF BUTTER: “Our goal is not to build a country in America’s image”.
WHAT HE RECOGNIZES: “I recognize that many Americans are tired of war.” So it’s a purely emotional reaction, not a reasoned critique of a failed policy or a principled opposition to organized violence. We just all need a good nap and we’ll be as right as rain. This dismissive “tired of war” crap, which Bush also used a lot, really pisses me off.
BECAUSE NOTHING SAYS UPHOLDING HUMAN DIGNITY LIKE A DECADE-LONG WAR: “Here in Afghanistan, Americans answered the call to defend their fellow citizens and uphold human dignity.”
The cable ship Mackay-Bennett reaches Halifax with 190 of the Titanic dead. They’d already dumped 116 more into the ocean, only 57 of whom were identified (the rest didn’t have enough left to be identifiable), thus leading to tedious plot developments that go nowhere on “Downton Abbey.” 60 of the bodies brought in have not been identified, and are believed to be mostly crew members.
In the Massachusetts primary, Republican voters split nearly evenly between Taft & TR (however, voters also voted for 8 at-large delegates, and the ones they elected are all pledged to TR, it said so right on the ballot). The NYT thinks this result discredits the whole idea of popular primaries, “a first-rate device for splitting a party wide open and inviting defeat on election day.”
On the Democratic side, Champ Clark defeats Wilson, but turnout was much lower than for R’s. Also, the ballot had a little flaw in that there were delegates pledged to the state’s Gov. Foss listed on the ballot, 36 of whom were elected, but Foss himself was not on the ballot. Some consider that those delegates are morally obligated to ignore their pledge and follow the results of the popular vote.
The Taft Admin files an anti-trust suit against International Harvester. One can’t help thinking that the timing is political, since the Tafties have been attacking TR for having halted this action when he was president five years ago.
The LA Times reports ever so respectfully about the forthcoming big women’s suffrage parade in NYC, suggesting that the order that marchers not talk while marching will be impossible for women to obey.
Obama today made fun of Romney (aka “people”) for not wanting Osama bin Laden dead, because then he’d have to baptize him as a Mormon, or something. Actually, the Romney part isn’t my interest here. Let’s roll the tape:
As far as my personal role and what other folks would do, I’d just recommend that everybody look at people’s previous statements in terms of whether they thought it was appropriate to go into Pakistan and take out bin Laden. I assume that people meant what they said when they said – that’s been at least my practice. I said that I’d go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him, and I did.
“Take out.” “Go after.” “Clear shot.” He’s stopped pretending there was ever a capture option.
Sen. William Alden Smith will cut short the Titanic hearings, which he’d planned to continue pretty much until the end of time. For a start, all the other members of the committee are now boycotting it. He questioned members of the Titanic crew about the large sums they’ve been receiving for telling their story to the NYT: $1,000 for the surviving radio operator (and $750 for the Carpathia’s radio operator).
Woodrow Wilson says that the US is slowly turning to Socialism because the D’s & R’s aren’t giving them what they want. He accuses Taft & Roosevelt of fighting with each other “as to which had been most closely identified with special interests.” (I wonder when the phrase “special interests” was first used by politicians?)
President Taft is making speeches all over Massachusetts, starting each one saying how much he’d prefer not to be doing so: “I should not be here, and I am very sorry I have to be here. I deprecate the intervention of the president of the United States in a political controversy like this that requires him to come upon the stump in order that he may defend himself against misrepresentation.” He calls for giving presidents a single 6- or 8-year term, so that no future sitting president has to go through the unseemly business of campaigning for reelection.
Roosevelt, who made 19 speeches in Massachusetts yesterday, denies Taft’s accusation that he preaches class hatred. In fact, he says, the reforms he wants would be “the most effective kind of antidote to class hatred; whereas, if Mr. Taft’s policy of flabby indecision and helpless acquiescence in the wrongdoing of the crooked boss and the crooked financier is permitted to continue, there will really grow up class hatred in this country.”
First, a reminder that comments do actually exist, post-JS-Kit, they’re just annoyingly invisible on the front page (any suggestions on how to rectify this situation are very welcome). You can comment/read comments on the individual post pages (click on the post title).
Second, about 10 days back the NYT wrecked its archive feature, the one I use for the Today -100 posts, and pestering them about it on Twitter doesn’t seem to be accomplishing anything. I’m a few weeks ahead, but unless they fix it or I find an acceptable alternative, this feature, beloved by literally ones of readers, will be done around June 24th and we’ll never know who the Democrats picked to run for president in 1912.
I can think of two alternatives, but I don’t think either is good enough to sustain us. Instead of an index, I can use the Times Machine feature, which shows images of the paper with links to the stories, but that would leave you with links only subscribers can use. Or there’s ProQuest, which I use for the LA Times, but 1) again, no links, because there’s individualized data in the URLs I wouldn’t care to share with the class, 2) it keeps timing out, 3) it seems to miss a lot of the stories, 4) it’s less readable and more eye-strainy.
Are there other options out there?
Also, I hate the new Gmail design, Google Reader has stopped telling me how many unread articles I have, and I like pineapple but am allergic to it. Someone please fix all that.
The surviving Titanic crew return to Britain. The Board of Trade had been planning to hold them incommunicado until they’d testified before an inquiry, but when their ship arrived at Plymouth, the president and secretary of the British Seafarers’ Union took a sailboat alongside it and shouted over to them that they shouldn’t speak until they’d consulted with their union. Eventually, the authorities gave up on holding them captive.
Back in the US, there was a revolt against the Senate Titanic committee’s chairman, Sen. William Alden Smith (R-Mich.), who has tended to ask silly questions and is letting the whole thing meander and drag on. Several senators threatened to resign the committee.
Titanic victim and journalist W.T. Stead has evidently sent a message from the spirit world to Mrs. Cora Richmond, pastor of the spiritualist Church of the Soul. It seems that “There is no death.” So that’s okay then. (Actually, the prose of his message from the afterlife is quite purple, so I guess some things really don’t change with death: “I awoke as one awakening from a horrible dream. My son, my son, yes, the first to meet me. He was one of the rescuers from that realm where lifeboats are never lacking.”)
I guess I haven’t been keeping up with the saga of the Paris motor-car bandits. Last week their chief, Jules Bonnot, killed the deputy chief of the Paris Detective Service, so now he’s been killed in turn in a big ol’ shoot-out. And dynamite, the cops used dynamite.
Evidently in Friedrichshafen, Germany, there is an annual child fair, in which children of both sexes between 11 and 16 are sold to the highest bidders for farm work.
Woodrow Wilson is opposed to the recall of judges, but says he can see why some people (Roosevelt for a start) are in favor, given that in many parts of the country the judiciary is controlled by party interests and works to safeguard special interests rather than enforce the law.
In Japan, a bill to end the ban on women attending political meetings is rejected by the Diet. The chairman of the committee that rejected the bill said that women who participated in politics would neglect their domestic duties and might disagree with their husbands, which would lead to bickering and disunity in the family. The sponsor of the bill denies this, because Japanese women are not in any way like the “impudent hussies of Europe and America” and are quite docile, as women should be. For example, he points out, most Japanese politicians keep concubines, and their wives are totally okay with this.
Philadelphia Mayor Blankenburg bans movies depicting the sinking of the Titanic because it is just wrong to “commercialize such a terrible disaster.”
The Sunday magazine has a long article on the Titanic.
William Harris, London’s Sausage King, has died. He was a bit of an eccentric (although not as eccentric as the sub-hed “Always Wore Evening Dress” first made me think – turns out he wore dress clothes, an opera hat and patent-leather shoes at all times, not an evening dress). He named all three of his sons William and all three of his daughters Elizabeth. Anyone who wrote a poem about sausages, no matter how crap (the poem, not the sausages), was assured of getting a quid or two (or a pound of sausages). For example:
Have you seen the Sausage King?
His sausages are just the thing.
In history-repeats-itself news, 1) the ocean liner Empress of Britain hits an iceberg, but isn’t badly damaged, and 2) in a re-run of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, 25 people jump from a burning factory in the Bowery; one hits head-first and dies.
Theodore Roosevelt responds to Taft’s speech: “It is a bad trait to bite the hand that feeds you.” [Insert fat joke here]. He seems especially pissed that Taft released his 1907 letter ordering his attorney general to postpone anti-trust actions against the International Harvester trust as well as cordial personal, private letters TR had sent Taft in 1910-1, which Taft is releasing to show that TR didn’t always think he was a big ol’ loser. TR says by this action Taft has been not only “disloyal to our past friendship, but has been disloyal to every canon of ordinary decency and fair dealing”. “Such conduct represents the very crookedest kind of a crooked deal” and for Taft to say he had not been disloyal is “the grossest and most astounding hypocrisy.”
He accuses Taft of a “quality of feebleness, yielding to the bosses and the great privileged interests,” although he concedes “I do not think Mr. Taft means ill; I think he means well. But he means well feebly, and during his administration he has been under the influence of men who are neither well meaning nor feeble. It is this quality of feebleness in a normally amiable man which pre-eminently fits such a man for use in high office by the powers of evil.”
The Missouri Republicans will send rival Taft & Roosevelt delegations to the national convention.
Secretary of War Stimson says he plans to equip the army with 120 airplanes, including 8 in Hawaii, 8 in Panama and 16 in the Philippines.
The Japanese administration in the colony of Korea is trying 82 Koreans for attempted assassination of the governor-general. It says the bombs they planned to use came from Russia and China via American missionaries.
Last year, Taft vetoed the Arizona statehood bill because the territory’s prospective constitution included the recall of judges. Well, now AZ is a state and can do what it likes and an amendment for recall has passed the Legislature (unanimously in the lower house) and been signed by the governor.
Taft made several campaign speeches in Massachusetts, going negative on Roosevelt, reluctantly, or so he claims: “This wrenches my soul... I do not want to fight Theodore Roosevelt, but then sometimes a man in a corner fights.” Roosevelt, he says, can’t be trusted because he promised never to run for president again (which is arguable), and that if he considers himself so indispensable now, he might continue to do so and can’t “safely be intrusted with successive presidential terms.” He complains about TR’s “appeals to discontent and class hatred” and accuses him of distorting Taft’s words and taking them out of context. He says that if there was fraud in the NY primaries as Roosevelt says, the courts are open to him to seek redress. He also denies Roosevelt’s attempts to link him with the corruptly elected Sen. Lorimer of Illinois, TR’s charges that his supporters have been fired from patronage jobs (they have), and other charges, in a point-by-point rebuttal.
Taft also gave an address to a dinner of newspaper publishers, by telephone (they were in NY, he was in Boston). They each had to listen on their own receiver. Also addressing them telephonically were the prime minister of Canada, the actor Lewis Waller, who read Kipling’s “If” to them, and José Collins, who sang to them, and a couple of women whose phone conversation leaked through the line while the prime minister was trying to speak.
Another Republican convention, another fight. In Pulaski County, Arkansas (which includes Little Rock). The nephew of the chairman of the county Republican organization was hit over the head with a tomato can by one of the Roosevelt supporters trying to gain admission to the convention. This was followed by a general melee.
Venice inaugurates the Campanile of San Marco. I had no idea that the current Campanile was a replica (the old one fell down in 1902), only a couple of years older than the replica on the UC Berkeley campus.
Titanic Butt Headline of the Day -100: “Students to Honor Butt.” Oh, Titanic Butt headlines, how we’ve missed you! (Elsewhere in the paper, a near miss for another Titanic Butt Headline when Taft sends an army major to Halifax to look at the recovered bodies and see if one of them is Maj. Butt: “Taft Orders a Search.” They could have gone with “Taft Orders a Search for Butt,” but no.)
Love Story or Whatever of The Day -100: A German dude, J. Paul Schabert, in Reno to get a divorce, hears that his wife was on the Titanic and was rescued, abandons his divorce suit and races to New York where they are reconciled.
The House of Representatives votes 81-25 to allow the Territorial Legislature of Alaska to vote on women’s suffrage. The House divided almost exactly on North-South lines. An unfortunately unnamed congresscritter interrupted Victor Berger’s pro-suffrage speech to ask whether, if women had the same rights as men, they would they have the same privileges as they did on the Titanic. Berger says they would, because women are more important to the race than men.
Taft wins the Republican conventions in Iowa and Rhode Island.
Taft sends to the Senate letters Theodore Roosevelt wrote to his attorney general in 1907 ordering him to postpone anti-trust action against the International Harvester company.
The NYT blames the outbreak in Fez against Morocco’s new French masters on “the blind loathing of the Mohammedan masses for all Christians”.
The city editor of the Spokane Chronicle is shot dead by a crazy Russian, who said too much had been printed about the Titanic. He also claimed to have been on the Titanic, which he wasn’t.
The British are beginning to get annoyed at the US Senate’s decision to arrogate to itself the power to investigate the sinking of a British ship. The London Times notes that the questions have been rather ignorant and aimed at finding someone to pillory (although I’m sure everyone was charmed by Sen. William Alden Smith [R-Mich.]’s questions to Fifth Officer Lowe, “Where do icebergs come from?” and “Of what is an iceberg composed?”)
Another year, another wishy-washy presidential statement on “Armenian Remembrance Day,” as he calls Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, because he failed to remember the genocide. HI-larious! Armenian Remembrance Day could be the day we all remember some random Armenian, possibly one of the Kardashians.
As is traditional with these statements, the passive voice abounds. 1.5 million Armenians “were brutally massacred” – I guess by person or persons unknown – and they “senselessly suffered and died”. He says “My view of that history has not changed,” but he doesn’t remind us what that view of that history is, for those who came in late, i.e., sometime in the last four years. He suggests that “Moving forward with the future cannot be done without reckoning with the facts of the past. The United States has done so many times in our own history, and I believe we are stronger for it.” Yes, if there’s one thing Americans are known for, it’s reckoning with the facts of the past.
In fact, Obama doesn’t even reckon with the facts of the present, since he “commit[s] to bringing a brighter future to the people of Armenia” but fails to mention the status of the Armenians remaining in Turkey and elsewhere.
“Although the lives that were taken can never be returned, the legacy of the Armenian people is one of triumph.” So that’s okay then.
This must be at least the third time I’ve seen a story along these lines: the Cabinet urges Taft to fight back against Roosevelt. Among other things, they want him to release some of TR’s correspondence. Taft is about to make some campaign speeches in Massachusetts (which will have its first ever primaries this year) and this is actually something new: it’s unprecedented for a sitting president to campaign openly for re-election.
Taft wins the New Hampshire primary. This is the first presidential primary ever held in New Hampshire and indeed in New England.
Moroccans are evidently not so happy with their new “protectorate” and attacked and killed a bunch of French soldiers in Fez. There have been stories running for days about the four brave French telegraph operators who held off their attackers for hours before being killed (it’s all very Rudyard Kipling but, you know, French). The Jewish quarter of Fez was set on fire, as is traditional.
More bodies are recovered from the wreck of the Titanic.
The Titanic’s lookout tells the Senate’s Titanic hearings that the ship might have been saved if he had been given some binoculars.
Here’s the thing about Barack Obama. He can look just as solemn and intense staring at a souvenir football, as he did this afternoon,
as he can when staring at an eternal flame at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, as he did this morning.
So today he met Elie Wiesel and other Holocaust survivors, and also the Fighting Falcons, and gave speeches to both. See if you can tell which excerpts are from which speech: And most of all, we are honored to be in the presence of men and women whose lives are a testament to the endurance and the strength of the human spirit -- the inspiring survivors.
Even when they were dogged by injuries, this team pulled together when it mattered most.
These guys faced a brutal schedule, but they never backed down.
despite all the tanks and all the snipers, all the torture and brutality unleashed against them, the Syrian people still brave the streets.
As Coach Calhoun said, “This group had a warrior spirit in them.”
To stare into the abyss, to face the darkness and insist there is a future -- to not give up, to say yes to life, to believe in the possibility of justice.
These guys toughed it out
So God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.
and God bless Air Force.
Bram Stoker dies. The two articles about him in today’s NYT mostly refer to him as Henry Irving’s theatrical manager. Dracula is mentioned only in a list of his writings (unless you count the comment that “his stories, though they were queer, were not of a memorable quality.”)
More Titanic waifs. A different two “waifs” than those in yesterday’s story. Two French children, Louis and Lolo, roughly 3-4, may be the children of a French woman whose estranged husband kidnapped them after telling friends he was going to America. Ship officers, enforcing the “women and children” first rule, evidently kept the kids’ father from entering the lifeboats. That rule certainly created a lot of widows and orphans.
Virginia Brooks is elected president of the Board of Education of West Hammond, Ill. (which is now Calumet City) “after scenes of violence, during which her women supporters all but drowned one political foe and administered beatings to others.”
Headline of the Day -100: “Zionist Riot Over Smoking.” That is, residents of Zion City, Illinois, a planned community built a few years ago by a faith healer in association with his Christian Catholic Apostolic Church. Smoking is banned in the town, but some “crusaders” learned that factory workers were smoking, so they formed a posse to escort those workers forcibly to view the “no smoking” signs. The workers resisted and... now, “Every person in Zion City owning a revolver carried it to-day. Others paraded the street with pieces of lead pipe.”
Justice Charles Evans Hughes sends reassurances to President Taft that he won’t accept the Republican nomination for president as a compromise candidate.
And a former Texas land commissioner, A.J. Baker, announces his candidacy for vice president for the Democrat party. Evidently people did that then.
Cardinal Gibbons, the Archbishop of Baltimore, blames the Titanic sinking on “the excessive pursuit of luxury.”
Tear-Jerking Titanic Headline of the Day -100: “Seek Waifs of Titanic.”
There are no funny headlines about Archibald Butt today. Let the national mourning begin.
The White Star Company is keeping the Titanic crew members who testified before Congress under guard aboard the Celtic. They have been told they’ll be fired if they talk to the press. A NYT editorial denounces the crew’s ill-preparedness for the fact that so many of the lifeboats were launched with only a few people in them.
In addition to the much-vaunted “chivalry” of the men, such as Astor, who died so that women & children could live (a subject under some discussion by British suffragists), there has also been praise for the women who refused to let that policy turn them into widows and chose to stay with their husbands to the end.
Titanic Butt Headline of the Day -100: “Pope Mourns for Butt.” Runner-up: “Official Praise of Butt.”
A petition signed by many German academics, lawyers, military men, scientists, etc, has been sent to Russia, denouncing the notion of ritual murder by Jews.
Roosevelt wins West Virginia’s county-level primaries.
Headline of the Day -100: “War Is Right, Peace Wrong, Says German General.” Friedrich von Bernhardi, author of “Germany and the Next War,” a best-selling (in Germany) bit of warmongery. Sadly, Gen. Bernhardi did not die in Germany’s next war.
Some French dude invents a motorless, hand-cranked airplane.
The revolution in China seems to have made little difference to the occupation in Tibet (yet another sentence that applies to Today or Today -100). The Chinese army is using machine guns to mow down thousands in Lhasa.
