Friday / Weekend Open Lines

Friday, March 4th. The first woman to serve in Congress took her seat on this date in 1917. Barely a month later, Jeannette Rankin of Montana shortly became one of the few representatives to vote against entry into World War I, a stand that contributed to her defeat when she ran for the Senate in 1918. Absent for 24 years, she reentered Congress by winning a seat in the 1940 elections. Putting her pacifist principles ahead of office holding, she cast the lone vote against declaring war on Japan after the Pearl Harbor attack. Her political career, which began before women gained the right to vote, ended with her term in early 1943. A full 43 percent of female citizens over 18 voted in the 2014 elections, and over 66 percent report being registered to vote. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at <www.census.gov>.

Saturday, March 5th. A severe economic panic, striking in 1893, led the city of Seattle to create the nation’s first municipal unemployment assistance office on this date in 1894. State and federal unemployment assistance wasn’t established until the 1930s. Recently, the national unemployment rate, as determined by the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, has settled to around 5 percent. In 2010, Washington state’s average was at the then national average of 9.6 percent. The most current unemployment rate in Washington state is 5.3 percent. The national employment picture is one of the 21 economic indicator statistics immediately accessible on the Census Bureau’s mobile app called America’s Economy. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at <www.census.gov>.

Sunday, March 6th. Seemingly out of nowhere, the issue of mandatory vaccinations has been in the news in recent years. But governmental involvement in vaccination has a long pedigree, tracing back to this date in 1810. That’s when Massachusetts enacted a law to “diffuse the benefits of inoculation for the Cow-Pox.” Such vaccinations of the mild, bovine cowpox virus immunized humans from smallpox, then a leading cause of disfiguring illness and death. This particular discovery dated from Great Britain just 14 years earlier. From producing simple cosmetics to complex vaccines and antibiotics, the pharmaceutical industry encompasses some 2,100 establishments doing over $200 billion of yearly business. You can find current data on the country’s economy by downloading the ‘America’s Economy’ mobile application at <www.census.gov/mobile>.