President saves editor from the slammer, 1909

On this day (November 17) in 1909, President William Howard Taft remitted the prison sentence of editor and publisher Bernarr Macfadden. The famous health faddist had been sentenced to two years at hard labor in the New Jersey state penitentiary for what newspaper reports called “mailing unmailable matter.” The matter in question was a series titled “Growing to Manhood in Civilized (?) Society” that Macfadden had published in his magazine Physical Culture in 1906 and 1907. Macfadden still had to pay a fine of $2,000.