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Whether or not the Federal Suffrage Amendment is ratified by a sufficient number of the States in time to permit the women of every State to vote in the next Presidential campaign, there will be 15,492,751 women eligible to vote in 1920. Leaders of women in this country are endeavoring to increase the number to 29,000,000, by securing the ratification of the Federal Amendment by thirty-six States within the next few month.

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(Frank Leslies Weekly/July 25, 1907) The automobile has worked a great change in mining in the desert regions of the West. Formerly many mines could not be opened because of their distance from a base of supplies and the difficulty of hauling food by mule-power. Now the automobile is used both for passenger and freight purposes, and it is possible to reach in hours claims that were a little while ago days away from the railroad. It is possible in level districts to make a mile a minute over the sandy wastes, for no speed laws hamper the mining men. It is reported, however, that the friction on the hot sand occasionally melts the cement of the tires.

COMPLAINT is made by some automobilists (chiefly the speed enthusiasts) that the oiled or tarred road, by reason of its dark color, is difficult to follow after nightfall, whereas the light surface of the clay or macadam road is comparatively plain to view, even on rather a dark night. The average automobilist, however, using good lights and maintaining a reasonable speed, should have no great trouble from this cause.

On June 20, 1893, Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the murders of her father and stepmother.

A summary of the case in Frank Leslie’s Weekly’s June 29, 1893 issue was read by Americans coast-to-coast and helped shape American views of the event and ensuing trial. Miss Borden, in court, was featured on the cover of that issue.

THE BORDEN CASE.

THIS cause célèbre will pass down into the annals of criminal jurisprudence as one of the most remarkable on record—in fact, taken in all its details and aspects it has no equal in the world’s history of crime; and that is saying a great deal. Here were two old people, living the final chapter of their lives in peace and plenty, apparently without a known enemy, who are found in their own home literally hacked to pieces, and without a visible clew to the murderer or murderers. All this took place in Fall River, Massachusetts, noted for its thrift, its steady going, quietly industrious, and frugal people. After a few days’ search the police authorities, bound, of course, to arrest somebody for the crime, bring the focus of their detecting faculties to centre upon the daughter of the murdered man and the step-daughter of the murdered woman, and place her under arrest, charged with the awful crime of killing first her step-mother and then her own father. And they kept her in jail for eight long, weary months before the slow-moving wheels of criminal procedure in the old Bay State could revolve and bring the accused to the bar of justice, to be tried for her life.

By Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.,
Assistant Secretary of the Navy

“There is another type of thought which is represented by dreamers who see in every new invention a subversion of all present conditions. In this class are the individuals who assert that the airplane has rendered obsolete and unnecessary either infantry or capital ships.”

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Navy

The United States is a republic. Every citizen has an equal vested interest in its government. Therefore, every one of its public institutions belongs in the last analysis to the individual citizen. If an individual has an interest in any piece of property in ordinary everyday life, that individual keeps informed of the manner in which that property is handled. The same thing should hold true in so far as our governmental activities are concerned. Every citizen should take an active and intelligent interest therein. Certainly one of the most important of these is the navy, for the navy is the first line of defense of our country. When the test comes it is on our navy that we must largely depend to maintain our policies and ideals. All men and women should inform themselves in general concerning it. If they will do this they will be in a position to intelligently advise their representatives in Congress concerning their wishes. If they do not, many and grave errors may be made.

Frank Leslie

Frank Leslie’s Weekly, later often known as Leslie’s Weekly, actually began life as Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Founded in 1855 and continued until 1922, it was an American illustrated literary and news publication, and one of several started by publisher and illustrator Frank Leslie. John Y. Foster was the first editor of the Weekly, which came out on Tuesdays. While only 30 copies of the first edition were printed, by 1897 its circulation had grown to an estimated 65,000 copies.

These weekly papers were large quarto in size, about 12″ by 16″, and each consisted of sixteen pages to the issue. They followed a tested and proven formula of carefully combining elements of war, politics, art, science, travel and exploration, literature and the fine arts in each issue, enhanced with between 16 and 32 illustrations.

Throughout its decades of existence, Frank Leslie’s Weekly provided illustrations and reports — first with woodcuts and Daguerreotypes, later with more advanced forms of photography — of wars from John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry and the Civil War until the Spanish-American War and the First World War. It also gave extensive coverage to less martial events such as the Klondike gold rush of 1897, the laying of the 1858 Atlantic Cable and the San Francisco earthquake.

News Brevities (March 1870)

• CANADA has fifty-seven snow-shoe clubs.
• PINEAPPLE fritters are a Florida delicacy.
• BRAZILIAN troops draw rations of dog meat.
• CHRISTMAS has been made a legal holiday in Ohio.
• SPIRITUALISM is called “Spiritism” in Australia.
• MACON, GA., has an ox that weighs 4,545 pounds.
• OLLIVIER favors the abolition of capital punishment.
• PHILADELPHIA has executed but twenty-five criminals since 1789.
• CINCINNATI proposes to make itself a city of forty-two square miles.
• LONDON has its first street railway. The carriages are drawn by horses.
• MAINE has spent $21,000,000 for its six hundred and seventy-two miles of railroad.
• MR. BURLINGAME, the Boston “Post” says, leaves a memory to be crowned only with myrtle.
• MILWAUKEE is to have an Irish daily and weekly paper. The company has been chartered.
• THE Chinese in San Francisco held a jubilee on January 30, the first day of the Chinese new year.
• TWO HUNDRED of the gentlemen at a late Tuileries court ball are said to have worn hired court suits.
• A GOTTINGEN professor has discovered some very minute diamonds in a specimen of Oregon platinum.
• A LADY physician of Lafayette, Ind., is honest enough to return her professional income at $2,500.
• BOSTON shipowners are signing a petition asking Congress to abolish the laws allowing extra pay to seamen.
• THE number of skilled workmen out of employment in England is said to be between seventy and eighty thousand.
• A LOYAL undertaker of Calcutta hoisted a huge “Welcome” over his shop-door in honor of Prince Alfred’s coming.
• THE English soldier in India is to be allowed to wear a beard, but it must be cut periodically —that is, trimmed to a full point.
• THE Rev. Mrs. Phœbe A. Hannaford has received and accepted a call to the pastorship of a Universalist church in New Haven.
• THE Paris papers tell how an English lady was shown out of the Prefect’s ball because she brought her pet terrier in her handkerchief.
• THE Board of Immigration of Honolulu have sent an agent to China to promote the immigration of the Chinese to the Sandwich Islands.
• THE cost of telegraphic dispatches in Australia has been reduced to one shilling for twelve words, and one penny for every additional word.
• THE Rhode Island Democratlc State Convention is to be held in Providence, on Thursday, March 17, to nominate candidates for State officers.
• EASTERN Florida congratulates itself upon its vigor, life and spirit, indicated by its rapid growth, by its large immigration , and by the rapid increase in the value of real estate.
• THERE were several severe shocks of earthquake recently on the Island of Hawaii. The summit of the volcano Mauna Loa is shrouded in smoke, indicating that the fires in the crater are again active.
• THE bill endorsing the first mortgage bonds of the Mobile and Montgomery Railroad, to the amount of $2,500,000, has passed both houses of the Alabama Legislature by the constitutional majority.
• JOHN NEAL says that out of 544 cases brought before the Superior Court of Maine, in six terms, only ninety-nine went to a jury. That is, the people preferred the decision of a judge in 405 cases.
• THE Board of Supervisors for the County of Milwaukee, Wis., have tendered the new Court-House, to cost nearly $1,000,000, to the State for a Capitol, provided the Capital is moved to Milwaukee.
• ON the 22d of February, outrages were committed on Chinamen in San Francisco, which threatened to produce a riot; but a heavy rain and a strong force of police combined, dispersed the gathering crowds.
• THE Yale Navy have voted not to accept the proposition of Harvard to open the annual races to the whole university; therefore, only the academical department can be represented in the crews next summer.
• NAVAL honors were paid by the vessels of our squadron at Hong Kong, and by the foreign vessels present at the time, to the memory of the late Mr. Stanton, Franklin Pierce, and Rear-Admiral Stewart.
• EDWARD AND DANIEL AGNEW have been arrested in Reading, Penn., for bigamy. They have families in Philadelphia, but represented themselves in Reading as single men, and were recently married in that city.
• AT a meeting of the presidents of three of the freight lines leading from Louisville, the tariff was reduced from sixty to fifty cents on all fourth-class fast freight. They also adopted a resolution to adhere to these rates.
• THE Auburn “Advertiser” learns that the Auburn Theological Seminary is soon to have a library building, suited, in all respects, to its needs. The corner-stone of the Seminary was laid just fifty years ago next May.
• REAR-ADMIRAL ROWAN, in command of the Asiatic Squadron, informs the Navy Department that all is quiet on that station, with the exception of occasional piracies and the “murder of a missionary now and then” by the Chinese .
• THE Sacramento “Union” states that a set of railway speculators are proposing to the California Legislature to pass a law to enable them to fasten a bonded debt of $1,000,000 on the County of San Bernardino, when the whole taxable property of San Bernardino is $500,000.
• THE workingwomen of Boston, by a unanimous vote, have passed the subjoined resolution: “That we will not become parties to any attempted encroachments on the legitimate sphere of man’s duties, and therefore we respectfully, but firmly, remonstrate against legislation in favor of suffrage for women.”
• COL. BERNARD, with detachments of the First and Eighth U. S. Cavalry, had a series of running fights with the Indians in the Dragoon Mountain, in Arizona, on the 28th of January. Thirteen Indians were killed, and two were taken prisoners. The Indian camp and a large amount of material were destroyed.