1906

Society

1906. Johannesburg lawyer Mohandas K. Gandhi, 37, speaks at a mass meeting in the Empire Theater and launches a campaign of nonviolent resistance to protest discrimination against Indians in South Africa.

1906. The North American Review reports that more Americans have been killed by motorcars in 5 months than died in the Spanish-American War.

1906. Princeton University president (Thomas) Woodrow Wilson says of the motorcar, "Nothing has spread socialistic feeling in this country more than the use of the automobile To the countryman, they are a picture of the arrogance of wealth, with all its independence and carelessness."

1906. "The men with the muckrakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society," says President Roosevelt. His reference is to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress; "a man who could look no way but downwards, with a muckrake in his hand."

1906. U.S. inventor Lee De Forest, develops a three-electrode vacuum tube amplifier that will be the basis of an electronics revolution. His Audion will permit the development of radio.

1906. Popular Songs: "China Town, My China Town"; "School Days"; "Anchors Aweigh."

1906. The forward pass is legalized in football.

1906. "Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance" becomes a sportswriter catchphrase to denote efficient teamwork.

1906. The permanent wave introduced by London hair-dresser Charles Nestle takes 8 to 12 hours and costs $1,000.

1906. New York architect Stanford White is shot dead June 25 at the roof garden restaurant atop Madison Square Garden, which he designed in 1889. His murderer is Pittsburgh millionaire Harry K. Thaw whose wife Evelyn Nesbit Thaw was a chorus girl and White's mistress before her marriage. Thaw will win acquittal on an insanity plea.

1906. The murder of Cortland, NY, factory girl Grace Brown, 19, makes world headlines in July. A capsized rowboat found in Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks the morning of July 13 leads to a search, a boy of 13 spots a young woman's body in 8 feet of water and police arrest Chester Gillett, 22, at a nearby resort hotel and charge him with murder. Theodore Dreiser will write An American Tragedy in which he will suggest that the American dream of wealth and leisure caused the young man to commit the murder.

1906. The San Francisco earthquake, April 18, is the worst ever to hit an American city. The tremor of the San Andreas fault at 5:13 A.M. and its ensuing 3-day fire destroy two-thirds of the city, kill an estimated 2,500, leave 250,00 homeless and destroy property estimated at more than $400 million.

1906. A British School Meals Act passed by the Liberal government provides free meals for children, many of whom have been unable to profit from their education because they have come to school without their breakfast.

1906. The Heyburn Bill regulates food producers, and its prohibitions are against selling diseased meat, decomposed foods, or dangerously adulterated foods, and it requires only that labels give truthful descriptions of contents.

1906. The 'hot dog" gets its name from a cartoon by Chicago cartoonist Thomas Aloysius "Tad" Dorgan who shows a dachshund inside a frankfurter bun.

Literature

The Forsyte Saga. John Galsworthy. British. 1906. Novels. Large upper-middle-class London family of conventional, materialistic businessmen. Marital issues.

The Four Million. O. Henry. American. 1906. Stories. 25 short stories. Rebuttal to New York high society's "Four Hundred."

"The Gift of the Magi." O. Henry. American. 1906. Story. He sells his watch to buy her combs for her hair; she has hair cut off to buy him a watch fob.

The Jungle. Upton Sinclair. American. 1906. Novel. Grim account of life in the Chicago stockyards.