The Socialists, whose political tenets necessarily made them opponents of royalty and monarchism everywhere, were particularly embittered against a Kaiser whose contempt for them was so openly expressed. Their press, which consistently referred to him baldly as "Wilhelm II" sailed as closely into the wind of _lese majeste_ as possible, and sometimes too closely. Leading Socialist papers had their special _Sitzredacteur_, or "sitting-editor," whose sole function consisted in "sitting out" jail sentences for insulting the Kaiser or other persons in authority. Police officials, taking their keynote from the Kaiser, prosecuted and persecuted Socialists relentlessly and unintelligently. Funeral processions were stopped to permit policemen to remove red streamers and ribbons from bouquets on the coffins, and graves were similarly desecrated if the friends or mourners had ventured to bind their floral offerings with the red of revolutionary Socialism. The laws authorizing police supervision of all public meetings were relentlessly enforced against Socialists, and their gatherings were dissolved by the police-official present at the least suggestion of criticism of the authorities. There was no practical remedy against this abuse of power. An appeal to the courts was possible, but a decision in June that a meeting in the preceding January had been illegally dissolved did not greatly help matters. Socialist meetings could not be held in halls belonging to a government or municipality, and the Socialists often or perhaps generally found it impossible to secure meeting-places in districts where the Conservatives or National Liberals were in control. Federal, state and municipal employees were forbidden to subscribe for Socialist publications, or to belong to that party. The extent of these persecutions is indicated by a report made to the Socialist congress at Halle in 1890, shortly after the _Ausnahmegesetze_ had expired by limitation, after a vain attempt had been made to get the Reichstag to reenact them. In the twelve years that the law had been in operation, 155 journals and 1,200 books and pamphlets had been prohibited; 900 members of the party had been banished from Germany without trial; 1,500 had been arrested on various charges and 300 of these punished for violations of the law. The _Ausnahmegesetze_ failed of their purpose just as completely as did the Six Acts[10] of 1820 in England. Even in 1878, the very year these laws were enacted, the Socialists polled more votes than ever before. In 1890 their total popular vote in the Empire was 1,427,000, which was larger than the vote cast for any other single party. They should have had eighty members in that year's Reichstag, but the shift in population and consequent disproportionateness of the election districts kept the number of Socialist deputies down to thirty-seven. At the Reichstag election of 1893 their popular vote was 1,800,000, with forty-four deputies.