100 years ago in The Saratogian
Tuesday, March 13, 1917
After reporting last week on unfounded rumors accusing a prominent German-American Saratoga Springs man of spying and sabotage, The Saratogian seems eager to show that anti-German hysteria isn’t a purely local phenomenon.
Germany and the U.S. stand at the brink of war after President Woodrow Wilson ordered the arming of American merchant ships sailing the Atlantic. The order follows Germany’s resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare on ships bound for France and Great Britain.
The March 7 Saratogian reported that John A. Beyer, who runs a tea and coffee store on Broadway, was rumored to have plotted to bomb the Saratoga armory and the state capital in Albany. Police chief James A. King refuted the rumors and characterized Beyer as a loyal American.
Today’s paper picks up an Amsterdam Recorder report that “rumors that one of Amsterdam’s physicians and a clergyman of the city have been arrested on the charge of being German spies.” The rumors “have grown by leaps and bounds with each repetition until now even Baron Munchausen might not be ashamed to own any one of these fictitious tales as his very own.”
On a less humorous note, “life has been made, to say the least, unpleasant, not so much for the heads of the households, as for their children, and the taunts that have been hurled at them would do credit to a semi-civilized people.”
CLEAN ‘EM OFF
As winter winds down and spring draws near, The Saratogian reminds residents of Saratoga Springs to clear their sidewalks of leftover snow and other wintry debris.
“It shouldn’t be necessary to recall to Mr. Good Citizen the common obligation he shares with the community to clean off his sidewalks at this season of the year,” an editorial writer opines, “for if he has occasion to walk abroad it is pretty apt to be splashed and slopped home to him.”
Cleaning sidewalks is a matter of public safety and civic pride. “Sloppy and unnavigable sidewalks are certain to be taken as a token of neglect and slovenly management,” the writer warns, “a sort of public spirit that is not appealing or prepossessing in a community with a reputation to sustain.”
WHAT’S HAPPENING
After being blocked from showing it last Sunday, the Broadway Theatre tonight presents the film “My Fighting Gentleman,” a drama set during the Reconstruction period and described as “A Worthy Sequel to ‘The Birth of a Nation.’” The Sunday showing was blocked, not for any inflammatory racial content, but because the Broadway is no longer protected from police raids for showing movies on the Christian Sabbath.