100 years ago in The Record
Wednesday, Dec. 5, 1917
“The thermometer of crime in any city is its police court,” The Record reports. By that measure, crime in the Collar City has declined drastically since the U.S. declaration of war against Germany last April. “Every little while, sometimes twice or so in one single week, there will be no cases for Judge [James F.] Byron to consider,” our police court reporter writes, “and to- day that was the situation once more.” Asked to explain that situation, Byron tells our writer that “the war, odd as it might at first appear, had apparently stepped in as a life-saver.” More specifically, a wartime ban on the manufacture of whiskey has put alcohol out of reach for many so- called “police court drunkards.” Saloons can still sell whiskey, but limited and diminishing supplies have led to higher prices. “The price of even the very cheapest grades of whiskey has now gone beyond the power of money production of this class,” Byron explains. Before the war, the “derelict of the streets” could manage to “beg, borrow and even steal in petty ways the small sum that kept him supplied with cheap alcohol and made him a patron of the court.” Now, however, “There is no more five-cent whiskey and the man who slaved every day – though he was never credited with work – to get the pennies that go to make up the five-cent price was out of a job. Ten cents is twice as hard to get as five.”
Priced out of the market, the erstwhile police court drunkard is forced into sobriety, or “at least the police court records have it as so.”
Welcome to America
Another wartime surprise is the record set in Rensselaer County naturalization court today. Justice Wesley O. Howard admits 58 out of 76 applicants to U.S. citizenship, the largest number “from any session of the naturalization court in Rensselaer county.” Russia, Poland, Hungary and Italy provide the largest numbers of applicants. The Hungarians’ position is tenuous, as Congress is debating a belated declaration of war against the AustroHungarian Empire, Germany’s ally since the summer of 1914. So far, a distinction seems to be made between ethnic Hungarians and Germanspeaking Austrians. “There were several from Austria who were very anxious to be admitted,” The Record reports, but they’re told to wait until after the war. The Turkish-ruled Ottoman Empire is also a German ally, but since the U.S. has no immediate plan to declare war the sultanate, “several natives of Turkey got in” by pledging to “stand behind the President of the United States in any action he may take.”