THIS DAY IN 1918 IN THERECORD
Friday, Aug. 9, 1918. Benjamin and Earle Bullis are sentenced to six months in the Rensselaer County jail for failing to stand for the national anthem last Wednesday, The Record reports. The Amsterdam residents, who were fired from their jobs at the Watervliet Arsenal yesterday, disrupted a performance at Proctor’s Theatre the night before by refusing to rise during the playing of “The Star Spangled Banner.” Arrested for disorderly conduct, they still face federal charges for treating the flag in disrespectful fashion. After city clerk John P. McNamee refuses to appear in their defense, Amsterdam attorney Howard Putnam comes to Troy to plead for leniency before police court magistrate James F. Byron. Putnam is accompanied by the Bullises’ mother, who claims that they were her only means of support. “I have known them long and can vouch for them as steady and law-abiding men,” Putnam says, “I can assure the court that they are sorry for what they did, and, of course, they will have cause to be more so. “They have been pretty well punished as it is, having lost profitable employment at the Watervliet arsenal, and putting themselves in bad with others. They have been the sole support of their mother, and I do not think they meant to be disloyal. They were tired, after a day’s work, when they went to the theater and did not feel like rising.
“Of course they should have risen, and I cannot account for their conduct when asked to rise except on the ground of just stubbornness.”
While Putnam questions whether failing to stand for the anthem counts as disorderly conduct, he still enters a guilty plea for the brothers. Regardless of the plea, the magistrate isn’t in a forgiving mood.
“While I’m sorry for the mothers of these men, I have no leniency to waste on them,” Byron says, “They were in the employ of the government, earning big wages, yet had no respect for the government of the men fighting to maintain the honor of the flag.
“The men who are fighting for the flag are receiving insignificant pay, while these men protected by draft classification were receiving big money at the arsenal. The others are in the field to be killed, if necessary, in defense of the flag which these men refused to show the respect to of rising for a moment from their seats.”
Six months may seem like a heavy sentence to Putnam and his clients, but Byron says it’s “No more so than the case warrants. Respect must be shown to the flag and there must be no display of disloyalty.”