Category: new-york tribune

It’s still just barely Thursday here.

1. The Olympics have not been going well:
   

   The unfortunate series of disputes which have arisen since the opening of the Olympic games, not only between the Americans and the officials of the Amateur Athletic Association but between the athletes of other nations and the same officials, culminated this afternoon in an occurrence which threatened to wreck the Olympic games.

   The occurrence? The men’s 400 metre run was nearing the end:

   It looked like anybody’s race as they approached the last turn, the three leaders being bunched. Their spurt for the final hundred yards was just begun, when suddenly a number of officials rushed on to the track, the tape across the finish was torn down and the race was declared void.

   The officials claimed that J. C. Carpenter (USA) fouled Wyndham Halswelle (UK) on the turn. Not everyone agreed. Controversy ensued. All but one of the competitors ran through to the finish: Carpenter first, W. O. Robbins (USA) second, Halswelle third. The Americans wanted Carpenter declared the winner and filed a protest. They were not happy with what followed:

   A committee meeting of the Amateur Athletic Association, the details of which have not been made public, was called, and the judges who rendered the decision and Halswelle were called to state their case. Neither any member of the American committee nor any one of the three American runners, however, was called on to make any statement, and the committee, after more than two hours’ consideration, rendered the following decision:

   “The judges decide the race void, and order the same to be run over again on Saturday at noon. Carpenter is disqualified.”

   The American team has ordered their runners not to run on Saturday (in 1908, 24 July was a Friday) and released a statement detailing their objections.

2. British papers on the Olympic 400 metre controversy: Carpenter fouled Halswelle, no question about it. The Daily Telegraph wonders if there’s more to the story:
   

   With three runners the Americans had a strong hand to play. They knew none of them was equal to Halswelle, so they were set to help one another on their journey. It is the writer’s view that all had a separate mission, although Taylor [who was far behind and who did not complete the race after the officials called it off] was no party to the plan laid down. He had no need to have it divulged to him.

3. A huge thunderstorm hit New York and New Jersey.
4. Three members of the National Guard were killed and twenty-six injured in an electrical storm that hit their camp in Gettysburg, PA yesterday.
5. The military academy has suspended eight West Point cadets for hazing.
6. President Roosevelt has ordered the Attorney General to retry the Standard Oil case. The paper seems to assume that readers know what it’s about; apparently an appeals court reversed an original decision that had gone against Standard Oil.

Photos: from the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

William Jennings Bryan is famously an electoral loser, but he wasn’t always a loser. In 1904, Alton B. Parker was. Don’t know much about Alton B. Parker? Neither do I, but he won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1904 after having been (scroll down for the correct Parker) chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals. I don’t know anything about his merits as a candidate, but Wikipedia notes:

In author Irving Stone’s 1943 book, They Also Ran, about defeated presidential candidates, a chapter about Judge Parker mentioned that he is the only defeated presidential candidate in history never to have a biography written about him. Stone theorized that Parker would have been an effective president and the 1904 election was one of a few in American history in which voters had two first-rate candidates to choose from. Stone professed that Americans liked Roosevelt more because of his colorful style.

After the election Parker went back to being a lawyer, though it appears he was still referred to as “judge” – as was the style at the time. And in today’s 1908 New-York Tribune, he (or someone with the exact same name) makes a surprise appearance at the bottom of the front page:

JUDGE PARKER EXECUTES DEFENDANT

Toston, Mont., July 16.–Judge Alton B. Parker, while visiting here yesterday, took part in a tragedy. The dead: One large and vociferous rattlesnake. The judge was riding a horse in the wake of a band of sheep at Riverside Ranch, when he took judicial cognizance of the reptile. The rattler waved its tail. His honor, not to be outdone, waived all technicalities, and by virtue of his authority and a large stone executed the defendant on the spot.

Top stories:

1. An express train on the New York, New Hampshire, & Hartford Railroad derailed just past Greenwich station, leaving 1 dead and a dozen people injured.
2. (a) Columbia University professor Darius Eatman, who did not know how to swim, drowned in a North Carolina pond after the boat he was on capsized. Eatman’s companions on the boat, who were able to swim, were unable to save him.
   (b) Unusually high pressure from firefighters’ hoses let the water used to put out a fire at Nos. 1, 3, and 5 Bond St. to cause more damage than the fire itself.
3. A report from the Olympics in London
4. Bad news for the Democratic presidential nominee:
   

   The Nebraska State Railway Employes Association, started in Nebraska as a movement against William J. Bryan and the principles for which he stands, has spread into other Western states, and already organizations are being formed in Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Kansas and Colorado. Other states will be organized as fast as possible until all railroad employes in the Middle West have joined the organization.

5. Taft has completed the first draft of his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination. He plans to cut if from 10,000 to 3500 words by the time he delivers it in Cincinnati on July 28th.
6. The Atlantic battleship fleet arrived in Honolulu yesterday.

Photo: Honolulu harbor

I can’t believe I stopped doing these for over two months. I’m going to make sure I do one 1908 “above the fold” each week until the end of the year. Here’s today’s:

Left-to-right:

1. William Howard Taft is getting ready to write his speech accepting the Republican nomination. He’ll be working with Republican National Committee chairman, Frank H. Hitchcock.
2. Venezuela has recalled its Chargé d’Affaires from Washington in response to Washington having pulled its Chargé from Caracas.
3. That’s William Jennings Bryan in the photograph. The stories below the picture:

   a. The President denies having told Congressman Richmond Pearson Hobson (D-AL) that the US “would be in the midst of war with Japan within a year”*

   b. The Lusitania is on pace to set a speed record for crossing the ocean. (Note: I’m confused by the end of this article, which seems to say that the ship has finished its voyage – was that information added later but the opening paragraphs were not altered or is there something I’m missing?)
    

4. William Jennings Bryan has been nominated at the Democratic convention. It looks like it’s not quite official, but that he’s pretty much assured. The paper went to press before everything could be settled, so no word yet on who will be the Vice Presidential nominee. The longer article directly below looks like it was filed even earlier.

*Check out the denial from Roosevelt’s executive secretary:

In reference to the speech of Congressman Hobson, Secretary Loeb stated that the Congressman must, of course, have been misquoted. The President not only never made such a remark, but never made any remark even remotely resembling it. All the President has ever said is that if there was a sufficient navy there would never be any possibility of this country getting into a foreign war.

It’s still – just barely – May 1st and I realize I haven’t done one of these in a while:

Have you noticed the weather reports on the front page (inserted into what I guess is the masthead)?

To-day, fair and colder.
To-morrow, fair; northwest winds.

I wonder when daily weather – as opposed to general seasonal predictions about climate conditions (drought, heavy rain, harsh winter, etc.) – became a regular feature of newspapers. Surely someone’s researched this.

The top stories:

1. An accident led to a massive traffic jam on the Brooklyn Bridge. Elevated lines were stopped for nearly an hour, surface lines “were operated with difficulty and much discomfort to the passengers” and the station platforms nearly overflowed during the evening commute to Brooklyn. Bad weather prevented many from crossing the bridge on foot.
2. How convenient: a new subway tunnel to Brooklyn is scheduled to open service today.*
3. Let me just quote the first paragraph:
   

   Joseph Bermel, who resigned as Borough President of Queens under pressure on Wednesday, sailed yesterday for Italy on the Slavonia, although under subpoena to appear before the Queens County Grand Jury this forenoon at 10 o’clock to answer questions concerning alleged crooked work in the administration of the Borough of Queens.

   His successor was apparently his “right hand man.” Note this bit of detail about his flight:

   The scene at the pier when Bermel sailed with his family was dramatic in the extreme. Bermel’s friends and constituents literally pushed him up the Cunarder’s gangplank. A party of about fifty friends and politicians formed a horseshoe six deep around him, and any one seeking to serve a subpoena could not have forced himself through.

4. Last night’s storm wreaked havoc around the city, blowing out plate glass windows, knocking ships off course, and causing flooding in some areas.
5. Train robbers took four bags of currency amounting to $10,000 from a St. Louis bound express last night.
6. New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes gave a big speech in Schenectady yesterday opposing racetrack gambling and criticizing party bosses for acting against the will of the voters.

*The route goes from Bowling Green to Atlantic Avenue: sounds like what are today the 4 and 5 lines.

A quick explanation. I wanted a Presidential election year. I didn’t want to do McKinley, didn’t want to do a re-election, and couldn’t do 1912 – which would be really interesting – because the collection I’m using doesn’t cover that year. So it was 1908. It’s convenient that it’s exactly a century ago, but that wasn’t a goal.

I thought it would be cool to do a small local paper people don’t see much of, but there was only one choice from an area I know very little about. (The rest of the choices being from areas I know nothing about.) Unfortunately, the Amador Ledger is only a weekly, and not very appealing visually. I thought of doing the San Francisco Call – the only Bay Area paper with a daily selection, and the region of the country with whose history I’m most familiar – but then I figured a New York paper would have more self-consciously “national” news. So I went with the Tribune.

Even Eric admits it. (Whether that means this is the last Bee for a while, I don’t know.) On to today’s paper:

The photo:

JOINT DINNER OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AND THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS’ ASSOCIATION AT THE WALDORF-ASTORIA LAST NIGHT

Top stories:

1. William Jennings Bryan and Charles F. Murphy have worked out a deal: the New York delegates “selected arbitrarily at the state convention” last week will be recognized as the state’s “regular” delegates at the national convention. In exchange, the New York delegates will vote for Bryan on the first ballot and will apply “the utmost pressure” on other delegations to make Bryan’s nomination unanimous. Update: Murphy was apparently part of the Tammany crowd and Bryan was expected to deny reports of an agreement. A fair amount of intrigue.
2. The New York state Senate passed a new rapid transit bill.
3. The city of New York has sent a bill for $78,220.95 to the Brooklyn Rapid Transit company for street work the city says the company should have done.
4. A member of the New York Historical Society has come across 200 old wills, dated between 1670 and 1730.
5. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. took a balloon ride from Washington, DC to Delaware yesterday.
6. A report on the AP and publisher dinner photographed on the front page. In a speech, Bryan “urged the publication of bipartisan newspapers.”

Previous Tribunes: 1, 2*

*Technical note: I have created a category for these, but I noticed that this blog’s theme does not display anything more than the post titles when you click on the category and archive pages. So I’ll probably switch to a new theme. Update: Done.

I think I’m going to keep this up. I’ll try to do it regularly, but daily is probably too time consuming. Here’s what has now just become yesterday’s 1908 New-York Tribune: 

Across the top of the page, left to right:

1. William Jennings Bryan gave a speech on “Universal Brotherhood” – and then defended the Democratic southern states afterward when asked a question about the disfranchisement of black voters. Note his reference to northern laws restricting Filipino suffrage.
2. The British election is heating up, with pronouncements from both Winston Churchhill on Home Rule and David Lloyd-George on pensions.
3. The Senate steering committee met today and worked out a schedule for the rest of the session.
4. The NYU Chorus went on strike yesterday.
5. A Canadian banker’s daughter eloped just long enough to get married.
6. The State Senate passed “the Page bill placing telephone, telegraph and ferry companies and stage lines under the jurisdiction of the Public Service Commissioners.”

As a bonus, click through and scroll down the front page for what’s likely an unintentionally comical headline about a Lincoln statue (column 5).

Inspired by the above the fold feature at The Edge of the American West, I thought of trying to do the same thing for a historical newspaper. Much to my surprise, thanks to the Library of Congress, this just might be possible.

Here’s the New-York Tribune for April 21st, 1908:

(click on the image to be taken to the full issue)

Some thoughts:

Either the type is smaller than what the Sacramento Bee uses or the paper is wider (or something else is going on). In any case, you really have to click through to be able to read the headlines. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing: if you click through, you’ll be able to read the whole day’s paper. I don’t really have time to read the articles, but I can highligh some of the headlines.

If I do more with this – and there are years of daily issues to choose from (not to mention other papers in the collection) – I’ll experiment with larger image sizes. I don’t have the best in image software, but getting an image of the top of a front page* seems easy enough.

*This raises the question of “the fold”: since the archived image is unfolded to get the full page, there’s no way to be sure where the fold was. But if you look carefully at the quality of the type, it looks like there was a crease part way down. If I keep this up, I’m just going to go with my best guesses.