100 years ago in the Saratogian
Saturday, June 1, 1918. Saratoga Springs is feeling the effects of a streetcar strike in Schenectady that may spread further through the region over the weekend, The Saratogian reports.
Members of the Amalgamated Association of Street Railway Employees walk off their jobs in the Electric City this morning. They demand a nine-cent increase in the top hourly wage for motormen and conductors, from 31 cents to forty cents an hour.
“The company expresses a willingness to meet the men’s demands if the city will alter the franchise which now prescribes a maximum fare of five cents in the city,” a Schenectady correspondent writes. The strike may spread to Albany and Troy depending on votes by union locals tonight.
The Schenectady strike “proved inconvenient to many Saratogians. The only way of reaching the Electric City except by automobile was by way of the [Delaware & Hudson railroad] which operates a single train in the afternoon, or by way of Albany and over the [New York Central] lines from that city.”
Nurses Graduated From the Hospital
Nine women graduate from the Saratoga Hospital Training School for Nurses today as the hospital honors nurses and doctors who’ve gone abroad for wartime service.
The Saratoga Hospital service flag boasts eleven stars, acknowledging the five doctors and six nurses currently in service. The service flag is dedicated during the nurses’ graduation ceremony at the Saratoga Casino.
“Truly this is an hour of dedication as well as a renewal of our whole-hearted loyalty and devotion to our beloved mother — America,” says Rev. John Fox in his dedicatory address.
“The medical profession has never failed America and what it is doing today will be the bright page in the annals of that profession.
“True to their calling, the American nurses are enlisted under the banner of freedom and are doing a humanitarian work in the service of civilization. American womanhood is a splendid body. From the days of Molly Pitcher and Clara Barton and today American womanhood has won the laurel wreath of victory.”
Former state senator Edgar T. Brackett, the city’s leading orator, adds his tribute to nurses at home and abroad. “The profession of nursing has reached such great heights as it has since this world war began,” he says.
“To my mind there is a great analogy between the nurse and the soldier. Each is fighting a great battle; each must be the sentry watching for the faintest movement of an enemy and reporting promptly to his superior officer….In the great battle of life and death the nurse is as great a soldier as any on the battlefields of Europe.”
— Kevin Gilbert