Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Two news items illustrated the evolving role of women in 1911 society.

The first was the semi-joking suggestion by Mrs. A.P. Fassett that her Woman’s Nonpartizan League hold a “Well Fed Men’s Contest.”

Why? Some men had implied that women would neglect home, hearth and their husbands’ stomachs if they got involved in politics.

Mrs. Fassett said she, certainly, would be happy to enter her own husband in such a contest. One Spokane County commissioner, who had provoked Mrs. Fassett with some earlier remarks about women, said he would also do well in such a contest, “if 185 pounds avoirdupois would count for anything.”

The county auditor worried aloud that weight should not be the sole criterion since some kinds of men, like livestock, “took on fat more readily than others.”

Meanwhile, speakers at the National Country Life Congress in Spokane extolled one of the pillars of civilization: the country girl.

“The country girl plays an important part in country life as well as in the life of the nation and has been neglected,” said a keynote speaker. “… Nowhere is the woman’s homemaking instinct more valued than on the farm.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1910: New York’s Pennsylvania Station officially opened.