100 years ago in The Record
Monday, May 6, 1918
The new Y.W.C.A. building is formally presented to the organization tonight by the Cluett family in a ceremony of “peculiar interest,” The Record reports. Mrs. George B. Cluett, Robert Cluett and Frederick F. Peabody paid for the new structure at State and First streets. Mrs. Cluett is president of the Troy Y. “The cherished hope of building this edifice had been prayed about, thought about, talked about for years and is now a fulfilled purpose,” Robert Cluett says in the presentation speech, “Troy is not to be surpassed.” Speaking for the national Y.W.C.A., Ruth Cort observes that the world war means “the withdrawal of men from their wonted tasks, and the placing of women in new positions must follow.” However, “in doing this work … we must not work too hastily, the transition should not be too sudden. Many of our opinions must change, much of our inherited conservatism must give way.”
Speaking for a new party
Around the same time, another group of progressive women meets at the Central School auditorium for another lecture in the Women’s Suffrage Party’s “Business of Citizenship” series. They hear J. A. H. Hopkins of New York City make the case for a new political organization, the National Party.
Hopkins is the party’s first vice chairman and chairs its executive committee. The Na- tionals are left-wing but prowar, splitting with the Socialist Party last year over its opposition to the U.S. war against Germany.
The Nationals oppose an alleged major-party conspiracy to reelect all congressional incumbents this fall. Hopkins claims that Democratic and Republican leaders wanted to cancel the November 1918 elections until that proved either “not lawful” or “too dangerous.” While the new party supports President Woodrow Wilson, they don’t want Congress to be a mere rubber stamp for any president. Only the Nationals will elect intelligent men to Congress, Hopkins promises.
Steppin’ out
The first film adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Tarzan of the Apes” opens today at the Griswold theater. Elmo Lincoln plays Tarzan in the “most astounding story ever told on the screen and one which is totally unlike any movie ever made.
“You gasp and thrill at the adventures of Tarzan; you feel for him in his blind struggle to rise, and are fairly hypnotized at the marvel of scenery that is the background for this great story,” according to the ballyhoo.
Another of 1918’s blockbusters opens today at the Lyceum. “The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin” recreates alleged German atrocities in France and Belgium, and features actual footage of American troops training to join the fight against the “blood-lusty hordes of arch fiends.”