Today -100: November 11, 1919: Of injunctions, cops, cut and dried affairs, raids, and captains

The UMW are still debating whether to obey that federal judge’s order to call off the strike.

Boston has 600 new cops, mostly ex-military, to replace the fired strikers.

The House of Representatives votes 309-1 not to seat Victor Berger, the elected Socialist congressman from Wisconsin’s 5th district who was convicted earlier this year under the Espionage Act (the conviction will be overturned by the Supreme Court in 1921). Before the vote, Berger addressed the House, saying he expected his ejection to be a “cut and dried affair” because “I am a Socialist and an opponent of war and profiteering.” He says he takes back none of his words. He notes that the “conspiracy” of which he was convicted was with four other Socialists he hadn’t actually met, much less conspired with; the prosecutors claimed the conspiracy consisted of a “meeting of minds” because they all belonged to the Socialist Party. He points out that his position of neutrality in the war was the same as that expressed by Woodrow Wilson in 1916. The seat is declared vacant.

More Palmer Raids™: the government now holds 391 aliens under deportation warrants. For some reason 145 of those were arrested in Hartford.

Capt. William Turner of the Cunard Line retires. He was the captain of the Lusitania when it was sunk, and another ship that was sunk in 1917. He has (somehow) reached the mandatory retirement age of 63.

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