100 years ago in The Record
Saturday, Nov. 9, 1918. Despite his successes in this week’s election, Rensselaer County Democratic party head Joseph J. Murphy is turning down an offer to take over the Democratic state committee.
Today’s Record reports that Murphy turned the offer down last night after making up his mind against the chairmanship earlier this year. Murphy is the son of the late Edward Murphy Jr., a former Troy mayor and U.S. Senator who held the state chairmanship from 1888 through 1894.
“The showing of the Rensselaer county organization at the election Tuesday was the real accentuation for the reiteration of the desire to have Mr. Murphy take the office,” our reporter writes. Rensselaer County has the only Democratic assemblyman between New York and Buffalo in John F. Shannon, who was reelected Tuesday. After John J. Mackrell’s upset of Republican incumbent George B. Wellington, the county also has the only Democratic state senator in that territory.
In addition, “It was pointed out that Rensselaer county had been promised to Governor [Charles S.] Whitman by the Republican leaders by a majority between 3,500 and 5,000 and that its normal majority in the olden days was about 3,000. The Democrats cut the Whitman majority to 600 and Mr. Murphy has predicted this will be wiped out by the soldier vote when it is canvassed December 10.”
Murphy claims that over 80% of the county’s 1,188 men in uniform have voted Democratic. Their votes will only add to Democratic governor- elect Alfred E. Smith’s margin of victory. The county chairman predicts that Rensselaer “will be Democratic in the years to come by a safe majority of over 3,000.”
Despite statewide entreaties, Murphy reportedly “preferred to be a worker in the ranks” and “left no dubious impression of his attitude” yesterday.
Urge Work for United War Fund
While the world war continues this weekend, Germany is expected to accept the terms for an armistice ending the conflict any day now. For the time being, fundraising efforts for local war funds continue as well.
Women’s University Club president Mrs. Arthur M. Greene describes an “urgent need for the continuance of the various charities after the armistice had been signed” during a talk at the Young Women’s Association this evening. The postwar object of fundraising will be “to keep up the morale of the soldiers during the waiting period, through entertainment and moral and social influences.”
Alice Leavens of Boston was part of a Smith College delegation that visited France last year. Despite systematic “wanton destruction” by German forces, Leavens reports that growing field poppies typify “the French spirit, which rises up after every effort for its extinguishment. ”