Transportation History, Club History, Legislative History - Bits

It was nice to see the transportation history on the front page yesterday, but...

Front page + pages 2-4 yesterday

here's the last time it ran:

Front page, March 2016

Maybe the front page doesn't matter any more and it is wrong to criticize this as old news. There is big news in the world, though, and as long as there is a "print product" and editorial curation, this story, even refreshed and updated by a different author, seems like something that really belongs on an interior section or group of pages.

In rural areas, trucks were not universal
and wagons remained useful
January 31st, 1920

The New Exhibit at The Mill

The Mill's got a new exhibit on clubs in the Salem area, and the history piece in the paper today is on the 1920s activity of the Filipino Club and ephemera around an annual banquet.

In yesterday's paper

In trying to tease out biography and history of participants, zooming in onto individuals, it may not give enough context to the larger history. The banquet commemorated the "anniversary of the death of Dr. Jose Protacio Rizaly Mercado the martyred Filipino hero," whom the Spanish executed in 1896.

Left unsaid was that the US then occupied the Philippines in 1899 and was similarly resisted by guerilla warfare.

On "the fiendish water cure" - May 10th, 1902
(See also this piece the same day)

The torture we call "water boarding" has its roots in that war. The Oregon Volunteers and Battleship Oregon were also active in the theater of war.

Without more context, the interpretation of the ephemera in the paper may offer too much of a harmonizing reading and miss the ambiguity and layered meanings of the banquet and club. Probably it needed a longer piece, maybe a much longer piece, and perhaps there was another bit of a different club's ephemera that might more neatly promoted the new exhibit.

Cranking up the Legislature

Senate President Vinton, House Speaker Jones
Governor Olcott had cued up five issues
January 7th, 1920

The Legislature had been called into special session in 1920. They started with the Federal amendment for Women Suffrage. Governor Olcott had also identified capital punishment and the Fish and Game Commission, which was embroiled in a great dispute over William Finley, as other important issues.

19th Amendment led things, January 12th, 1920

The session was wildly fertile and Legislators passed nearly 100 bills in just a week's time.

January 23rd, 1920

Governor Olcott vetoed about half of the bills and there were many protests that Legislators did too much, rushing through too many bills for pet projects.

January 17th, 1920