June 17, 1907 (Monday)

ACTOR WALKS 700 MILES TO TRY OUT FOR A PART AT CONEY ISLAND: Things looked bleak for actor/sign painter Barney Gamezlas about 10 weeks ago. He was in Michigan -- in the town of Manistee, to be more precise. The traveling show he was with folded, leaving the actors short about three weeks of salary and three days of meal tickets. Gamezlas hopped a train to Detroit. He painted signs there for about five weeks. Then he decided to head to Coney Island to see if he could land a summer job in one of the stage shows at Luna Park, which the New York Times calls "The Electric City by the Sea" (as you can tell from this night-time photo). Barney and his dog Pal WALKED the 700 miles. They arrived Saturday night. It turns out that the show "The Days of '49" needed a stage driver. He got the role. And the dog Pal has been retained as "rat-catcher" for the show. The Times says that "according to last reports" the dog "is earning his board and lodging."

FRANCE INTRODUCES "NICOTINELESS WEED": Smokers in France who seek "a light flavor" or who "by reason of nervous or cardiac weakness are wary of nicotine" now have an option. It's called "caporal doux" and the French government has begun filling shelves with it. Thanks to a machine-washing process, the tobacco has a 1 percent proportion of nicotine, considerably less than the 2.5 percent typically found, according to a report in today's New York Times. The government began making the stuff about eight months ago. Here's a summary, presented in the Times:
To smokers accustomed to full-flavored tobacco the smoke of caporal doux is somewhat insipid. Its one advantage is that twenty-five cigarettes made of it contain only the same amount of nicotine as ten of ordinary corporal, and its narcotic action upon the heart and nervous system is proportionately reduced.
No mention of the lungs.

June 16, 1907 (Sunday)

THE COURT-ROOM SCENE IN BOISE: The trial of William Haywood continues in Boise, with star witness Harry Orchard holding up fairly well in the trial, which deals with the assassination of former Idaho Gov. Frank Steunenberg. Orchard's confession is the basis of the state's case against leaders of the Western Federation of Miners. This picture, from today's Boston Globe, shows the court room. Orchard is basically in the center, with the No. 11 on his heart.

JAPANESE POLITICIANS PUTS WAR TALK IN PERSPECTIVE: Japan's vice minister of finance (and future prime minister) Reijiro Wakatsuki chatted with a reporter from The New York Times in New York while en route to London and Paris. Wakatsuki, through a translator, blamed the YELLOW PRESS and POLITICIANS for the surge of Anti-American attitudes in his country. The words seem still relevant, 100 years later. Here's a sample:
There are newspapers in Japan that exaggerate things for the sake of sensationalism just as some do in America, and there are in Japan disgruntled politicians who seize upon anything, even though it is small and inconsequential that will help discredit their political enemies. They are not thinking a great deal about their country while playing politics. They feign the deepest indignation over things which, if they were in office instead of out of office, would doubtless cause them few pangs of shame. You know the way of politicians.
But even the Nichi-Nichi and the Jiji, our leading papers, seem to get cables from this country that tell of unfortunate incidents in California, which, though they are but local disturbances, may very well serve as mole hills out of which sensation mongers and politicians may make mountains.
The Times, which spells his first name Reiziro, described him as "a tall young man, with a brow as smooth as a piece of marble and a face as clear cut as a cameo."
Wakatsuki will leave for Europe on June 20. He left Japan on May 24.

HARVARD'S PRESIDENT MOANS ABOUT THE COLLEGE ATHLETE: President Charles A. Eliot of Harvard told the YMCA in Cambridge yesterday that college sports have become too all-consuming. Here's a quote from today's New York Times:
"We used to get along better in the old days, for there was a time between the football in the Fall and the baseball and rowing in the Spring when there was a chance to do some studying. Now the mind of the athlete is devoted to records, food, eating or drinking, so he has no vitality left for the intellectual development. His energy is all used up in training. It is a continual session all year. The only thing he reads is the newspaper, and then the sporting events are about all in them that interests him."

June 15, 1907 (Saturday)

RUSSIA'S DUMA APPEARS DOOMED: Pyotr Stolypin, the prime minister under Czar Nicholas II in Russia, upset many members of the Duma (Russia's parliament) yesterday. No visitors were allowed in the chamber when Stolypin opened the meeting "with a few brusque, menacing words," according to today's New York Times. Then, 55 members were charged "with the formation of an illegal society for depriving the Czar of the throne by a propaganda among the troops and a conspiracy against the czar's person." The high-handed manner and the demand that the Duma allow the Czar to arrest members of the body upset many, including those who support the Czar's power. Here's what the Conservative leader Mahlakoff said, according to the Times:
The Duma is no place for rebels. Tell us who they are, and we will put them out. But to come here and order us to surrender instantly certain Duma members is to treat us as no self-respecting Parliament would permit itself to be treated.
The Times writer added, "The Premier may have a good case, but he spoiled it completely by the violent method he has taken."

THEY HAD FALLEN IN LOVE BUT CERTAINLY WEREN'T GOING TO FALL DURING THE WEDDING CEREMONY -- WHICH WAS HELD ON WHEELS: Susan Pierce and Raymond Barrett were married yesterday at Paradise Park at the Fort George amusement park in the Washington Heights area of Manhattan. What made the ceremony distinctive was that the couple -- and the clergyman and the best man and the maid of honor and most of the guests -- spent the whole time on roller skates. The ceremony began when the leader of the orchestra at the rink stopped the regular music and started in with Lohengrin's wedding march (aka "Here Comes the Bride") by Richard Wagner.
About 500 COUPLES joined in the procession around the rink before the exchange of vows. After the ceremony, the band played "Love Me and the World Is Mine." The celebrants littered the rink with affectionately thrown junk. According to today's New York Times, "It took a dozen attendants thirty minutes to clean up the old shoes and other romantic missiles after it was all over."
After the ceremony, the couple headed off to Atlantic City -- by trolley (until 181st Street) and then by subway, not skates.

June 14, 1907 (Friday)

SOME JAPANESE NEWSPAPERS ARE STIRRED UP OVER "THE AMERICAN QUESTION": The Home Department in Japan is sufficiently worried about jingoistic articles being published in that country that it yesterday officially told papers to "abstain from the publication of any matter of an inflammatory or agitating nature upon THE AMERICAN QUESTION," according to today's New York Times.
That "American question" is reflected in the accompanying illustration that appeared in the June 9, 1907 edition of France's "Petit Journal." Basically, Japan is roiled over the treatment of their countrymen and women in the city of San Francisco. Confrontations continue. Osaka's publication called The Mainichi, with a circulation of 250,000, bemoaned yesterday a recent attack on a Japanese horticulturist in Berkeley. According to the Times, that publication said,
The outrage demonstrates the impotency of the California authorities to protect of compatriots. Now is no time to rest assured on the stereotyped diplomatic assurance from the Washington Government. Only two weeks after a positive declaration to take preventive measures to safeguard Japanese right comes the Berkeley outrage.
The personality of President Roosevelt towers high among living great men and deserves full confidence, but promises, however high sounding and reassuring, and the promisemaker, however high in character, are of no value whatever if unaccompanied by deeds.
The powerlessness of the California and the Federal Governments is thus demonstrated, and it only remains to take up the work of protection in our own hands.
That the outrages are limited to California occurrence is not a sufficient explanation.

FRANCE TRIES TO PROTECT QUALITY OF ITS WINE: After four days of debate, the French government's chamber voted 310-261 to pass "the first clause of the bill against wine frauds," according to today's New York Times. The clause calls for winegrowers to provide the government with more information about the production from each vineyard. The Government officials say the measure will allow the state to better monitor the wine as it goes from growers to dealers -- thereby cutting back on the extra water and sugar going into the stuff.

June 13, 1907

A GAME THE YANKEES WOULD LIKE TO FORGET: Yesterday, the New York Yankees dropped a game to the Detroit Tigers by an unfathomable 16-4 margin. Detroit scored nine in the second inning. Today's Times called that inning "one of the weirdest, most wretched exhibitions of baseball seen on a major league diamond in years." New York committed ELEVEN ERRORS in the game -- four by shortstop Elberfeld. That's why the Times said, "The game played yesterday would have brought a blush of shame to any schoolboy. The infield went to pieces completely." It didn't help that Detroit had 15 hits.
To top it off, after the game, New York's manager Clark Griffith (Shown here in a photo from 1906.) punched a fan. The victim was a Mr. Frank, a dry goods merchant with a store at 8th Avenue and 143rd Street. Frank said last night that he was walking toward the exit in right field. At one point, he approached Detroit's star Ty Cobb and said, "That was quite a batting game, wasn't it?" At that point, Frank said, Manager Griffith punched him in the jaw and then ran off to the club house. The Times reports that Frank plans to swear out a warrant today for the arrest of Griffith.

ELEVEN SAILORS DIE AT HAMPTON ROADS: A horrible and mysterious accident has killed 11 midshipmen and sailors from the brand new battleship U.S.S. Minnesota (above), which was commissioned in March. The ship has been in the Hampton Roads, Va., area to help participate in the Jamestown Exposition. Evidently, the 11 men were heading back to the ship aboard a launch just after midnight. They haven't been seen since. The seas were rough. Some think a wave overturned the craft. Others think a tug pulling a barge plowed into the small boat. In any case, no bodies have been found -- only some caps, capes and clothing belonging to the men and a town awning from the launch.

TESLA'S TOWER THREATENED: The mysterious tower that inventor Nikola Tesla built in Wardencliffe (or Wardenclyffe), Long Island, has been seized, and Sheriff Wells of Suffolk County is trying to sell it. Tesla has spent a fortune on the tower in an attempt to communicate over LONG DISTANCES, according to today's New York Times. The paper adds a little dig at the remarkable inventor with one of the headlines accompanying the story. The subhead says: "THERE'LL BE NO TALKING WITH MARS UNLESS $1,100 DEBT IS PAID."

June 12, 1907 (Wednesday)

PARKHURST SEEKS SOME FRESH AIR: Noted social reformer Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst (shown) has traveled from New York to Paris where he is making a "study of social conditions" and plans to write another book, according to today's New York Times. Evidently he feels the need to cleanse himself of New York's municipal correction. Here's what he told the Times:
I am going to Switzerland next week. I know the science of mountain climbing and to climb way up in fresh air above Tammany Hall and municipal corruption always does me good. I need rest after a hard year.

'BAMA'S LONGTIME SENATOR DIES: Sen. John Tyler Morgan (shown), of Alabama -- a 30-year veteran of the Senate and former Confederate officer -- died suddenly yesterday in Washington, D.C. To say he was "old school" was an understatement. He was one of the great backers of "Jim Crow" laws. Here's how today's New York Times described the old-fashioned ways of Morgan and his Alabama Senate colleague Sen. Edmund Pettus (both of whom lived in Selma):
Each question as it came up they examined and decided by only one test -- the test of their archaic principles. Nobody ever labored with them to change an intention, nobody ever offered them inducements or suggested considerations of expediency, for it would have been useless. Nobody even argued with them to amend their convictions, for there was no meeting ground. The convictions were the product of principles learned when the other Senators were boys, and there was no basis for argument. The world has moved on, and the very language in which these principles was expressed was foreign to the ears of this generation.
(Pettus, of course, brings to mind the site of one of the best-known Civil Rights confrontations of the 1960s.)

June 11, 1907 (Tuesday)

CIRCUS PARADE IN BUFFALO TURNS TRAGIC WHEN TAUNTED ELEPHANT CRUSHES BOY: As a massive elephant named Ruth plodded along a street in Buffalo yesterday during a Cole Brothers' circus parade, young boys tormented her and threw pebbles at her ear. Finally, she had enough. She wound her truck around the body of Rocco Laquino, 12, plucked him from a dense crowd and dashed him onto the paving stones, according to a front-page story in today's New York Times. (The photo here shows a parade in Denver in the early 1900s.) Another elephant struck the boy with her foot. Rocco died shortly thereafter. The boy remained UNIDENTIFIED for SEVEN HOURS. During that time more than 2,000 weeping parents filed past the slab on which his body lay -- to check and see if the dead boy was one of their children. At 6 o'clock, Rocco's mother filed past. She recognized his face and fell across the corpse.
Cole Brothers announced the animal would be killed within 24 hours. The circus also added that Ruth -- whom they think is about 70 years old -- had never displayed any signs of viciousness in the past. The value of the elephant is place at $7,000.

SOME BLACKS IN D.C. ARE UPSET ABOUT THE ACTIONS OF SOMEONE WHOM THEY CALL A "WHITE NEGRO": Cyrus Field Adams, who is assistant registrar of the Treasury, has been accused by prominent black leaders in Washington, D.C., with blackballing Garnett Wilkerson from membership in the Washington Philatelist Society on the basis of Wilkerson's color. As today's New York Times puts it: "Adams is President of this society but his foes say that members of the Philatelist Society do NOT KNOW their president is a negro." Other blacks in the city are upset about "the apparent masquerade of Adams as a full-blooded white man."
Adams, who knows seven languages, has long been affiliated with efforts to repeal "Jim Crow" and voting-discrimination laws in the South. But some say he has passed himself off as a white man since his appointment to a federal post in Washington. The race-based rejection of Wilkerson, who graduated at Oberlin College and teaches Latin in colored schools in D.C., has prompted a huge outcry, the Times says. Among those most offended is Calvin Chase (pictured here), the longtime editor of the Washington Bee. The paper's motto, by the way, is "Honey for friends; stings for enemies."

June 10, 1907 (Monday)

THE WORDS 'TRAMP,' 'HOBO' AND 'BUM' AREN'T THE SAME: The Brotherhood Welfare Association of Chicago has published a report that encourages people to use the words tramp, hobo and bum properly. Here are the definitions, as that group sees it, according to a report in today's Boston Daily Globe:
Tramp: A man who does not work, who does not want to work, because work interferes with his traveling; lives without working and travels constantly.
Hobo: A skilled or unskilled unemployed laborer without money and looking for work. (Perhaps such as the one pictured here.)
Bum: A man who hangs around a low-class saloon and begs or earns a few cents a day in order to obtain a drink; usually an inebriate.
The Brotherhood Welfare Association has been around for about two months. During that time, 10 tramps, 120 hoboes, 40 bums and 30 "stranded professional men" have asked the association to help them find work. Here's how those men appeared, according to the association:
25 percent were ragged; 90 percent wore soiled collars; and 50 percent had neither underclothing nor socks. In addition, 7 percent were identified as being "crippled or deformed," 12 percent were too sick to work, 5 percent were "drug fiends" and 80 percent were "drinking men."

JOURNALIST VISITS WITH MRS. EDDY AND FINDS HER LUCID: On Saturday, New York writer Arthur Brisbane interviewed Mary Baker Eddy, whose mental condition is the subject of a hearing today in superior court in Concord, N.H. Brisbane, who conducted the interview because he's writing something for Cosmopolitan Magazine, contacted that publication's managing editor on Saturday and told him that Mrs. Eddy appears to be quite competent. Brisbane said:
I had a long and extremely interesting talk with her. I am glad to tell you that I shall be able to write the article which you ask for, and that it will be positively reassuring and comforting to Mrs. Eddy's great army of friends.