March 8, 1908 (Sunday)

IS THIS A LOT OF BULL: This five-column cartoon is in today's New York Times. The winged man in the middle is John Bull, emblematic of Great Britain. The title of this is "John Bull in Egypt as Pictured by 'The Cairo Punch'."
The words put in his mouth are "I am absolute master of the Seas and Sovereign of all lands; and all the inhabitants of the East and West are submissive to me."
To the left of him are military men representing Europe (with Germany, Turkey, France, Austria, Italy and an oft-injured Russia).
To the right are the colonies, represented as insects and reptiles: Egypt, Sudan, Canada, Australia, the Transvaal and India.
Japan is shown on the right. That man says (to America) "May Washington's bones be sanctified; without him you would still be crawling among those vile insects."
America is perched on the left. It says, "I beg Him who has given me my liberty to strew under the feet of this giant, wherever he passes, as many Washingtons as he deserves to pull down his pride."

LATE ARRIVAL? NO PROBLEM. PASSENGERS GET MONEY: The fast train from Chicago to New York -- called the "118-hour flier" -- reached Jersey City, N.J., at 12:17 p.m., instead of 9:25 a.m. as the schedule dictates. The 135 passengers might have been upset, but they do receive CASH for the late arrival. According to an agreement, the railroad charges an INCREASED FARE for the flier -- with a catch. If the train is more than two hours late, it has to pay each passenger ONE DOLLAR for EACH HOUR of delay. Therefore, the railroad has to pay out $3 to EACH PASSENGER.

POLITICAL CANDIDATES CATCH SOME HEAT BEFORE GRILLERS CLUB IN MANHATTAN: Some "political satire and rough-hewn jokes" were the order of the day yesterday at Healy's Restaurant, where about 150 "grillers" gathered to toast some politicians. The topics dealt with included President Roosevelt's election to a third term, Countess Szechenyi's dowry, rapid transit on the Long Island Railroad, a race track bill and "the weight of Secretary Taft."A police dog was presented as the only member of the police department that was "incorruptible and had never received a bribe."
The motto of the group? "Soc et tu um."

March 7, 1908 (Saturday)

60-POUND BABY ARRIVES AT ZOO: A baby hippopotamus arrived yesterday morning at New York's Central Park. It was born to one named Miss Murphy. The name is Caliph II. (It's the eighth one born at the zoo; the postcard above, from 1906, presumably shows one of the earlier youngsters.) The keeper, a man named Snyder, has been expecting to hear about this for a couple of days. He got word just after midnight. At 60 pounds, it's about twice the weight of a typical baby hippo, Snyder says. According to today's Times, the hippo "has a head like a GEORGIA TURNIP and a mouth that looks like a map of the MISSISSIPPI DELTA." Does that help you picture it?

HERE'S A FIVE-PARAGRAPH STORY WITH A SNAPPY ENDING: In the second column on the front page of today's New York Times lurks an intriguing-looking story with the headline "SAVED THE GIRL IN RED." The key person in the story is Patrick Mullin, the driver of Fire Engine 141. In this case, the driver means he has control of some large horses pulling a fire apparatus. (The picture here shows a typical rig; this one is dated about 1901.) He made the newspaper because yesterday afternoon he was called on to answer a fire call. As he was racing to the blaze, he turned the corner on Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn. That's when he saw that he was charging right toward a group of school children who had just poured out into the street from Public School 127. In a flash, he noticed a small girl wearing a red Tam O'Shanter and a crimson jacket. It looked just like his daughter, who wears similar clothing and is a pupil at the school.
The kids were less than 50 feet in front of him. He knew he could not stop the horses in time. Mullin, in a heroic effort to avoid the children -- especially his daughter, threw all his weight on the right rein. The horses turned. The engine bounced over the curbstones. The horses then plunged head first into a heavy iron fence that surrounded the school yard. One horse was killed on impact. The other was badly hurt. Mullin meanwhile was catapulted over the fence and landed on the pavement in the school yard.
After all that comes the closing line of the article, adding an imporant bit of information to the tale:
The child was not Mullin's daughter.

March 6, 1908 (Friday)

REACTION TO COLLINWOOD FIRE DISASTER IS WIDESPREAD: The deaths of nearly 170 people on March 4 in the Collinwood School Fire in Ohio -- which dominated the news on March 5 -- have sent school officials scurrying to check the doors and fire escapes in schools around the country. (The picture above shows some of the bodies, covered, in a temporary morgue.) Today's Boston Globe says officials in Nashua, N.H., found a school which had "some exits locked and in one instance the teacher had no key to the locked exit. In another school an exit was found blocked by a hat rack." Officials in Providence, R.I., promptly declared one school as "dangerous" and found others to be "defective" when it comes to fire safety. Doors were found that OPENED INWARD at the Admiral Street, Amherst Street, Beacon Street, Branch Avenue, Courtland Street, Highland Avenue, Merino Street, Smith Street and Thurbers Avenue. In Manchester, N.H. officials were pleased to announce that all 350 pupils at the McDonald School were able to leave the building in one minute and 10 seconds during a fire drill.
As it turns out, the doors did NOT open inward in the Ohio school. The Globe says,
On the question, much discussed, whether the doors opened inward or outward, Fire Marshals Brockman and Feigenbaum examined the doorways today [March 5] and stated later that they were convinced that they opened outward. Whether they wee locked they have not been able to determine. They have testimony on both sides.
In any case, the overall construction of the school contributed mightily to the disaster: "The halls and stairways were enclosed between interior brick walls, forming a huge flue through which the flames shot up with great rapidity," the Globe says.
[NOTE: The 100th anniversary of the fire is noted in this article from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.]

FIRE DRAWS STINGING REBUKE FROM GERMANY: Reports of the Collinwood fire published in Germany indicate that about 70 percent of the victims of the fire were of German heritage. The news "occasions horror-stricken comment throughout the Fatherland," according to today's New York Times.
Here's a summary in that paper:
The papers publish brutally frank references to the cheapness with which life is held in America, and ask how many more death-dealing experiences like the Iroquois, Slocum, and Collinwood disasters are necessary before the Nation is sufficiently aroused to pay some attention to the protection of human life that Europe has long regarded as the elementary principle of government.
[NOTE: Certainly don't want to discount that sentiment. Wish the rulers of the Fatherland itself had regarded the importance of "the protection of human life" throughout the rest of the 20th century.]

March 5, 1908 (Thursday)

NEARLY 170 SCHOOL CHILDREN DIE IN FIRE NEAR CLEVELAND: Today's Boston Globe (above) filled its lead columns with a heart-wrenching tale of a disaster that will become known as the Collinwood School Fire. The story in the Globe is quite graphic, even without a photo. The opening words read:
Penned in narrow hallways, jammed against doors that opened inward, between 160 and 170 school children, mostly of tender age, in the suburb of North Collinwood, were killed today by fire and smoke or beneath the grinding heels of their panic-stricken playmates.
One subhead says parents could "see little ones perish before their eyes." For example:
About the burned schoolhouse there are but few homes. In one of those Mrs. Clark Sprung lived. Her little boy, Alvan, aged 7, was a pupil in the second grade. When the fire started the mother ran to the school and arrived when the first floor was a mass of flames. At a window on that floor she saw the face of her boy. He recognized her and pleaded for help.
Running across the street Mrs Sprung secured a step ladder and placed it against the window. Climbing up she reached for her boy. She caught him by the hair. It burned off in her hands and the lad fell back into the flames.
The local fire department was essentially powerless to help fight the fire, whose aftermath is pictured at right.

NEW YORK CITY SCHOOLS TO SPARE THE ROD: The vote at the New York City Board of Education was close last night, 21 to 17. The tally defeated the proposal to RE-INTRODUCE CORPORAL PUNISHMENT in the city's public schools. The committee charged with considering the measure received 470 letters from all over the country about the subject. Of that number, 270 asked that the board revive the practice. No word on the opinion of the city's fifth graders.

WORKERS MIGHT BE LOST AT ENGLISH COAL MINE: Fears are rising in the wake of a fire at the Hamstead coal mine near Birmingham, England. Reports indicate that 16 miners are entombed at the site. Today's New York Times has only two paragraphs on the story. The notice ends gloomily: "It is feared that they have perished."

CROWING COCK BETRAYS NEW YORKERS TO POLICE: A cockfighting ring was likely broken up yesterday, thanks to the good hearing of Sgt. Treanor of the East 120th Street Police Station in New York. He was suspicious of three men he spotted carrying valises on 125th Street, near Madison Avenue. He stopped them. One man dropped his valise and ran. Treanor grabbed the other two men.
Both said they had mere clothing in their grips. That's when Treanor heard some muffled sounds coming from inside one of the suitcases. He brought the men to the police station, where officers opened the valises. Inside each of the three cases were two fighting cocks, "all clipped and ready for the fray."
The two men apprehended were arrested "as suspicious persons."

March 4, 1908 (Tuesday)

HARVARD PROFESSOR SAYS "BUZZARD JOURNALISTS" AREN'T HELPING THE CAUSE OF THE BLACKS IN THE SOUTH: Harvard Prof. Albert Bushnell Hart earned a large column of type on Page 3 of today's Boston Globe. Hart's focus was on the South and the unjust treatment of blacks and some poor whites. The Globe says Hart, in his Lowell Institute lecture last night,
told about as revolting a story of oppression of negro slavery and lawlessness in the south of today as has been heard on a Boston platform since the old antislavery days.
This was, the Globe says, the "cold blooded statement of the investigator" given "without passion or prejudice." Hart even gave notice that conditions in the North aren't so great, either, the Globe noted. For those interested in prison statistics, Hart noted that while one-thirtieth of the population in the North are Negroes, a full one-tenth of people in jail in the North are Negroes. Bad as that is, in the Lower South, where one-third of the population are Negroes, about TWO-THIRDS of the prison population is made up of Negroes.
Interestingly, there are no quotation marks in the lengthy piece. It's one large paraphrase of Hart's presentation. Here's one description:
"He showed that the greatest crime of which the negro is accused, that of violence toward white women, is greatly exaggerated by both the press and the public, which has condemned 9,000,000 people for the crimes of a few." He said "buzzard journalists" have contributed to the ignorance.
He also condemned the peonage system and contract labor laws which "make slaves of the poor whites." Also, he said, these systems have "utterly discouraged immigration to the south."


U.S. STEPS UP EFFORTS TO DRIVE ANARCHISTS FROM THE NATION'S SHORES: The Secretary of Commerce and Labor Oscar Straus (left) issued a sweeping order yesterday that directed immigration officials to gain the "cooperation of the police and detective forces in an effort to rid the country of alien anarchists and criminals falling within the law relating to deportation."
According to an article in today's Globe a specific list of steps to follow is given by Straus, who is honored with a memorial in Washington, D.C. For an anarchist to be deported, authorities must show:
-that the person is, indeed, an alien;
-that he [or she] is an anarchist or criminal as defined by statute;
-that the date of their arrival in this country must be less than three years prior to their arrest;
-the name of the vessel on which they arrived in the U.S.;
-the name of the country of origin.
Today's New York Times calls this a declaration of "open war on Anarchists." This, the paper continues, is a result of "the great increase in crime and the growing boldness of those who are enlisted under the red flag."
Meanwhile, restrictions at the ports of entry will be tightened, the Times says:
The examination of the hordes of aliens that come yearly to these shores will be made so severe that it will in the future partake of the nature of an inquisition. The Government is beginning to realize that it has been employing too lax methods in the past.
There is a built-in "amnesty" of sorts in the dealings with immigrants of questionable background, as the Times explains -- without using that word:
As the law now stands, an Anarchist may go about unmolested by the police after he has spent three years in this country, and has not been connected with the perpetration of a crime in that time. He is immune from deportation. It does not matter whether the criminal is a citizen or not, he can legally resist all efforts to return him to the country from whence he came.


[NOTE: Straus' brother Isidor Straus went down with the Titanic in 1912.]

March 3, 1908 (Tuesday)

CHICAGO POLICE CHIEF SURVIVES ASSASSIN ATTEMPT IN HIS HOME -- THE EVIDENCE INDICATES: A 9 a.m. yesterday, a man called at the front door of the home of George M. Shippy, the chief of the Chicago police department (shown above). A tussle followed in the house; several shots were fired.

One person was killed -- the man who came to the door of the house (shown at right). Here's how this happened, according to Shippy, and as presented in today's New York Times. Shippy says his suspicions were raised "like a streak of lightning" because "he looked to me like an Anarchist." In his description, he and the stranger -- later identified as Lazarus Averbach -- began struggling in the front of the house. Shippy's wife heard the commotion; his driver Foley was outside getting the horses ready; his son Harry was upstairs.

"When she ran into the hallway where I was holding the man, I said, 'Mother, see if this man has a revolver.' She said he had after she had felt of his back pockets. I tried to hold him with one hand and draw my revolver with the other, but he jerked away and fell against the door.

"I caught him again, fearing that he would get at his revolver before I could. He fought hard to free himself, but I clung to him. My son was upstairs and he must have heard the struggle. He started down stairs and was only a few steps from the bottom when the man freed one hand, drew his revolver and fired two shots at my son. Then Foley stepped into the hallway and the man shot him. I fired shots into the man's head and body. He fell at the first shot but I fired more."

This will turn out to be a controversial case.

Police are working on the basis that Averbach is an Anarchist. The Times' article says he "apparently had dressed himself for death. He wore black clothes and overcoat, a new hat, and clean linen, all of fairly good quality. He had been freshly shaved, and his hair had ben trimmed recently. He was apparently a Russian, about 26 years old. His hands do not indicate that he was accustomed to toil."

You can see for yourself, thanks to the Library of Congress photo at right. The man who is steadying the head of the late Mr. Averbach is Captain Evans of Chicago's police department.

FRENCHMAN ARRIVES IN NEW YORK -- EN ROUTE TO (HE HOPES) HIS SECOND WALK AROUND THE WORLD: While the automobiles of the New-York-to-Paris race are bogged down in mud in Iowa, another around-the-world competitor has stepped into New York City. He's Laurent Revel. He just arrived from Washington, where he received an autograph from President Roosevelt. Next, he plans to head to the Pacific (via Canada) and from Victoria, B.C., he will head to Australia. (That latter part will be by boat.)
The first time he made the trip, he traveled with a companion, and the wager was $60,000. His companion, however, was killed in Mexico. Revel made it around the world, but the judges gave him half the prize for the walk ($30,000). He expects to receive the other half with this second stroll around the globe. He left Paris last July. If he arrives at a certain cafe in the Latin Quarter in Paris by a certain time -- not specified in the article -- he will receive $30,000. He carries with him an autograph book, in which he is collecting signatures of proof that he has walked where he claims.

March 2, 1908 (Monday)

MORE THAN 300 BUILDINGS BURN IN TAMPA: A large portion of the northeast section of Tampa, Fla., was destroyed yesterday during a fire that raged from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. More than 300 buildings in a 55-acre area were burned. Among the casualties were five cigar factories and 200 dwellings of cigar makers. Also destroyed was a silver display case that was at the M. Stachelberg & Co. factory. It was made before the Chicago Exposition; the silver in it was worth more than $20,000. The Times describes it this way:

It was a massive affair, standing nearly ten feet high, and made in the shape of a Turkish kiosk. It had been used at all the important world's fairs since 1893.

Fortunately the Tampa Bay Hotel (above) was spared.

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AN IMMIGRATION STANDOFF LEAVES TRAVELERS TRAPPED BETWEEN FRANCE AND BELGIUM: A group of so-called gypsies have been trapped at the Franco-Belgium border, near Longwy-Haut since Oct. 1, 1907, according to today's New York Times. The paper says they are "unable to return to Belgium whence they came; unable to proceed into France, whither they were going. Belgian gendarmes bar the route in one direction, French gendarmes bar the route in the other."

They are being fed from "Belgian public funds," and the cost has reached about 1,000 francs. Here's how they became trapped in the inter-border twilight zone:

On the date mentioned the gypsies, with their one-horse wagon, were being peacefully conducted out of King Leopold's territory by two Belgian gendarmes. Just as they were crossing the French frontier two gendarmes of the republic stopped them and forbade them to proceed.

Since then Belgian and French gendarmes have been on guard day and night, relieved every twelve hours, refusing on one side or the other to strike up an agreement by which this peculiar situation can be brought to an end. On the French side the gendarmes have built a cabin, which is heated and lighted at public expense. The officials of the commune paying these extraordinary expenses complain bitterly of the cost, but are prevented by local pride from yielding as long as their friends across the border hold out.

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PHILADELPHIA POLICE FINALLY FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET A FEMALE PRISONER TO PUT HER CLOTHES BACK ON: Prisoner Mary Wells caused quite a stir yesterday at the central police station in Philadelphia. While waiting for a hearing on a charge that she helped someone steal a purse, Wells sat in the Matron's room at the station dressed in what one of the police officers called her "birthday clothes."

Her clothing had been removed so the Matron could search her. The Matron then pleaded, in vain, for Wells to put her clothes back on.

Here's an exchange presented in today's New York Times:

"What are they going to do with me?" asked Mary Wells, pointing to her pile of clothing.

"Put you in a cell after you are photographed," said the matron.

"Then I'll not go," replied the prisoner. "I will not get dressed. All the policemen in this city can't make me get dressed. They can bring all the people in Philadelphia here to see me, but I will not get dressed."

She held out for an hour. Not surprisingly, a crowd gathered in the corridor. (There's no mention of whether or not the door to the room had a window.) Then someone got a bright idea to tell her they would TURN OFF THE HEAT in the building.

Her obstinancy melted and she began to put on her garments.