THIS DAY IN 1918 IN THERECORD

Thursday, June 13, 1918. The Troy Chamber of Commerce is being urged to lobby the city for the imposition of a 9 p.m. curfew for children under the age of sixteen, The Record reports. The Chamber’s Members’ Council meets tonight to begin drafting a curfew ordinance. They’re expected to call on the Chamber as a whole to hire an attorney to produce a formal draft. One decision made tonight is to allow exceptions only when children are accompanied by their parents. Local Salvation Army captain J. Barrett Mugford objects to an early proposal permitting children to be out past curfew if accompanied by “parents or guardians.” “If that loophole is left,” Mugford says, “they will all have guardians.” Mugford wants to make sure that girls as well as boys will be covered by the curfew. “Speaking of personal investigations, Captain Mugford said that on many nights, particularly Saturday nights, young girls could be found in places, the frequenting of which would spoil them to play the part they should in life,” our reporter writes. The need for a boys’ curfew is more obvious to most members. “Persons are well aware of the hundreds of youngsters who roam the streets almost every night in the week at unseemly hours, or who congregate around corners where one vicious boy can ruin the career of a score,” says William D. O’Brien.

“While in a mischievous frame of mind such youngsters often destroy property or steal, thereby forming a habit which prevents them from maturing into good citizens. The results of what late hours mean to a youngster may be seen at any time in juvenile court.”

Red Cross Auto Parade The War Service League of the Thirteenth Ward organizes a fleet of 50 automobiles to parade through the city tonight to promote a Flag Day carnival they’re hosting tomorrow night.

Led by grand marshal Edward J. Collins, the cars start at Ingalls and Sixth avenues and proceed north to Twentyfourth Street before heading as far south as the junction of Third and Fourth streets. Turning back north, the procession disbands at King Street and Fifth Avenue.

Trucks carry a fife and drum corps, a cornet and drum corps and a group of schoolchildren who “sang at the tops of their youthful voices various patriotic songs…. the ardor with which they sang provoked applause from the spectators all along the line.

“The spirit of the Red Cross pervaded the entire procession and the crowds that thronged the sidewalks, stimulated by the sight of the women attired in the garb of the Red Cross nurse, joined in extolling the ‘greatest mother in the world.’”