- In defiance of New Jersey Governor John Franklin Fort, an Atlantic County grand jury – “on which were enrolled state and county officeholders, politicians and some of the biggest hotel and business men of the resort” – refused to indict “the dispensers of Sunday rum in the resort.” Governor Fort has threatened to declare martial law in Atlantic City in order to enforce laws against selling liquor on Sunday.
- Interesting headline: “BANKER STRANGELY SHOT.” Charles B. Roberts, president of the Baltimore Supply Company, is in serious condition after being shot near the boardwalk in Atlantic City.
- Flood waters are finally beginning to recede in Augusta, Georgia, but the recovery is only beginning. Damages may reach $1 million and “there have been from ten to fifteen fatalities, mostly negro laborers drowned.” The situation is still dire:
The Augusta Railway & Electric Company cannot run its cars for three days. No power plant is in operation. The telephone lines are not doing business, and the railroads are accepting no passengers. The water service is crippled, but intact. The gas service is impaired, but the gas plant has not shut down. A citizens’ meeting will be held to-morrow.
There will be much suffering, especially in the northwestern part of the city, from which the water will not recede for two or three days. The people in the manufacturing district will require help. Whether Augusta will be able to care for the situation among the poor and unemployed will not be known until the water recedes further and opportunity is given for inspection. The flood expanse covers an immense territory, miles of water extending from the foot of the Carolina hills to the south into Georgia. The loss to farms, farm lands, crops and livestock in the valley is not included in the estimate of losses. The bottom cotton and swamp corn, an immense annual product, is ruined.
- The International Congress for the Protection of Industrial Property, currently meeting in Stockholm, is debating whether to take action to protest Britain’s new patent law. The United States and Germany both oppose the law.
- This is an odd story from Bordeaux: French soldier Camille Marquet was sentenced to six days’ imprisonment for attempting to blackmail President Theodore Roosevelt. The details:
According to evidence before the court, Marquet wrote to the President on January 9, demanding on behalf of “My Society,” without other specification, $2,000, “on account of services rendered during the Presidential election,” and promising further “immense help.”
Receiving no reply to this demand, Marquet wrote again on March 9, threatening a scandal “which will cast dishonor upon the whole family unless the money is forthcoming at a fixed date.”
In conclusion, the writer of the letter recommended the greatest discretion, adding: “The highest heads are no longer safe on their shoulders: look a Portugal!”
Roosevelt, not one for discretion, gave the letters to the French Consul General, who alerted the police.
- Governor Charles Evans Hughes, who still has not been officially renominated to his office but almost certainly will be, delivered a speech before a huge crowd at the Chautauqua County Fair in Dunkirk, New York. Hughes’ speech focused on
the right of the people to demand the enforcement of the laws on the statute books and the unquestioned duty of the Governor of the state to see that this demand was carried out.
Photo: Governor Hughes at the Saratoga County Fair