Today -100: April 3, 1918: Remember that practically every pacifist is a suffragist

In a red-baiting election for Chicago aldermen, every Socialist candidate is beaten by “loyalists.”

The NY State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage is changing its name to the Women Voters’ Anti-Suffrage Party to push for a new referendum to reverse the one that gave the vote to NY women last year. Outgoing president Mary Kilbreth reminds the annual meeting, “Remember that practically every pacifist is a suffragist.”

Sen. Charles Thomas (D-Colo.) claims that German spies working in a factory making gas masks sabotaged more than half of them. With little tiny holes. He blames immigrants who can’t speak English, who he wants banned from voting, and plotters speaking in foreign languages, which thwarts the Secret Service, whose members can’t be expected to be bilingual.

The Senate Judiciary Committee adopts an amendment to the Espionage Act making it illegal to make false statements with the intention of interfering with US military success or discourage the sale of Liberty Bonds or “wilfully cause or attempt to cause, or incite or attempt to incite, insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces” or obstruct military recruiting or say disloyal or seditious things about the government, Constitution, president or the flag or military uniforms or bring the government into disrepute or incite resistance to federal authority, or favor the cause of enemy nations, etc etc., subject to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The NYT totally supports this as “proportionate to the magnitude of the crime.” It would also like sabotage to be subject to the death penalty.

The Texas Legislature bans peace officers who earn less than $40 a month from carrying guns, presumably because they’ll be tempted to use those guns to supplement their income.

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