New Britain, Connecticut is gripped by election fever as Mayor A.M. Paonessa seeks his third term against challenger Gardner Weld in what promises to be the city's most hotly contested mayoral race. With 16,374 eligible voters (including 6,521 women), both campaigns have assembled 'the largest fleets of autos in history of city politics' to ferry voters to the polls when they open at 6 a.m. The race has turned nasty, with Polish businessmen condemning Paonessa for calling Alderman Stanley Karpinski and Councilman B.A. Grysbowski 'traitors' for voting against a license fee waiver for a Polish veterans' post. Meanwhile, local merchants are feuding over whether to stay open Friday or Saturday nights, with heated accusations of 'playing politics' flying across the Chamber of Commerce meeting room.

This snapshot captures small-town America in the mid-1920s economic boom, when even municipal elections drew massive organizational efforts and immigrant communities wielded real political power. The presence of 6,521 women voters reflects the transformative impact of the 19th Amendment, passed just six years earlier. The merchants' debate over store hours shows how prosperity was changing consumer habits and business practices. This was the height of the Roaring Twenties, when car ownership was exploding and local politics could still mobilize entire communities in ways that would soon be eclipsed by radio, depression, and world war.

• Someone's car radiator froze solid on April 12th at 5:30 a.m., forcing the driver to get hot water from a farmhouse - the temperature hit 22 degrees above zero, baffling 'oldest inhabitants' trying to remember such a cold April morning
• The Polish Businessmens Association met at 'Falcons hall' to condemn the mayor, while Paonessa was scheduled to speak at five different venues in one evening, including 'Skritulski's hall' and 'Lithuanian hall on Park street'
• A Methodist minister named Rev. Guy Willis Holmes of New Bedford was expelled from the ministry after secret hearings that lasted 'from 4:30 yesterday afternoon until 1 o'clock this morning'
• The New Britain Herald boasted a daily circulation of exactly 13,030 for the week ending April 10th - impressive for a city small enough that everyone knew which merchants were 'north of the tracks'

• Mayor Paonessa was stumping at the Stanley Works - the tool company founded in 1843 that would become Stanley Black & Decker, still headquartered in New Britain today and worth over $15 billion
• The heated merchant debate over Friday vs. Saturday store hours reflected a nationwide shift in the 1920s as the 40-hour work week spread and Americans gained more leisure time - by 1929, Saturday half-holidays would become standard
• That Methodist minister being expelled came just two years after the famous Scopes 'Monkey Trial' of 1925, as American churches grappled with modernity and scandals that would reshape religious authority
• New Britain's 16,374 eligible voters included over 6,500 women - remarkable considering that in 1920, the first presidential election after women's suffrage, many polling places still had no idea how to handle female voters
• The rival campaigns' 'largest fleets of autos' reflected America's car boom - by 1926, there was nearly one car for every six Americans, transforming even small-city politics into motorized operations