100 Years Ago Today - February 2021

Look at these statements from headline articles in the La Porte Argus in February 1921. Terminology, capitalization, and what makes headline news can be different. Yet accidents, business, crime, and war still make headlines. Want to read the whole article? It’s on microfilm in the Indiana Room at the Main Library. Staff will be glad to help you access it. 
 

February 1-6 

See the west window at Oberreich & Arnold, the Jewelers for prices on after inventory silver. 
 

Valparaiso university, famed all over the United States as “the poor man’s Harvard,” yesterday became the property of the city of Valparaiso. 
 

Skirts are going to be much longer in Paris this spring. It is not because of the denunciation by clergymen. It’s to hide stockings with cotton uppers because of the high cost of silk. 
 

Fire this afternoon completely wrecks the two story brick Garden theater in Michigan City, causing a loss of $100,000. 
 

About 8,000 American soldiers who were wounded or contracted diseases in the world war are cooped up in institutions throughout the U. S. where they are not being properly cared for. 
 

The house in Washington passes a bill to appropriate $13,000,000 for the construction of five hospitals to care for shell-shocked and tubercular ex-soldiers. 

  

February 8-13 

Thomas A. Edison thinks it is possible to communicate with the dead; however, ministers of this city when interviewed about the possibility with mechanical means say that such is not possible. 
 

La Porte’s Kiwanis club is formally launched when about 75 men met at the banquet board at the Maasonic temple last night. Members vote to give $50 to La Porte’s fund for starving children. 
 

There were three deaths from typhus and 20 cases of typhus among the 1,375 passengers on an Italian liner that arrived in New York. The vessel will be held at Quarantine indefinitely. 
 

Lenick’s ice cream can be delivered to any part of the city. It’s forty cents for 1 qt., 75c for 2 qts, and $1.25 per gal. Retailers may ask for wholesale prices. 
 

Henry Ford denies that he is anti-semitic, claiming that he employs 5,000 Jews in Dearborn, Michigan. 

 

Michigan City police raid a soft drink emporium across from the South Shore station on Franklin street, confiscate an immense quantity of whiskey, and arrest the owner. 

  

February 15-20 

Every member of the Kiwanis club who is not a daddy pledges to take one fatherless lad to the fathers’ and sons’ banquet to be given at the Y. M.C.A. the evening of Washington’s birthday. 

 

The farmers of Wills township held their meeting in the Brown school house last evening, but several members had to walk through miles of mud to get there after parking by mud holes. 
 

There are plans for the erection in Indianapolis of a children’s hospital as a memorial to the late James Whitcomb Riley, the “Hoosier poet.” 
 

The Salvation Army organizes an advisory board to undertake poverty, the unemployed, juvenile delinquencies, missing persons, and illegitimate births. 
 

Rudyard Kipling has contracted to write seven scenarios for motion pictures. 
 

The new city health officer, Doctor Prather, presents orders to Mayor Sallwasser with recommendations concerning sanitary conditions in the city of La Porte. 

  

February 22-27 

La Porte is to have a twelve apartment brick flat building, with location on the east side of Indiana avenue between Wile street and South avenue. 
 

Attempts to restore the teaching of the German language in the public schools of Indiana were given a final knockout blow today by the Indiana general assembly. 
 

The state senate adopts an amendment to a bill providing that women may work not longer than 56 hours a week, ignoring pleas for a limit of 50 hours by the Indiana League of Woman Voters. 
 

Pool Hall proprietors in Otis, Wanatah and LaCrosse had a bad day. An investigation into the operation of gambling devices and games in their places was held. 
 

Four new cases of scarlet fever have appeared in La Porte since the 15th of the month. It is not believed that the disease will become epidemic, but extreme caution is necessary. 
 

Forty-four people are dead in a train wreck at Porter, Indiana. Nine of them are from Michigan City.