Today -100: June 30, 1912: Of colossal impudence

The Democratic convention today was long, hot and (according to the LA Times) smelly. Also inconclusive. 14 more ballots were held today, for a total of 26. Champ Clark lost votes on each ballot after the 15th, 90 votes over the course of the day, dropping to 463½. Wilson gained 50, to 407½. 725½ are required. Gov. Harmon of Ohio (29) drops out. Clark’s people suggest that Wilson would make a good veep for Clark; Wilson’s people think not. Clark’s people also suggest another solution to the deadlock: every candidate except for Clark should withdraw.

Drama was provided by William Jennings Bryan, because that’s what he’s there for, when he asked to explain to the convention his shift from Clark to Wilson and more or less said that he will bolt the Democratic Party if its presidential candidate wins the nomination with the support of the 90 votes of the New York delegation, which he says is controlled by Wall Street and Boss Murphy, which it is, and therefore “does not represent the intelligence, the virtue, the democracy or the patriotism of the ninety men who are here”.

Part of the problem in getting a nominee is that under party rules each delegation must vote as a bloc. So the many Wilson supporters among those 90 NY delegates have to vote for Clark.

Headline of the Day -100: “William J. Bryan a Man of Colossal Impudence.”

The editor of the German Anti-Semitic Party’s newspaper has been convicted for slandering the Jewish religion and sentenced to one week in prison.

Texas Gov. Oscar Branch Colquitt is facing a primary challenger who is bringing up the large number of pardons Colquitt has issued. Colquitt responds by noting that most of those pardons were of young men who had left farms for the city and been led astray. Let’s see if you can spot what else he wants to highlight about the pardonees: “Out of the men I have pardoned some 225 of them were young white men who were serving their first terms in prison for their first offenses against the law, young white men who were without means for defense, young white men etc”.

Today -100: June 29, 1912: Of nominations and shaking prime ministers

On the Democratic Convention’s 10th ballot, there is finally some movement, with Champ Clark increasing his lead, with 556 votes to Wilson’s 350½, with Underwood & Harmon hanging in somewhere in the 100s. It would all have been over by now, with Clark the winner, but nomination requires 2/3 of the votes.

Headline of the Day -100: “Woman Shakes Asquith.” The prime minister meets a suffragette. Who shakes him. She is thrown downstairs, as is the custom.

What the Framers knew

Verily John Roberts says, “The Framers knew the difference between doing something and doing nothing.”

Today -100: June 28, 1912: There is nothing more timid than a politician, except two politicians

An attempt by Champ Clark supporters to pack the Democratic convention (they printed their own admission tickets) and rush his nomination through fails. They are now trying to bribe Boss Murphy of Tammany into throwing his minions behind Clark. But Murphy and the right wing of the party in general are scared shitless that if they knock Woodrow Wilson out of the race, his backers will join in a push for William Jennings Bryan, their worst nightmare. Bryan wasn’t even running in the primaries, but suddenly, here he is. Again.

Bryan makes a fiery speech introducing a resolution that “we hereby declare ourselves opposed to the nomination of any candidate for president who is the representative of or under any obligation to J. Pierpont Morgan, Thomas F. Ryan, August Belmont, or any other member of the privilege-hunting and favor-seeking class.” He accuses those millionaires of trying to buy the Democratic nomination. The resolution further demands the withdrawal of any delegates representing those interests. This provoked outrage, with Virginia (Ryan’s a VA delegate) invoking state’s rights. Bryan withdrew that part of the resolution.

Bryan reports on his speech in his syndicated newspaper coverage: “But when I called the country’s attention to the fact that we had in the convention two men who are politically sexless, who have no god but money, and who do not hesitate to use political power for their own enrichment, I at once became ‘a disturber of peace’ and an ‘enemy of the Democratic party.’” “There is nothing more timid than a politician, except two politicians.”

The resolution passes 889 (899?) to 196, because it’s just easier to give Bryan this one than have him storming out like Roosevelt. Bryan claims that the resolution’s passage makes clear that the convention is entirely a Progressive one.

Portugal says it will allow Jews to settle in Portuguese Angola and establish a self-governing Zionist colony.

A German Zeppelin flies nine hours from Hamburg to the North Sea and back, purportedly to demonstrate that it’s possible to use airships to bomb London if the need should ever, you know, arise.

16 have died from bubonic plague in Puerto Rico.

Yesterday, the NYT complained that British suffragette hunger-striking is making it impossible to keep them in prison. A letter today helpfully suggests deporting them to Borneo (similar letters can be found in the London Times).

Today -100: June 27, 1912: Of platforms, lynchings, bandanas, and hens

The Democratic convention decides to reverse the usual order of things and nominate the presidential and vice-presidential candidates before adopting a platform.

Taft says he deplores lynching and thinks those who do it should be punished. This in response to the woman being lynched in Georgia, where authorities have already said they aren’t going to punish anyone.

The new Progressive Party has purchased 28,000 red bandanas to be distributed to supporters. I guess the Rough Riders wore them at San Juan Hill.

Headline of the Day -100: “TAFT’S CADDY A SUICIDE; Guy Hurdle Had Been Scolded for Trading a Hen for a Watch.” The 13-year-old Guy Hurdle, for such was his name, hanged himself. No word on what became of the hen. I fear the worst.

Outspent

Just got an email from Barack Obama, because we’re close like that, and he’s worried about a dangerous trend in American politics: “I will be the first president in modern history to be outspent in his re-election campaign, if things continue as they have so far.” Oh, please, Mr. President, tell us what we can do to reverse this awful situation, why Thomas Jefferson would roll over in his grave if an incumbent president had a campaign chest of anything less than a billion dollars.

If you contribute, you are entered into a drawing for a “grassroots dinner” with the Obamas. Doesn’t that sound delicious?

Today -100: June 26, 1912: Of conventions, marines, club women, lynchings, and bathing suits

Former South Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Ira Jones tries to punch Gov. Blease after Blease says that his vote on the Court against a Jim Crow law was a vote for white women to be forced to ride in the same railroad carriage as “big negro bucks and wenches.” “That’s a lie,” yelled Jones, and went for him.

The Democratic Convention votes for Alton Parker over William Jennings Bryan for temporary chairman, 579 to 510. Parker gives the conservative keynote speech Bryan didn’t want to happen. Bryan reviews it in his syndicated reporting thusly: “People will not remain in a large hall unless they know what is being said, and Judge Parker’s speech was written in the language of Wall street. Only 200 or 300 of the delegates could understand it, and the committee was so busy oiling the machine that it had neglected to provide an interpreter to translate the speech into the every day language of Democrats.”

More by Bryan: “The smoke of battle has cleared away, and the country is now able to look upon the amazing spectacle of a national convention controlled by a national committee, that committee controlled by a subcommittee of 16, the sub-committee controlled by a group of eight men, these men controlled by Boss Murphy and Boss Murphy controlled by Thomas Fortune Ryan. Probably never before in the history of the country have we seen two men attending a national convention and pulling the strings in the open view of the public.”

The US Marines Taft sent to Cuba have been exchanging gunfire with the negro rebels.

The 11th biennial convention of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs is meeting, or, as the NYT headline puts it, “CLUB WOMEN MEET.; Thousands Make San Francisco Pavilion Attractive by Their Gowns.”

A rare lynching of a black woman, Annie Beshdale, a maid who supposedly stabbed her mistress to death (which is the sort of thing that white Southerners found especially worrying) in Pinehurst, Georgia. Authorities will make no effort to find the culprits, although they used automobiles, which were identified. She was hanged, and her body shot up.

Venice, California is considering a new bathing suit ordinance. Women would be required to wear bathing suits of “suitable heavy material which will not cling to the person,” with a skirt at least 14 inches below the waist and a neckline at most 2 inches below the shoulder. Men’s bathing suits must have skirts reaching the knee.

The pissant dissents

Earlier in the day, I read and wrote up most of Scalia’s dissent in Arizona v. United States (pdf, Scalia begins on p.30), but before finishing I had to go out to feed some ducks and perform other important tasks like that, while the Interwebs tore it to pieces, so by now probably none of this is new to you. But what the hell.

He puts a lot of emphasis on states being “sovereign,” which my dictionary defines as “possessing supreme or ultimate power.” I’m pretty sure Arizona isn’t that. Anyway, being sovereign, it has “the power to exclude.” He quotes “Emer de Vattel’s seminal 1758 treatise on the Law of Nations” to support that. Again, though, Arizona is not actually a nation (it is a mental state brought on by too much time in the sun without a hat). Then he quotes I R. Phillimore, Commentaries upon International Law (1854), except, again, international law doesn’t grant Arizona the right to ban people or any other rights because Arizona isn’t actually a nation. I don’t know how this has escaped Scalia’s notice.

Actually, there’s a linguistic clue that he hasn’t: at several points he talks about Arizona “protecting its borders.” Plural. Thing is, it has borders, plural, with other states of These Here United States but only one, singular, international border. It can’t “protect” the former (although, as the resident of one of the states bordering Arizona, I gotta say to Jerry Brown: Build the danged fence!).

He notes that states in the 19th century passed laws restricting entry of convicted criminals, indigents, people with contagious diseases and freed slaves. Those are the precedents he cites, because he’s Tony Fucking Scalia. And presumably, since he’s citing these as positive precedents for his position on Arizona’s law, he believes that it’s okay for states to pass such laws again. If we now see a spate of Southern states passing laws banning entry by free negroes from other states, we’ll know who to blame.

Actually, he says that the federal government has not pre-empted the power of the states to exclude, that is, to decide on their own what foreigners to allow into their states.

He criticizes Obama’s recent decision not to deport certain illegal immigrants who came as children and says that the states are free to arrest and imprison those people themselves, because of their awesome sovereignty.

There’s some racist immigrant-fear-mongering that could not be more out of place in a Supreme Court opinion, including an accusation that Obama “leaves the States’ borders unprotected against immigrants” and puts the states “at the mercy of the Federal Executive’s refusal to enforce the Nation’s immigration laws”. Obama has tied Arizona to the railroad tracks and is twirling his mustache while waiting for the Messkin hordes to have their way with her. Scalia says that Arizona’s “citizens feel themselves under siege by large numbers of illegal immigrants”. They may or may not feel themselves “under siege,” but they’re not.

He concludes, “If securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign State.” Okay, let’s.

Today -100: June 25, 1912: Of assassins, temporary speakers, and wotherspoons

Headline of the Day -100: “Blease Fears Assassins.” South Carolina Gov. Coleman Blease says that followers of Ira Jones, the former chief justice of the state Supreme Court, who is running against Blease for governor, have threatened to kill him. At a meeting last week, police had to break up a near-fight between the governor and the judge, and Blease has threatened that if Jones again “insults me personally, I shall hold him strictly to account off the platform when no others will be in danger,” which I take to be a promise to challenge him to a duel.

The Democratic convention has two women delegates, Mrs. Hutton of Washington and Mrs. Pilzer of Colorado (the latter is Champ Clark’s sister-in-law).

The fight over the temporary speakership of the Democratic Convention continues. Alton Parker is confirmed in the role by the DNC and there will be a floor fight over it. This wouldn’t have been a big deal except Bryan made it one. Bryan says if he can’t find a progressive candidate to run against Parker, he’ll do it himself. Parker, by the way, is attorney for AFL President Samuel Gompers, but wasn’t in court today when Gompers was sentenced to one year for contempt of the (highly contemptible) DC district court, which had issued an injunction against an AFL boycott.

Name of the Day -100: newly promoted Major General William Wallace Wotherspoon.

British suffragist leaders Emmeline Pankhurst and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence are released from prison one month into their 9-month sentences as a result of their hunger strike (other prisoners are being forcibly fed, Pankhurst was not).

The Newsroom

Aaron Sorkin misses Murrow & Cronkite. But you know who his new show made me miss?

Lou

Rossi

Billie

Charlie

Mrs. Pynchon

Animal


That said, Edward R. Murrow’s attempted interview of Harpo Marx was fucking hilarious.

Today -100: June 24, 1912: Of chairmen, prison riots, and Bedelia the Bear

Leading Democratic presidential candidates Gov. Woodrow Wilson & Speaker of the House Champ Clark are failing to take William Jennings Bryan’s bait in his crusade against Alton Parker being named the Democratic Convention’s temporary chairman. Bryan sees it as part of a sinister plot to give the “reactionaries” control of the convention and of the nomination (given the role Root performed as chair at the R. convention, he might have a point).

The Washington state Socialist Party nominates Anna Malley for governor, with more than 5,000 ballots returned.

The warden of San Quentin blames a recent revolt there, in which one convict was shot, on... wait for it... women voters, who have been advocating reform of the prison.

A bear escapes on Coney Island and goes to the beach. Bedelia the bear goes to the beach. Sounds like a not very good children’s book.

Today -100: June 23, 1912: Your steam roller had exceeded the speed limit

Right before the Republican convention was scheduled to vote on the presidential nomination, Henry Allen of Kansas read out a statement from Theodore Roosevelt which said that since the RNC had, “by the so-called steam-roller methods, and with scandalous disregard of every principle of elementary honesty and decency,” stolen delegates and “substitute[d] a dishonest for an honest majority,” making “the convention in no proper sense any longer a Republican convention representing the real Republican party. Therefore I hope the men elected as Roosevelt delegates will now decline to vote on any matter before the convention. I do not release any delegate from his honorable obligation to vote for me if he votes at all, but under the actual conditions I hope that he will not vote at all. ... Any man nominated by the convention as now constituted would be merely the beneficiary of this successful fraud; it would be deeply discreditable to any man to accept the convention’s nomination under these circumstances; and any man thus accepting it would have no claim to the support of any Republican on party grounds, and would have forfeited the right to ask the support of any honest man of any party on moral grounds.” Allen continued (I’m not sure if this is still TR’s statement), “we decided that your steam roller had exceeded the speed limit.” “You accuse us of being radical. Gentlemen, let me tell you that no radical in the ranks of radicalism ever did so radical a thing as to come to a national convention of the great Republican party and secure through fraud the nomination of a man that they know could not be elected.”

Taft was officially and alliteratively nominated by Ohio’s ex-Lt. Gov. Warren G. Harding: “I have heard men arrogate to themselves the title of ‘Progressive Republicans,’ seemingly forgetting that progression is the first essential to Republican fellowship... 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.” Taft is in fact “the greatest Progressive of his time,” said Harding, to the accompaniment of “hisses, hoots, groans, and boos”. Later in the speech Harding accused TR of “pap rather than patriotism” and elevated Taft to the “party pantheon.”

Almost 1/3 of the delegates abstained from voting (including 20 of the 22 from California). Taft won the nomination by a narrow majority (561). 107 of the Roosevelt delegates felt honor-bound to honor their instructions or primary voters and vote for TR, but most (344) sat on their hands. The convention then re-nominated James Schoolcraft Sherman as VP, the first time a sitting VP had been re-nominated in 80 years, even though Sherman was dying of Bright’s disease and everyone knew it (Spoiler alert: he will die just before the election).

A platform is adopted.

Taft gives the NYT a statement that his, um, victory means the constitution has been saved. Evidently he sees this as purely a defeat of the idea of judicial recall. “All over this country patriotic people to-night are breathing more freely, that a most serious menace to our republican institutions has been averted.”

Roosevelt delegates hold a rump convention and nominate Roosevelt for president. He accepts, but says he’d step aside if the new party, once it is organized and holds a proper convention, decides to choose someone else, like that could happen. A lot of speeches use the phrase “Thou Shalt Not Steal” and the most popular word is “fraudulent.” The convention will meet again tomorrow. Says Gov. Hiram Johnson, “I know it is Sunday, but our work is holy work.”

Headline of the Day -100: “Hamburg Has a Talking Cat.”

Allegedly, an anarchist tries to poison King Victor Emmanuel of Italy’s trout. The cook tasted the dish and dropped dead.

The US Secret Service plans to adopt guns that fire gas that blinds and chokes people.

Today -100: June 22, 1912: Toot toot

The NYT says all the fight has gone out of the Republican convention. (William Jennings Bryan, in his syndicated coverage, concurs: “The machine has worked beautifully all day; it has not slipped a cog. When it was running at full speed ‘Toot,’ Toot,’ would occasionally come from the audience. Sometimes sounds arose that resembled escaping steam, but I am satisfied that no steam escaped; it was all being used, and at high pressure, too.”) The convention is voting on disputed delegates state by state, ignoring a motion by the Theodores to seat all the Roosevelt delegates as a bloc (that would have required all 78 disputed Tafties to sit out the vote; instead, piecemeal voting let the Texas Tafties vote on the credentials of the Alabama ones and vice versa).

Favorite line of the coverage: “The Governor [Hiram Johnson of California] stood there shrieking and gesticulating with his embattled forefinger”.

I’ve been meaning to mention that two of the California delegates were women, the first women at a national convention.

William Jennings Bryan is starting a fight with the Democratic National Committee over its plans to make Alton Parker, the party’s conservative 1904 presidential candidate, temporary chairman of the convention, asking the leading presidential candidates to support some Progressive for the position.

Today -100: June 21, 1912: Of women’s suffrage, and credentials

Both Taft & TR supporters will support a women’s suffrage plank (though probably not a federal constitutional amendment). On hearing this, the secretary of the New York Man’s League for Woman Suffrage immediately goes to Roosevelt’s office to drop off a membership form for him. Sadly, TR’s secretary says he does not wish to join at the present time.

New Hampshire’s constitutional convention rejects women’s suffrage, 208-149.

The Theodores on the convention’s credentials committee end their boycott. The convention will be considering the credentials of its members for the entire time it sits. Nothing much happened in the convention itself yesterday.

Roosevelt himself seems to be vacillating on exactly what his next step should be and is ordering his delegates to continue attending the convention but not participate, in other words a holding action. He’s saying he’ll run as a non-Republican “if there was found to be a demand for me,” but isn’t saying precisely in what form such a demand would be expressed. William Jennings Bryan notes that Roosevelt has no way of knowing how many delegates would bolt if he ordered it and, indeed, many will only make up their minds when the time comes.

A Civil War veteran from Chicago, I presume a delegate, accuses a negro delegate of selling his vote. The negro delegate knocks him down.

Cuba thinks that the proclamation by the leader of the negro rebellion threatening to kill all whites who didn’t leave the El Cobre district was actually written by the French consul.

Today -100: June 20, 1912: Of the real and lawful majority of the convention, executions, and Lloyd George’s hat

NYT: “The convention today cheered for Roosevelt and voted for Taft.” There was a 45-minute pro-Theodore demonstration (to be fair, there was also a 15-second Taft demonstration later in the proceedings). Later, Roosevelt supporters withdrew from the convention’s credentials committee on the pretext of its refusal to give a full hearing to all the contested seats (and the convention voted to let 72 contested delegates, enough to swing the convention to either Taft or TR, vote on their own cases). TR had told a meeting of his delegates in the morning that if the “fraudulently seated delegates” were seated, they, “the real and lawful majority of the convention,” should organize their own convention. Incidentally, before the bolt, the Theodores were spreading a rumor that if the convention nominated Roosevelt, Taft was planning to run as an independent.

A convicted murderer will soon be executed in Nevada. Under a new law, he gets to choose the method of execution and has opted for being shot. The NYT thinks this is inappropriate for a non-military regime and that hanging is “a relic of the mediaeval punishments by public exposure.” It also thinks taking poison (an option the Nevada Legislature considered but rejected) is “revolting to modern sensibilities” and much prefers New York’s electric chair, which is “certain, scientific, and prosaic”.

British Suffragettes knock Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George’s hat off. Detectives seize the women while he jumps into a cab and escapes. No word on the fate of the hat.

Mittimal

ABC interviewed Newt Gingrich at the National Zoo, so the headline reads “Newt Gingrich’s Advice for Mitt Romney: Sharpen Your Animal Instincts,” although he didn’t actually say that. But it raises a question:

If Mitt Romney were an animal, what animal would he be?

CONTEST!

Today -100: June 19, 1912: Of hissing and leper republics

At the “sullen, ugly, ill-tempered” Republican convention, “hissing the order of the day.” Also, according to the NYT, savage talk, personal insults, hoots, grim silence, booing, cat calls, imitations of a steam whistle, derisive laughter, angry snarls... It took six hours to elect a temporary chairman, Sen. Elihu Root (the Tafties’ choice), by a handful of votes over Wisconsin Gov. Francis McGovern, a La Follette supporter backed by the Theodores in a tactical move. And, er, that’s it for day one. William Jennings Bryan, sitting in the press section, said “If you didn’t know where you were you might think you were in a Democratic Convention.”

Michael Walen of the United States is elected president of the Philippine Leper Republic.

Today -100: June 18, 1912: If they ask for the sword, they shall have it!

Metaphor of the Day -100: Some of the Taft delegates traveling to the Republican National Convention are injured in a train wreck.

Metaphor of the Day -100, runner-up: Theodore Roosevelt, at a meeting: “If they ask for the sword, they shall have it!” He asks Taft delegates to vote for his candidate for the temporary chairmanship of the convention to rebuke the “burglary and piracy” of the RNC and says that any action by the convention which was voted upon by fraudulently seated delegates would not be binding on the party (he wants organizational votes to be cast only by unchallenged delegates). William Jennings Bryan reports: “The Arabs are said to have seven hundred words which mean ‘camel’; Mr. Roosevelt has nearly as many synonyms for theft, and he used them all tonight. ... He compared political crimes, such as he charged against his opponents, with the crimes for which men are imprisoned, to the advantage of the latter, and declared that some of the governors among the reactionaries have refused pardons to criminals whose deeds were infinitely less wicked than the political misdemeanors of the governors themselves.”

Some of the negro delegates from Georgia defected to Roosevelt yesterday and defected back to Taft today, claiming they’d been bunkoed. The Georgia delegates almost came to blows, a white delegate who announced himself a Theodore raising a chair to ward off negro Tafties (Tafty is my own term, since there seems to be no one-word term for Taft supporters, but Roosevelt supporters are occasionally called Theodores). The Roosevelt strategy of winning over negro delegates (or bribing them, according to the Tafties) is not going well.

Taft vetoes the $92 million Army appropriation bill because of its provisions reducing the size of the General Staff, setting the qualifications for the office of Army chief of staff that would remove Taft’s appointee, and removing decisions on the distributions of forts and disposition of the army from the War Dept to a committee of retired officers.

The LAT, always so good in its understanding of the Celestial mind: “CHINESE RESIST REFORMS.: Abolition of Gambling and Girl Slavery Weakens Hold of the New Government on the Ignorant Masses.”

Today -100: June 17, 1912: Of meat riots, white planks, socialists, and negro rebellions

Meat riots in Chicago. Which sounds like a funny way of describing the Republican convention, but no, it’s actually rioting over the high price of meat.

Sen. Francis Newlands (D-Nev.) proposes a “white plank” for the Democratic platform: a constitutional amendment to disenfranchise all black people and ban all non-white immigration.

Republican delegates are arriving in Chicago, marching from the railway station to hq behind bands which only seem to know “Hail, Hail, The Gang’s All Here” or “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.”


William Jennings Bryan, covering the convention for many newspapers, notes that “The Taft men, excepting the Southern delegates, are as a rule of the conservative type. They speak more deliberately and show less animation. Many of them are politicians of long experience who have been accustomed to the methods of the inner circle. They speak cautiously, act deliberately, and are more inclined to ‘view with alarm’ than to enthuse. They feel that things have been going along fairly well, and are anxious that such changes as are necessary may be made ‘slowly and only after careful investigation.’ The Roosevelt men, on the contrary, are largely of the aggressive type. They have already decided matters and have no doubts to settle. They are not waiting for investigation and are not weighing reforms in apothecary scales.”

For the first time, the Socialist Party will be on the ballot in every state.

The Canadian Supreme Court rules that Quebec can’t make mixed marriages between Catholics and Protestants illegal if performed by a Protestant (but not a Catholic) priest.

The head of the negro rebellion in Cuba orders all foreigners in areas under his control to leave or be hanged.

Today -100: June 16, 1912: It is a fight against theft, and the thieves will not win!

Taft campaign director McKinley says Roosevelt’s followers are trying to “sweep delegates off their feet by bluff, bulldoze, and bluster.”

The LA Times describes the California delegation, arriving in Chicago for the convention, as “screaming protests” at the unseating of their delegates from the 4th Congressional district (in violation of California election law).

The RNC has finished adjudicating contested convention seats, deciding 19 seats for Roosevelt and 235 for Taft, including those named by all-white conventions in Virginia. The NYT says that the Taft delegates from the South who were approved by the RNC are “decidedly of a better type” than the rejected Roosevelt delegates, but complains that the Southern states are represented at all, since those states are “hopelessly Democratic, where the actual Republican vote is very small, and where it is made up almost altogether of the weaker of the two races”; this is “bad for the negroes, for the Republican Party, and for the whole country. At home the negroes suffer from the bitterness of political feeling.”

Arriving in Chicago, Roosevelt tells the crowd greeting him, “It is a fight against theft, and the thieves will not win!”

The Perth Amboy strike may be near an end, following numerous shootings and other violence (Gov. Woodrow Wilson refused to send in the militia, and claims he can’t find any strike leaders to deal with personally). One of the demands of the strikers is an end to the system by which men who worked more than 24 days in a row at the foundries got a bonus. Sentences of 6 months or a year have been handed out to strikers for throwing stones or “inciting to riot,” but the guards and/or deputies who shot down two strikers yesterday remain at large, although the prosecutor admits the shooting was illegal without the Riot Act having been read.

The Texas attorney general’s office rules that married women aren’t eligible for public offices that require bonds because married women can’t execute valid bonds unless they go through a lengthy legal procedure to remove coverture.

The NYT condemns a recent bit of naughtiness by British suffragettes, saying “The right to vote will never be secured through disorderly conduct.” When has it been secured through anything else?

Headline of the Day -100: “Only The Kaiser Can Blow This Horn.” Evidently no one is allowed to copy the sound of Kaiser Bill’s car horn, which “differs from any other signaling instrument in the world in that it consists of four or five distinct tones, blended into a harmonious whole, which produces more the effect of an operatic recitative than a prosaic blast”.