This sign from 1920 was designed to be placed in the window of a home so that all who passed would know that the woman within had exercised her right under the 19th amendment and registered to vote. It also served as a reminder to other women to do the same.
I have cleaned it up and made a nicely printable version that will fit on a standard (US) Letter size page.
Sign, “A Woman Living Here Has Registered to Vote,” ca 1920.
The pamphlet, “Habit-forming Agents their Indiscriminate Sale and Use a Menace to the Public Welfare” by L. F. Kebler, Chief of the Division of Drugs in the Bureau of Chemistry at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was released in 1910.
In this publication, Kebler uses strong language and examples to condemn the use of addictive ingredients in products used by Americans of walks of life. Its release was the culmination of an investigation that revealed the “alarming extent to which such habit-forming ingredients are used, and the large number of channels through which they reach the public, which is not informed as to their nature.”
I have included a few excerpts from the document here, but the whole thing can be read here. Of special note, this was released during the period when Spelling Reform was a hot topic. As a result, you will see some simplification rules in use like cocain for cocaine and sirups for syrups.
The amount of opium (exclusive of smoking opium, which is now denied entry into this country), consumed in the United States per capita, has been doubled within the last forty years. Large quantities of other habit-forming agents, introduced chiefly for medicinal purposes, have been used. For example, “cocain” (cocain hydrochlorid), has been used for about twenty-five years, and the amount consumed at present is estimated at approximately 150,000 ounces per annum.
There are at present at least 100 sanatoriums advertising treatment for drug addiction, and it is well known that many thousands of cases are treated annually by physicians in private practice and general hospitals. The writer knows of at least 30 so-called mail-order “drug-addiction cures,” some of which apparently have a large patronage. The manager of one of these treatments stated that his company had 100,000 names, including alcohol addicts, upon its books. The number of drug addicts in the United States is variously estimated by those who are conversant with the situation at from 1,000,000 to 4,000,000; the latter number is probably excessive.
It was not an uncommon practice in former days to represent to the consumer that such agents were absent when, as a matter of fact, the very drugs named in the disclaimer were present. The reason for this subterfuge is plain. Normally no one desires to take preparations containing known habit-forming agents, which are frequently responsible for the use of, or demand for, the preparations containing them.
Soothing sirups naturally occupy the first place in such a list. Under this title will be briefly considered baby sirups, soothing sirups, “colic cures” children’s anodynes, “infant’s friends,” teething concoctions, etc. It has long been known to the medical profession that these products, as a rule, contain habit-forming agents, but the majority of mothers have been and still are ignorant of this fact.
The following are representative of this class:
This 1959 letter to Virginia Governor Wise from John Randolph Tucker, Virginia’s Attorney-General at the time.
Gov. Henry A. Wise
It outlines Virginia’s legal assertion that it had the right to censor the mail and prosecute those importing Abolitionist literature into the state of Virginia. It details the process of destroying material by fire in the presence of a judge.
Tucker skirts the First Amendment issues and focuses on the Postal Service’s role as a delivery system as opposed to a role akin to a publisher.
Tucker (1823–1897) was from a distinguished slaveholding family, he was elected Virginia’s attorney general in 1857 and after re-election served during the American Civil War. After a pardon and Congressional Reconstruction, Tucker was elected as U.S. Congressman (1875-1887), and later served as the first dean of the Washington and Lee University Law School.
The letter opens Willam Lloyd Garrison’s book, The new “reign of terror” in the slaveholding states, for 1859-60, published in New York in 1860.
RICHMOND, Nov. 26th, 1859.
John Randolph Tucker
SIR, -The question is submitted to me for an Opinion as to the effect of the law of Virginia upon the distribution of mail matter when it is of an incendiary character. A newspaper, printed in the State of Ohio, propagating abolition doctrines, is sent to a person through a post ofiice in Virginia.
What is the duty of the Postmaster in the premises?
The law of Virginia (Code of Va., chap. 198, sec. 24) provides that:
“If a Postmaster or Deputy Postmaster know that any such book or writing (referring to such as advise or incite negroes to rebel or make insurrection, or inculcate resistance to the right of property of masters in their slaves) has been received at his office in the mail, he shall give notice thereof to some Justice, who shall inquire into the circumstances, and have such book or writing burned in his presence if it appear to him that the person to whom it was directed subscribed therefor, knowing its character, or agreed to receive it for circulation to aid the purposes of abolitionists, the Justice shall commit such person to jail. If any Postmaster or Deputy Postmaster violate this section, he shall be fined not exceeding two hundred dollars.”
![U.S. Wars on Loafers and “Sports” [May 23, 1918]](https://wordsfrom.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/f0-1080x675.jpg)
This item appeared in the May 23, 1918 issue of the Lake County Times, in Hammond, Indiana.
It is estimated that in Hammond, Gary, East Chicago, and Whiting there are 1,000 idlers affected by the U. 8. war department’s new ruling. Many of these men sleep by day and prowl by night. Some of them are gunmen. They are draft dodgers. News that Uncle Sam is after them is glad news to the police departments of the Calumet region cities. (more…)
![She Tells Why Employers Should Hire Middle-Aged Women [1922]](https://wordsfrom.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/screenshot_20180504_213710-1080x675.jpg)
By Mrs. Marshall Darrach
“The discovery of the efficiency of the middle-aged woman has been one of the recent joys of the business world,” said Mrs. Robert Armstrong, formerly personnel director of the National City Company in Wall Street, and now personnel secretary of the Eastman Kodak Company at Rochester, New York.
Mrs. Armstrong, when questioned as to the nature of this belated recognition of the merits of the middle-aged woman in business, spoke with enthusiasm and with the voice of authority on this phase of the economic independence of women.
“When do you consider that a woman has reached middle age in the eyes of a businessman?” Mrs. Armstrong smiled. “I know that some men consider a woman elderly at twenty-eight, but the woman under discussion, and who is demonstrating her value in business life, is from forty to fifty. She made her appearance in sufficiently large numbers to permit of a collective scientific study as a war emergency; and what businessmen learned of the sterling qualities of the middle-aged woman when she was fitted into the particular place that had been awaiting her, caused her stock to rise in the employment market.”
The wonderful work of archivists have preserved far more material than we usually see. Our goal here is to unearth and present some of the stuff we never saw in school.