by Richard van Pelt, WWI Correspondent

Ireland was a major concern for Great Britain. The army would have serious reservations were war to break out in Europe. An article on the front page read:

ANNIVERSARY OF THE BATTLE OF THE BOYNE
The Occasion, Nearly Always One of Serious Clashes,
It is Feared this Year May Result in Genuine Trouble

The administration was extremely apprehensive today of trouble in Ireland.

It was the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, and many parades and demonstrations were planned by Orangemen and nationalists and with the feeling between home rules and anti-home rulers so bitter as at present, it was considered especially likely to be attended by serious disorder.

Sir Edward Carson, the anti-home rule leader, was scheduled to make the principal address in Belfast.

It was reported that 40,000 rounds of ammunition were smuggled into Ulster by the Orangemen in the past week despite the government’s embargo on such importations.

There were 442 Marion County residents either born in Ireland or whose parents were born in Ireland.

Wall Street featured prominently on the front pages, then as now:

FINANCIAL JOY RIDING COSTS STOCKHOLDERS $100,000,000
Commission Declares the New Haven Directors Consciously Violated the Federal
Anti-Monopoly Laws and the Laws of Many States and Recommends Their Prosecution – It Has Turned the Matter Over to District Attorneys and Advices Prosecution.
NO ATTEMPT WAS MADE TO PLACE BLAME AS BETWEEN MELLON AND MORGAN
“The Result of Our Research Has Been to Disclose On of the Most Glaring Instances
of Maladministration Revealed in the History of American Railroading” – This Is
What the Commission Says After a Scathing Review of the Whole Matter

The gist of the interstate commerce commission’s report today on the result of its investigation of New Haven railroad affairs was that the managements monopolistic theories were unsound and mischievous, that its directors were “criminally negligent”and that a substantial part of the stockholders’money they wasted could [not] be recovered.

The report was couched in the most strongly condemnatory terms the commission every used.

Mismanagement by the company through J.P. Morgan plunged thousands of small shareholders into ruin and brought to the company to near bankruptcy. The Interstate Commerce Commission found that the financial operations and acquisitions by the railroad were achieved through the carefully concealed juggling of money and securities from one subsidiary of the company to another. The ICC investigation revealed exaggerated prices for railway acquisitions, large sums spent on lobbying, and attempts to influence public opinion through the press, and fictitious payments to politicians.

Railroads figured centrally in the writings of the Muckrakers, especially Frank Norris’ The Octopus: A Story of California. A generation of writers who influenced the Progressive Era, the Muckrakers wrote of the horrors of the slaughterhouses, of long-haul/short-haul short changing of farmers, and of the grasping of monopoly capitalists. Writers included Ida M. Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, Frank Norris, and Jacob Riis.

In Europe, though there are no headlines in the Capital Journal, nonetheless, events were moving inexorably toward war.

In Bosnia, the Austrian investigator reports from Sarajevo that there is no evidence linking the Serbian government to the assassination.

In Austria-Hungary and in Germany, the German Ambassador Tschirschky warns the Austrian chancellor that if Austria fails to act against Serbia, it will loose its Great Power status and could possibly loose the support of Germany.

In France there are angry debates over military preparedness and that French forces are at a disadvantage relative to the Germans.

In Britain 20,000 naval reservists are called up for a Royal Navy test mobilization in place of the usual summer fleet maneuvers.