100 YEARS AGO IN THE SARATOGIAN
Monday, June 24, 1918. “There was ‘music in the air’ – with plenty of discords – at a special meeting of the City Council,” The Saratogian reports after a majority rejects a plan to open the Congress Park concert season three days early.
Public works commissioner George W. Ainsworth believes that there are enough summer tourists in town to justify opening the season on July 1 instead of July 4. Presenting the council a fait accompli, he tells them that he’s already invited bandleader William Noller to begin performances a week from today.
Led by Mayor Harry E. Pettee, the council shoots down Ainsworth’s idea.
“The principal reason why Mr. Ainsworth’s request was turned down was of a parliamentary nature,” a City Hall reporter explains, “The matter could not be brought up at a special meeting, it was ruled, and there will not be a regular meeting until after the concerts have started,” i.e. after the Independence Day holiday.
There may be nothing personal in the council’s reasoning, but Ainsworth appears to take the rejection personally. After withdrawing his request that they ratify his invitation to Noller, the commissioner asks “if he would have to ask them to decide on the time of day or night the band is to play.” He’s assured by the city attorney that “according to the contract, Mr. Ainsworth is given this power.”
State Electricians Open Convention
Saratoga Springs hosts more than 200 delegates to the New York State Electrical Contractors and Dealers Association convention this week. The opening session is held in the Grand Union Hotel grill room this morning.
Former state senator Edgar T. Brackett welcomes delegates to the Spa City with a patriotic wartime speech. “This is a time for strong men,” he says, “It is a time, too, for boys. And the boys who have gone over there [to Europe] won’t come home until it’s over, over there.”
Brackett calls upon God to “Repay, repay, repay, repay Belgium for every atrocity; repay France for the destruction and want and misery. And in asking for vengeance, I say with due regard to the Methodism in which I have been brought up that I hope the Germans will be kept so damned busy paying up after this war is over, that they won’t have time for at least several generations to think of attacking any other innocent people.”
What’s Happening
The Broadway Theatre skips vaudeville today in favor of a movie double-feature. Irene Castle, “The best dressed woman in the world,” stars in “The Mysterious Client” while Raymond McKee stars in a film version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Kidnapped.”
-- Kevin Gilbert