May 4, 1908 (Monday)

HOTEL IN FORT WAYNE CONSUMED BY BLAZE; 11 REPORTED KILLED: A horrible fire swept through the New Aveline Hotel in Fort Wayne, Ind., in the early hours of May 3. The blaze, recalled in that city 100 years later, left 11 people dead, according to today's New York Times.
The blaze started in an elevator shaft about 3:30 a.m. and was discovered by the night clerk, Ralph Hipkins. He ran to the top of the hotel to warn as many residents as possible. He "saved many lives," the article says. The fire spread fast; the woodwork on the inside was "dry as tinder," according to the article.
One man climbed down five stories in an air shaft, holding onto an electric wire.

CLEVER SWINDLER VICTIMIZES JEWELERS WITH A NEW "SHORT-CHANGE" SCHEME, WHICH THE NEWSPAPER DESCRIBES IN DETAIL: Police have been on the lookout in numerous cities for a man and woman who have "worked nearly half a dozen cities" and made about $7,000 since December with a variation of a "short-change" tactic. In Jersey City they got $600 worth of diamonds for $21; in Minneapolis, they got $1,075 worth of diamonds for $15; in Philadelphia, they got $1,885 worth of diamonds for $25. The couple has swindled three stores in New York since April 2. In an ongoing effort to educate thieves HOW to do their job better, the New York Times helpfully described how the man -- sometimes accompanied by a woman -- pulled off the trick, once he has called on a store or pawnshop and asked to see some diamonds...
He selects a number of stones, handing over a roll of bills with a rubber band around them in payment, remarking that the proper amount, he believes, will be found in the roll. But he waits, ostensibly to make good if the roll happens to be dollar or two short. The seller finds in the roll a goodly number of bills of large denomination, with some small bills. The seller finds the roll $1 short. The swindler takes the roll back into his possession, and, after acknowledging the error, puts it down on the counter with a silver dollar on top of it. He then walks out.
On counting over the money a second time the seller finds that when the swindler took the money back to recount it he abstracted all the big bills, leaving only the bills of small denomination.
Police are looking for a man who's about 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighing 140 pounds with a long and thin nose and with a sallow complexion. He usually wears eyeglasses and is about 27 years old. The woman, who is at his elbow sometimes, is 5 feet 2 inches and has dark eyes and hair. She looks to be about 30 years old.

May 3, 1908 (Sunday)

THE SIZE AND COST OF WOMEN'S HATS DRAWS SOME JOURNALISTIC ATTENTION: Today's Sunday New York Times includes many explanatory features -- including one that looks into the high cost and big size of women's hats. The feature includes the illustration above, which is captioned, "The Master Hat Designer Makes His Designs as Artists Make Pictures, the Finest Efforts Being Those Transcribed Directly from Nature." Here, the hat designer's ribbon-and-feather design is inspired by a pastoral scene of trees and a house.
The dimensions are mind-boggling. The writer claims to have found the following in a Fifth Avenue hat shop:
-- a "Charlotte Corday" hat that was ONE FOOT HIGH and SIX FEET in CIRCUMFERENCE;
-- a "Rembrandt" hat made from a Georgette model that was 23 INCHES from front to back and more than SEVEN FEET around the BRIM.
Small - or tiny - hats are popular, too.
Evidently, some adornments in the hats are LIVING THINGS. The article describes a hat with LIVE BUTTERFLIES worn in a party at a French chateau. Another hat, worn to a night party given in Italy by a Hungarian noble, included LIVE GLOW WORMS. And a New York woman recently attended an afternoon tea wearing a green hat with TWO LIVE GREEN CHAMELEONS (furnished with gold collars and chains attached to jewelled pins (which kept the creatures in place).

DOORWAY TO DIPLOMATIC SERVICE OF THE HIGHEST RANK REMAINS CLOSED TO MANY: Today's New York Times as an article that indicates bluntly that the urge to build large embassies in other countries might be in vogue nowadays wasn't always so. Yesterday the U.S. Senate deleted a $403,267-provision for embassies in Paris and Tokyo from a bill. Here's how the Times began the article:
Jeffersonian simplicity in the Diplomatic Service won a temporary victory, at least, over knee breeches, dress swords, and gaudy show..."
However one of the advocates of the measure, Senator Teller, expresses the need for such money fairly eloquently (and using an image drawn from Judaic, Christian and Islamic traditions):
"If we are a world power we will have to pay the price. Make it possible for a citizen who is not a multimillionaire to be eligible to high station in the foreign service. At the present time it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a poor man to aspire to an Ambassadorship."

May 2, 1908 (Saturday)

ROOSEVELT IS PLANNING HIS EXIT STRATEGY: Looking ahead, and over his shoulder, at the 1908 presidential election, the outgoing President Theodore Roosevelt has decided to leave the country for TWO YEARS right after he leaves office. This would allow his replacement, presumed to be William Howard Taft, to get started on his administration without the appearance that Roosevelt would be pulling the strings behind the scenes. The paper contrasts this with President U.S. Grant's post-presidency tour of the world (The illustration above shows Grant appearing before the Japanese ruler.):
Gen. Grant was received in state by Emperors and Kings wherever he went. He was feted as no other American ever has been. Mr. Roosevelt will avoid all that, and by spending a good part of the time in pursuit of game he will put himself out of the way of social entertainment.
Evidently, Roosevelt plans to do some big-game hunting in Africa. That's one purpose. The other is presented this way in today's New York Times:
He intends to put himself beyond the reach of those persons who would inevitably seek, if he were within reach, to use his influence with the new Administration.
Roosevelt is still pretty young. He will turn 50 in October 1908, just before the election of his successor.


HERE'S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SCHOLARS TRY TO READ LATIN, WHEN IT'S REALLY ITALIAN, or A CHARMING TALE THAT MIGHT BE TRUE FROM THE ARCHAEOLOGISTS AT THE ROMAN FORUM: An item in today's New York Times describes a humorous exchange at the site of excavations in the Roman Forum "the other day." It seems that Commendatore Giacomo Boni (right) found a stone tablet with the following inscription:
"QUE STAELA VI A DAGLIA SINI".
This puzzled the "learned Latinists and archaeologists." Some thought the phrase could be translated from Latin as "I am able to gaze upon the star without pain."
As the scholars argued, a "farmer of the Campagne" passed by and stopped to see what the fuss was all about. He was shown the inscription.
He gazed at it for several minutes, and then read slowly:
"QUESTA E LA VIA DEGIL ASINI." (Translated from the Italian as "This is the way of asses.")
So, the article continues, "the Latinists, the archaeologists and the other savants crept quietly away."
[NOTE: Interestingly, this tale is repeated nearly word-for-word (without attribution) on pages 179 and 180 of "Italian Highways and Byways on a Motorcar" by Francis Miltoun, printed in 1909 by L.C. Page of Boston. }

May 1, 1908 (Friday)

MORE THAN 200 JAPANESE SAILORS DIE WHEN CRUISER SINKS: The training cruiser Matsushima (above) sank after an explosion about 4:30 a.m. April 30 while at anchor in the Pescadores Islands. Reports indicate that about 240 of the 415 men on board died. About 50 cadets were on board. That prompted today's Times to list some of the recent accidents that have caused a significant deaths on naval training ships. Among the disasters were the sinking of the German training frigate Gneisenau in 1905 at the Port of Malaga and the sinking of the Belgian training ship Comte de Smelt de Nayer in 1906 in the Bay of Biscay.

BIG HATS WILL BE BANNED AT PARADE: Carpenters and others have spent the past week building a large grandstand on the south, west and north sides of the main cathedral in New York City. The seats will provide some great views of the parade of laity up Fifth Avenue tomorrow, marking a major anniversary of the Roman Catholic Church in New York City. There will be enough room for several thousand people on the seats. Last night tickets were sent out to people for the seating. Each ticket had the following words printed in large type: "LADIES SHOULD WEAR SMALL HATS." Organizers, including Edward J. McGuire, chairman of the Parade Committee, want to prevent someone from having to sit behind a woman wearing a hat like the one shown above, a so-called "Merry Widow Hat." About 40,000 people are expected to march in the parade.

April 30, 1908 (Thursday)

NOTED FRENCH CHEF TIPS HIS HAT (OR TOQUE BLANCHE) TO AMERICA AND PREPARES TO HEAD HOME:After a week-long visit, chef George Auguste Escoffier, aka "The Prince of Chefs", aka "The Emperor of Chefs", is expected to sail to Europe today on board the Deutschland. According to today's Times, he "leaves behind, as part payment for the good times America has made him here" a "creation." Here's the description:
Timbale a la Silz: Philadelphia squab, with noodles, scrap fish, shrimp butter and cream served in a timbale crust, half and half.
The Times notes that the "recipe" is less than clear: "That's what he said -- half and half. It is taken for granted that all cooks will know what the half and half refers to."
Escoffier was the guest of honor last night at a party at Cafe Martin. In his statement, he said:
M. Escoffier says that this is the greatest country in the world for the appreciation of the good, square meal.

FOR GERMAN IMMIGRANT, NEWSPAPER-READING LED TO ENGLISH LITERACY: A letter-writer named Dorothy Ritterband wrote a note to the Times that the paper published today. She described an encounter she had Sunday with a German who had lived in the U.S. for five years. Here's how he learned English, according to her note:
He told me that for the first month of his sojourn here he could read only the evening newspapers with great headlines, but he then began buying The Times, of which he could understand very few words.
Little by little, however, his vocabulary increased, and he now enthusiastically states that his present pure English was learned entirely and only from The Times and that it is the greatest newspaper on earth!"

April 29, 1908 (Wednesday)

CLASSIFIED AD CRAWLS ONTO THE FRONT PAGE OF THE TIMES One of the oddest "lost and found" ads imaginable appeared at the top of the left hand column on Page 16 of today's New York Times. (It's pictured above, under the Times' boilerplate explanation -- The Corn and the Chaff -- of its ad policy.) The ad states:
FOUND -- Live alligator, dressed in doll's clothes, in a green taximeter cab, between Hotel Astor and Grand Central Depot, New York Transportation Company, 49th St. and 8th Ave.
The item made it from the advertising department into the newsroom, which assigned a reporter who generated a front-page story about the alligator. The reporter took the initiative to add some whimsy to the article. For example: "The alligator answered to the name of Florabelle, so far as any human can tell about an alligator answering."
The reporter also described the "doll's clothes" that adorned the creature as "a tight-fitting gown of Swiss cheese cloth over a biscuit totoni underfrock, with a sash swathed tightly over the hips, producing that exceedingly de rigeur effect rarely seen off Sixth Avenue and Orchard Street."
The night manager of the New York Transportation Company acknowledged to the reporter that he did not know precisely where Florabelle was at that exact moment, adding that the claim department would know. However, the aforementioned claim department was closed at the time.
Could the 'gator have been merely a tip?
[Might Florabelle be named for the journalist Florabelle Fly, a character in the Cohan musical "Little Johnny Jones"?]

EVEN WITH AN ALLIGATOR IN THE BACK SEAT, TAXICABS MIGHT BE SAFER THAN STREET CARS IN NYC: Today's New York Times reports, with hardly a blink, that about 600 PEOPLE ARE KILLED every YEAR in accidents involving trolleys in Greater New York. That's nearly TWO A DAY. Commissioner Maltbie of the Public Service Commission began yesterday working on a plan to make the cars safer -- which is a fine idea. Maltbie said that an additional 2,000 are SERIOUSLY INJURED in the wrecks -- which number about 14,000 a year. He added,
"From the standpoint of humanity this is a serious condition, and ought not to be allowed to continue if there is any way to prevent it."

April 28, 1908 (Tuesday)

TIMES SHEDS SOME LIGHT ON SOME OF THE HIGHEST-PAID PEOPLE: Today's New York Times includes an editorial titled "A Large Salary," which focuses on the famous mining engineer John Hays Hammond (right). It is supposed, the paper says, that Hammond received "the largest salary in the world." The editorial says, "Judged by the standard of earning capacity, Mr. Hammond ought to be the foremost man in the world, barring a few effete monarchs who really are not expected to earn their pay."
Hammond's pay has been "several times reported" as being $500,000 a year. Many people make more than that through "lucky investments, daring speculations and the deft manipulation of capital," the editorial says, but in terms of a salary and money earned for work performed, this could be the tops.
For comparison, the editorial says the CEO of a banking system or railroad might be paid $100,000 annually for his services. The president of the U.S. earns $50,000; the chief justice of the Supreme Court earns $13,000; three of the state governors earn $10,000 a year (the governor of Vermont is paid $1,500); the archbishop of Canterbury makes $75,000 and the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland gets $100,000.
Although Hammond's pay far exceeds those, the editorial says, adding that "the merit of his achievements, the quality of his intellect, his vast store of knowledge are not to be denied." His pay is likely reasonable, the editorial concludes, because he "is paid by practical men who want 'results'."
[NOTE: For today's equivalents, multiply by about 20.]

NEW YORK CLUB TRIES TO REMOVE THE COLOR LINE: The Cosmopolitan Club of Greater New York held a dinner last night in the restaurant at 140 Fulton Street. Of note to the New York Times was the fact that "while the majority of the men present were white, the greater number of the women were colored." One goal of the group was "the bringing into closer relations the colored races of the world with whites." In an unusual categorization of folks, the article noted that "There were black negroes and yellow negroes, and they sat at the table with whites."
Speakers aren't quoted in the article but a summary says Oswald Villard "asserted that caste was the most dangerous spirit that could exist in a republic. Then the Rev. George F. Miller, a colored clergyman from Brooklyn, recited the achievements of the colored race."