Today -100: August 10, 1911: Of milk, maneuvers, and elevated officials

I believe I mentioned that President Taft’s cow would be a special exhibit at the International Dairy Show in Milwaukee. Well, her milk will be sold at 50¢ for a small bottle. Souvenir milk – who came up with that brilliant idea?

Orange, NJ bans Carrie Davenport from teaching in Orange schools. She is black.

The Texas Legislature shouts down a proposal that Booker T. Washington be allowed to speak in the Capitol.

Airplanes will participate in German military maneuvers for the first time.

Headline of the Day -100: “CHOOSE ELEVATED OFFICIALS.” The guys in charge of Chicago’s El. So it’s the train tracks that are elevated, not the officials.

Today -100: August 9, 1911: Of restored h’s, mutinies, duels, and states

The long national nightmare is over: The spelling of Pittsburg is being changed back to Pittsburgh. That decision was made by the Post Office (or the United States Geographic Board?). The city had been demanding its h back for the last 20 years.

There was a mutiny a couple of days ago aboard a Spanish battleship anchored off Tangier. 26 sailors have been court-martialed and executed.

An East Chicago man who challenged another man to a duel (both have Serbian names) is sentenced to a fine, jail and, interestingly, disfranchisement, under a law against challenging someone to a duel, the first time the Illinois law has been used.

The bill for statehood for Arizona and New Mexico passes the Senate 53-18. An attempt to strike out Arizona’s provision for the recall of judges was voted down, but AZ will be required to vote on that provision separately from the referendum on the entire constitution. However, it will be admitted to the Union however that vote goes.

Quote of the Day

If you’re the lieutenant governor of Missouri, Peter Kinder, and you’re planning to run for governor in 2012, this is probably not what you want to have to send your spokesmodel out to say: “I really highly doubt the lieutenant governor is going to a bar where they don’t wear pants on a night when they don’t wear pants.”

Today -100: August 8, 1911: Of women’s games, stilts, and cleaning up

The mayor of Hunnewell, Kansas, Ella Wilson, is in a death-struggle with the all-male city council. They won’t confirm any of her appointments and she won’t sign any of the ordinances they pass. She says she would quit if she could, and that “politics is not a woman’s game,” but instead is working with the governor to oust the council.

Headline of the Day -100: “FIREMEN FIGHT BLAZE IN HOUSE ON STILTS.” Sadly, it was the house (the Jamaica Bay Yacht Club) which was on stilts, not the firemen.

Pathé begins the first newsreel in America, Pathé’s Weekly.

NYT Index Typo of the Day: “TY COBB CLEANS UP WITH BABES FULL.”

Today -100: August 7, 1911: Of crap shooters, slavery, trolleys, and icebergs

Haiti’s revolutionary army proclaims as president one Gen. Cincinnatus Leconte, the great-grandson of a previous Emperor of Haiti. Spoiler alert: contrary to his name, he did not return to his plow, but was blowed up in 1912.

Topic Sentence of the Day -100: A story headlined “Negro is Killed By His Own Pistol” begins “Moses Hill, a negro [okay, we get it already: he’s a negro], who had a reputation as a crap shooter, met his death by his own hand as a result of that talent yesterday morning.” No, “crap shooter” doesn’t mean he was a really bad shot but rather that three white men he beat playing craps decided to beat the crap out of him and he drew a gun. My, the word crap is so versatile, isn’t it?

Mississippi’s Democratic primary (all-white, of course) last week chose former governor James Vardaman as candidate for US Senate. Many black people are now fleeing the state, believing that when he is elected, slavery will be restored. To be fair to Vardaman – the white supremacist shit – he only advocates repealing the 14th and 15th Amendments, not the 13th.

Why are street car strikes always so violent? The one in Des Moines has ended because a court ordered the reinstatement of the conductor whose dismissal was the cause of the strike, but another one in Brooklyn/Coney Island features the usual wrecking of cars, beating of scabs and terrorizing of passengers. The street car operators want an increase in pay from 23¢ an hour to 25¢.

Interesting details of the Columbia’s collision with the iceberg.

Today -100: August 6, 1911: Of sabers, Confederate nickels, Doc Hazzard, trolleys, and patents

In Berlin, a burglar kills a cop trying to arrest him. New orders have gone out to the Berlin PD concerning the use of service revolvers: they can now use them first, rather than having to try their sabers first. To reiterate: cops in Berlin had sabers.

More Berlin police news: police have issued a warning against some Confederate bills that have been circulating, brought back by an artisan who was living in the US until recently.

After a patient dies while taking the starvation cure at the Hazzard Institution – she can’t say she wasn’t warned – Dr. Linda Hazzard is arrested for killing patients to take their money.

Rioting by striking street car workers in Des Moines succeeds in making every scab flee the city.

The US issues its one millionth patent: a puncture-proof tire. (Update: Oh, actually no. 1m as issued by the Patent Office since it was created in 1836. There were 9,957 issued 1790-1836.)

If you hop while eating BBQ, you’re going to get very messy, or am I missing the point?

Fox News complains that Obama’s birthday “Hip-Hop BBQ Didn’t Create Jobs.”

Speaking of Hip-Hop birthdays, the day Katrina hit New Orleans...

Today -100: August 5, 1911: Of alphabets, poltroons, Reciprocity, and icebergs

Rep. Fred Jackson (R-Kansas) introduces a bill calling on Taft to call a conference of all nations to consider the creation of a Universal Scientific Alphabet.

German ultra-nationalists are worried that the government may compromise with France over Morocco. The Pan-German Post calls Kaiser Wilhelm “The Valorous Poltroon.” What is the German for poltroon, and how do you spell it in the Universal Scientific Alphabet?

Update: Google Translate says the German for poltroon is feigling, which seems to me to capture the literal meaning but not the tone.

President Taft names his new horse Reciprocity, after the Canadian trade treaty. There’s probably a joke in that somewhere.

In a freak accident that will never be repeated, the passenger liner Columbia, traveling from Glasgow to New York, hits an iceberg. No one was hurt.

Somebody needs a better travel agent

White House press releases today:

On Tuesday, August 9, the President will travel to Interstate Moving Services in Springfield, Virginia, to announce first of their kind fuel efficiency standards for work trucks, buses, and other heavy duty vehicles.

On Thursday, August 11, the President will travel to Holland, Michigan, to tour the Johnson Controls Inc. advanced battery facility.

The Vice President will depart for China, Mongolia, and Japan on August 16, 2011.

Today -100: August 4, 1911: Of three-time losers, arbitration, monkeys, and cows

William Jennings Bryan says he will never run for president again. And he won’t.

The US signs arbitration treaties with both Britain and France. Even matters of “honor” are to be settled through arbitration.

Upton Sinclair announces that he plans to write a book about the horrors of prisons. What on earth did they do to him during his 18 hours at the New Castle Workhouse?

Headline of the Day -100 (LAT): “A Monkey Chews Gum.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Taft to Exhibit Cow.”

Unfortunate Headline of the Day

AP: “Heather Mills: Journalist Told Me I’d Been Hacked.”

Today -100: August 3, 1911: Of enlistments, extinctions, women lawyers, menacing revolutions, and useless husbands

There is a controversy in the US Army over whether army enlistments should be short, with a high turnover so that a large number of people can be trained and then called up if needed, or conversely whether enlistments should be increased to five years.

The chief health officer of Richmond, Virginia, notes that negroes have a higher death rate than whites and predicts they will become extinct in the 21st century.

Arabella (“Belle”) Mansfield, the first woman admitted to the bar in the US (Iowa, 1868), although she never actually practiced law, dies. She was dean of the College of Arts at DePauw University.

Well that was fast: “New Revolution Menaces Mexico.”

Condescending Headline of the Day -100 (LA Times): “They’ll Give Up Candy For Sake of Suffrage.” California suffragists are fund-raising for the October state referendum on women’s suffrage through a “self-denial week.”

Headline of the Day -100: “KILLED USELESS HUSBAND.; Wife Gives Excuse That She Could Not Make a Man of Him.” But she could make a dead man of him – it’s compromises like this that make marriages work.

The Southern Pacific Railroad will no longer hire women. They get married just when they’re becoming useful.

Because nothing empowers women like telling them what they can and can’t wear

Italy is joining other European countries in planning to ban the burqa with a new law requiring women’s faces to be visible. Since the proposal comes from Silvio Berlusconi’s party, it will probably also require their breasts to be visible.

Today -100: August 2, 1911: Of reapportionment, Sunday golf, and braaaaaiiinnnsss!

The reapportionment bill is going through despite opposition from Robert La Follette, who notes that the changes will disadvantage Republican Insurgents in the Electoral College, and from a few mainstream Republicans like Elihu Root, who think any reapportionment will work in favor of Democrats (which it will, because R’s did so badly in so many state legislature elections in 1910).

Follow up: Upton Sinclair and the ten other members of the Arden, Del. Single Tax colony will serve 18 hours in the workhouse for violations of the blue laws. Sinclair, imprisoned for felonious tennis-playing, now plans to go on the offensive against the blue laws by applying for arrest warrants for anyone who plays golf or other games on the sabbath. Wilmington Country Club, you have been warned!

Headline of the Day -100: “Doctors Buy Her Brain.” Progressive teacher Celeste Parrish. She has a really good memory. They’ll wait until she’s dead to collect it.

A detailed case

Obama, in his announcement yesterday of the debt ceiling deal: “And over the next few months, I’ll continue to make a detailed case to these lawmakers about why I believe a balanced approach is necessary to finish the job.” After all this time, he still thinks it’s about reasoned discussion, healthy debate, back and forth, making a detailed case. Dude’s learned nothing.

Today -100: August 1, 1911: Of sugar and anarchist sabbatarians

The House Special Committee investigating the Sugar Trust held a sugar-tasting session. They decided that French sugar was the tastiest.

George Brown, a philosopher and anarchist, angered by his treatment at the (Henry) Georgian Single-Tax utopian colony in Arden, Delaware, where his espousal of his views at a meeting of the Economic Club after they had expelled him from membership earned him a $2 fine (and 5 days in the workhouse when he refused to pay), is seeking his revenge by swearing out warrants for the arrest of all the top leaders at Arden for violations of the state’s blue laws. He charges Upton Sinclair with having played tennis on a Sunday and others with playing baseball or selling ice cream.

Super

So there will be a “Super Congress.” Prepare for much hilarity in the days ahead as we discover which members of the current Congress are considered “super.”

Happy now?

Paul Krugman reminds us of Obama’s press conference last December after he gave in on tax cuts for the rich, when he was asked whether not having addressed the debt ceiling left the Republicans with significant leverage and Obama said that Boehner would never be so crass as to do that.

In my analysis of that press conference, which is worth re-reading (if I do say so myself) as a reminder of how smug and self-righteous Obama was about his so-called pragmatism, I see that Obama said this: “I am happy to be tested over the next several months about our ability to negotiate with Republicans.”

Today -100: July 31, 1911: Of raging kaisers

Headline of the Day -100: “Kaiser in Rage on Morocco.” He’s pissed at Foreign Minister Baron von Kiderlen-Waechter (say that three times fast), who had thought that Britain wouldn’t back France up, even though they have a mutual defense treaty.

In the Canadian elections, the Conservatives are making a big deal over a telegram Taft sent to the Hearst newspapers, thanking them for supporting the tariff reciprocity treaty. Since William Randolph Hearst also advocates annexation of Canada, the Conservatives say that this telegram obviously means that Taft does too.

Today -100: July 30, 1911: Of popular wars, bloodless revolutions, elections, bounties, and guillotines

A “highly qualified American observer of European affairs” thinks that the Moroccan crisis shows that a war between Britain and Germany might not be unpopular in Britain.

The NYT reassures its readers that the ongoing revolution in Haiti is bloodless.

The Canadian Parliament has been dissolved, and elections will be fought in part on the reciprocity treaty with the US.

The government of Persia offers a $100,000 reward for the head of the former shah, Mohammed Ali Mirza, who is trying to recapture the throne.

The Paris guillotine (the “widow”) is moved inside La Santé Prison. In future it will no longer be ceremonially transported to the prison prior to executions on a cart drawn by a white horse (French executions were public until 1939). The guillotine had been kept in a shed outside the house of the public executioner, Anatole Deibler (who inherited the job from his father, and also married into a family of executioners, which is not at all creepy). He assembled guillotines himself, IKEA-style, from parts ordered from separate carpenters and joiners, so none of them knew what they were working on. He also put together guillotines intended for export. China just ordered one. Deibler’s “staff has a sense of humor, for a year or two ago they amused themselves by strapping their chief to ‘the widow,’ with his neck under the fatal knife, and left him there for quite a while to appreciate the sensation of one of the condemned wretches whom he has so often dispatched to the next world.”