Today -100: November 12, 1919: I think that I would rather perish in the exclusive company of members of my own sex

The non-alien Communists will evidently be tried under state law. In NYC, Chief Magistrate William McAdoo reads the constitution of the Communist International Party and declares it to be an “organized conspiracy against the United States Government and the Government of the State of New York, and each member of the party is guilty and responsible for the acts, writings and sayings of each and every member,” astonishingly citing as precedent the cases arising from the Gordon Riots in London in 1780. He then insisted that the US is at war with Russia.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Actually, there are two versions of this, one in which Wobbly snipers shoot at members of the American Legion marching in an Armistice Day parade in Centralia, Washington, and another version (which makes no appearance in the NYT) in which the Legionistas storm the IWW Hall and the Wobblies shoot in self-defense. Either way, 4 veterans are dead, and the rest lynch Wobbly Wesley Everest (not Britt Smith as the article says) and dump his body in the river, as was the custom. Tensions already existed in the town: last month the Citizens’ Protective League announced plans to drive radicals out of the city.

The White House reports that Pres. Wilson has sat up for the first time in well over a month “and is declared to have been none the worse for his experience.”

The British House of Lords rejects a measure to allow women to sit in the Lords. The Lord Chancellor the Earl of Birkenhead (an Anti-suffragist from way back), moving rejection, says “If we [the Lords] are to be abolished, I think that I would rather perish in the exclusive company of members of my own sex.” Lord Haldane expresses surprise that Birkenhead did not wish “to see the gentle touch of ministering angels about us at the moment that that extinction came.”

Many coal miners are obeying the court and going back to work, but North Dakota’s Gov. Lynn Frazier (Non-Partisan League) takes advantage of the strike to proclaim martial law and seize control of the mines.

Ohio voters rejected ratification of the Prohibition Amendment (which has of course already been ratified) by a narrow majority.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Demanding them from Germany, anyway. They don’t just go around demanding cows from passing strangers. Probably. 

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