MIA : Early American Marxism: Socialist Party of America Download Page: 1906-1916

The Socialist Party of America

(1906-1916)

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1900

MAY

“The Negro and Socialism,” by J.A. Wayland [May 12, 1900] Socialism would solve the problem or racial relations in America by making possible a perfect, segregated world intimates publisher and editor of the Appeal to Reason Julius Augustus Wayland. Wayland supposes that in the Socialist future every citizen, black and white, would be raised in a decent environment and trained in some useful calling upon maturity. Since he regards as axiomatic the idea that “the white population would not like to have the black work side by side with it, as it does today, nor would the black like to work where it felt a difference between them,” cities and sections would consequently emerge “where the colored race would be supreme.” In these places “they would have as good homes and factories and surroundings as the white race, because the whole nation would be interested in them having such conditions,” Wayland blandly prophesies. Both races would thereby be freed for cultural and economic development in parallel — and thus would Socialism “solve the race question.”

 

JULY

“Debs’ Denial,” by J.A. Wayland [July 23, 1900] With the Presidential campaign heating up in the summer of 1900, the Democratic Party reached into its bountiful bag of dirty tricks in an effort to undermine the new left wing opposition represented by the Social Democratic Party. False reports were trafficked indicating that SDP candidate Eugene V. Debs would be dropping out of the race on Oct. 1 to throw his support to the Democratic nominee, William Jennings Bryan. This allegation brought immediate refutation by the Social Democratic Party candidate and his brother at the National Office — the full text of which is reproduced here. Gene Debs declares himself “equally opposed to all capitalist parties of whatever name,” while his brother notes that socialist activists remained “highly amused” to the crude attempt at trickery by the Democratic Party. Appeal to Reason editor J.A. Wayland indicates a target of a million votes for the new party and likens the place of Debs on the ticket to that of Abraham Lincoln in the election of 1856.

 

SEPTEMBER

“Platform of the Social Democratic Party of America, 1900." [Sept. 15, 1900] The election of November 1900 marked the first time that the Social Democratic Party of America was able to field a national ticket, featuring Eugene V. Debs for President and Job Harriman for Vice-President. This document reproduces the national platform of the SDP in this inaugural campaign. The maximum program is short and sweet, two planks calling for the organization of the working class into a political party and the abolition of “wage slavery” in favor of a system of cooperative industry on the basis of the social ownership of capital and the means of distribution. A 12 plank minimum program is also part of the platform, featuring two planks in favor of women’s rights; several in favor of public ownership of utilities, natural resources, and means of transportation and communication; establishment of the initiative and referendum; and initiation of programs of national accident and unemployment insurance and old age pensions.

 

“E.V. Debs." (St. Louis Chronicle) [Sept. 29, 1900] A published personal biography from the first Debs Presidential campaign by a reporter (unfortunately unnamed) who conducted extensive interviews with Debs and others who knew him in constructing a detailed, positive piece. Debs is quoted directly and at great length. The formation and demise of the American Railway Union is recent history and is therefore covered in detail here, including interesting material on the Chicago trial and potential legal peril he faced. Debs indicates that he left working as a railway fireman following the death on the job of a friend, at his mother’s request. Glowing testimonials of a local Terre Haute clothing manufacturer and a Baptist minister are directly quoted as evidence of Debs’ quality as a human being.

 

1906

MARCH

“Arouse, Ye Slaves!” by Eugene V. Debs [March 10, 1906] If Debs’ Sept. 1906 call for the mine workers of America to arm themselves and resist the violence of their employers by force wasn’t the most militant statement ever made by the Hoosier Socialist, this editorial written in response to the kidnapping of William Haywood and Charles Moyer and their transport to Idaho to face charges of capital murder certainly was. The kidnapping is called “a foul plot; a damnable conspiracy; a hellish outrage,” and Debs calls the governors of Idaho and Colorado “brazen falsifiers and venal villains, the miserable tools of the mine owners who, themselves, if anybody, deserve the gibbet.” Debs declares that “Nearly twenty years ago the capitalist tyrants put some innocent men to death for standing up for labor. They are now going to try it again. Let them dare! There have been twenty years of revolutionary education, agitation, and organization since the Haymarket tragedy, and if an attempt is made to repeat it, there will be a revolution and I will do all in my power to precipitate it.” Debs actively advocates the possibility of armed struggle around the Haywood-Moyer case: “Get ready, comrades, for action! ... Capitalist courts never have done, and never will do, anything for the working class.... A special revolutionary convention of the proletariat at Chicago, or some other central point, would be in order, and, if extreme measures are required, a general strike could be ordered and industry paralyzed as a preliminary to a general uprising. If the plutocrats begin the program, we will end it.”

 

MAY

“Rand School of Social Science: Important Auxiliary for Socialist Movement: The Work of the School to Begin on Oct. 1—Systematic Instruction of Social Sciences and Training of Speakers and Writers the Objects in View.” [May 19, 1906] This first press announcement from the New York Worker details the forthcoming establishment of the Rand School of Social Science and Library in New York City. The will of Elizabeth D. Rand, mother of Carrie Rand Herron, bequeathed an endowment for a school of social science, which was to be “an auxiliary to the Socialist Party,” the article notes. The American Socialist Society, a New York group founded back in 1901, was chosen as the operating body under state law. The American Socialist Society had leased a large residence building located at 112 E 19th Street, and was to take possession on July 1, 1906. Ground floor rooms were to be made into a library, reading room, archive, office, and book shop, and the rooms of the second floor were to be made into class rooms. A sum of $1,000 had been made available for the purchase of socialist books and pamphlets, and SPA members were called upon to make additional loans and donations of rare and out of print materials to the library, for which a planned opening date of July 15 was scheduled. A list of planned courses was also announced and is listed here, with instruction slated to commence on Oct. 1, 1906. Officers of the American Socialist Society were Algernon Lee, President; Morris Hillquit, Treasurer; and W.J. Ghent, Secretary; with additional directors Leonard D. Abbott, John C. Chase, Benjamin C. Gruenberg, T. Levene, and Hermann Schlueter.

 

“The Meaning of May Day: Address Delivered in Grand Central Palace, New York City — May 1, 1906,” by Morris Hillquit  Among other things, Socialist Party leader Morris Hillquit was a pioneer American historian of the socialist movement. In this May Day speech in New York City Hillquit recounts the origin of the workers’ holiday just 17 years previously at the founding Congress of the Second International in Paris. Hillquit notes the appropriateness of linking the perennial celebration of the beginning of spring with the celebration of the world socialist movement, since “Socialism presages the spring of nations.” The Russian Empire-born Hillquit uses his public platform to condemn the “oppressive autocracy” of the Romanov regime in Russia, then in the midst of successfully downing the Revolution of 1905. “The Russian revolution is not dead,” Hillquit presciently notes, “The revolutionary workingmen of Russia are alive and their number is legion.” He also inveighs against the kidnapping and forthcoming trial of three leading officials of the Western Federation of Miners, warning the governors of Idaho and Colorado, “There are sufficient reasons to believe that you have entered into a conspiracy to commit cold-blooded murder in order to discredit and destroy a powerful labor organization; we have found an indictment against you, and we will watch you and scrutinize you, and if we find you guilty, we will see to it that you do not consummate your foul purposes.”

 

“The IWW and DeLeonism: Letter to the Editor of The Worker,” by A.M. Simons [May 22, 1906] At the end of 1905 and during the first half of 1906 there was a strong movement on the part of the Left Wing of the Socialist Party to forge organic unity with the rival Socialist Labor Party. The formation of the radical Industrial Workers of the World, endorsed both by the SP Left and the Socialist Labor Party, had seemingly reduced the ideological differences between the two feuding organizations to a negotiable level. The move to unite with Daniel DeLeon’s SLP was a red flag, so to speak, to those like Algie Simons, who had formerly been active members in the SLP and who had fought a bitter political and legal war in 1899-1900 for control of the organization against DeLeon and the SLP Regulars. In this lengthy article to The Worker Simons professes allegiance to the IWW and its tactics and slams Daniel DeLeon, calling DeLeonism “the worst enemy of the IWW.” Distrust of DeLeon based upon his history of “tricky dishonesty in the labor and Socialist movement” was putting off many solid unionists from joining the fledgling IWW and stilting the organization’s growth, Simons claims. DeLeon had craftily “fastened himself upon the IWW” in order to add “a few new dupes...to those select few who still cling to him,” Simons asserts, and this clique was attempting to make loyalty to DeLeon a prime component of IWW doctrine. “Anyone who refused to do this was at once assaulted by all the mud batteries at the command of the Professor of Lying and Vilification,” Simons declares. Simons provides an extensive and historically valuable account of the 1899-1900 split from the perspective of insurgent Section Chicago, in which he indicates that Daniel DeLeon in his role of editor of The People suppressed party communications for factional reasons. Simons is scornful of the movement among the SPA’s Left for establishment of a “party-owned press” (a central tenet of DeLeon), declaring “It speaks poorly for the intelligence of some members of the SP that they have bit at such thinly disguised gudgeon bait.”

 

JULY

“As to Unity with the SLP: Letter to the Editor of The Worker,” by Ben Hanford [July 21, 1906] Former and future Socialist Party Vice Presidential nominee Ben Hanford adds his voice to those in opposition to the drive for unity between his party and the Socialist Labor Party guided by party editor Daniel DeLeon. Hanford bitterly notes that for the previous 7 years since the 1899 party split “the SLP has at all times, so far as it had power of expression by print or speech, denounced, anathematized, and vilified the trade union movement of the United States” and had heckled propaganda meetings and leafleted against the Socialist Party. “Year after year the members of the Socialist Party have had to devote almost as much of their effort and their slender means to meeting the attacks of the SLP as we did to the battle with the capitalist class,” Hanford declares. Hanford believes that the two organizations are based upon fundamentally different sets of tactics: “Briefly stated, the Socialist Party allows its individual members and its constituent organizations to work for Socialism in their own way, only resorting to disciplinary measures when they pursue a way or resort to means that stultifies the end. On the other hand, the editor of the Party-Owned Press, by printing what he desires them to know and omitting those things of which he wants them to remain ignorant, decides what is the best way to work for Socialism in the Socialist Labor Party and then uses the party machinery to make others work HIS way.” Hanford notes that he favors unity with all genuine Socialists, for whom the door to the Socialist Party of America remains open, but a forced unity on the basis of the New Jersey Unity Manifesto would mean “we would only unite to fight and divide”—in short, a new split would inevitably result and that no lasting unity with DeLeon and the SLP was possible.

 

“The Socialist Party and the Trade Unions: Contribution to a Symposium in The Worker,” by Eugene V. Debs [July 28, 1906] Eugene Debs responds to a set of questions issued by the New York Worker on the question of industrial unionism with this lengthy definition and analysis. For Debs, industrial unionism is more than simple “unification of all the industrial workers within one comprehensive organization, divided and subdivided into departments corresponding to their various industries;” it also implies a revolutionary ideological content. “Industrial unionism is class-conscious in character and revolutionary in aim, its mission being not only to mitigate the ills of the workers, but to abolish the wage-system and achieve complete emancipation. Without this character and ultimate end in view the mere solidarity of the trade amounts to nothing more than “pure and simpledom,” and cannot properly be called industrial unionism,” Debs declares. Debs reject the charge that the IWW are dual unionists starting new rival organizations, noting that the members of the IWW are, “as a rule, seasoned old unionists; they did not drop from the skies, nor come up out of the seas; they are not interlopers nor new beginners, but they are of the very heart and marrow of the labor movement, and I think their records as fighters and builders in point of time and character of service will compare favorably with those of their reactionary critics; and when credit is claimed for what has been done in the past let it be remembered that the members of the IWW figured in it all and are entitled to their full share of it.” He adds that it is “better a thousand times that labor is divided fighting for freedom than united in the bonds of slavery.” Debs additionally weighs in strongly in favor the SPA Left Wing’s campaign for unity—economically in the IWW and political through unification with the Socialist Labor Party. “Let us pursue the straight course and stick without wavering to the clear-cut revolutionary movement, and hew to the line of industrial and political unity for the overthrow of wage slavery,” Debs declares.

 

SEPTEMBER

“No Impossibilism for Us!”, by Victor L. Berger [September 1906] A succinct philosophical manifesto of the “constructive” Socialist political philosophy, originally published as an editorial in the Social-Democratic Herald by that paper’s editor, Victor L. Berger. Berger declares war upon “IWW element of our party,” of which he says that “most of whom are as ignorant as they are fanatical and hypocritical .” The AF of L for all its shortcomings is in every way preferable to the IWW, Berger contends. Berger states that a great deal has been done “for the working class and for humanity” within present society, with much more to be achieved or “Socialism will never be possible.” Berger says that “we believe in a policy of steady change very much in the social system per se, unless economic conditions (besides also the education and enlightenment of the people) are favorable towards a complete change. Otherwise, we might simply change masters.” A “moral, physical, and intellectual strengthening of the proletariat” is called for, as well as the formation of a “class alliance with farmers”—in this way society can “grow into” Socialism. In conclusion, Berger advocates the arming of the whole people: “Not for the sake of ‘revolution,’ but for the sake of peace and progress. An armed people are always a free people. Even the demagogues then would have a great deal less to say than they have today. An armed people is always a strong people.” Step-by-step constructive action is called for and “impotent and good for nothing REVOLUTIONARY PHRASES and holy words” are held in the lowest regard by Berger in this biting manifesto.

 

1907

OCTOBER

The Parlor Socialists, by Ellis O. Jones [Oct. 1907] This is one of the most thoughtful and well-crafted essays of the Debsian period of the Socialist Party of America—a defense of the so-called “parlor socialists,” published in the pages of the International Socialist Review. Jones, a rank-and-file socialist from Columbus, Ohio, states that up until as few as 5 years previously socialism had received scant attention in America, dismissed as an idiosyncratic preoccupation of peculiar European immigrants. The Socialist Party, founded in 1901, had at last struck root in the ranks of the native American population, Jones indicates. “...The phenomenon which the paragrapher lightly dubs Parlor Socialism is nothing more or less than an unmistakable sign of the Americanization of Socialism, leading the paragrapher gently but powerfully and relentlessly past the point where he can define Socialism as the unintelligible ravings of a handful of unnatural and unnaturalized bomb-throwing aliens plotting against duly constituted authority,” Jones declares. Unable to label and dismiss these eminently reasonable American socialists to the hackneyed stereotypes of the past, a new epithet was invented on the fly—“parlor socialists.” Jones sees a dichotomy among American socialists between the largely uneducated individuals of proletarian origin and vocation, and the new group of “intellectual” adherents to the socialist cause, young and often college educated individuals who (unlike most of their peers) takes time to “examine the general manner of money—making and weigh it in ethical scales, asking the question as to why he, young and inexperienced, should possess so much without effort while thousands whom he sees about him possess but little or nothing with the maximum of effort. He is led into investigating the sources of wealth and soon comes to the obvious conclusion that wealth is produced by labor and that therefore he is living on the labor of others.” Ultimately, the so-called “parlor socialists” arrive at “the conclusion that true luxury is impossible so long as a large majority of his fellow beings live in squalor and destitution.” Jones concludes that “Parlor Socialism as a characterization is ephemeral. It will disappear when the Socialist movement is thoroughly Americanized, that is, when the Parlor Socialists are sufficiently numerous to cease to invite individual comment and when, through the lapse of time, they have given unmistakable evidence that they are not merely victims of a passing fad or fancy.”

 

“Calm Review of the Seattle Situation,” by John Downie [Oct. 6, 1907] A factional salvo fired by a supporter of the Socialist Party of Washington’s Left Wing majority against a pamphlet published by an adherent of the party’s dissident Right Wing. After recounting his own biography as a former member of the Slobodin-Hillquit Springfield Social Democratic Party and founding member of the Socialist Party of Washington in 1900, Downie lays into assertions published by Ira Wolfe of Seattle’s 9th Ward Branch. Downie insists that the radical Pike Street Branch had never asked for or received a single cent of party funds for support of Hermon Titus’s radical weekly, The Socialist. He further declares Wolfe’s claim that Socialist supporters ignored the party’s financial needs to be a falsehood, and similarly rejects claims that the Pike Street Branch had itself started The Socialist and that that paper rejected out-of-hand all content departing from Left Wing orthodoxy. Downie instead blames the Right Wing for a campaign of calumny against Hermon Titus which effectively disrupted the party’s effectiveness.

 

NOVEMBER

“Walter Thomas Mills — His Record,” by Thomas J. Morgan [Nov. 2, 1907] One of the most bitterly divided state organizations of the Socialist Party of America was that of Washington state, which was more or less continuously controlled by Left Wing elements throughout the decades of the 1900s and 1910s, over bitter opposition. One of the key leaders of the Right Wing during the party’s first decade was Walter Thomas Mills, regarded by his radical opponents as both an extreme factionalist and a socialist huckster. In 1907 Left Winger E.B. Ault wrote to veteran Socialist Tommy Morgan of Chicago seeking an enumerated list of Mills’s transgressions. Morgan responded with this letter, published in Hermon Titus’s radical Seattle weekly, The Socialist. Mills is characterized as a “minister, an evangelist, temperance lecturer, etc.” who had been involved in various socialist schools and colonization schemes in Illinois and Southwestern Michigan which resulted in financial losses to those persuaded to invest in them. Morgan recites a litany of complaints: Milis’s “immoral conduct” in New York state caused him to be removed from work there; the thick book which he sold at lectures as his own work was largely ghostwritten; additional essentially bogus colony and school schemes had been launched in Kansas and Colorado. Morgan intimates that it is in this light that his new socialist business enterprise, the Seattle Saturday Evening Tribune, should be viewed. “The ability of Mills to continue in his peculiar work in the party is due to the silence of those whom he has bitten and fooled, and while he is under expulsion from your organization, comrades ignorant of his record are ready to welcome him here because of his ability to talk,” Morgan declares.

 

DECEMBER

Socialist Unity in the United States, by Charles H. Kerr [Dec. 1907] Eminent Socialist publisher Charles H. Kerr presents the recent referendum put forward by Local Redlands, California calling for the amalgamation of the Socialist Party of America with the Socialist Labor Party on the basis of industrial unionism and a party-owned press. Kerr—himself a Marxist and a partisan of industrial unionism—argues assertively against both of these preconditions for merger. With regards to industrial unionism, Kerr states that while California Socialists may consider it a facile matter, on the actual battlefront in the industrial east, things were not so simple. Most Socialists in industrial Chicago were members of the unions of their craft, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, Kerr states. These individuals “joined these trade unions long ago, and for the very good and very prosaic reason that they wanted better wages and depended on the unions to help get them, or perhaps found that they could not get jobs without carrying union cards. They remain inside these unions today for the most part because there are no industrial unions here in the trades in which they work. If they were to withdraw from the existing unions to join the budding organization of the Industrial Workers of the World, they would stand a very good chance of losing their jobs” and additionally be treated by their shopmates as scabs. It would be best not to mix the political and industrial questions, Kerr opines, instead putting forward the industrial union model as the only one suitable for meeting trustified industry across the bargaining table at anything approaching unity. With regard to party ownership of the press, Kerr is more negative still, noting that such a structure was traditional within the SLP and had led to a practical result which placed “the editor of The People [Daniel DeLeon], wielding the power of the National Executive Committee, in full control of the sources of information of the party membership, so that he has dominated and still dominates the opinions of the rank and file... I am decidedly opposed to a system placing such absolute power in the hands of any one man or small group of men.” While unification of the American socialist movement would be a positive thing, in Kerr’s view, the position of Local Redlands would have it “that the larger party should discard its successful methods and adopt the disastrous methods of the smaller party. I am for consolidation, but not on these terms.”

 

1908

FEBRUARY

Shall the Two Parties Unite? by Carl D. Thompson [Feb. 15, 1908] The years 1907 and 1908 saw an effort by the Left Wing of the Socialist Party to bring about unity between that organization and the Socialist Labor Party. This concentrated effort of course drew a response from those opposing the revolutionary Socialist agenda. One prominent Socialist who was particularly outspoken in his opposition to the proposal was Wisconsin state organizer Carl D. Thompson, who contributed this two-part article to the constructive Socialist organ The Christian Socialist. Thompson outlines the turbulent history of the Socialist Labor Party and its various “unity” efforts of the past—with the anarchist movement, with the Greenback Labor movement, with the Henry George campaign. These efforts at a unity of weakness are contrasted with the early history of the Socialist Party, which built its organizational size and strength through an essential and timely split with the utopian communalists who had won the day at the convention of 1898. Thompson declares that the SLP had been responsible for disruption with the labor movement with its dualist Socialist Trades & Labor Alliance and support of the Industrial Workers of the World; that it held a sectarian position on the agrarian question, which had served as inspiration for a long-running melee in the Socialist Party of Nebraska; and undermined party democracy, State Autonomy, and freedom of the press through its dogmatic belief in party ownership of the press and strict party centralization. The addition of the SLP en masse to the ranks of the Socialist Party would additionally bolster the “Impossibilist” wing of the party, in Thompson’s view, thus setting back the work of years to lessen the influence of this wing in the party’s councils. “Therefore if these people wish to join the Socialist Party the door is open to them as individuals, the same as to all others. By accepting our platform, our program, constitution, and tactics, they may come in. And upon no other ground. For them to propose any other bears upon its face a sinister suggestion. Let them apply as others do to the individual branches. And let the branches be the judge of their individual fitness and right as in the case with all others,” Thompson concludes.

 

APRIL

Separate Organizations by Josephine C. Kaneko [April 1908] The matter of mobilizing women in support of the socialist cause was an important matter for the Socialist Party of America from its earliest days as an organization. One notable step forward took place in 1907 with the launch of the monthly magazine, The Socialist Woman, organ of the Socialist Women’s League of Chicago. While the importance of mobilizing women was almost universally accepted, the means of bringing women into the movement was the matter of some debate. Josephine Kaneko of The Socialist Woman offers her own opinion of the two primary tacks: integration of women into locals of mixed genders vs. the organization of female auxiliary branches. Kaneko states that given ideal conditions — a sufficiently ideologically enlightened group of women and a male Socialist local “sympathetic and responsive to those needs of women which lie outside their own” — the so-called “mixed local” was unquestionably the superior form. However, Kaneko states, frequently women were insufficiently familiar with socialist ideology or comfortable in asserting themselves on an equal plane with men, resulting in a tendency for them to sit at meetings in “obedient reverence under the shadow of their aggressive power.” In other cases, Kaneko notes, Socialist locals functioned as glorified men’s clubs: “a place where men met and talked and smoked, and split hairs over unimportant technicalities, transacted a little business, talked and smoked some more, and adjourned until the next meeting’s program, which consisted of practically the same line of procedure.” In such cases the organization of separate women’s organizations as a temporary training grounds for female activists was merited by conditions. “we have to manage, somehow, to get women interested in Socialism,” Kaneko declares, “It hasn’t been done satisfactorily so far through the mixed local. It remains to be seen what can be done through separate organizations.”

 

MAY

Josephine Kaneko of The Socialist Woman magazine issues an explicit feminist challenge to the delegates of the forthcoming 1908 National Convention of the Socialist Party of America. “It is time now,” she declares, “that we cease our appeal to men alone, and give some attention to womankind. It is not enough to say that ’the interests of the workingman and woman are identical, therefore what we say to the workingman includes the woman also.’” Kaneko continues: “Women are tired of being ’included,’ tired of being taken for granted. They demand definite recognition, even as men have it. They know that their interests and men’s interest have not been identical since the dawn of human history, and it will take something more than a mere statement of the fact to make them believe they can be identical under Socialism.” Kaneko charges that the tendency of Socialist Party meetings to be held in back rooms of taverns and “other dreary, comfortless halls which are always obnoxious to women” constitutes “a discrimination in favor of one sex over another.” She additionally castigates the party for the male orientation of its propaganda and failure to actively address issues of importance to women.

Report of the Finnish Translator to the Convention of the Socialist Party of America, May 10, 1908, by Victor Watia Extensive report of the Translator of the Organization of Finnish Socialists (Finnish Federation) to the 1908 Chicago convention of the SPA. Watia provides a number of interesting details about the oriigin of the Finnish movement inside the SPA, noting the pivotal decisions of the Federation’s 1906 convention which set the table for closer participation of the organization with the party. Watia reveals that the concept of a “Translator” emerged spontaneously in several states of the upper midwest, in which Finnish socialists found themselves in need of assistance converting documents between Finnish and English and employed their own translators. The Finnish organization determined to establish the post of National Translator and made every effort to have this individual located inside SPA headquarters for convenience. This office soon came to serve as the central office of the Finnish organization itself. Watia notes the mutually beneficial nature of this post and advocates the placing of skilled SPA organizers in the field among the various language groups and committing itself to develop Translators for other language groups desiring them. Also includes the budget of the Finnish federation for first 16 months of its affiliation with the SPA (which began Jan. 1, 1907). Watia’s report includes a lengthy prohibition resolution of the Finnish Federation which caused Victor Berger to get grumpy.

 

Report of Committee on Foreign Speaking Organizations to the National Convention of the Socialist Party, May 17, 1908. Committee report to the 1908 SPA Convention in Chicago, delivered by S.A. Knopfnagel. The Committee advocated the acceptance of all foreign language organizations seeking affiliation with the Socialist Party, subject to 5 conditions: “ (1) They are composed of Socialist Party members only. (2) Any foreign speaking organization having a national form of organization of its own be recognized only if all the branches composing this organization having been chartered by the national, state, or local Socialist Party organizations, and pay their dues to the respective Socialist Party organizations. (3) No foreign speaking organization asking the Socialist Party for recognition shall issue their own particular national, state, or local charters. Same to be issued only by the respective organizations of the Socialist Party, as the case may require. (4) All foreign speaking organizations affiliated with the Socialist Party must and shall conform in every respect with the Socialist Party national, state, and local constitutions, platforms, and resolutions. (5) They should function only as agitation, education, and organization bureaus of the Socialist Party.” Includes an amendment made from the floor but not published in the SP’s Official Bulletin (probably due to incompetence rather than malice) prohibiting the refusal of admission to the SPA on account of race or language.

 

A Short Speech Amongst Friends: Girard, Kansas—May 21, 1908, by Eugene V. Debs After the conclusion of the 1908 Socialist Party convention in Chicago, a number of prominent Socialists made their way to southeastern Kansas to tour the new facilities of The Appeal to Reason. A cake and ice cream banquet was arranged bringing together leading Girard Socialists with their out of town guests, including the party’s recently renominated Presidential standard bearer, Gene Debs. An Appeal to Reason stenographer was present to record the evening for posterity, the proceedings published as a small circulation souvenir pamphlet. This is the full transcript of Debs’ remarks to the gathering. Debs likens the former hostility and later acceptance of anti-slavery forces among the people of Kansas to the current warming of popular temperament towards Socialism and Socialists. He also likens the fellowship of assembled Socialists to the human relations that will be evident in the Socialist society of the future: “We may not live to see the full fruition of our work, nor does it matter; so insidiously can a man feel Socialism, so completely consecrated can he be to the Cause of Socialism that he lives within the realization of it, even now.” As is often the case with Debs, quasi-religious sentiment abounds: “Looking into your faces and catching your spirit I feel myself rising to exaltation. Socialism to us is something more than a mere conviction. It courses in our veins; it throbs in our hearts; it fires and sanctifies our souls; and it consecrates us to the service of humanity.”

 

JUNE

The Terror, by James Oneal [event of June 1908] Although perhaps slightly fictionalized for the allegorical telling, this short work by Socialist Party activist James Oneal detailing a June 1908 lynch mob which he witnessed stands as his most compelling piece of writing. First published in 1909, this powerful story was reprinted by the New York Call’s Sunday magazine in September 1918.

 

The Failure to Attain Socialist Unity, by Frank Bohn [June 1908] This article by former SLP member and current IWW activist Frank Bohn states that “unity of the Socialist movement should undoubtedly have been attained in 1901. Failure to secure the desired end by all of the then existing factions was due to a wrong position taken by some comrades, who will now pretty generally admit their error.” Despite its “correct” tactical position since the convention of 1900, the Socialist Labor Party had failed to grow organizationally due to the attempt to separate its veteran revolutionary socialist membership from the rest of the movement, which was evolving towards its orientation, as well as an attempt to “draw about itself the veil of absolute sanctity,” Bohn states, adding “The scientific truths at the bottom of the revolutionary upsweep were made over into the mumbled litany of a sectarian clique.” Bohn states that in addition, the SLP used “wrong methods” of propaganda and organization: “Men and women who will develop into revolutionists worthwhile to the movement are sure to demand respect and decent treatment from their teachers while they are learning. This consideration the honest utopians and reformers in the movement (and all of us were such) have never received from The People, by which the work of the SLP is ever judged.” In a second section of the article, Bohn relates the parable of the field, in which a “quack doctor” [DeLeon] and his servants, together with a number of energetic young men, fence themselves off from the rest of the community and stunt their own crops in the process—the useful members of the community ultimately leaving through a hole in the fence to join the others while the “quack doctor” hides himself away in a patch of poison ivy with his retainers. “In the IWW we who uphold political action find no difficulty in working with those who do not. On the political field we industrialists can surely labor with equal success beside those who do not realize the efficiency and the ultimate revolutionary purpose of industrial unionism. For these reasons members of the IWW who favor political action should support the Socialist Party,” Bohn concludes.

 

SEPTEMBER

“The State Convention: What the Socialists Did at Jefferson City — Delegates Pleased with Growth — The State Platform,” by Phil A. Hafner [c. Sept. 10, 1908] Participant’s account of the 1908 state convention of the Socialist Party of Missouri, as published in the small circulation Scott County Kicker of Benton, MO. Editor Hafner notes the convergence of 5 political parties simultaneously at the state capital of Jefferson City for political conventions. Each were addressed by a representative of the Woman’s Suffrage League of St. Louis and asked to instruct their elected candidates to support women’s right to vote in the state at the next meeting of the legislative assembly. It seems the Socialists and the People’s Party resolved as such, with the Democratic, Republican, and Prohibition parties rejecting the suggestion. Hafter also notes the way the party delicately worked around a new state law which would have stripped the rank-and-file of the ability to elect the party’s officers by referendum and notes the adoption of a state platform for the Socialist Party of Missouri.

 

OCTOBER

“How I Became a Socialist Agitator,” by Kate Richards O’Hare [October 1908] Autobiographical sketch by professional Socialist organizer and journalist Kate Richards O’Hare about her early life and decision to live the life of a touring radical agitator. Beginning life on the ranch of a reasonably successful Kansas rancher, O’Hare recalls that the economic crisis of 1887 caused her family to lose its Kansas homestead and forced her father to become a wage-worker in Kansas City. Although recovering his financial position somewhat, the experience left the young Kate Richards scarred. After time as a religious zealot in the temperance movement, Richards came to understand that the liquor trade and prostitution were effects rather than causes of poverty and she began to look for solutions in other places. She pushed until she was eventually allowed to become an apprentice machinist, which gave her entre into the trade union and eventually the Socialist movements, with a speech by Mother Jones reckoned as of particular importance. Richards met Coming Nation and Appeal to Reason publisher Julius Wayland and eventually became in a school for the training of Socialist party workers in Girard, Kansas underwritten by Wayland and taught by Walter Thomas Mills. It was there where Richards met her husband, Frank O’Hare, a fellow student. Upon completion of the course at Mills’ school the pair embarked on seven years as touring socialist agitators.

DECEMBER

The Tour of the Red Special,” by Charles Lapworth [Dec. 1908] Large graphic pdf file, 9.2 megs. This is a copiously illustrated participant’s memoir of Eugene V. Debs’ memorable 1908 Presidential campaign, during which a special train was chartered and toured coast-to-coast in support of the Socialist Party of America’s electoral program and ticket. Lapworth indicates that SPA Executive Secretary J. Mahlon Barnes was the individual who conceived of the special Socialist campaign train and A.M. Simons the one who devised the moniker “Red Special.” The debs train traveled from Chicago to the Pacific coast, back to the Midwest and then along the East Coast, drawing enthusiastic crowds wherever it went. Riding the train along with Debs and a bevy of Socialist Party worthies was a brass band which entertained crowds at campaign stops. Anecdotes about various campaign stops make this a significant primary source material for historians of 20th Century American socialism.

 

The Tour of the Red Special, by Charles Lapworth [Dec. 1908] This is a valuable primary source document, a participant’s account of the famed Socialist Party Presidential “Red Special” of 1908. This lengthy memoir from the pages of The International Socialist Review is in addition rather fun to read — its colloquial tone and sometimes snide commentary not entirely dissimilar in form from a punk rock tour diary from a 1990s fanzine. The Red Special, a chartered train which crisscrossed the country in the late summer and early fall of 1908, was met everywhere by large and enthusiastic crowds, many of whom paid admissions to hear silver-tonged Presidential candidate Gene Debs and other Socialist luminaries expound upon the party program. Speeches from the train at depots across the nation were additionally coordinated with successful evening meetings, Lapworth makes clear. The result was an explosion of excitement and energy around the Socialist Party campaign (albeit not reflected in the disappointing 1908 Socialist Presdidential vote count). The Red Special’s very real media success has been emulated over the years by “whistle stop” tours of the candidates of the two major parties and additionally finds its echo each campaign season as primary candidates charter busses and planes and crisscross the nation attempting to generate media attention with their sundry road extravaganzas.

 

Words of History: From the Annual Report (1907-08) of the Editor and Manager of St. Louis Labor which was Read at Last Year’s Annual General Meeting of Local St. Louis and Adopted by G.A. Hoehn [Dec. 13, 1908] Valuable history of the early period of the socialist press in the German-American mecca of St. Louis, Missouri, written by veteran party editor G.A. Hoehn. Hoehn, a German immigrant born in 1865, recounts the first German socialist newspapers in the city, the Volkstimme des Westens (People’s Voice of the West) (c. 1877-c. 1880) and the St. Louis Tageblatt (St. Louis Daily Gazette) (1888-1897). The first English-language paper, according to Hoehn, was the original St. Louis Labor, edited by Albert E. Sanderson (1893-1896). Hoehn explains the proliferation of SLP papers of this period using the name Labor: “Later this publication developed into a Socialist Newspaper Union with special editions for 34 cities, some of which were Chicago; Milwaukee; St. Paul; Buffalo, Troy, NY; Boston, Holyoke, Manchester, Adams, Mass.; San Antonio, Texas; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Pueblo [CO]; Lincoln, Neb.; and other cities. St. Louis remained the headquarters of the Socialist Newspaper Union. For three years these publications, which had a joint circulation of over 6,000 [sic.?], did good work.” A demonstrably incorrect version of events leading in the transition from the Social Democratic Party paper Missouri Socialist to the second iteration of St. Louis Labor follows. Hoehn hints at disarray within the seemingly solid ranks of Local St. Louis, declaring: “we cannot tolerate the DeLeonistic and Anarchistic work which some of our ward clubs have pleased to carry on for a number of years, much to the detriment and injury of our general party movement and our local Socialist press.”

1909

NO DATE

1909 Average Paid Membership by States, Socialist Party of America.

JANUARY

The Party Referendum by E.E. Carr [Jan. 1, 1909] This article by Rev. E.E. Carr, editor of The Christian Socialist, demonstrates that there was a tradition of inner-party factional campaigning within the Socialist Party years before the abrogated National Executive Committee election of 1919—which was set aside by the outgoing NEC on the various pretexts of factional membership organization within the party, existence of slates and bloc voting, and purported election fraud. Carr endorses the re-election of Victor Berger, Carl Thompson, Graham Phelps-Stokes, and John Work—considering the re-election of Morris Hillquit, Algie Simons, and A.H. Floaten assured. Carr also lends his support to the re-election campaign of J. Mahlon Barnes as Executive Secretary of the party, noting that “he has been faithful, fair, and efficient in that office...” Seemingly without noting the contradiction of his own factional organization in order to defeat factional organization, Carr notes that “a freer and more general comment in all our papers concerning the fitness of candidates would be decidedly helpful to the party, and it is the only way to prevent dangerous cliques. Some who oppose an open discussion of these matters are the very ones who are most incessant at star-chamber scheming—and open discussions are likely to upset their secret plans!”

 

March

In Memoriam: Comrade Anna Ferry Smith Died in San Diego, Cal., by G.A. Hoehn [March 6, 1909] Memorial for Anna Ferry Smith, one of the 33 delegates that split the 1898 convention of the Social Democracy in June 1898 over the question of political action v. colonization to form the Social Democratic Party — one of the forerunner organizations of the Socialist Party of America. Hoehn, founding editor of the St. Louis Arbeiter-Zeitung, the city’s socialist weekly established in August 1898, recalls Smith’s role as a founder of the Socialist movement in St. Louis and recounts a humorous episode of her defeat of a cockroach infestation at party headquarters. Also included is a reprint of a memorial by Francis M. Elliott from the Appeal to Reason, which lauded the “impulsive, combative, Celtic” Comrade Smith as “one of the grand apostles of human liberty, whose presence may be divinely discerned far out upon the frontier of human progress in every age of man.” Bedridden in her last years, Smith had managed to fulfill her final wish of seeing Gene Debs nominated for President in 1908 and learning the “disappointing results of that contest.”

 

APRIL

Socialist Party Membership Data: A survey circulated in 1908. Compiled by Emma Pischel. In December 1907, the NEC of the Socialist Party determined to survey the entire party membership in attempt to better understand the social composition and demographic makeup of the organization. While certain state organizations in the industrial Northeast (MA, NJ, CT) and the Socialist strongholds of Wisconsin and Oklahoma and the big Western state of California did not respond, an excellent sample of over 15% of party members did. This document quantifies the 6,310 survey replies and provides an unparalleled quantitative snapshot of the Debsian Socialist Party. The first myth smashed by the 1908 membership survey is the tendentious assertion that the Socialist Party was little more than a conglomeration of shopkeepers and professionals. Nearly 2/3 of survey respondents were of the proletariat—with “craftsmen” outnumbering “laborers” by a margin of 2-1, both of these groups dwarfing the number of transportation workers. Another 17% of respondents were farmers—a percentage probably slightly inflated by the lack of participation in the survey by the various industrial centers. Less than 10% of the party was involved in commerce and less than 5% in professional occupations, according to the survey. The second myth shattered by the 1908 survey was the depiction of the Debsian SPA as comprised of innumerable youthful idealists and few greyheads. An astounding 70% of survey respondents were over the age of 30, with over 30% of the party over the age of 45. The survey also shows that over 3/4 of survey respondents were of American birth and that the most widely subscribed Socialist publication—by a wide margin—was The Appeal to Reason, with nearly 2/3 of respondents receiving that publication each week. Also interesting (given the Socialist movement’s obsession with the medium) is the very low efficacy of leaflets in the swaying of political views, with less than 5% listing this as their own factor of primary importance.

 

MAY

 

Fred Warren Convicted by a Packed Jury,” by Eugene V. Debs [May 15, 1909] Radical journalism by Socialist publicist Eugene Debs of the Appeal to Reason editorial staff. In 1907, Appeal to Reason Editor Fred D. Warren sent out a mailer offering to pay a $1,000 reward for anyone capturing and returning fugitive ex-Governor Taylor to Kentucky, where he was under indictment for murder— an attempt to ironically play upon the fact that the Supreme Court of the United States had earlier refused to rule on the legality of the kidnapping and transportation to Idaho of William D. Haywood, Charles Moyer, and George Pettibone of the Western Federation of Miners in a sensational and thoroughly politicized murder trial. Some two years later, in 1909,.a new Republican Governor of Kentucky had pardoned his predecessor freeing the federal government’ s hand to move against Editor Warren, charging him with violation of federal postal regulations. Debs charges that the federal marshal had packed the jury pool and that the post office inspector serving as the chief prosecution witness had lied under oath to influence the jury. In addition, Debs charges that the name of the recipient of the single letter which purportedly triggered the proceeding was a fictional creation of the authorities— that no one had ever heard of “Pierson” of California, nor did any such name appeal on the mailing roles of The Appeal. “The fact is the prosecution had no evidence at all, or anything worthy to be called by that name. It was the flimsiest case ever tried outside of a mock court,” Debs states. Despite the packed jury, division resulted in a 22 hour deliberation before a guilty verdict was returned, Debs notes.

 

Trial and Conviction of Fred D. Warren: Summary of the Celebrated Case— Liberty of the Press the Issue— Two Years in the Federal Courts and the Motive Behind It,” by Eugene V. Debs [May 22, 1909] This follow-up article on the sensational May 1909 trial of Appeal to Reason editor Fred Warren emphasizes the central issue of the affair— freedom of the press. “The specific charge in the indictment was that Warren had violated the federal statute prohibiting the mailing of ‘ scurrilous, defamatory, and threatening matter.’ ” By no stretch of the imagination can the matter complained of be construed as having any such meaning,” Debs states. Debs charges that the entire affair was little more than a premeditated political hit against the Appeal, noting that several costly continuances had been granted the prosecution and quoting an unnamed federal official who stated that “if The Appeal could be reached in no other way it could be kept in court indefinitely and loaded with fees and costs until ‘ the damned reptile was bled to death.’ ” Debs is emphatic that “Without The Appeal to Reason this case would never have been heard of. Warren might have deposited the same envelope in the post office every day to the end of his life and no grand jury would ever have dreamed of indicting him.”

 

Constitution of the Christian Socialist Fellowship: Adopted at the 4th General Conference, Toledo, OH—May 29, 1909, The controversial 4th General Conference of the Christian Socialist Fellowship attempted to ameliorate a growing factional controversy between its feuding New York and Chicago affiliates. It also enacted this new constitution for the organization, which at this time had approximately 525 members. The new constitution once again depicted the class struggle as a problem to be rectified rather than an immutable part of capitalism, expressing the object of the CSF as follows: "To proclaim Socialism to churches and other religious organizations; to show the necessity of Socialism to the complete triumph of Christianity; to end the class struggle by establishing industrial and political democracy; and to hasten the reign of justice and brotherhood—the Kingdom of God on earth." Under the new constitution, dues were raised and made payable monthly and the structure and role of local, district, and state organizations were defined for the first time. The size of the governing General Executive Committee was additionally cut in half, from 50 to 25 members.

 

JUNE

 

Letter to Fred D. Warren in Girard, KS from Eugene V. Debs in Terre Haute, IN, circa June 8, 1909.” This letter from Debs to Appeal to Reason Editor Fred Warren (not published in the 3 volume collection of Debs’ letters) offers Debs’ views on the sensational assertion made in the paper the previous week that federal authorities were planning a lawsuit against Debs and publisher Julius Wayland for libel for charging that the jury pool in the Warren trial had been hand-picked by the federal marshal to include all Republicans. Debs writes: “As for having libeled the marshal that is uproariously funny. If he brings that action I will give him his money’ s worth. I already know a good deal about him and his record and I have it very straight. I will make it my business to get the rest if he opens fire. My only concern in the case is The Appeal. For myself I do not care. I know they can send me to the pen if they want to, but that will matter very little. We are in this fight and it is just beginning and some of us will have to go and it might as well be myself as anybody else. But I am thinking about what effect it will have on The Appeal?” However, Debs believes that the government’ s backdoor effort to silence the country’ s biggest and most influential Socialist newspaper through trumped up legal actions will be unsuccessful. “The only consideration with the administration and its corporation supporters is the breaking of The Appeal and I’ ll stake anything I have that they can not do it. If the government brings these suits The Appeal will gain more than it will lose,” Debs declares.

 

AUGUST

 

“Where Do We Stand On the Woman Question?” by Theresa Malkiel [Aug. 1909] Former garment worker turned Socialist journalist Theresa Malkiel takes aim at Socialist Party weakness and inconsistency on the so-called “Woman Question,” declaring that “in the heat of the battle for human freedom the proletarians seem to forget that the woman question is nothing more or less than a question of human rights.” Malkiel hits Italian socialist Enrico Ferri and others of his mindset for their contention that equality of the sexes is an assertion which “cannot possibly be maintained.” Rather, the backwards place of women in science and the arts is but a reflection of “woman’s long subjection” which has stilted intellectual development among many, Malkiel argues. Working women find themselves between two fires, Malkiel indicates, capitalists intent on forestalling female emancipation on the one hand, male workers on the other, “utterly listless to the outcome of her struggle.” As for the Socialist Party, Malkiel indicates that only 2,000 of 50,000 party members (4%) are female. “We will not achieve any considerable progress until our men will change their views as to woman’s scope of activity in the movement,” Malkiel insists.

 

OCTOBER

 

“The Danger of Centralized Power,” by W.J. Bell [Oct. 1909] A critique of the fundamental structure of the Socialist Party by Texas organizer W.J. Bell. Basing his argument on the axioms that “centralization spells autocracy” while “decentralization spells democracy,” Bell argues that the history of the left wing labor movement has been marked by the damaging effects of centralization, particularly in the cases of the Socialist Labor Party and the Knights of Labor. Hearing from non-party members complaints of possible bureaucratic danger in the event of Socialist Party victory, Bell advises the neutralization of this critique by an immediate attack upon centralization in the structure of the Socialist Party itself. Bell advocates the SPA emulate the Republican Party in adjourning its National Committee and abolishing its National Executive Committee, leaving party affairs and the bulk of party dues payments in the hands of the autonomous state organizations, which he indicates utilize propaganda funds far more efficiently. Bell further argues that the Socialist Party should follow the example of the Cigar Makers’ International Union by abolishing costly and inherently unrepresentative national conventions, replacing these with expanded membership referenda.

 

NOVEMBER

“What is the Matter with the Socialist Party?,” by Charles H. Kerr [Nov. 1909] The Communist movement did not magically materialize from thin air in 1919; it had deep roots in American radicalism older than the Socialist Party of America from whence it emerged. One might reasonably argue that the historic trend which lead to the 1919 split began with the disappointing performance of the SPA in the 1908 electoral campaign. This editorial by Charles H. Kerr in The International Socialist Review gives voice to the proto-communist revolutionary socialist wing inside the Socialist Party: “Long enough we have cringed before the aristocracy of labor begging for votes that we did not get. Long enough we have experimented with ‘immediate demands’ that might swell our apparent strength by winning the votes of people opposed to revolution. The time has come for the proletarians of the party and those who believe the party should be proletarian in its tactics to bring about a revolution in the party. Let us not withdraw...but take possession. Let us put wage-workers on the National Executive Committee. Let us cut the “immediate demands” out of our platform and leave reformers to wrangle over reforms. Let us make our chief task to spread the propaganda of revolution and of the new industrial unionism, and when we elect members of our own class to office, let us instruct them that their most important work is to hamper the ruling class in the war it will be waging on the revolutionary unions.”

 

DECEMBER

1909 Average Paid Membership by States, Socialist Party of America. Alphabetical listing of official state-by-state totals of average paid membership in the SPA. Data for all 41 organized states is included. Top five state memberships included New York (4,333), Illinois (3,517), Pennsylvania (3,266), Massachusetts (2,526), and Ohio (2,512). Other states with over 1,000 members included: California, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Texas, Michigan, Kansas, and Missouri. A total of 41 states were organized by the SPA. Weakest of the organized states was Vermont, with an average paid monthly membership of 82.

 

Socialist Propaganda Through Moving Pictures, by J. Mahlon Barnes [Dec. 11, 1909] Perhaps the earliest effort of the American socialist movement to make use of motion pictures for propaganda purposes was the Adrem Company, an unfruitful and obscure 1909 effort by Socialist Party National Secretary J. Mahlon Barnes and others to establish a socialist movie house in Chicago, for which it was planned to produce propaganda films. “This way to the minds of men and women means converts by the thousands, where cold logic and a windy corner would not hold a corporal’s guard,” Barnes hopefully speculates. Declaring the moving picture to be “a medium as mighty as the daily newspaper,” Barnes even proposes the radical new idea of the newsreel (created in France in 1908): “It is even possible to picture the tragedies of a big city upon the very day that they have happened. Photographs are taken, rushed to the studio, printed upon films, and thrown upon the screens before eager audiences within a few hours after their actual occurrence.” The Adrem Company was to donate 50% of it profits to the Socialist Party, Barnes indicates, clearly implying the remaining 50% distributed to owners of $1 “profit-sharing certificates.”

 

“State Platform of the Socialist Party of Oklahoma: Adopted at the Annual State Convention, Oklahoma City — Dec. 28-29, 1909.” The frontier state of Oklahoma was one of the greatest hotbeds of Socialist activity in the United States during the first two decades of the 20th Century. This document, the 1910 state platform of the Socialist Party of Oklahoma, helps to illustrate the source of organizational strength — a strong commitment to agricultural reform. Opening with a declaration that the SPO a “party of the working class” committed to the principles of International Socialism, the program abstractly expresses a goal of “socializing the means of production,” but advances a minimum program only calling for the establishment of state sawmills, cement plants, coal mines, and gas and oil wells. The bulk of the document is dedicated to various plans for land acquisition by the state, the construction of model farms, establishment of state disaster insurance for farmers, construction of state grain elevators, and state finance of mortgages for homes, warehouses, and the purchase of farmland.

 

A Matter of Vital Importance, by E.H. Thomas [Dec. 31, 1909] Rotation of candidates in office is dismissed as a capitalist principle, a fad, and a tool for the radical left wing of the Socialist Party of America to take over the organization in this short piece by Elizabeth H. Thomas — already for a decade the State Secretary of the Social Democratic of Wisconsin. Thomas points to the experience of the German, Belgian, and Austrian socialist parties in keeping “able, faithful, and experienced leaders” in positions of trust. The governing National Executive Committee of the SPA, consisting of right wing socialists Robert Hunter, Algie Simons, Victor Berger, and John Spargo, and centrist Morris Hillquit is just such a collection of “tried and true veterans” worthy of return to office in the “present crisis” — to whom she would add Wisconsin’s own Rev. Carl D. Thompson to fill the vacancy left by the departure of left winger A.H. Floaten. “Comrades, this is no time to experiment with the party... Preserve the Socialist Party!” Thomas vigorously declares.

 

1910

JANUARY

“Vote Catching Amendments,” by C.W. Barzee [Jan. 20, 1910] Letter to the editor of the Chicago Daily Socialist by a top leader of the Socialist Party of Oregon. Although himself closely identified with the “constructive socialist” rather than “revolutionary socialist” wing of the SP, Barzee is sharply critical of watering down the Socialist Party platform in an effort to win the electoral support of disaffected members of the Democratic Party. Barzee declares that a Socialist is one who “understands the Marxian theory of surplus value as operated through the profit system and opposes it for the purpose of destroying that feature of our social condition.” “We do not want any other kind of votes for our party,” he insists, explaining that election before “the people understand what they want and why they want it” would be disastrous, resulting in office without the capacity to initiate actual systemic change. “The party will...succeed to the government function when the evolution of society demands it and it would be folly to place it there before that time,” Barzee declares.

 

“Platform and Municipal Program of the Public Ownership (Socialist) Party of Duluth.” [Jan. 29, 1910] Rare 1910 civic platform of the Socialist Party of Duluth, Minnesota. After a short exposition of the definition of capitalism and the nature of the socialist critique, a short and highly ameliorative civic platform is offered — despite having acknowledged “the impossibility of expecting any fundamentally beneficial results by the mere capture of control in a municipality.” Demands include the universal franchise for women, appointment of municipal factory inspectors, abolition of child labor, establishment of a free city hospital, expansion of public library hours, and the extension of education and culture to the entire population.

 

MARCH

 

“What Socialists Can Do in Office,” by John C. Chase [March 26, 1910] With an election for Chicago City Council around the corner — a race in which the Socialist Party backed an earnest slate of candidates — former Socialist Mayor of Haverhill, Massachusetts John C. Chase was called upon to rally the troops against discouragement in the Chicago Daily Socialist. In opposing the notion that “it is no use to vote for Socialist candidates because they cannot be elected, or because they cannot do anything if elected,” Chase contends that to the contrary elected Socialists “always succeed in forcing through many ordinances and laws that better the condition of the workers.” Chase lists some such achievements in Massachusetts, which included establishment of an 8-hour day for city workers and the forced reduction of natural gas rates in Haverhill, MA, and a right to picket during strikes and to force those soliciting strike replacement workers to make note of the existence of a strike in their ads and solicitations. Chase contend that the election of just two Socialists to the Chicago City Council will have the effect of forcing passage of legislation benefiting the working class for the first time in the city’s history.

 

APRIL

 

Chicago Labor Breaks with Old Parties as J. Fitzpatrick Balks: President of Body Refuses to Carry Out Decision in Resolution.” [event of April 17, 1910] The fiasco of 1923-24 involving the Workers Party of America, Chicago Federation of Labor chief John Fitzpatrick, and the Farmer-Labor Party is well known through the telling of historian Theodore Draper in his seminal Roots of American Communism. What is less well known is the backstory. This 1910 article from The Chicago Daily Socialist marks the first time the powerful CFL went on the record as endorsing “independent political action” (i.e. a Labor Party) in opposition to the accepted idea of the Samuel Gompers-led American Federation of Labor, supporting individual allies and punishing individual foes within the two party system. Instructed to support this new CFL agenda at a forthcoming Farmers Convention to be held in St. Louis, CFL President and convention delegate elect flatly refused the instruction (and by extension the Labor Party idea) rather than potentially cross swords with the Gompers-led AFL officialdom. An attempt to reconsider the endorsement of a Labor Party in the wake of Fitzpatrick’s refusal was narrowly turned aside, leaving the CFL on the record for a Labor Party and opposed to the Gompers old parties political strategy, with Fitzpatrick remaining in Gompers’ camp.

 

“New Awakening for Socialism in Cleveland: Future is Bright for Workers’ Party in Big Ohio City,” by C.E. Ruthenberg [April 18, 1910] One of the earliest published writings of future Cleveland Socialist Party and national Communist Party leader C.E. Ruthenberg. The 28-year old Ruthenberg, at the time of this writing a member of the SPA for about 16 months, spins the recent defeat of reform Mayor of Cleveland Tom Johnson as the removal of a severe “handicap” which had confronted the Socialist Party in the city. Ruthenberg paints a rosy picture of the development of the Cleveland party, including its employment of a paid field organizer, its launching of a professional literature agent (to be paid from book sales), its regular monitoring of the meetings of the Cleveland City Council, and its organization of a lecture bureau. Credit is given to Max S. Hayes’ labor weekly The Cleveland Citizen for its support of SP organizing efforts in the city. The recent electoral triumph of the Socialist Party in the city of Milwaukee is cited as an inspiration and a model by Ruthenberg, who indicates that the party’s victory had “filled our hearts with the knowledge that if we persevere, if we march on, fighting at every step to build up a better, stronger, more virile and aggressive organization of the working class, in the end we will reach our goal.”

 

MAY

“Hoboed Over 8,000 Miles,” by Thomas J. Mooney [May 1910] An article weird and wonderful from the pages of The International Socialist Review. In 1910-11, the P.T. Barnum of American Socialism, Gaylord Wilshire, conducted an 11 month long subscription-selling contest with the lucky winner to receive a trip around the world. The battle of the socialist salesmen shook down to a head to head competition between SP National Organizer George Goebel and an unknown young man from San Francisco named Thomas J. Mooney—this well prior to the latter’s de facto martyrdom as America’s most famous class-war prisoner in 1916. Mooney describes his more than six month investment, riding the rails throughout the west from town to town selling newspaper subscriptions, “over the deserts of Utah, California, and Nevada in scorching suns of July and August; through October and November rains in Oregon and Washington; and worst of all the ice and snow and sometimes zero weather of December and January in Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada.” He contrasts this life of privation to that of his competitor, Goebel, who traveled the country on the Socialist Party’s dime as part of his paid employment, bending the contest rules. As a desperation measure, Mooney wrote this letter to ISR in an effort to garner Wilshire’s subscriptions on his behalf. An interesting sidebar to the political biography of Tom Mooney... Includes a photograph of the young Mr. Mooney and a “To Whom It May Concern” testimonial letter written by Gene Debs on his behalf.

Finns Have a Plan for Socialist Work: Difficulties of the Foreign-Speaking People Pointed Out and Remedy Suggested by J. Louis Engdahl. Published May 11, 1910. One of the most interesting and vital questions to come before the National Congress of the Socialist Party next week will be the attempt to better define the relations between the English and foreigns peaking Socialist organizations in the United States.

 

“’Opportunist’ Possibilities vs. ’Impossibilist’ Inevitabilities,” by G.H. Lockwood [May 2, 1910] With a national convention looming, Socialist Party of Michigan State Secretary G.H. Lockwood is asked for a short report on party activities in his state for publication by the Chicago Daily Socialist. Instead, Lockwood responds with an intriguing analysis of the latest permutation of the perennial left-right split of the American radical movement. Identifying the two positions by the mildly pejorative terms “Opportunist” and “Impossibilist,” Lockwood acknowledges the recent victory of the Milwaukee Socialists in the April 1910 elections as the “opportunity of the opportunists,” and advises the left to withhold judgment until the experiment is fully tried, although he indicates the inevitable outcome is a “clean capitalistic administration” amidst the ongoing wage system and the class struggle. Lockwood, a self-described revolutionary Socialist, details the ideology of the “impossibilists” in some detail, declaring that “very little can be gained by Socialists trying to administer the capitalists’ political machinery” and professing a fundamental belief that the capitalist state was unceasingly “evolving the methods of its own destruction.” Lockwood expresses a fear that the Socialist victory in Milwaukee will launch a feeding frenzy among self-appointed party “leaders” to win ultimately ineffectual municipal elections. “A more hopeful sign to me than the questionable victory in Milwaukee is the growth of the spirit of solidarity among the working class as manifest by the frequent sympathetic strikes and the tendency towards industrial unionism,” Lockwood declares.

 

“Stories of an Agitator: Albert Parsons,” by Ralph Korngold [May 11, 1910] Possibly apocryphal and certainly inadequately documented memoir of social revolutionist and Haymarket martyr Albert Parsons from his period in hiding following the 1886 bombing. The individual who gave verbal testimony to Socialist Party organizer Ralph Korngold claimed that Parsons had been a friend of his father “Charlie” and that Parsons had spent his time holed up in an upper floor room of the family’s home on a Wisconsin farm. Parsons had decided to turn himself in over his disquiet over life in hiding and a desire to be with his comrades in distress at trial in Chicago — despite having been warned by his benefactor Charlie that surrender would mean death. According to this account, Parsons had sought for Charlie to turn him in for the $5,000 reward offered so that he might pay off his mortgage and give financial aid to his children, but Charlie had flatly refused to participate in gaining such “blood money” and Parsons had turned himself in alone.

 

The Rise of Factory Agriculture and Other Current Trends: Draft Report of the Committee on Farms of the Socialist Party of America,” by A.M. Simons [May 16, 1910] A.M. Simons was the leading agricultural expert in firmament of the Socialist Party during its first decade — a figure roughly comparable to Harold Ware and later Lem Harris in the Communist Party in later decades. This is the working draft of a report to be made to the forthcoming 1910 “National Congress” of the Socialist Party. Simons emphatically sees no trend towards concentration in agricultural production, stating that average farm size appears smaller than ever. He does note at length, however, the growth of factory methods of production, based largely upon the expanded outlay of capital necessary for the purchase of agricultural machinery and artificial fertilizer — components which he argues make the physical soil itself less important as a primary component. Similarly, Simons argues, perfection of livestock breeding and the science of meat production was lending itself to the increase of factory methods in animal husbandry. Simons notes that free lands had vanished and land prices begun to skyrocket, reducing the possibility of impoverished workers beginning a new life as farmers. He envisions a growth in both the quantity and potential for organization of agricultural laborers. Simons indicates that modern farm organizations such as the American Society of Equity and the Farmers’ Union were taking a page from the playbook of organized labor and seeking to maintain higher prices for their products through a control of supply, dismissing the strategies employed in a previous generation by the Grange and Farmers’ Alliance. He notes an objective connection between the interests of organized farmers and organized workers and the potential for close political cooperation. Included is the full Farmers’ Program of the Socialist Party of Oklahoma, which Simons advocates as a model for national consideration and possible emulation, forged as it was through actual political practice rather than abstract theoretical contemplation.

 

Woman and the National Socialist Congress, by Theresa Malkiel [May 31, 1910] While the relationship between the Communist Party in the 1930s and ’40s with the black liberation movement has been detailed at length in the literature, less attention has been paid to the connection between the Socialist Party of the first two decades of the 20th Century and the women’s movement of the day. Former clothing worker turned Socialist journalist Theresa Malkiel offers this enthusiastic estimate of the Socialist Party’s commitment to equal rights for female citizens, as witnessed at the recently concluded national congress of the party in Chicago. Malkiel praises the willingness of male socialists to place their female comrades in positions of authority — not as a “gift of mercy,” but through honest trust. Both the female delegates to the convention and the males working with them behaved effectively and professionally, with the women demonstrating ability and judgment and the men receiving their comments with interest and attention. “Every man present recognized the disadvantages the working woman was doomed to find herself in as long as she remained a political nonentity, and all like one displayed a spirit of revolt against this unjust deprivation. Their determination to work for woman’s enfranchisement was at once self-evident,” Malkiel observes.

 

AUGUST

“Accident Insurance and Political Action,” by Charles Ruthenberg. [Aug. 1910] A very early example (from his second year of SPA membership) of the writing of Cleveland Socialist C.E. Ruthenberg, later the head of the Workers (Communist) Party. “The industries of the United States kill, injure, and maim twice as many workers in proportion to the number at work as any other civilized country.... The capitalist class knows no other law than the law of profits... The workers have the power to place on the statute books a compulsory insurance law, but they cannot secure such a law by voting for the candidates nominated by parties owned and controlled by their employers.”

 

SEPTEMBER

“Working Class Politics: Extracts of a Campaign Speech for Local Cook Co. SPA at Riverview Park, Chicago, Sept. 18, 1910,” by Eugene V. Debs Debs launches the 1910 fall campaign for Local Cook County, Socialist Party with a rousing speech to the faithful. Debs declares that the millions of wage workers have common economic interests, regardless of nationality, race, or sex, and that it is only the “ignorance” of the working class majority which enables the ruling capitalist minority to keep them in subjugation. “The primary need of the workers is industrial unity and by this I mean their organization in the industries in which they are employed as a whole instead of being separated into more or less impotent unions according to their crafts,” Debs argues. This move from the hundreds of competing craft unions to large industrial unions is seen by Debs as essential: “So long as the workers are content with conditions as they are, so long as they are satisfied to belong to a craft union under the leadership of those who are far more interested in drawing their own salaries and feathering their own nests with graft than in the welfare of their followers, so long, in a word, as the workers are meek and submissive followers, mere sheep, they will be fleeced...” Emancipation is in the hands of the working class, Debs believes: “The workers themselves must take the initiative in uniting their forces for effective economic and political action; the leaders will never do it for them.” While the Socialist Party is declared to be the political arm of labor, “the new order can never be established by mere votes alone,” says Debs. Instead, “this must be the result of industrial development and intelligent economic and political organization, necessitating both the industrial union and the political party of the workers to achieve their emancipation.”

 

OCTOBER

“Conference of the Polish Socialist Organizations: National Headquarters, Socialist Party of America: Chicago—Oct. 29, 1910: Minutes by Mabel H. Hudson, Secretary” The year 1910 saw a move for admittance to the Socialist Party by the Polish Socialist Alliance [Zwiazek Socjalisów Polskich—ZSP], which sought to join the Polish Socialist Section [Zwiazek Polskiej Partii Socjalistyczne—ZPPS] in the ranks of the Socialist Party of America. A conference of the two organizations and NEC member George Goebel was held in Chicago on Oct. 29, 1910 to discuss possible obstacles to the ZSP’s joining the Socialist Party. Chief among ZSP concerns was the prospect of an excessive rate of dues (it needing to support its own official organ and propaganda efforts) as well as to an overly complex set of requirements for payment of dues to state and county organizations. There seems to have been little if any turf-related controversy between the ZSP and the ZPPS and ZSP delegate L. Banka seems to have been satisfied by the SPA’s dues policy towards federations (of which he had not been previously aware, apparently adopted in 1909). The ZSP and ZPPS agreed to exchange fraternal delegates to each others’ organizational conventions, scheduled to be held in the 4th quarter of 1910.

 

NOVEMBER

“Operating a Socialist Sunday School,” by Kenneth Thompson [November 1910] Rare participant’s account of the structure and operations of a Socialist Sunday School written by a Bay Area Young People’s Socialist League activist. The SSS in Oakland was established by the YPSL Study Class in February of 1909, Thompson says, with an elected instructor coordinating the lesson and leading singing in conjunction with a YPSL standing committee of 3, of which Thompson was a part. The SSS elected its own officers and conducted its own formal meetings, a form of practical training “not taught in any other school for children,” Thompson indicates. Suggestions about lesson content were made by the children themselves. “The lessons are carefully worked out so that the class struggle is always before the children as the basis of the Socialist philosophy, and without the class struggle we would have no Socialist movement; always careful not to blind their young minds with any false conceptions of ‘justice, right,’ etc., other than class justice,” Thompson states. Picnics were held, group singing and “red flag drill” conducted in association with entertainments of the regular SP, and newspaper advertising sales contests held in conjunction with The Oakland World. “The Socialist work among children is one of the most important branches of the party work, and should be encouraged in all cities and towns where there is a party organization,” Thompson states.

 

1911

JANUARY

Danger Ahead, by Eugene V. Debs [January 1911] In the wake of the unprecedented electoral success of the Socialist Party of America in the fall 1910 elections, party leader Gene Debs was one of the first to throw a wet blanket on blind enthusiasm with this short piece published in International Socialist Review. Debs colorfully remarks that “Voting for socialism is not socialism any more than a menu is a meal” and cautions the party faithful to guard against the danger that the Socialist Party will be swamped by an exodus from the old parties seeing a coming government headed by the rising SPA as a distributor of government jobs. Moreover, Debs notes, “the truth is that we have not a few members who regard vote-getting as of supreme importance, no matter by what method the votes may be secured, and this leads them to hold out inducements and make representations which are not at all compatible with the stern and uncompromising principles of a revolutionary party.... Socialism is a matter of growth, of evolution, which can be advanced by wise methods, but never by obtaining for it a fictitious vote.” Debs declares “the economic organization of the working class” to be of “far greater importance than increasing the vote of the Socialist Party,” but warns against opportunistic promises being made to “American Federation of Labor and its labor-dividing and corruption-breeding craft unions” in pursuit of votes.

“Able Talent in Array of Lyceum Course Speakers: Forceful Organizers and Entertainers Sure to Please All,” by L.E. Katterfeld [Jan. 4, 1911] One of the leading leaders of the Communist Labor Party and its successor, the United Communist Party, was Ludwig E. “Dutch” Katterfeld, a veteran Socialist Party functionary. This article from the Chicago Daily Socialist documents Katterfeld’s work in 1911 as head of the SPA’s short-lived speakers’ bureau, the Lyceum Bureau. Katterfeld explains the new program and details the list of touring speakers, who together presented a “lyceum course” on behalf of the Socialist Party. Katterfeld presents brief biographies of C.B. Hoffman, editor of the Chicago Daily Socialist as well as Oscar Ameringer and George Kirkpatrick, filling in for the jailed Fred Warren of The Appeal to Reason. “The opposition used to claim that the Socialist movement would never gain a foothold here, but the tremendous gains of the Socialist Party during the past year have put that claim to sleep forever,” Katterfeld declares.

 

APRIL

“Join the Party” (Editorial in the Columbus Socialist) [April 29, 1911] Perhaps the moment of greatest optimism in the history of the Socialist Party is documented in this front page editorial from The Socialist, published in Columbus, Ohio. Congressman Victor Berger was installed in office and the groundswell of popular support for the Socialist cause was palpable. Paid membership in the SPA had topped 78,000, it was reported, with National Executive Secretary Mahlon Barnes predicting 100,000 dues-payers by the start of the next year. There were more dues-paying members of the Socialist Party of America than the Socialist Party of France, a country in which twice the vote was garnered. The future was looking like roses, with at least a million votes predicted in the 1912 Presidential campaign and half a dozen Socialist Congressmen envisioned. Notable is the absolutely total commitment to the electoral road to Socialism, in which “capture” of the state through the ballot box was not only plausible but virtually preordained by history. “Never before has the future looked as bright for the Socialist Party in the United States as it does today,” the editorialist declares. “There does not seem to be anything too big for it to accomplish during the next few years."

“Negro Resolution: Passed by the Ohio State Convention of the Socialist Party of Ohio, April 27-30, 1911." The early Socialist Party of America is frequently viewed as ambivalent to the question of race, at best, including as it did among its ranks at least a few virulent racists. This 1911 resolution of the Socialist Party of Ohio indicates that the SPA was not totally blind to the fact that American blacks represented a particularly exploited stratum of the American working classes which should be incorporated into the party ranks. The resolution is brief and to the point, declaring “It is the sense of this convention that we invite the negro to join the Socialist Party, which would give him an equal opportunity to receive the full social product of his labor, and urge that competent speakers be engaged by the State Executive Committee to organize the negro voters of Ohio into the Socialist Party. It is perhaps worthy of mention in the context of this site that CLP founding members Tom Clifford and Lawrence Zitt and CPA founding member C.E. Ruthenberg were among the delegates to the 1911 Socialist Party of Ohio conclave.

JUNE

“Who is the Foreigner?” by D. Bond [June 1911] Short anti-racist article from The International Socialist Review advocating acceptance of a class view of society rather than one of artificial racial and ethnic divisions. “There are but two nations in the civilized world. To which nation do you belong? Do you belong to the nation that lives by working, or to the nation that lives by owning? Some people who think they live by working in reality live by working the workers. Preachers, lawyers, capitalists, and burglars are apt to be of this class. “Workingmen of all countries, unite.” That means unite in your own nation. The Chinaman, Jap, Mexican, Italian, Hungarian, or Negro who works, belongs to my nation. He belongs to your nation if you both are doing needful work,” Bond declares.

“Comrade Bloor at Nelsonville,” by W.W. Green [events of June 21-22, 1911] An excellent little snippet of Socialist social history here — an account of two speeches by firebrand orator “Mother” Ella Reeve Bloor. Her June 21, 1911 speech in Nelsonville, Ohio drew a counterdemonstration in the other end of the town square, featuring a sermon by a preacher. Bloor seems to have won the contest handily: “When the preacher had finished his sermon he only had six listeners, while as many hundreds as you could count on the fingers of both hands gathered compactly around the little lady and held their breath while she gave them the message of Peace on earth, good will toward man.” Then next day Bloor and Green went underground at Mine 204 to speak to several hundred coalminers assembled in a large cavern. “The miners cheered lustily as she drove and clinched nails in the coffin of Capitalism. She showed them how they had voted themselves into a darkness worse than the gloom that surrounded them — that their unions were no more a remedy than their bank lamps were to dispel the blackness of the mine. They had voted themselves in — they must vote their way out,” Green declares.

JULY

“The Secret of Efficient Expression,” by Eugene V. Debs [July 8, 1911] Asked by the Education Department of the University of Wisconsin to participate in a study of oratorical “fertility and efficiency of expression,” Socialist Party agitator Eugene V. Debs responds with an autobiographical essay on the men who shaped his conception of an orator—Patrick Henry, John Brown, Wendell Phillips, and Robert Ingersoll—and his path of self-education. Debs contends that “There is no inspiration in evil and no power except for its own destruction. He who aspires to master the art of expression must first of all consecrate himself completely to some great cause, and the greatest cause of all is the cause of humanity. He must learn to feel deeply and think clearly to express himself eloquently. He must be absolutely true to the best there is in him, if he has to stand alone.”

“Debs on the Socialist Movement,” by Elias Tobenkin [July 29, 1911] Extensive interview with copious direct quotations of Socialist Party leader Gene Debs, on the road in Newark, New Jersey, presumably lifted by the Columbus, Ohio Socialist from the New York Call. Debs sharply criticizes sectarian squabbling when he declares, “There is nothing so hurtful to the Socialist Party as squabbles over little, insignificant things. The uninitiated, who is not familiar with the Socialist mind, may easily become discouraged at seeing these squabbles and mistake them for vital disagreements, and then turn away from the Socialist movement, using the old argument that the Socialists do no agree among themselves.” He objects to “coddling” the craft unionism of the AF of L, when he proclaims it “a mistake to fondle trade unionism in the hope of swinging it toward radicalism at some later time. We must consistently advocated industrial unionism, revolutionary unionism.” Debs also proclaims the propaganda work of Victor Berger in Congress to be of “immense value” to the Socialist Party and the socialist movement and proclaims Pennsylvania as the strongest state for the Socialist movement.

Why Boys Should Not Join the ‘Boy Scouts,’ by Celia Rosatstein [June 1911] The decade of the 1910s was marked by an ideological struggle for the hearts and minds of children, pitting on the one side the paramilitary Boy Scouts of America and on the other the radical anti-militarists of the Socialist Sunday School movement. This article from Young Socialists Magazine — produced by the publishers of the socialist German daily New Yorker Volkszeitung — makes the plea for SSS boys to reject the appeals of the Boy Scouts movement. Rosatstein writes: “Do not join the scouts. You will be taught to stand up for your master, to respect your master, to obey your master, and in case of a strike to shoot to kill. They will teach you that the workers are fools; that they don’t know what they are talking about when they want their rights. And when your parents who had struggled hard to support you that you may grow up to be good and healthy men, rise up and still struggle that you and your brothers and sisters may live in plenty, you, being on the side of the capitalists, will crush them. And yet you want to join an army where you will be taught to do the same.”

Our Policies vs. Our Principles by Ella Reeve Bloor Published in The Socialist [Columbus, OH], vol. 1, no. 30 (July 15, 1911), pg. 7.

 

AUGUST

“The Rising Tide of Socialism,” by Carl D. Thompson [Aug. 8, 1911] This is a snapshot of the electorally-oriented Socialist Party at its most self-satisfied. Carl D. Thompson, head of the SPA’s Literature Department, reviews the growth of the socialist movement in America and around the world — using the dubious benchmark of electoral results to happily pronounce the Socialist movement worthy of “inspiration and wonder.” After providing vote tallies from 17 countries, Thompson exclaims, “Look at those figures! See them march upward. At that rate of increase it is not hard to see what the future has in store.” The greatest historical importance of this article, however, deals with Thompson’s provision of a year-by-year membership count for the Socialist Party. Instead of starting his membership series in 1903 — as the Socialist Party officially did every time without exception until they started suppressing their membership figures altogether in 1923 — Thompson provides figures for average monthly dues actually paid dating back to the start of the SPA in the summer of 1901. Thanks to this article by Thompson we know now that in 1901 the Socialist Party had an average monthly  paid membership of 4,320, while in 1902 it had a membership of 9,949. In assessing the state of the party press, Thompson counts 2 English Socialist daily newspapers, 6 non-English dailies, 33 English weeklies, and 22 non-English weeklies.

“Mob Wrecks Socialist Newspaper: Editor Ordered to Leave Town, but He Decides to Stick." [event of Aug. 24, 1911] Short article from the Columbus, Ohio Socialist documenting an act of mob violence committed by anti-Socialists in Garden City, Kansas. While the proprietor of the town’s Socialist newspaper, The Interlocutor, was engaged conducting a public meeting addressed by prominent Midwestern pamphleteer W.F. Ries the right wing mob stormed the newspaper office, destroying the press and scattering lead type through the streets. Editor Ashford was threatened with death, given 24 hours to leave town. The editor refused to flee.

 

SEPTEMBER

“The New Review: A Socialist Weekly, (A Prospectus)” . [Sept. 1911] One of the most important American Socialist periodicals of the decade of the 1910s was a small theoretical journal published in New York City called The New Review. First published in 1913, the magazine brought together various stands of international socialist thought, including revolutionary industrial unionism and the general strike and anti-militarism. The journal was an intellectual bridge between the so-called syndicalist movement on the one hand and the anti-imperialist movement on the other, and included contributions by such individuals as Henry Slobodin, W.E.B. DuBois, Louis Boudin, Moses Oppenheimer, and Louis Fraina, among others. This trend would emerge in 1918-19 as the Left Wing Section, Socialist Party, the core anglophonic constituency of the American Communist movement. This prospectus notes the obsessive preoccupation of other Socialist periodicals with converting the unconverted with “so-called popular agitation,” proposing instead to fill a glaring need for “serious discussion of the theoretical and practical problems of the labor movement” in a manner designed “for the education of the Socialists themselves.” Includes a list of 22 sponsoring “members of the Socialist Party.”

 

Make-Believe Radicalism by C.E. Ruthenberg Letter to the editor of the Cleveland Citizen, Sept. 9, 1911.

“Socialism and the Race Problem: A Speech to Black Workers,” by Peter Kinnear [Sept. 4, 1911] The Socialist Party is sometimes regarded as having taken a position of benign neglect towards non-white members of the working class, with the Communist Party’s position on the race question mythologized as a massive break from past practice. In reality, there was a large element of continuity as this lengthy Labor Day street speech before a black audience in Columbus, Ohio demonstrates. Again and again the orator, Peter Kinnear, proclaims commonality of interest of workers of all races. The experience of New Orleans dockworkers in joining together in a multi-racial union is held up as a model for emulation and the maintenance of racial bars to membership by some unions a major cause of the loss of strikes. The “Race Question” is viewed as a facile ruse utilized by the master class in an effort to divide the working class, thereby keeping wages low. This tactic was increasingly being recognized by the established union movement and racial bars were falling, Kinnear intimates. The Socialist Party and the union movement are portrayed as dual wings of a single organism, while the Republican Party — traditional enemy of chattel slavery — is said to have unconsciously lost its anti-racist principles over the course of five decades. “The working class unite themselves into an organization of physical strength, regardless of race, creed, or color, and under the guiding wing of Socialism...storm the political stronghold of the job-owners, forever abolish them, and bring about the democratic ownership of all jobs in the hands of the job-seekers,” Kinnear declares.

 

OCTOBER

 

1912

UNDATED

Work Among Women: A Progressive Woman Leaflet” . [circa 1912] Short leaflet soliciting subscriptions to The Progressive Woman, a publication from J.A. Wayland’s Girard, Kansas Appeal to Reason Socialist stable. The leaflet lists reasons why Socialist propaganda work among women is important, including: “Woman is disfranchised. The Socialist Party demands equal suffrage for all, regardless of sex, color, or race. Woman’s disfranchisement is a great factor in holding here in economic slavery. Woman’s position in industry is of a much lower status than man’s. She seldom receives equal wages for the same grade of work. Woman has become a very large part of the industrial world. She is the most formidable competitor man has in the industries.”

 

MARCH

“How I Became a Socialist: An Episode of My Boyhood,” by Alexander Jonas [published March 1912] Alexander Jonas was the most important figure in the history of the 19th Century German-American Socialist movement — a fact somehow missed by historical encyclopedia editors of left (Buhle, Buhle & Georgakas) and right (Johnpoll & Klehr) alike. Co-founder and editor of one of the longest-lived and most influential periodicals of the American left (the New Yorker Volkszeitung), Jonas played an important role in educating German-speaking American Socialists for a generation. In addition to his literary contributions, Jonas also played an important role as a political actor in all three of the great factional wars of the 19th Century Socialist Labor Party — the battle with the anarchist and Social Revolutionary groups of 1883-86, the recall of W.L. Rosenberg of 1889, and the pitched battle with the DeLeon-Kuhn faction for the soul of the party in 1899. Jonas and those around the Volkszeitung went 2-for-3 in these struggles, winding up outside the SLP and founding members of the Socialist Party of America in 1901. This article was translated from the German for the magazine of the Young People’s Socialist Federation in memory of Jonas, who died on January 30, 1912. In it, Jonas grippingly describes the revolutionary events of March 1848 in his native Berlin, and how he, the young son of a petty bourgeois bookseller of democratic sympathies, came to understand the existence of an inevitable division between the bourgeoisie and the working class even within the revolutionary forces and how he thus gained consciousness of the Socialist mission. Includes a brief biography and photo.

 

“’Nigger’ Equality, ” by Kate Richards O’Hare. [March 1912] One of the Socialist Party’s dirty little secrets was the presence in its ranks of a significant number of individuals with frankly racist perspectives. This 1912 pamphlet by Kate Richards O’Hare appealing to Southern voters is the epitome—the most racist document ever issued on the Socialist Party’s behalf. The Socialists do not seek social, physical, or mental equality, O’Hare states, but rather “Equality of Opportunity.” “Just as long as a ‘nigger’ can be robbed of the product of his labor by the capitalist class by being shut out from access to the means of life, just that long he can be made the club and chain that will drag and beat the white workers down into the mire of poverty,” O’Hare states. The only answer to the race question is segregation, O’Hare declares: “Let us give the blacks one section in the country where every condition is best fitted for them.... If the negro rises to such an opportunity, and develops his own civilization, well and good; if not, and he prefers to hunt and fish and live idly, no one will be injured but him and that will be his business.”

 

JUNE

“’The Record of the Past is the Promise of the Future,’” by C.E. Ruthenberg [June 29, 1912] C.E. Ruthenberg is remembered as one of the key leaders of the first decade of American Communism. Before that, however, Ruthenberg was a prominent leader in the Socialist Party of Ohio, standing as that organization’s gubernatorial candidate in 1912. This is an artifact of that 1912 campaign, a piece from the weekly newspaper of Local Cleveland, SPA. Ruthenberg sounds very much the conventional Third Party candidate, pronouncing that “so long as the Republican or Democratic Party is in control all the powers of government will be used to continue the exploitation and industrial slavery which capitalism means for the working class.... Both are incompetent to help the workers in their struggle against the developing industrial plutocracy which is rapidly being brought into existence as the result of the concentration of industry.” Ruthenberg declares that the “only hope” of the workers is in their own power; “that if they would emancipate themselves from the wage-slavery and serfdom of capitalism, they must organize on the basis of their own interests. They must organize in a party— in the Socialist Party— which represents their interests, which is controlled by them and whose candidates are subject to their directions.”

 

JULY

"Capitalism’s Fetters on Production,” by C.E. Ruthenberg [July 27, 1912] Document of the 1912 Ohio gubernatorial campaign of Cleveland Socialist Party leader C.E. Ruthenberg. In this article from the Cleveland Socialist, Ruthenberg expounds upon Marxist theory for the party faithful, asserting that given the current technological levels of industrial production, capitalist economic relations are “hampering and limiting our productive powers” as “capitalism does not dare use to their fullest extent the productive forces of our present age.” Ruthenberg further maintains that the “robbery of the workers” of a part of the product of their labor results in periodic economic crisis forcing the complete shutdown of production due to underconsumption, causing “the anomaly of millions of people suffering, not because we cannot produce the things they need, but because we have produced too much.” Socialism alone offered millennial possibilities in Ruthenberg’s view: “Once we establish collective ownership of our industries we will throw off the clogs and checks of our productive powers and will be able to produce more than enough not only to supply every human being food, clothing, and homes to live in, but the opportunity for education and culture which can make life worth living.”

 

OCTOBER

“The Socialist Party’s Appeal”, by Eugene V. Debs [Oct. 24, 1912] This 1912 campaign statement by Socialist Party Presidential nominee Gene Debs appeared in the pages of The Independent—a mainstream news weekly. Debs declares that for the first time since the abolition of slavery “a great moral question cleaves the political atmosphere of this nation.” The choice is stark, Debs indicates: “Either capitalism, with its gorgeous wealth and power for its successful devotees and owners, and its brutal, degrading struggle for existence for its workers, will write ’esto perpetua’ upon the scroll of Time and this civilization will enter eclipse and decline, as have the civilizations of every previous age, or else capitalism will surrender the scepter of power to socialism and the race will progress to heights undreamed and establish a civilization as far in advance of capitalism in its beneficence to mankind as capitalism is in advance of savagery.” Debs’ analysis is Lassallean in essence, nary a word being uttered about trade unionism (in marked contrast to Debs’ orientation in the first decade of the century), while salvation is held to lie in the transference of political power. “The Socialist calls upon his brother worker to join him in the overthrow of capitalism through capturing the powers of government and legally transferring the ownership of the world from capitalism to socialism.... It invites them to seize political power in the name of the working class, and to legally write their own economic emancipation proclamation,” Debs declares.

 

NOVEMBER

“Story of the Tragedy,” by Fred D. Warren [Nov. 11, 1912] News account of the suicide of the 58 year old publisher of the Appeal to Reason, J.A. Wayland, by that paper’s editor, Fred D. Warren. “Wayland, at the last term of court testified he had no connection with the management of the paper. Government officials claim they were prepared at this term to prove Wayland’s responsibility as publisher and that an indictment may have been asked on a charge of perjury,” Warren noted, adding that Wayland had been periodically depressed over the death of his wife in an automobile accident the previous year. Warren adds that a suicide note was found offering Wayland’s bleak last words to the movement: “The struggle under the competitive system is not worth the effort; let it pass.”

“Telegram Read at the Funeral of Julius Augustus Wayland: Girard, Kansas—Nov. 13, 1912,” by Eugene V. Debs Scheduled to speak at the funeral of his close friend and former employer, J.A. Wayland of the Appeal to Reason, Eugene Debs was distraught and found himself unable to make the trip. Instead this short telegram was dispatched and read at the grave site: “Today you will give back to mother earth the mortal remains of our fellow warrior. The hearts of a million loving and loyal comrades will beat his funeral march. He fought the good fight without flinching to the end. He gave to the cause of the oppressed all the strength of his body and soul and future generations will reap the harvest he has sown and pay his memory the homage of their love and gratitude.” Includes photo of J.A. Wayland.

 

“William Mailly as a Socialist Type,” by George D. Herron [Nov. 14, 1912] Graphic pdf from The Coming Nation (an Appeal to Reason side project) eulogizing the recently deceased socialist journalist and former head of the Socialist Party of America, William “Will” Mailly. Herron’s biography of his departed friend is frankly hagiographic, with Mailly’s life and career remembered as “one of life’s good promises for the human future.” Herron remembers Mailly as a man of “no capacity for dishonesty,” “joy of energy,” “infectious boyishness,” and a “positive genius for friendship;” a lover of literature and art, loyal to his friends, and of “sublime yet simple devotion to the cause to which he gave his life.” Herron goes on to describe Mailly’s New York friends Algernon Lee and Morris Hillquit in similar terms, amidst allusions to the early Christians.

 

The Results of the 1912 Election: A Statement,” by Eugene V. Debs [Nov. 16, 1912] In this statement published in the Appeal to Reason in the aftermath of the 1912 election, Socialist Party Presidential candidate Gene Debs attempts to depict the SP’s rather disappointing vote total (about 1 million votes, when about twice that number was predicted and expected) in the best possible light. Emphasizing quality over quantity, Debs declares that “the million votes cast this year, be it understood, are Socialist votes. The possible vote that could have been taken from us was taken by the so-called Progressive Party, and the vote which remains is a solid Socialist vote upon which we can count in the future without fear of disappointment.” Debs believes that intra-party warfare is about to split the Democratic Party in the same way that it divided and weakened the Republican Party, opening up the way for future Socialist victory. “Soon after the Democrats go in power they will demonstrate their utter impotency and helplessness and thousands who voted their ticket will turn from them in disgust,” Debs wishfully predicts, adding that Socialists should be prepared for an economic panic “to be precipitated” during the Democratic administration.

 

“Last Conversation with My Father,” by Jon G. Wayland [event of Nov. 5, 1912] On the evening of Nov. 10/11, 1912, publisher of America’s largest Socialist newspaper, J.A. Wayland, took his life by his own hand. He was due to appear in federal district court in nearby Fort Scott the next day to face trial for a trumped-up mail-obscenity charge brought by zealous federal prosecutors with a rumored additional indictment to follow for perjury committed at a previous proceeding. This brief account published in the Appeal to Reason by Wayland’s 2nd son, Jon, recounts his last meeting with his father and sheds light upon the older Wayland’s motivation for his suicide. “ “My boy, I am going to end it all; I cannot longer stand this persecution, mental oppression, and misunderstanding. I have done my work living and worn myself out, and perhaps my death will further the interests of the cause,” the younger Wayland quotes his father as telling him at their parting. “Not once during this talk did he exhibit any feeling of malice or hatred toward even those government officials who are directly responsible for his death. He felt it was all a part of the order of life and unavoidable,” Jon Wayland adds.

 

“Story of the Tragedy,” by Fred D. Warren [Nov. 11, 1912] News account of the suicide of the 58 year old publisher of the Appeal to Reason, J.A. Wayland, by that paper’s editor, Fred D. Warren. “Wayland, at the last term of court testified he had no connection with the management of the paper. Government officials claim they were prepared at this term to prove Wayland’s responsibility as publisher and that an indictment may have been asked on a charge of perjury,” Warren noted, adding that Wayland had been periodically depressed over the death of his wife in an automobile accident the previous year. Warren adds that a suicide note was found offering Wayland’s bleak last words to the movement: “The struggle under the competitive system is not worth the effort; let it pass.”

“Telegram Read at the Funeral of Julius Augustus Wayland: Girard, Kansas—Nov. 13, 1912,” by Eugene V. Debs Scheduled to speak at the funeral of his close friend and former employer, J.A. Wayland of the Appeal to Reason, Eugene Debs was distraught and found himself unable to make the trip. Instead this short telegram was dispatched and read at the grave site: “Today you will give back to mother earth the mortal remains of our fellow warrior. The hearts of a million loving and loyal comrades will beat his funeral march. He fought the good fight without flinching to the end. He gave to the cause of the oppressed all the strength of his body and soul and future generations will reap the harvest he has sown and pay his memory the homage of their love and gratitude.” Includes photo of J.A. Wayland.

 

The Results of the 1912 Election: A Statement,” by Eugene V. Debs [Nov. 16, 1912] In this statement published in the Appeal to Reason in the aftermath of the 1912 election, Socialist Party Presidential candidate Gene Debs attempts to depict the SP’s rather disappointing vote total (about 1 million votes, when about twice that number was predicted and expected) in the best possible light. Emphasizing quality over quantity, Debs declares that “the million votes cast this year, be it understood, are Socialist votes. The possible vote that could have been taken from us was taken by the so-called Progressive Party, and the vote which remains is a solid Socialist vote upon which we can count in the future without fear of disappointment.” Debs believes that intra-party warfare is about to split the Democratic Party in the same way that it divided and weakened the Republican Party, opening up the way for future Socialist victory. “Soon after the Democrats go in power they will demonstrate their utter impotency and helplessness and thousands who voted their ticket will turn from them in disgust,” Debs wishfully predicts, adding that Socialists should be prepared for an economic panic “to be precipitated” during the Democratic administration.

 

“Last Conversation with My Father,” by Jon G. Wayland [event of Nov. 5, 1912] On the evening of Nov. 10/11, 1912, publisher of America’s largest Socialist newspaper, J.A. Wayland, took his life by his own hand. He was due to appear in federal district court in nearby Fort Scott the next day to face trial for a trumped-up mail-obscenity charge brought by zealous federal prosecutors with a rumored additional indictment to follow for perjury committed at a previous proceeding. This brief account published in the Appeal to Reason by Wayland’s 2nd son, Jon, recounts his last meeting with his father and sheds light upon the older Wayland’s motivation for his suicide. “ “My boy, I am going to end it all; I cannot longer stand this persecution, mental oppression, and misunderstanding. I have done my work living and worn myself out, and perhaps my death will further the interests of the cause,” the younger Wayland quotes his father as telling him at their parting. “Not once during this talk did he exhibit any feeling of malice or hatred toward even those government officials who are directly responsible for his death. He felt it was all a part of the order of life and unavoidable,” Jon Wayland adds.

 

DECEMBER

“The Red Flag and the Stars & Stripes,” by Morris Hillquit [Dec. 1912] In this short article from The Young Socialists’ Magazine, Socialist Party leader Morris Hillquit asserts the “open and honest” allegiance of the Socialists to the Red Flag as a symbol of “worldwide peace, harmony, and brotherhood” in the “great international fight against corruption, exploitation, and oppression.” Right Wing detractors are eager to flaunt the Stars & Stripes in provocative opposition to the Red Flag, but Hillquit demands: “What claim do you have to the emblem of American independence, democracy, and justice? You have ruthlessly destroyed the ideal of social equality, which was fondly woven into the texture of the American flag by the revolutionary founders of the republic, and have delivered the country and its people to a gang of financial freebooters. You have reared a purse-proud aristocracy more unbearable than ever was the rule of George III. You have driven millions of American men, women, and children into industrial slavery, misery, and destitution. You have banished the American ideals of civic righteousness, and have poisoned the public life of the nation by wholesale fraud, bribery, and corruption.” The Red Flag is complementary to the Stars & Strips, Hillquit asserts. “When Socialism will win its battles, both emblems will flutter together from all huts and palaces, gaily proclaiming in their multiform colors that mankind is free.”

 

1913

JANUARY

“Direct Action and Sabotage,” by Moses Oppenheimer. [Jan. 25, 1913] There has been a tendency in the literature to dismiss the Socialist Party’s “Anti-Sabotage” faction fight of 1912-13 as a historical event having little relationship to the Communist/Socialist split of 1919. In reality, both of these episodes were chapters in the same long-running saga, heated political events linked to an ideological division within the SPA dating back to the 1901 establishment of the party and before. This January 1913 discussion of the newly-installed “Anti-Sabotage” section of the SPA constitution by New York activist Moses Oppenheimer helps to demonstrate this connection. Oppenheimer—a major figure in the Left Wing Section, Socialist Party six years hence—is sharply critical of the new “Anti-Sabotage” section, arguing that the two ideological concepts anathematized by the May 1912 Convention were either untested as to efficacy (in the case of Direct Action and the General Strike) or were merely a new name for a long-established defensive tactic of the labor movement (in the case of Sabotage). Oppenheimer considers the decision to rely on the political groundrules established by the reactionary and biased capitalist courts to be ridiculous. He further notes that the majority of the party had not spoken out on the matter, with only 20% voting on the referenda in question and both the contradictory majority and minority reports being approved by majorities of those voting. Oppenheimer sees Direct Action and Sabotage as being distinct from Anarchism due to their coordinated, mass nature, in contradistinction to Anarchist philosophy and practice.

 

“Debs on Syndicalism: A Letter to H.M. Hyndman in London from Eugene V. Debs in Terre Haute, Indiana, January 30, 1913.” This letter to British Socialist H.M. Hyndman was widely published in the American Socialist press as a means of propagating Debs’ views on the bitter conflict over “syndicalism” which divided the Socialist Party. Debs wrote: “Syndicalism has swooped down upon us, and the capitalist papers and magazines are giving it unlimited space, but the Socialist Party is in no danger on account of it. Just at present there are some sharp divisions and some bitter controversies on account of it, but the Socialist Party will emerge all the stronger after syndicalism has had its fling. The Anarchists are all jubilant over the prospect that syndicalism may disrupt the Socialist Party, but they will again be disappointed. There are many of our Socialists who favor syndicalism and sabotage, or think they do, but the party is overwhelmingly opposed to both, and will stick to the main track to the end.”

 

MARCH

“Debs on IWW: A Letter to William English Walling from Eugene V. Debs in Terre Haute, Indiana, March 5, 1913.” This letter to William English Walling was widely reprinted in the Socialist Party press as a means of making known SPA leader Eugene V. Debs’ view of the party’s “Anit-Sabotage” provision and the recent recall of Bill Haywood from the SPA’s National Executive Committee. “I regret to see Haywood’s recall, but it was inevitable. He brought it on himself. I should not have put Section 6 in the constitution, but it is there, and put there by the party, and Haywood deliberately violated it. Is not this a fact?” Debs declared. He added that “The IWW for which Haywood stands and speaks is an anarchist organization in all except in name, and this is the cause of all the trouble. Anarchism and Socialism have never mixed and never will. The IWW has treated the Socialist Party most indecently, to put it very mildly. When it gets into trouble it frantically appeals to the Socialist Party for aid, which has always been freely rendered, and after it’s all over, the IWW kicks the Socialist Party in the face. That is the case put in plain words, and the Socialist Party has had enough of that sort of business, and I don’t blame them a bit.”

 

“The Psychology of Syndicalism (An Editorial),” by Gaylord Wilshire. [March 1913] During the first years of the 1910s, a new radicalism blossomed both inside and outside the ranks of the Socialist Party of America. This left wing moment, centered its orientation around building revolutionary industrial trade unions and winning power through use of the tactic of the general strike. This movement, while in some sense a mere continuation of the dichotomy between “Lassallean-political action” and “Marxian-trade unionism” that had divided the modern radical movement for its entire history, nevertheless gained momentum on an international basis and self-consciousness as something entirely new—“Syndicalism.” The “new” radical industrial unionist movement gained important adherents in the American Socialist movement—the monthly magazine of the Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co. The International Socialist Review; the upstart New York theoretical journal The New Review; and, as this editorial demonstrates, the well-established (albeit ethically sketchy) Wilshire’s Magazine. This editorial by Gaylord Wilshire notes that “the revolutionary union is the product of the automatic machine and the trustification of capital. It is the only form of organization which can meet the present juncture, for the knell of craft unions was rung by the automatism of the machine.” Socialism, or “Revolution by voting,” is an anachronistic and futile enterprise, Wilshire indicates, colorfully stating that “voting is merely praying in a ballot box.”

 

APRIL

“A National Organization is On Its Way!” by J. Louis Engdahl [April 1913] Powered by the success of the Los Angeles Young People’s Socialist League, with 1200 members, and the support of State Secretary of the Socialist Party of California T.W. Williams, the establishment of the national YPSL organization was finally about to happen, according to this report by Chicago Socialist Louis Engdahl. An estimated 200 autonomous and “practically independent” Socialist youth organizations had sprung up in American, needing “only a centralized movement to put them in active operation,” Engdahl indicated. In accordance with this objective, information was being gathered about the strength and resources of each for presentation to the forthcoming annual meeting of the Party’s National Committee (essentially a convention with representatives present from each state organization). A debate was underway over the structure of such an organization, with some favoring a sovereign but associated organization electing its own National Secretary and 3 of 5 of the member s of its National Committee, while others favored creation of a subordinate youth department of the Socialist Party, akin to the structure already extant for women.

 

MAY

“The Finnish Young Socialists of the United States” by J. Louis Engdahl [May 1913] With a decision by the Socialist Party’s National Committee on the organization of a national young people’s section looming, Louis Engdahl analyzes the division of the youth sections on language lines, the most important section of which was the Finnish Gymnastic Societies organized by the various Socialist Party branches. There were some 53 of these societies at the end of 1911, Engdahl states: 22 in the Finnish Federation’s Eastern District, 17 in the Middle District, and 14 in the Western District. A total of 1,156 young men and women were affiliated with these societies, which paid no dues to the Socialist Party but were funded by Party branches. In addition to these gymnastic societies, the Finns had choral societies, dramatic societies, dancing clubs, and other organized group activities—projects that were advanced by the fact that many Finnish branches possessed their own halls. Engdahl notes that the Finnish and English language Socialist organizations had long remained segregated and that the task of integrating these sections of the party to work on matters of common concern remained largely unresolved.

 

The National Committee Meeting [Chicago — May 11-16, 1913] by Tom Clifford Published in Cleveland Socialist, vol. 2, whole no. 83 (May 24, 1913), pg. 2..

 

JUNE

“To Work with Young People,” by James M. Reilly [June 1913] Short article in The Young Socialists’ Magazine by a Socialist Party National Committee member from New Jersey announcing the May 1913 decision of the NC to establish a Youth Department attached to the National Office, effective October 1, 1913. Reilly states that “It is not the intention of the Party to interfere with any of the young people’s Socialist organizations now in existence. The aim is rather to lend assistance and cooperation.....The department will also be a sort of clearing house for Socialist literature especially suitable for the young.” He notes that “We Socialists do not believe in forcing our faith—so to speak—on anyone. We do not wish our children to be Socialists because we are. The true Socialist wants his children to do their own thinking, and of course form their own conclusions.” However, the SPA had been negligent in providing even rudimentary information about itself to young people in any systematic way. Through this new department it was hoped that first steps would soon be taken in this regard.

 

AUGUST

"Let Us Build,” by Eugene V. Debs [Aug. 9, 1913] The Socialist Party’s great mediator, Gene Debs, attempts to patch up the factional war between radicals and moderates in this 1913 article from the SPA’s official bulletin. “We have heard and still hear a great deal about ’the Reds’ and ’the Yellows’ in the Socialist Party,” Debs remarks. “I know a good many of both, and so far as I am able to discern, they are very much alike. The actual difference between them, were it fire, would hardly be enough to light a cigarette.” Debs calls for an end to internecine factional warfare so that fire can be directed upon the actual enemy, declaring “If we mean to destroy capitalism we must develop the power of our class, and we can only do that through the class-conscious unity and the energetic and harmonious cooperation of our forces.” Despite this sentiment, Debs voices an opinion clearly in harmony with the Center-Right alliance in control of the party apparatus rather than the syndicalist Left Wing when he proclaims “The Socialist Party, it should be remembered, is a political party, and there is room enough in it for everyone who subscribes to its principles and upholds them in good faith, but there is no room in it for those who either openly sneer at political action or who avow it falsely to mask their treachery while they carry on their work of disruption.–

 

OCTOBER

“Socialism and the Municipalities” , by Henry L. Slobodin. [Oct. 1913] A short defense of the strategy of Socialist engagement in civic electoral politics en route to the social revolution. Not only would an educated, well-housed, and well-fed working class do more to advance the Socialist cause than an ignorant and impoverished working class, Slobodin argues, social revolutions historically always had been urban events. In such a scenario, victory would belong to those who controlled the city governments—with the number of Socialist politicians sitting in Congress a comparatively unimportant detail. Slobodin was the Executive Secretary of the SLP Right (the so-called “Kangaroos”) during the 1899 party split before moving into the Socialist Party. First published in The New Review, October 1913.

 

“Lobbying and Class Rule,” by Louis C. Fraina. [Oct. 1913] The relationship between financial power, corruption, and state control is explored in this article published in The New Review in October 1913. Fraina argues that lobbying and financial intervention in the political process are not class measures but rather “clique measures in the interest of one capitalist clique against another clique,” specifically the needs of the plutocracy against the interests of petty capitalism. The legislative and judicial branches of government inevitably represented the most powerful capitalist interests, Fraina argues. Retrospectively interesting is the observation that corruption “is no more a necessary condition of class rule than violence is a necessary condition of proletarian struggle. Both, in a measure, may be unavoidable, but they are not inherently necessary.”

 

1914

NO MONTH

“List of National Committee Members of the Socialist Party of America, 1914”. Most intriguing names on the list are Santeri Nuorteva (MA) and Duncan McDonald (IL).

 

MARCH

“Jesus, the Supreme Leader”, by Eugene V. Debs. [March 1914] An underappreciated aspect of Eugene Debs’ ideology was his interpretation of Christianity and conscious emulation of the central figure of that religion. For Debs, Jesus Christ was in no way a fictitious or allegorical personage but rather a thoroughly admirable historical figure advancing a truly sacred cause—the class-conscious struggle of the downtrodden and oppressed against “Mammon.” For Debs, Jesus was a radical political leader whose tradition ran down the ages to John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and Karl Marx—and served as a model for the way in which a righteous person should live. This firey article is probably Debs’ fullest statement of his radical religious faith.

 

JULY

“American Socialist Forerunner of Powerful Revolutionary Press”, by Eugene V. Debs [July 18, 1914] Socialist Party leader Gene Debs salutes the decision of the SP National Committee to break with tradition and establish the first mass circulation official organ in the history of the organization. “We who stand for collective ownership and democratic control cannot logically argue in favor of a privately owned press, and without detracting in the least from papers that are still so owned nor underestimating the service they have rendered, the very logic of our development will ultimately necessitate the party ownership and control of the Socialist press,” Debs notes. While he acknowledges that while “there will likely be those who will argue that a party-owned paper will reflect the personal views of those in charge of it and tend to become oppressive and dominate the movement instead of representing it,” such an objection does not outweigh the principle involved. Debs expresses a belief that The American Socialist “will be the forerunner of a revolutionary press (including daily as well as weekly papers, magazines, and other periodicals) which is more and more urgently needed and will have to be established as a part of the movement itself and which in fact constitutes its very life and existence.”

 

AUGUST

“Proclamation of the Socialist Party of America on the Outbreak of War in Europe.” [August 8, 1914] First statement by the Socialist Party of America on the eruption of hostilities in Europe, issued by the party’s “Committee on Immediate Action” over the signature of National Executive Secretary Walter Lanfersiek. In the declaration, the SPA “hereby reiterates its opposition to this and all other wars, waged upon any pretext whatsoever; war being a crude, savage, and unsatisfactory method of settling real or imaginary differences between nations, and destructive of the ideals of brotherhood and humanity to which the international Socialist movement is dedicated.” Blame is place firmly on the shoulders of the national capitalists of Europe: “points out to the world that by their action in this crisis they have conclusively proven that they are unfit to administer the affairs of nations in such a manner that the lives and happiness of the people may be safeguarded.” Foreign-born workers in America are called upon to hold “joint mass meetings for the purpose of emphasizing the fraternity and solidarity of all working people, irrespective of color, creed, race, or nationality.” Locals of the party are requested to lend every possible assistance to these events. A quasi-religious pacifist language is employed rather than the language of class war: “The Socialist Party of the United States hereby pledges its loyal support to the Socialist Parties of Europe in any measures they might think it necessary to undertake to advance the cause of peace and of goodwill among men.”

 

SEPTEMBER

“The Real Fatherland”, by Mary Marcy [Sept. 1914] Anti-patriotic editorial from the pages of The International Socialist Review written in response to the eruption of the European war in August 1914. Editor Mary Marcy addresses herself to the workers of the entire world, combatant nations and Americans alike, arguing that “Patriotism means the love of the land in which you were born—that and nothing more. And why should you love that land any more than any other?” The various nations of the world have done nothing whatsoever for the working class, she states—neither protecting its children nor assuring food and shelter or employment or taking care of its sick and aged. Instead, all the national governments of the world exist to protect the wealth of their individual ruling classes. “If you are rich, ’your’ country will open her arms to you and spread out her army, her laws, her police to protect your riches. If you are penniless, she will just as readily drive you from her furthermost provinces or send you to here vilest prisons,” Marcy states. Therefore, “You have no country!” she declares, adding that “Every national flag in the world today means protection for the employing class, who appropriate the things produced by the workers. It has no message for those who toil. There is only one flag worth fighting for and that is the red flag, which means universal brotherhood of the workers of the world in their fight to abolish the profit system.” The real fatherland of the working class is international Socialism, she concludes.

 

“The Gunmen and the Miners”, by Eugene V. Debs [Sept. 1914] Probably the most militant article that Socialist leader Gene Debs ever wrote, published in the pages of Charles Kerr’s International Socialist Review. Citing recurring violence by company-employed “mine guards” in strikes at Paint Creek, Calumet, and Ludlow, Debs demands that the United Mine Workers and Western Federation of Miners systematically arm their members to meet force with force in the class war. “Under government by gunmen you are literally shorn of the last vestige of liberty and you have absolutely no protection under the law. When you go out on strike, your master has his court issue the injunction that strips you of your power to resist his injustice, and then has his private army of gunmen invade your camp, open fire on your habitations, and harass you and your families until the strike is broken and you are starved back into the pits on your master’s terms.” Debs characterizes such private armies as “lawless aggregations” of “murderers at large” and states that “you have the same right to kill them when they attack you that you have to kill the burglar who breaks into your house at midnight or the highwayman who holds you up at the point of his pistol.” Debs notes that “we stand for peace, and that we are unalterably opposed to violence and bloodshed if by any possible means, short of absolute degradation and self-abasement, these can be prevented. We believe in law, the law that applies equally to all and is impartially administered, and we prefer reason infinitely to brute force. But when the law fails, and in fact, becomes the bulwark of crime and oppression, then an appeal to force is not only morally justified, but becomes a patriotic duty.” Therefore, he urges, “Let the unions...arm their members against the gunmen of the corporations, the gangs of criminals, cutthroats, woman-ravishers, and baby-burners that have absolutely no lawful right to existence!”

 

“Murderous War in Europe is the Inevitable Culmination of Murderous European Capitalism” by Morris Hillquit [Sept. 5, 1914] Analysis of the cause of the 1914 European bloodbath by a top leader of the Socialist Party of America. Hillquit firmly advances the Marxist position that the world war was a byproduct of imperialist rivalry and the standing armies of militaristic capitalist states. “The countries most prominently involved in the war are among those in which capitalism has reached the highest levels of development. Their industries have long been conducted for the private benefit of individual capitalists, thus leading to the enrichment of a small group and the impoverishment of the large masses.... Production became stagnant and business chronically depressed. Rumbles of revolt became audible among the workers and grew ever louder and more threatening. In this critical situation the shortsighted capitalists of Europe saw but one solution—finding of new outlets for their goods by the expansion of the national territory and the conquest of colonies.... The capitalist nations of Europe, armed to the teeth, stood threatening each other for years. Each of them saw at least a temporary salvation in downing the other and robbing it of its colonies and markets. Each waited for an opening. Europe was an armed camp long before the present hostilities began. Its nations were at war long before the formal declarations. None of them was taken by surprise—they were all prepared when the first pretext came.” Only the elimination of barbarous capitalism and its associated barbarous wars for markets offered humanity hope in the future, Hillquit declares: “War will become a horrible memory of the past only with the termination of the system of wealth production for private gain—with the advent of Socialism.” Americans must take heed, he adds, since “Already we are developing a ’colonial policy,’ fortifying our army and building up a strong navy with steady and fatal consistency. The ruling classes of the United States are even today steering the ship of state towards a devastating world war as surely and irresistibly as the ruling classes of Europe have been during the last generation.”

 

NOVEMBER

 

“Strangle the Beast!” by A.M. Simons [Nov. 21, 1914] A red hot anti-militarist screed by Algie Simons, long time Chicago Socialist journalist, former member of the Socialist Labor Party, and founding member of the Socialist Party of America. Simons writes that “familiarity is breeding acquiescence. Some infection of the martial spirit has crossed the Atlantic. American jingoes are preaching the need of military preparations. Powerful newspapers, politicians, and paid agents of the armament trust, with the blood-lusting snobs of the army and navy clique are crying for more battleships and whispering of the need for a great standing army. That whisper will soon become a scream for the whole military mess.” Less than 2 1/2 years later Simons would himself be one of Woodrow Wilson’s chief cheerleaders for the purported “war to end all wars” and commitment of American lives and funds to the European bloodbath. Thus Simons’ 1914 anti-militarist words ring ironically: “It is either capitalism and competitive military hell, or Socialism and cooperative peaceful enjoyment of the bounty of the earth. The time is here to choose. Militarism is, after all, but the bloody claw and gore-flecked fang of the beast of capitalism.Whoever defends any form of militarism, any arming for wholesale killing, defends the most damnable feature of capitalism and can have no part or parcel in the doctrine or movement of Socialism.” Simons declares that “we must work quickly, for the beast is now within our gates.”

 

“Socialism,” [excerpt] by Barney Berlyn [Nov. 28/Dec. 5, 1914] First two parts of a serialized exposition of the basic principles of socialism written by a founding member of the Socialist Party of America. Berlyn notes that for all the various books interpreting socialism, “there is one Socialism, the Socialism which has its foundation in the worldwide International Socialist Movement.” When the European war is over, Berlyn notes, “a new and more powerful international movement will present itself to the attention of the world. It will be the international workingmen who will understand more than ever that to emancipate themselves, they, the workingmen, rather than some swell heads literary wonders, must do the work themselves.” Berlyn calls for “the discarding of superstitious belief and the challenge of all false authority.” Although evolutionary and democratic in its essence, “let no one underestimate the element of force which is absolutely essential in the development of the Socialist movement,” Berlyn states. “The working class must get together, gather force, seize power, and use such power when acquired in behalf of their class to relieve them of oppression. When sufficient force shall be gathered, the new and clean authority based upon the will of the people, mentally and socially free, will be obeyed without challenge.”

 

DECEMBER

“Decision of the National Executive Committee on the Finnish Controversy.” [Dec. 13, 1914] From 1913 through 1915 a severe factional struggle raged in the Finnish Federation of the Socialist Party, brought about when the constructive socialist leadership of the Eastern District won control of the Executive Committee of the Federation and editorial control of the radical organ of the Middle District, Työmies. The left wing of the federation withdrew their support of Työmies and established a new daily newspaper called Sosialisti. The Federation leadership responded with a series of expulsions and the left appealed to the NEC of the Socialist Party to intervene. After hearings at the September 1914 NEC session, a subcommittee was appointed to deal with the Finnish controversy. The subcommittee attended the special convention of the Finnish Federation (boycotted by the left), and held a hearing of the two factions, before making their report to the December 1914 session of the NEC. The NEC approved the resolution here, which gave a green light to the constructive socialist Finnish leadership to purge the revolutionary socialist “disrupters” affiliated with Sosialisti, resolving that “the decision of the Finnish Federation as to expulsion of locals or members shall be accepted by state, county, and local organizations as final.”

 

“Disarmament and World Peace: Proposed Manifesto and Program of the Socialist Party of America.” [December 26, 1914] The National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America determined at its Dec. 12-14, 1914, meeting to appoint a subcommittee to draft a manifesto and program to end the war in Europe and assure future peace. This group—which included NEC members Lewis J. Duncan and J. Stitt Wilson, Executive Secretary Walter Lanfersiek, Carl D. Thompson (SPA Information Dept.), John C. Kennedy (Illinois State Secretary), and May Wood Simons (Women’s National Committee)—submitted this draft proposal shortly thereafter, it being published in The American Socialist on Dec. 26, 1914. Calling the European war “the supreme tragedy in human history,” the SP manifesto noted that for 50 years Socialists had warned the world of impending catastrophe if capitalism was not halted from its inevitable path of development. Instead, Socialist predictions had come true. “If now this unspeakable tragedy shall serve to teach the world the real, the underlying and fundamental causes of the war, so that by removing these causes the world henceforth may live at peace, the war may be worth the cost,” the manifesto declares. A program for peace and disarmament follows, based upon a peace without indemnities or transfer of territory; establishment of a world court, international congress, and international police force to maintain order; a freezing of existing arms levels, move of armament manufacture out of the realm of private enterprise, pending international disarmament; neutralization of the seas and internationalization of strategic waterways; abolition of secret diplomacy, removal of the power to declare war to direct vote of the people; implementation of universal suffrage and a program of economic democracy, including the elimination of unearned income and the “socialization of the national resources, public utilities, and fundamental equipment of industry of the nations.” The Socialist movement of the world is called upon to implement this program, nation by nation.

 

1915

JANUARY

“Socialism and War,” by Morris Hillquit [Jan. 1915] — Text of a short article by Socialist Party leader Morris Hillquit outlining the socialist position on war to a mass audience through the pages of the Metropolitan magazine. Hillquit notes the instinctive urge of socialists to support the oppressed class and the forces of progress in every armed conflict, citing the example of Karl Marx during the American civil war. However, he notes, in the current interval while just conflict in the name of liberty, progress, and civilization are generally supported, “the modern Socialist doctrine is that the people of each country must conquer their own political and economic emancipation, and that while the workers of all countries can and should help one another in their respective struggles, no nation can depend for its salvation entirely on another nation.”

 

“Socialist Neutrality” by Morris Hillquit [Jan. 9, 1915] Socialist Party of America leader Morris Hillquit cautions party members to maintain emotional neutrality in the ongoing European bloodbath. “If any people can afford to take a sober and dispassionate view of the European catastrophe, it is the people of this country, about 4,000 miles removed from the fields of battle; and if any section of our people should be free from hysteria in its attitude toward the war, it is the Socialists,” he insists. “American Socialists should not take sides with the Allies as against the Germans. The assertion that the forces of the Allied armies are waging a war of democracy against militarism is a hollow catchphrase devoid of true sense and substance. The governments of France and England are not fighting for the liberation of the German people from the yoke of their reactionary and militaristic government.... Nor should American Socialists favor the German side of this war as against that of the Allies. The claim that the German sword has been drawn in the interests of ’culture’ is just as false and hypocritical as the contention that the Allies are fighting for democracy.” Both sides in the conflict included unsavory allies—Tsarist Russia on the one hand, reactionary Turkey on the other—that belied their propagandistic claims, Hillquit observed. Presciently, Hillquit argues that “a decisive victory of either side is likely to foster a spirit of military overbearing and pseudo-patriotic exultation on the part of the victorious countries, lasting resentment and increased military activity on the part of the defeated nations, and a general condition of pan-European irritation with a tendency to another, perhaps more pernicious war.” He concludes that “from the true Socialist viewpoint the most satisfactory solution of the great sanguinary conflict of the nations lies in a draw, a cessation of hostilities from sheer exhaustion without determining anything. Only in that case, only if it will become apparent to all the world that the heavy rivers of human blood have flown for nothing; that hundreds of thousands of human lives have been extinguished in vain... Only then will this war remain forever accursed in the memory of men, only then will it lead the people of all nations to revolt against any repetition of the frightful experience and to revolt against the capitalist system which leads to such paroxysms of human madness.”

 

“Peace on Earth,” by Eugene V. Debs [Jan. 9, 1915] Short essay by Socialist Party orator Debs on a topic assigned to him by an American newspaper chain. Debs asserts that “there has never been “Peace on earth and goodwill toward men;” and we shall have to go forward and not backward to realize that ideal. Civilization is still in a primitive, rudimentary state. It has taken countless ages to bring us from the brute, the caveman, and the savage to where we are today. The development has been painfully slow, but steady, and will continue to the farthest stretches of time.” Debs indicates that peace will come to earth only “when the brute and savage shall have died in us and we have become human. In a word, peace will come to earth when humanity has been humanized, civilization civilized, and Christianity christianized.” He sees the carnage in Europe as a turning point, in which the people are coming to see the economic basis of war based in the capitalist system. But that war inevitably will play itself out, Debs believes: “We cannot stop the European war. We can and will intervene when the time comes and do all in our power to restore peace. To end the war prematurely, were that possible, would simply mean another and perhaps even a bloodier catastrophe. Let us show the people the true cause of war. Let us arouse a sentiment against war. Let us teach the children to abhor war.”

 

“An Appeal to the Investigating Committee of the NEC..” [Jan. 13, 1915] A very rare document, published as part of a special English language edition by the Duluth Finnish-language newspaper Sosialisti. This extremely lengthy article details the faction fight which raged in the Socialist Party’s Finnish Language Federation from 1912-15, in which the constructive socialist Eastern District and those around its organ Raivaaja captured effective control of Executive Committee of the Federation the leftist organ of the Middle District, Työmies. In response, a new left wing daily newspaper was established in the Middle District, Sosialisti. Punative expulsions of individuals and locals supporting the new periodical were begun by the Finnish Federation, which drew an appeal from the left wing to the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America, since under the party constitution only the state organizations were granted the right of suspension and expulsion. The NEC of the SPA instructed the right wing majority group to reinstate the expelled left wingers and to settle the issue at a special convention of the Federation; this instruction was ignored by the Finnish Federation however, in an attempt to stack the forthcoming election of convention delegates. As a result, the left wing boycotted the election and renewed their appeal to the NEC. “The disruption within the Finnish Federation is very clearly and positively a result of a very fierce opposition in the main, of the officers in the organization against any criticism of their erroneous ideas, errors, or plain miscarriages in the offices,” this appeal document argues.

 

FEBRUARY

“The Socialist Party in Oklahoma,” by J.O. Welday [Feb. 1915] This brief general introduction to the Socialist Party of Oklahoma was written for a general, politically-oriented readership. “The Socialist Party did not create class lines or class distinctions in this new commonwealth. The fact that 180,000 mortgaged and tenant farmers are producing wealth, the bulk of which is finally gotten hold of by a small group of non-producers, cannot be charged to socialist activity,” Welday declares. The old parties had both delivered policy in defense of the interests of this small exploiting elite, in Welday’s view. “The exploiting group has paid the bills of these parties and has in the main molded and directed their policies. Legislation has been both consciously and unconsciously shaped to the end that these propertied interests might be protected and secured.” In opposition to both of the old parties, “the Socialist Party, with its clear cut and understandable discussion of the class struggle and its application of the same to conditions in Oklahoma, is rapidly becoming the political expression of the dispossessed class,” Welday declares. Those who view the Socialist Party of Oklahoma as a milquetoast of agrarian ameliorative reform will be interested to note Welday’s insistence that “no Bismarckian policy of partial restitution will satisfy those who have done and are now doing the hard and necessary work of the state,” that things like “workmen’s compensation acts, minimum wage laws, stringent usury statutes, actually enforced, loaning of state money for long periods at low rates of interest, statutes regulating the construction of dwellings on rented farms, state or county gins and elevators...will merely postpone the final result.” This ideological perspective was reflective of the SP’s Center or Left current rather than the Right Wing orientation stereotypically associated with the Oklahoma party.

 

“Executive Committee Rule,” by T.E. Latimer. [Feb. 1915] In 1913-14 a serious factional struggle erupted in the Finnish Federation of the Socialist Party of America between a Right faction based in the Eastern US and a Left faction based in the Midwest. Accusing its opponents of favoring sabotage, in contradiction to the SPA Constitution, the Right faction attempted to seize the daily newspaper and assets of the Left faction and engaged in a series of expulsions as part of this process, which centered on Local Negaunee, Michigan. The SPA’s National Executive Committee was drawn into the controversy. This contemporary article reviews the issues behind the fight from a perspective sympathetic to the Finnish Left faction and hostile to the SPA NEC. Originally published in the Feb. 1915 issue of The International Socialist Review.

 

“Open Letter to President Wilson,” by Kate Richards O’Hare [Feb. 1915] Socialist Party orator Kate Richards O’Hare delivers a stinging rebuke to the pious hypocrite in the White House with this open letter published in the radical monthly, The National Rip-Saw. With Europe reduced to a “vast charnel house” with its fields “trampled into quagmires soaked with human blood and polluted with rotting human flesh,” Wilson had allowed American capitalism to cash in on the slaughter. O’Hare storms: “With millions of Americans shivering, unclad and unshod, the stored up labor of cotton farmers, fabric weavers, and shoemakers are being hurried across the water to clothe hostile armies while they kill. Iron mills are busy turning out shrapnel, factories are beating plows into bayonets and reapers into rifles. Shrapnel and dum-dum bullets that strew all Europe with dead men are the creation of the workers of the United States, and the inventive faculties of American people have been turned from the works of peace to the creation of the machines for murder.” O’Hare declares that “the manly, Christian, statesmanlike thing would have been for you to have called the Congress of the United States into session and said, ‘GO TO YOUR LEGISLATIVE HALLS, FRAME THERE A LAW THAT NOT ONE POUND OF FOOD, NOT ONE YARD OF CLOTH, NOT ONE PIECE OF AMMUNITION SHALL BE EXPORTED TO ANY EUROPEAN COUNTRY UNTIL PEACE IS DECLARED.’” Instead, Wilson had hypocritically sponsored “the neutrality of HELL, the Money Changer’s pact with the War Demon, the Profit Monger’s bargain with DEATH, Peace with DAMNATION, that the profits of a few capitalists may be enhanced!”

 

Letter to J. Stitt Wilson, member of the NEC of — the Socialist Party of America from Frans Bostrom in Tacoma, WA, Feb. 15, 1915. — The governing National Executive Committee elected by the Socialist Party in 1914 was among the most moderate in the organization’s history. The group immediately took an interest in the ongoing political feud by the minority Center-Right and the majority Left Wing in the state of Washington, appointing a subcommittee headed by Christian Socialist and former mayor of Berkeley, California J. Stitt Wilson to investigate the situation. This February 1915 open letter to Wilson was sent by the radical State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Washington, Frans Bostrom. Bostrom takes an impossibilist line, declaring the root of the party’s problems lay in its “incongruous, confused, inconsistent platform declarations in favor of every populistic reform ever conceived.” Emphasizing the “uselessness” of such reforms, Bostrom argues that in a heterogeneous party the only way to ensure unity was to limit the party program to Socialists’ lowest common denominator, the thing upon which all could agree: a “single demand” for “the conquest of the powers of government for the purpose of introduction of the cooperative commonwealth, i.e., the revolution.”

 

MARCH

 

“I Denounce,” by Kate Richards O’Hare [March 1915] “Never in all the history of the United States has the thoughtful intelligent citizenship of our nation had such cause to blush for the petty, sordid, groveling character of our so-called statesmen,” declares Socialist Party agitator Kate O’Hare. She is sickened at the failure of American politicians to tackle the pivotal issues of war in Europe or unemployment in America. Hunger, crime, prostitution, suicide, and despair are said to be sweeping America, while in Europe millions had been slain, millions more would be slain, homes were destroyed, production ruined, and womanhood ravaged by invading armies. “The Congress of the United States has the power to stop the war in Europe almost instantly by forbidding the exportation of food and ammunition. Only gross ignorance, brutal stupidity, or hellish cupidity can explain the inaction of our President and Congress in this hour of world travail,” O’Hare asserts, adding “BEFORE GOD AND MAN I DENOUNCE THEM AND DECLARE THEIR GUILT AND I CHALLENGE THEM TO ANSWER.”

 

“Open Letter to President Wilson,” by Kate Richards O’Hare [Feb. 1915] Socialist Party orator Kate Richards O’Hare delivers a stinging rebuke to the pious hypocrite in the White House with this open letter published in the radical monthly, The National Rip-Saw. With Europe reduced to a “vast charnel house” with its fields “trampled into quagmires soaked with human blood and polluted with rotting human flesh,” Wilson had allowed American capitalism to cash in on the slaughter. O’Hare storms: “With millions of Americans shivering, unclad and unshod, the stored up labor of cotton farmers, fabric weavers, and shoemakers are being hurried across the water to clothe hostile armies while they kill. Iron mills are busy turning out shrapnel, factories are beating plows into bayonets and reapers into rifles. Shrapnel and dum-dum bullets that strew all Europe with dead men are the creation of the workers of the United States, and the inventive faculties of American people have been turned from the works of peace to the creation of the machines for murder.” O’Hare declares that “the manly, Christian, statesmanlike thing would have been for you to have called the Congress of the United States into session and said, ‘GO TO YOUR LEGISLATIVE HALLS, FRAME THERE A LAW THAT NOT ONE POUND OF FOOD, NOT ONE YARD OF CLOTH, NOT ONE PIECE OF AMMUNITION SHALL BE EXPORTED TO ANY EUROPEAN COUNTRY UNTIL PEACE IS DECLARED.’” Instead, Wilson had hypocritically sponsored “the neutrality of HELL, the Money Changer’s pact with the War Demon, the Profit Monger’s bargain with DEATH, Peace with DAMNATION, that the profits of a few capitalists may be enhanced!”

 

“List of National Committee Members of the Socialist Party of America, 1915”. Most interesting names on the list are those of C.E. Ruthenberg (OH) and W.H. Johnston (DC). Santtu Nuorteva remained on the National Committee in 1915.

 

“List of State Secretaries of the Socialist Party of America, as of March 1915”. Most interesting name on the list is that of Ludwig E. Katterfeld of Everett, State Secretary of Washington.

 

“The Question of Party Tactics: A Joint Discussion of Party Affairs between C.W. Barzee of Portland, Former State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Oregon and — Frans Bostrom of Tacoma, Former State Secretary — of the Socialist Party of Washington.” [March 25, 1915] — The factional war within the Socialist Party of Washington was in 1915 one of the most greatest battles within the Socialist Party of America between its “constructive socialist” center-right and its “revolutionary socialist” left. This published debate between the center-right former State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Oregon and the radical former State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Washington delineates the difference in perspectives. Oregonian Barzee argues for the use of immediate demands to help win broad support for a program of socialist change, arguing for a commonality of interests between the working class and the rest of society for the establishment of a just society. Washingtonian Bostrom scoffs at Barzee’s apparent rejection of the idea of the class struggle. “Appeals to the fair mindedness and generosity of the governing class has never given results,” Bostrom declares, adding that the programmatic “sops” offered to the middle class as planks in the national SPA platform were a direct violation of the constitution of that organization, based upon acceptance of the class struggle. “To appeal to any class for fairness, justice, generosity, or mercy is utopian. To appeal to anyone for votes for Socialism under any other pretext than of absolute overthrow of capitalism is opportunism, which is a polite name for humbug,” Bostrom asserts, adding that “force alone rules, now and always.”

 

APRIL

“Booze and Revolution,” by Kate Richards O’Hare [April 1915] — This short piece by Missouri rabble rouser Kate Richards O’Hare asserts a connection between sobriety and advancement of the revolutionary movement. “Sobriety means efficiency, and ‘efficiency’ movements have in all ages been the incubators in which revolutions were hatched,” O’Hare declares. She adds that the ruling class’s interest in “more efficient slaves” has also “produced a desire on the part of the slave to enjoy more,” bringing about a spirit of revolt. So, too, with the revolutionary movement, in O’Hare’s view: “A man whose brain is pickled in whiskey is of little value to the ruling class, and he is of inestimably less value to the working class. Efficiency oils the wheels of revolution.... We guarantee that if you can keep men sober, we will organize them for revolution.”

 

“Silent Souls in the Ranks,” by Eugene V. Debs [April 1915] — Short salute to the rank and file by the Socialist Party’s four time Presidential candidate, Gene Debs. The quiet, selfless activity of these unnamed “Jimmy Higgenses” of the movement were the source of hope and confidence, Debs indicates. “These silent comrades never dispute about anything, but their hand can be seen in everything. They make no noise, although they are constantly at work doing the things that others argue about and split hairs over.” Debs cites examples of extreme effort made by rank-and-file members in Idaho to attend a Socialist meeting and contrasts their behavior with that of party leaders. “Leaders may and often do disrupt a movement, but never make one,” Debs declares. “The rank and file create always, but never destroy.”

 

 

MAY

“The People are Soft,” by Eugene V. Debs [May 1915] — Short article by Socialist Party spiritual leader Gene Debs lambasting Congressional inability to solve the economic crisis then gripping the nation. Debs charges that with 20% of productive workers unemployed, Congress found itself able only to waste time filibuster legislation and to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on pork barrel projects before adjourning itself. Debs declares: “The fact is that capitalism has collapsed and that the political state of capitalism is paralyzed except in the function of creating bogus issues over which to humbug the people and keep them divided and fighting sham battles while they are being bled by the vampires that have seized upon the nation’s industries and control the government with no other object in view than to perpetuate their own plutocratic piracy and keep the people in poverty and subjection.” Debs proposes the socialization of industry as the prescription for resolution of the crisis.

 

The ‘Collapse’ of the International”, by Morris Hillquit [May 1, 1915] Morris Hillquit, arguably the top theoretician of the Debsian Socialist Party of America, takes aim at “the peculiar brand of Socialists who rejoice in Socialist mistakes, fatten on Socialist defeats, and are enthusiastic only when they can point out some alleged faults of the Socialist movement,” individuals who had lately been regaling themselves and their readers with the assertion that “the Socialist International has utterly collapsed in the face of the world war.” Hillquit begs to differ. Capitalism’s evolution has made it an international system, Hillquit observes, this process in turn giving birth to a parallel international labor movement. Socialists continued to share a common economic vision across national boundaries. While the eruption of nationalism and fratricidal war was a setback to the cause of international socialism, the economic basis underlying the Socialists’ ideological system remained unchanged. Indeed, “the war will not check the growing internationalism of either capital or labor. Rather will it stimulate and accelerate the developments of both,” Hillquit asserts. Therefore, “the soul of the Socialist International is thus bound to emerge from the ashes of the war strengthened and purified.” “So far the Socialists engaged in the war have shown a most remarkable spirit of mutual understanding and forbearance. It is impossible to predict what situation may be produced if the war should continue much longer. The sense of irritation may become acute, and on the other hand a new turn of the war may alienate the Socialists from their governments and bring them together in common opposition to the continuance of the war,” says Hillquit, adding his believe that the latter outcome is most likely. “Whether the Socialist International will maintain or change its form of organization after the war is at this time still uncertain. It is also quite immaterial,” Hillquit states, arguing that International Socialism itself is imperishable.

 

“The 1915 National Committee Meeting: Reports of National Committeemen L.E. Katterfeld and James P. Reid” [held May 9-14, 1915] ** REVISED EDITION ** Report of the annual meeting of the Socialist Party’s National Committee, held in Chicago May 9-14, 1915 by two Left Wing members of the NC, Washington State Secretary L.E. Katterfeld and Rhode Islander James P. Reid. Katterfeld sees the 1915 NC meeting as seminal, a “complete reversal of the policies that have dominated the party for the past three years.” The process of centralization begun in 1912, which took the election of the governing National Executive Committee out of the hands of the membership and vested it in the National Committee, was undone. Rules for the initiation of referenda were also liberalized, with the number of required seconds reduced so that locals could once again initiate the process with some hope of success. The power of affirmative action between its annual physical gatherings was also restored to the National Committee, severely reducing the authority of the 5 member NEC, which reigned supreme under the model of 1912. All these things, once ratified by the party membership in referendum, meant “an absolute reversal of this autocratic policy and a return to democracy in the party’s control,” in Katterfeld’s view. In his shorter assessment, James Reid adds that “The ’Finnish controversy’ took up much time in the meeting and bodes danger to the party. It will be with us for some time to come.” Reid notes that “the rank and file of the English-speaking comrades will have to become conversant with the element of danger to our movement which the structural connection of the foreign federation with our party means.” Under the current system of attachment of the federations “ambitious persons in those federations can keep the whole party busy trying to settle their rows, and all to the detriment and delay of the work of organizing the American wing of the International Socialist movement,” Reid observes.

 

JUNE

“Is It Practical?” by Carl D. Thompson [June 1915] — Short article by Carl D. Thompson, one of the national leaders of the center-right “Constructive Socialist” tendency in the Socialist Party of America. Thompson addresses the critique of the socialist movement that while its analysis of capitalism is generally accurate, its program for change is impractical. Thompson declares it “of vital importance to make it clear...that the Socialist movement does have a constructive program” which is consistently followed by the party’s elected officials. The party’s ultimate objective does not prevent it from stubbornly engaging in “the struggle for immediate and temporary gains,” Thompson notes, and fighting “for every measure that would improve the immediate conditions of the common people.” Thompson concludes with what seems to have been even in 1915 an old Socialist adage: “it is better to vote for what you really want and not get it just yet than to vote for what you don’t want and get it immediately.”

 

Assessment of the 1915 National Committee Meeting by Ludwig Katterfeld and James P. Reid. Katterfeld and Reid, two members of the Left Wing of the SPA, were participants at this session. This meeting, held in Chicago in June of 1915, was regarded by both as a seminal session—a change of direction from the course set at the 1912 National Convention. Direct election of party officials was returned to the membership (to be exercised via the referendum) and “party treason” statutes were reinforced. Both Katterfeld and Reid went on to become active members in the Communist Labor Party of America.

 

JULY

The 1915 National Committee Meeting: Reports of Two National Committeemen (First published in The International Socialist Review, v. 16, no. 1 [July 1915], pp. 56-60).

Restoring Confidence: A Letter to the Editor of The American Socialist, July 3, 1915, by John M. Work After peaking in size in 1912, the Socialist Party entered a period of significant membership decline, with the organization losing nearly a third of its numbers by 1915. This substantial setback caused the National Committee at its May 1915 annual meeting to initiate a set of constitutional changes aimed at enhancing rank and file control over the organization in the hopes of rebuilding the spirit of participation. SPA founding member John Work wrote this letter to the editor of the SPA’s official organ supporting these changes and attempting to focus attention on the need for structural reform of the organization. Work sees two great obstacles impeding the SPA’s efforts—“scatterization” (a myriad of privately owned publications and individualistic initiatives) and “want of confidence” (the rank and files growing unease with a bureaucratic and centralized party apparatus). In Work’s view, the “want of confidence” crisis began in 1912 with a rightward turn of the party and the implementation of a set of constitutional changes lessening democratic control of the organization by the rank and file. This trend was continued by the National Committee at its 1914 annual meeting, Work indicates. The 1915 meeting of the National Committee attempted to reverse this trend, however, with initiatives intended to make it easier for the rank and file to propose constitutional changes and party referenda as well as to provide for direct election of the Executive Committee and the Executive Secretary of the Party by the membership. Work characterizes these changes as commendable, albeit imperfect.

 

AUGUST

Party Membership Endorses Constitutional Amendments Proposed by National Committee: Report on Referendum A, 1915. [Aug. 28, 1915] The year 1915 saw a significant overhaul of the constitution of the Socialist Party of America. Aiming to stave off the attrition of the organization’s membership, a set of changes were proposed to the membership aiming at streamlining the party organization and bringing elected officials under party discipline on the issue of spending on the military. The nominations for President and Vice President were to be made by referendum vote, the Executive Committee and Executive Secretary were to be elected by the direct vote of the rank and file for 2 year terms, and Language Federations were to be held to a higher standard of 1,000 paid members in order to receive office space and salary for a Translator-Secretary. The relationship between units of the various Federations and the Young People’s Socialist League on the one hand and the regular party apparatus of locals, county, and state organizations on the other, was spelled out. All 17 changes proposed by the National Committee were ratified seriatim by the rank and file in a referendum vote by wide margins. This article from the SPA’s official organ announces the vote tallies for each.

 

SEPTEMBER

 

“The Uninteresting War,” by Max Eastman [September 1915] — Lengthy impressionistic perspective on the war by the editor of The Masses following a trip to Europe. Rather than accepting a crude Marxist perspective that the European bloodbath was the result of a battle for colonial possessions and export markets, Eastman indicates the likelihood of a multiplicity of causes, with nationalism in the first place and German militarism and the actions of its war party the most culpable. Eastman expresses a great fondness for French culture but argues against absolutes in the conflict; German victory would not result in the end of culture but rather would only be a nominal result, since in the long run “the civilization of France would conquer that of Germany, whether she was defeated in arms or not, because of the greater degree of happiness and human fun there is in it.” Eastman sees the war as a mass industrial slaughterhouse, the “regular businesslike killing and salting down of the younger men of each country involved — 20,000 a day, perhaps, all told.” He tells of little popular taste for the bloodshed, devoid of recognizable battles or achievements, and expresses profound doubt “whether the plain folks of Russia and France and England have enough enthusiasm for this war to do much more than fight to a draw with Germany.”

 

“Why Hold a National Convention?” Letter to the Editor of The American Socialist, by Otto Pauls [Sept. 11, 1915] St. Louis rank-and-filer Otto Pauls points out to the membership of the Socialist Party of America that since the organization had recently changed its constitution to provide for nomination of the party’s Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates by referendum vote, there was now no significant function for the next quadrennial convention of the party, slated for June 1916. Pauls notes that unless action is taken by the SP to set aside the provision of its constitution calling for such a gathering “we will be compelled to hold a national convention next year, consisting of 300 delegates and costing about $25,000, for the sole purpose of adopting a platform.” Instead, Pauls suggests this money would be better spent on the campaign itself, and that the “fairly representative” NEC consisting of George Goebel, James Maurer, Adolph Germer, Emil Seidel, and Arthur LeSueur could solicit suggestions for slightly adapting the existing “excellent” platform and “splendid” statement of principles from the 1912 campaign, and submitting that for approval by the SPA membership by referendum. “It will be just as satisfactory as any convention platform and will save the party about $25,000—the difference between a rousing campaign and no campaign at all,” Pauls asserts.

 

“The School for the Masses: The People’s College of Fort Scott, Kansas,” by Eugene V. Debs [Sept. 18, 1915] The People’s College was a private venture closely associated with the Socialist Party—an attempt to create a working class institution of higher education, somewhat reminiscent of early utopian colonization schemes. Eugene Debs was Chancellor of this institution, located just up the road from Girard (home of The Appeal to Reason) in Southeastern Kansas). President and Dean of the Law Department was SP NEC member Arthur LeSueur; Vice President and Director of the English Department was Alva George. Sitting on the 10 member Advisory Board included such SP worthies as Debs, Charles Edward Russell, John Work, Charles Steinmetz, George Kirkpatrick, Frank P. Walsh, Fred Warren, and Kate Richards O’Hare. The article here was published in the official organ of the Socialist Party as a means of publicizing the People’s College venture, which was begun in the fall of 1914. Debs writes that “ colleges and universities are without exception ‘endowed’ by the rich with funds taken from the poor for the purpose of controlling educational influences in a way to keep the rich and poor respectively where they are, and to impress the public with the wonderful work the philanthropists are doing in spreading the light when all the time their cunning ingenuity is being taxed behind the curtains to keep the people in darkness.” This Debs contrasts with the People’s College, “the greatest school for the education of the masses ever instituted among men,” founded and funded and democratically administered in the interests of the working class.

 

OCTOBER

“Fanaticism Means Failure,” by Job Harriman [Oct. 1915] — With war raging in Europe, food prices skyrocketing, and unemployment sweeping the nation, Western Comrade editor Job Harriman wonders the cause of the Socialist Party’s membership malaise, with tens of thousands of dues-payers vanished. Harriman asserts that the problem was the party’s tendency to make a “religion of our theories.” He states that “abstract principles must be tested and sustained by practical, concrete experience,” otherwise doctrine would devolve into fanaticism and the Socialist Party would continue down the path previously traversed by the ultra-orthodox, sectarian Socialist Labor Party. Harriman predicts a change of course would come through increased participation in the labor movement and in “cooperative enterprises,” otherwise the party would inevitably dissolve. “Capitalism will be overthrown by an organization that can deliver more comforts to the people than Capitalism can deliver, or it will not be overthrown at all — talk, teach, preach, and argue as we may,” Harriman declares.

 

“Organization,” by Dan Hogan [October 18, 1915] High rates of membership turnover were by no means limited to the Communist Party of later days—all political organizations show a similar sort of rapid membership turnover. In this article leading Arkansas Socialist Dan Hogan shares for the first time his “most serious doubts” about the ability of the American Socialist movement to “democratically direct and control our movement when it shall have reached its high tide of popular manifestation.” The Socialist Party is racked by low levels of participation, Hogan observes—fewer than 100,000 of a population of American socialists which he estimates at approximately 2 million, based on vote returns and so forth. Of this limited percentage of the whole, only a tiny fraction actually participates in the active direction of the socialist movement through participation in party affairs. “Not 1 in each 100 locals organized ‘stick,’” Hogan asserts—instead, they typically gather, elect a secretary and appoint committees, meet for 2 or 3 months, and disappear. The cause of this enormous turnover of membership revolves around the fact that “we have come to regard the Socialist movement as a pure and simple political party and appealing to mankind upon purely political grounds,” Hogan believes. The same people who drop out of the Socialist Party ostensibly claiming lack of time and funds loyally support various fraternal and benevolent organizations, Hogan notes, freely giving them time and money. The explanation for this behavior lies in the realm of material self-interest, Hogan thinks: “the lodges and fraternal orders serve their immediate economic interests. Their lodges and fraternal orders supply and offer a necessary function and fulfillment of their economic and social desires.” Hogan does not say how the Socialist Party might alter its nature to make it similarly fill this sort of necessary functions and social desires.

 

“Comrades of the Revolution: Letter to the Editor of The American Socialist from the State Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of Washington, Oct. 23, 1915.” This letter to the Socialists of Washington state reprinted in the official organ of the Socialist Party of America illustrates the very limited tactical vision of the unorganized Left Wing of the Socialist Party in 1915. State Secretary L.E. Katterfeld and the radical Washington State Executive Committee declare that “The time has come for ACTION instead of talking. Never in the history of our movement were the conditions so favorable for carrying on our propaganda. Let us too begin a Great Drive, not irregularly and spasmodically here and there with no unity of action, but with a hearty cooperation along the whole line of front. Let us pierce the enemy’s line and capture his trenches at every point.” Peeling away this aggressive bluster, for the Washingtonians it is only the “systematic and statewide distribution of leaflets” that is “the secret” and “the Comrades of Oklahoma” (”organized so that they can reach every home in their state with Socialist propaganda”) which serves as the model. A series of 12 monthly leaflets to be distributed statewide in Washington state is announced, including among the first set of four rather pedestrian and previously released material by John Work, Fred Warren, and Daniel K. Young.

 

The Third International, by Alexandra Kollontai [Oct. 23, 1915] Prominent Russian Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai made her way to the United States in the Fall of 1915, where she conducted a brief lecture tour under the auspices of the German Federation of the Socialist Party of America. This article by Kollontai, published in the official organ of the SPA, is believed to be the first exposition published in the American English language radical press advocating the establishment of a new revolutionary International to replace the failed Second International. The old International had floundered on the principle of “Defense of the Fatherland,” Kollontai states—a progressive principle in a bygone epoch when the danger was one of the republic being attacked by the last vestiges of feudalism, but a reactionary principle in a time of imperialism. This slogan of the “great” and “old” men must be cast aside in favor of the higher principle of the international solidarity of labor, Kollontai argues. It would be primarily the radical youth who could be counted upon to put an end to the false ideas of bygone years, she believed. In Germany, Russia, England, Italy, and France there were emerging a new “left” movement in opposition to militarism and “civil peace”—the kernel of a new, third International. (Kollontai interestingly includes the Independent Labour Party—the British sister of the Socialist Party of America—among the short list of the worthy.) This Third International must be established on 3 fundamental principles, Kollontai states: (1) organic, organized unity of the movement rather than superficial alliance of member parties; (2) commitment to revolutionary tactics; (3) decisive and relentless battle against war and militarism and the “civil peace” with which it is linked.

 

NOVEMBER

“The War Censor Arrives in America: United States Postal Officials Deny Mails to Jack London’s Article ‘The Good Soldier,’” by J. Louis Engdahl [Nov. 20, 1915] The Woodrow Wilson regime did not begin its offensive on freedom of speech and freedom of the press in 1917 after American entry into the European war, but rather in 1915, during the first days of the “preparedness” campaign. Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson’s first move was a ban of a short anti-militarist article by renowned Socialist author Jack London from the mails. This banning of London’s piece, “The Good Soldier,” prompted editor of the Socialist Party’s official organ Louis Engdahl to publish this article under banner headlines—complete with London’s article in bold type, on page 1 above the fold. Military censorship is characterized by Engdahl as a “great power of darkness that stops up the human brain, while the human body goes ignorant to the slaughter,” an institution of the most reactionary militarist regimes of Europe. “The War Censor is out of place in a republic. He has no place or function in a democracy,” Engdahl declares. Engdahl cites a recent poll showing an overwhelming majority of Democrats and Republicans in Congress in agreement with Wilson’s program for the militarization of America. “Does the Democratic administration intend to maintain this majority by gagging the utterances of the American people? We hope not,” says Engdahl. London’s original article, basically a prose poem, declares: “The lowest aim in your life is to become a soldier. The good soldier never tries to distinguish right from wrong. He never thinks; never reasons; he only obeys... A good soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine. He is not a man. He is not a brute, for brutes only kill in self-defense. All that is human in him, all that is divine in him, all that constitutes the man has been sworn away when he took the enlistment oath.... Down with the army and the navy. We don’t need killing institutions. We need life-giving institutions.”

 

“Eugene V. Debs Declines Presidential Nomination,” by J. Louis Engdahl [Nov. 27, 1915] Short news article from The American Socialist announcing that 4-time Socialist Party Presidential standard bearer Eugene V. Debs had sent in a form to the national office of the SPA declining the party’s nomination for President in the 1916 campaign. In a telegram to Engdahl, Debs stated “I do not think I ought to make a public statement, for I really have nothing to say that would be of any interest to anyone, and it would likely seem presumptuous in me to offer an explanation not asked for and not expected. I have no special reason for declining other than that there are thousands of comrades who are at least as well qualified as I am for the nomination.” Debs ultimately ran an unsuccessful race for the US House of Representatives in Indiana in the 1916 campaign.

 

“The Zimmerwald Conference and its Endorsement by the Party NEC,” by Arthur LeSueur [Nov. 27, 1915] Member of the Socialist Party’s governing National Executive Committee Arthur LeSueur offers this explanation to the party for the NEC’s recent endorsement of the manifesto of the Zimmerwald Conference. Despite the conference’s unofficial status, its manifesto “contains a clear-cut, definite statement of the principles which should guide us in the future,” LeSueur writes, adding that such an endorsement was “all the more necessary because of the fact that many of the members high in the councils of the party had expressed themselves in sympathy with the attitude of the officials of the party in Germany, France, Belgium, etc., in their abandonment of the theory of the class struggle, and the class character of the state, and their adoption of a nationalism that placed their necks beneath the feet of their masters.” LeSueur ponders the reason that the European workers were led to the slaughter so easily, theorizing that it was an overemphasis of the socialist movement on economics rather than internationalist idealism that left the rank and file intellectually disarmed. LeSueur states that the NEC cannot bind the party to any certain manifesto, nor would it try, but that the NEC had endorsed the Zimmerwald declaration in order to start the debate in the party over the matter of internationalism. He seeks to change the traditional hesitancy of the international socialist movement to “go on record unequivocally for labor and against war, with a pledge as binding as can be made not to assist or in any way further the war of nations, and never to bear arms against each other, and to bear arms against those who order murder in order to prevent the greater cataclysm, and to do this each in his own country at no matter what cost to themselves...”

 

DECEMBER

“The Social Spirit,” by Eugene V. Debs [Dec. 11, 1915] Socialist Party leading light Gene Debs briefly upbraids many Socialists for their overdeveloped individualism and their underdeveloped “social spirit.” He then moves from party criticism to more familiar terrain, flatly stating that “typical capitalists are barren of the social spirit,” while he paints Socialist interpersonal relations in glowing and effusive neo-religious terms: “How differently two Socialist comrades shake hands! Their hearts are in their palms and the joy of greeting is in their eyes. They have the social spirit. Their interests are mutual and their aspirations kindred. If one happens to be strong and the other weak, the stronger shares the weakness and the weaker shares the strength of his comrade. The base thought of taking a mean advantage, one of the other, does not darken their minds or harden their hearts. They are joined together in the humanizing bonds of fellowship.” Debs asserts that “the end of the reign of anarchistic individualism is in sight.” Until then “we need to be more patient, more kindly, more tolerant, more sympathetic, helpful, and encouraging to one another, and less suspicious, less envious, and less contentious,” and thereby to motivate others to join the Socialist cause through the power of example.

 

“Duty of the Working Class Today,” by Adolph Germer [Dec. 4, 1915] Socialist Party National Executive Committee member Adolph Germer declares that “the paramount duty of the American working class today is to counteract the pernicious doctrine of pro-Militarism that is spread throughout the land.” He makes note of an ideological offensive on all sides by the forces of reaction, making use of schools, churches, fraternal organizations, theater, and cinema (Germer specifically names the films “The Battle Cry of Peace,” “Neill of the Navy,” and “Guarding Old Glory” as examples of “preparedness” propaganda movies). “Every atom of our energy should be put forth to frustrate the use of hundreds of millions of dollars of the people’s money to strengthen the means of destruction of property, the product of labor, and the murder of human beings—while millions of our comrades are jobless, hungry, ill-clad, and unhoused,” Germer declares. He urges party members to flood Congress and President Wilson with letters protesting the attempt to turn America towards militarism. Includes a short biography of Adolph Germer.

1916

JANUARY

“The Third International,” by Anton Pannekoek [Jan. 1916] This article by Dutch Left Wing Socialist Anton Pannekoek details the move towards a new, third, international set in motion by the Zimmerwald Left — nearly two years prior to the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917. The formulas of the "social democratic parties" have "gone by the board" in the wake of the collapse of the Second International, Pannekoek argues. "They have in the great majority surrendered to imperialism; the conscious, active or passive, support of war policies by the party and labor union representatives has dug too deep to make possible a simple return to the old pre-bellum point of view." A "merciless analysis of the errors of the old revisionism"and exposition of the principles of revolutionary socialism leading to a new International was to follow, Pannekoek notes.

“Socialist Presidential Referendum Now On, Arouses Intense Interest.” (Editorial from the Appeal to Reason)[Jan. 22, 1916] In 1916 the Socialist Party of America did not hold a typical quadrennial convention to nominate its candidates for President and Vice President of the United States, instead making use of a party referendum to select its nominees. This “Socialist experiment” is here hailed by the weekly Appeal to Reason as a “great success” and an example to be followed in the future by the Democratic and Republican parties. Three had been nominated for President: Appeal columnist Allan L. Benson of New York, Pennsylvania AFL leader James H. Maurer, and North Dakota Socialist leader Arthur LeSeur of Kansas. “A big vote on the Presidential referendum will be an inspiring beginning for the next big national contest between the forces of capitalism and Socialism,” the editorial declares.

“The Truth About ‘Preparedness,’” by John Spargo [Jan. 8, 1916] The content of this article by John Spargo is largely forgettable, save as a curiosity—conspiracy-theory alleging mutual manipulations of an owned press by the armaments makers of the main European antagonists. The national trusts of guns and iron are said to each and all have planted hostile stories abroad against their own nationality in order to fan the flames of patriotic hatred at home, generating lucrative military contracts in the process. Points for originality, I suppose. What is more striking is the extent to which John Spargo “flipped” on the question of militarism in little more than a year’s time, he becoming a lead propagandist and cheerleader for Woodrow Wilson’s War as well as the administration’s token Socialist for foreign missions. Unintended irony drips from Spargo’s words: “The great war in Europe has caused many people to fear the astonishingly efficient military organization of Germany.... And the capitalist ‘patriots’ have capitalized that fear. They have made it the basis of the most hysterical campaign in our history. They have even swept some of our best-beloved comrades from the moorings of their faith. Socialists who but yesterday thrilled us by their revolutionary ardor now join in the hysterical cry ‘Prepare against War! Prepare against War!’ Let us not be deceived. The United States is more assured against attack from any quarter in the world today than at any time within the past hundred years. Nowhere in the world is there the interest, the disposition, or the power to make war upon this nation.”

 

“Publishing Statements: Letter to the Editor of The American Socialist,” by I.T. Barron [Jan. 8, 1916] This letter to the editor of the Socialist Party’s official organ from a long-time New Hampshire rank-and-filer calls on editor Louis Engdahl to publish more verbatim statements by leading party figures, so that the party membership may be better informed. “William D. Haywood was recalled from the National Executive Committee [in 1912] and it’s a cinch that not 1 in 25 who voted to recall him knew what he said or that he actually said anything. I voted to recall him but do not know to this day whether I was justified in doing so,” Barron writes. A similar controversy surrounds the purported statements of Charles Edward Russell in Philadelphia on Nov. 29, 1915, Barron believes. Russell was alleged to have at that time come out for the Wilson regime’s program of American militarization (so-called “preparedness”); party members again remained in the dark about the actual statement made. “Let us get at the facts before we act. If Comrade Russell lacks class consciousness to the extent that he advocates principles to which the Socialist Party is unanimously opposed he is not fit to be a candidate for President or a member of the Socialist Party. Let’s fire him,” declares Barron, adding that there are three absolutely sacrosanct principles of the SPA: Collective Ownership, Democracy, and Anti-Militarism.

 

“Executive Secretary Candidates in Party Referendum Voice Views on Militarism and Preparedness.” [Jan. 15, 1916] “Do You Favor the Policy of Military Preparedness?” Asking early 20th Century American Socialists this question is about as provocative as asking early 21st century Democrats whether they favor a woman’s right to reproductive choice or Republicans of the same era whether they favor lower income taxes. Virtually all members of the Socialist Party—Left, Right, and Center—were vehemently opposed to the European war and Woodrow Wilson’s campaign to militarize America under the slogan of “Preparedness.” One can read personal ideology through shadings of position statements, however. The 4 candidates for SP Executive Secretary make their positions heard. At the far Left is Washington State Secretary Ludwig Katterfeld, who states “The capitalist system is rotten ripe for revolution. It will collapse as quick as we are ready. Let us prepare. Stop frittering away our strength on ‘reforms.’ Educate and organize for the purpose of revolution.” A radical Center-Left position is staked out by Adolph Germer, who indicates that if the American public insists upon military preparedness, it should take the form of universal military training for all able bodied men between ages 18-45 in lieu of a standing army, complete with democratic election of officers, guarantees against the militia being used against strikes or in wars of aggression, and a provision that individuals are to keep their rifles and at least 200 rounds of ammunition (all provided by the government) at home—a de facto arming of the proletariat with obvious albeit unstated revolutionary implications. At the Center, current Executive Secretary Walter Lanfersiek seems demoralized and resigned to electoral defeat, his position reading in toto: “I am opposed to military preparedness.” To the SP Right is Carl D. Thompson, who emphasizes a positive program consisting of “a federation of nations, a sort of United States of the World with an international congress and court, universal disarmament, and the erection of the World International.”

 

“Election of Party Officials: Letter to the Editor of The American Socialist in Support of Santeri Nuorteva for SPA NEC,” by J.F. Maki [Jan. 22, 1916] Translator-Secretary of the Finnish Socialist Federation J.F. Maki here endorses Santeri Nuorteva of Massachusetts in the coming election for the 5 members of the SPA’s governing National Executive Committee. He provides a fine short biography of Nuorteva, noting that the young Nuorteva had spent two years in Germany as an office worker before touring the world as a fireman aboard a steamer. Maki says that Nuorteva was elected to the Finnish Diet 3 times and served as editor of party publications there, drawing the ire of the Tsarist censorship, “who indicted him at least 20 times for articles he wrote to the party press.” Nuorteva had served one 7 month term in prison and was under the cloud of another sentence for a 2 year term in his native Finland. In America, Nuorteva “has made several lecture tours over the country, translated several works on socialism, and at the present time is editor of one of our dailies,” Maki notes.

 

“Adolph Germer for Executive Secretary: Letter to the Editor of The American Socialist,” by U. Solomon [Jan. 29, 1916] While the campaign for NEC of the Socialist Party was polite, the battle for the Executive Secretary position got a bit nasty, with proxies for the 4 candidates (and candidates themselves) chipping at one another. New York State Secretary U. Solomon here goes after Rev. Carl Thompson, who had previously went after sitting Executive Secretary Walter Lanfersiek, a man who was also attacked by the 4th candidate, future CLP/UCP/CPA leader Ludwig Katterfeld, Washington State Secretary. Solomon accuses Thompson of taking credit for the work of others, engaging in factionalism in Nebraska and Minnesota, and feathering his own nest as head of the SPA’s Speakers’ Bureau. “If a change is necessary, and it seems that one is because of friction in the National Office, in which Thompson is by no manner of means a disinterested person, then let us have a real change. Keep out of the National Office all those who either started dissensions or were participants in the same. A real change will take place if we elect Adolph Germer.” Germer, it should be noted, was a well-known figure in the SP milieu, the leading vote-getter in the National Committee’s balloting for NEC in 1915 and a fairly frequent contributor to the party press on labor issues. Regardless, this letter provides an excellent illustration of the idea that factional struggle often had at its root a struggle for jobs and was often powered by personal animosity. Further, this sort of behavior has been typical of human political organizations for hundreds of years and did not suddenly spring from nothing in the American Communist movement in 1919.

 

“Russell and His War Views: Letter to the Editor of The American Socialist,” by Eugene V. Debs [Jan. 29, 1916] In November 1915, Socialist Party touring organizer Charles Edward Russell came out for Woodrow Wilson’s program of military “Preparedness.” A storm of discontent erupted among the Party faithful over this flagrant departure from Socialist principles, including calls for Russell’s immediate expulsion. This prompted widely respected party orator Gene Debs to write this letter to the SPA’s official organ in Russell’s defense. Debs expresses his belief that though he disagrees fundamentally with Russell’s pro-militarist orientation “I honor the man for having the courage of his convictions and I want to say that it requires moral courage of the highest order to take the position he has taken and fearlessly and frankly express himself in the face of a hostile and overwhelming opposition.” This frankness had cost Russell the probable nomination of his party for the Presidency, Debs believes, noting that such courageous statements of conscience are “ all too rare in the world.” Debs states that the charge levied against Russell that he was guilty of party treason was not applicable: “There is not a drop of traitorous blood in Russell’s veins. He is simply mistaken and it is our duty as his comrades to seek to convince him of his error. “

 

FEBRUARY

“State Convention Passes Upon Many Important Questions: Finnish Difficulties Satisfactorily Settled —Many Constitutional Changes.” [events of Feb. 26-28, 1916] This unsigned article from the Minneapolis Socialist weekly New Times, edited by Alex Georgian, reviews the changes made at the 1916 Minnesota State Convention of the Socialist Party. The conflict within the Finnish Socialist Federation in 1914-15 had taken a serious toll on the party’s membership, as had the discouragement and economic downturn which followed the eruption of war in Europe in the summer of 1914. From a high of 5,600, the paid membership of the Socialist Party of Minnesota had fallen to 3,547, it was reported to the convention. The convention determined to issue charters to five locals loyal to the (conservative) national Finnish Socialist Federation while at the same time implementing constitutional changes that would make it more difficult for the State Executive Board to arbitrarily suspend locals. Henceforth, charges would have to first be published in the official state newspaper and seconds for the proposed suspension gathered from 6 locals in no fewer than 5 counties. Former Christian Socialist and future Communist Jeremy Bentall was nominated to head the Socialist Party’s ticket as its candidate for Governor.

 

“The Duluth Convention,” by John Gabriel Soltis [events of Feb. 26-28, 1916] This upbeat report of the recently completed Minnesota State Convention of the Socialist Party of America hails the termination of the bitter feud within the Finnish Socialist Federation as the greatest achievement of the gathering. “It can be said to the credit of Leo Laukki, the brilliant Finnish thinker and leader of the ‘Reds,’ that he himself engineered and supported the much desired rapprochement between the two Finnish factions,” Soltis writes. He adds: “It was clear to all that the Finns of both sides desired unity. After all they came to realize that their differences of opinion concerning tactics did not justify a wide split, so they united. As a result the organization is now much stronger. This act of unity confirms the theory that socialists can always unite if they have the will to do so.” Soltis also indicates that the creation of a new county level of organization in the Minnesota party will go far in curbing the “anarchical” actions of individual locals. He also lauds the choice of Jeremy Bentall as the party’s candidate for Governor, noting that Bentall is “an able speaker in two languages, and a clean student of the revolutionary movement.”

 

“The State Convention,” by Alex Georgian [events of February 26-28, 1916] Recap of the 1916 Minnesota State Convention of the Socialist Party by New Times editor Alex Georgian. Georgian concurs with other analysts that the chief accomplishment of the 1916 Minnesota convention was the liquidation of the split within the Finnish Socialist Federation in the state, revealing details of the backstory. According to Georgian, the pro-syndicalist Left Wingers of the Finnish Federation, expelled from the national federation for their support of the Left Wing daily Sosialisti,retained their charters from the Minnesota State Executive Board and blocked the efforts of moderates loyal to the national Finnish Federation from forming their own locals. Composition of the Minnesota Executive was determined in advance by the Left Wing Finns and their anglophonic allies, who elected a full slate, thus maintaining the status quo. The 1916 convention seems to have brokered an agreement allowing the moderate Finns to establish their own locals in exchange for legitimacy of the Left Wingers and their paper — support of which had been deemed to be a party crime by the moderate Finnish Federation leadership, based in the Eastern District. Georgian, later a prominent member of the early American Communist movement, reveals his sympathies to be with the Finnish moderates rather than the pro-syndicalist Left Wingers.

 

“What the Convention Accomplished,” by Sigmond N. Slonim [events of February 26-28, 1916] This analysis of the 1916 Minnesota State Convention of the Socialist Party reiterates the steps towards reunification of the so-called “Reds” and “Yellows” into which the Finnish Socialist Federation was divided. The two factions had “instead of fighting for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism, began to spend their time, money, and energy in fighting each other” and a split of the federation itself had resulted. The decision of the convention to allow the excluded Finns to establish locals had laid the groundwork for real unity of the two factions, Slonim believes. “I hope that the time is not very far off when the two factions of our party will soon realize the importance of having harmony in the party and they will join hands not only by holding membership in the party, but by doing away with their animosities and hatreds against each other and will then put up a solid front in their struggle against capitalism until the time will come when the toilers of the world will be emancipated from wage slavery.”

 

MAY

“The Finnish Amendment,” by Sophie Carlson [May 6, 1916] The author of this letter to the Minneapolis Socialist Party weekly was a moderate member of the Finnish Federation whose local lost its charter as part of the faction fight in the Finnish Socialist Federation — a particularly bitter battle in the state of Minnesota. Carlson describes the sequence of events, in which her Chisholm, MN local expelled a handful of pro-IWW dissidents for two years under Article II, Section 6 of the Socialist Party’s national constitution. Under the Socialist Party’s federative system, final say over such matters in the state was held by the elected officials of the state party in each state; and the Minnesota State Executive Board overturned the decision of Local Chisholm and ordered the expelled syndicalists reinstated by Local Chisholm. This the local refused to do, which the Minnesota SEB met by pulling the charter of Local Chisholm for violation of party discipline and issuing a new charter to the pro-syndicalist dissidents. When the moderate majority faction reapplied for admission to the Socialist Party of Minnesota, the SEB declined, stating there was already a Finnish branch in Chisholm. The moderate majority sought to align itself with the national Finnish Socialist Federation (which had itself conducted mass expulsions of its pro-IWW Left Wing) and refused to join the chartered local and a stalemate ensued. Carlson is not hopeful of rapprochement between the two factions: “We have had meetings and hot debates, and at present are trying to compromise but it seems impossible,” she writes.

 

“A Necessary Protest: Letter to the Editor of The American Socialist, May 6, 1916,” by Ludwig Lore Translator-Secretary Lore of the German Federation of the Socialist Party protests against what he sees as a coordinated effort to fan the flames of prejudice against the Language Federations and to “attach the “American” Socialists to the Thompson bandwagon.” The German Federation was fully justified in making its non-binding recommendations on party affairs, Lore states. Further, he indicates that Thompson supporters, in addition to practicing dirty politics and being incorrect were also hypocrites: “In the East, George Goebel, a member of the National Executive Committee and A.W. Ricker, whose party activity...are acting as campaign managers for Thompson & Co. We say Thompson & Co. because it is generally known that the same comrades who are so “righteously” indignant over the ‘arrogance’ of the German Language Group, agreed on and supported a slate of 5 comrades—not 2—for the National Executive Committee.” Baited by the Thompson supporters to explain why Thompson was less than suitable as Executive Secretary, Lore pulls no punches: “We believe that Carl D. Thompson’s election as National Secretary would be detrimental to the movement, because in our opinion, the chief officer of a workingmen’s party should be neither a Prohibitionist nor a Christian Socialist, nor a mere reformer. What the Socialist Party needs today, more than ever before, is an Executive officer—a man who, as a class-conscious Socialist—knows and understands the needs of the working class and will keep in touch with the working class movement. Such a man is Adolph Germer and not the prohibitionist, ‘Christian’ Socialist Carl D. Thompson.”

 

“Fair Play: Joint Letter to the Editor of The American Socialist, May 6, 1916,” by the Translator-Secretaries of 10 Socialist Party Language Federations Ten of the 15 Translator-Secretaries of the Socialist Party of America join in a protest of the Milwaukee Leader’s allegation that the federations made use of the unit rule and cast their ballots unanimously in party referenda—unlike the SPA’s English language locals and branches. Unfair electoral tactics against the Leader’s favorite for Executive Secretary, Rev. Carl D. Thompson, is thus alleged. “If that charge were true the foreign branches would make the referendum a ridiculous farce. But it is not true. It was obviously invented to create a prejudice against foreign speaking branches,” the letter by the 10 asserts. The Leader refused to print the denial and refused to retract its assertion, however, thus forcing the 10 Translator-Secretaries to take their case to the party’s official organ.

 

“Russell and Teddy Agree: Letter to the Editor of The American Socialist,” by Alfred Wagenknecht [May 20, 1916] This letter from Left Wing Socialist Alfred Wagenknecht—home again in Ohio after the better part of a decade as a leading member of the radical Washington state organization—takes a shot at Victor Berger by linking him with the “Preparedness” campaign bally-hooed by Theodore Roosevelt and endorsed by Right Wing Socialist Charles Edward Russell (soon to leave the party). In Wagenknecht’s view, both Russell and “Teddy the Terrible” agree that “eventually and ultimately we must come to a system of universal military service patterned after the Swiss and Australian plans. Both claim, and so does Victor Berger, that these plans of compulsory service further true democracy.” Russell may be excused for bringing intellectual baggage of his past into the socialist movement, Wagenknecht states, “but how about veteran Berger? Shall we excuse him on the assumption that his brain still contains vestigial impressions of the savage state of society?”

 

“Result of Referendum: Germer is Chosen National Secretary; Berger, Hillquit, Maley, Work, and Spargo Members of National Executive Committee.” [May 27, 1916] Complete state-by-state returns for the run-off election for 3 open slots on the Socialist Party’s NEC and for the position of Executive Secretary. In the all-important Executive Secretary race, Adolph Germer won a bitter election over Carl D. Thompson, 14,486 (54.9%) to 11,900 (45.1%). Thompson won majorities in 25 of the 48 states and territories participating, but lost the race due to strong Language Federation voting in Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New York, which delivered decisive majorities for Germer. In the race for the 3 remaining seats on the governing National Executive Committee—Morris Hillquit and Victor Berger having already won impressive majorities in the first round of balloting in March—Anna Maley (17,585), John Work (14,057), and John Spargo (13,413) received majorities of votes cast in the run off and were elected. Maley garnered strong support across the country, picking up the highest number of votes cast in 28 of the 48 participating states. Founding member Work received similar broadly spread support, while Spargo was put over the top by a decisive total in New York State. Losing candidates in the run-off were founding member Algie Simons, Oklahoma favorite H.G. Creel, and sitting NEC member Walter LeSeuer.

 

JUNE

“Chicago ‘Prepares’ to Live; Fights ‘Preparedness’ to Die,” by J. Louis Engdahl [June 10, 1916] On Saturday, June 3, 1916, Chicago’s employers declared a paid holiday so that their workers could march in an official “Preparedness” parade through the city’s streets, patterned after an earlier event held in New York City. The Chicago Association of Commerce, primary organizer of the event, claimed that over 130,000 participated. This article appeared in the Socialist Party’s official organ the following week. The use of economic compulsion and “conscription” on the party of nationalistic employers is charged, and anecdotes related about workers who refused participation. Secretary of the Chicago Federation of Labor Edward Nockels is quoted as saying “”We are not in sympathy with the parade.... The men at the head of it are all enemies of organized labor.” American Socialist Editor Engdahl characterized the parade as primarily an event of big business and in support of the Presidential candidacy of Theodore Roosevelt, and only secondarily as a real “preparedness” event. An ineffectual counter-effort was made by the two outnumbered Socialist aldermen on the Chicago City Council, who unveiled a three part “program of social preparedness” for the city, calling for the formation of committees given the task of drawing up concrete legislation to take before the next session of the Illinois legislature on the issues of housing, unemployment, and for municipal ownership. The first of these proposals was passed by the council, the second two referred to committee, where they presumably died.

 

“The Party Finances: Report of the Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party,” by Walter Lanfersiek [June 17, 1916] Final report of outgoing National Secretary of the SPA Walter Lanfersiek, of Kentucky. Though soundly defeated in his bid for reelection in 1916, Lanfersiek takes pride in having righted the Socialist Party’s financial affairs over the past three years. The party’s leftover debt from 1912 had been more or less liquidated, and the party’s net worth had increased by some $25,000, despite having had 3 costly annual meetings of the National Committee and undertaken a greatly expanded payroll in the form of 11 Translator-Secretaries. Actually paid party membership stood at 94,378 (including dual members and exemptions) for the previous 3 months, Lanfersiek states. “There is no doubt that the past 3 years have been the hardest years the party has had, or perhaps ever will have. The membership has not been as large as all have desired, which fact reduced the income. The war and unemployment in 1914 and 1915 had a great influence on keeping the party back, and our present position, with close to 100,000 members, and with the finances in an excellent condition, will make it possible for the party to go ahead with its work.” Lanfersiek makes no apologies and indicates that history will show him to have been “a faithful and conscientious servant of the party.”

 

“Politicians and Preachers,” by Eugene V. Debs [June 24, 1916] This brief election year article by SPA orator Gene Debs written for the party’s official organ remains timely in an election year 90 years later: “The politicians and preachers of capitalism are set up as the shepherds of the flock, the politicians holding aloft the banner of patriotism and the preachers arrayed in the livery of religion. These are the real betrayers of the people, the hypocrites that Christ denounced and for which he was crucified; the slimy, oil-tongued deceivers of their ignorant, trusting followers, who traffic in the slavery and misery of their fellow-beings that they may tread the paths of ease and bask in the favors of their masters.... Beware of the liveried hypocrites of the landlords, the usurers, the money-changers, the stock-gamblers, the exploiters, the enslavers and despoilers of the people; beware of the ruling class politicians and preachers and mercenary menials in every form who are so profoundly concerned about your ‘patriotism’ and your ‘religion’ and who receive their 30 pieces for warning you against socialism because it will endanger your morality and interfere with your salvation.”

 

JULY

“Eugene V. Debs, Interviewed for Appeal, Sees Bright Chance for His Election to the United States Congress: ‘Voters Sure to Come to Us,’ Says Veteran Champion of the Working Class–Comrades Throughout the Country Support the Campaign with Silver Ballots–Fifth Indiana District Being Flooded with Socialist Literature,” by Emanuel Julius [July 1, 1916] In 1916, 4 time Socialist Party Presidential standard bearer Eugene V. Debs decided not to run for chief executive, but to instead pursue election to US Congress in the Indiana 5th District. Appeal to Reason writer Emanuel Haldeman-Julius paid a visit to Debs at his home in Terre Haute to report on the high profile campaign for the tens of thousands of readers of the Kansas Socialist weekly. “I have every reason to believe that the campaign if properly constructed (and I am sure it will be) will bring the vote to us. The preparedness issue will do it. I have confidence that the situation is going to become more and more responsive to the appeal of Socialism,” Debs told Julius. Debs expresses disdain for President Woodrow Wilson’s reversal on the issue of stopping the trusts and his flip-flopping on militarization: “Mr. Wilson, who had all his life been opposed to militarism, has now become the avowed champion of plutocratic preparedness, and today he stands before the country pleading in the name of Wall Street and its interests for the largest standing army and the most powerful navy in the world,” Debs declared. Debs was upbeat about party unity in 1916: “I’ve been in all campaigns since our party was organized in 1900,” said Debs, “and never have I been in a campaign like this one, never have I seen such harmony.”

 

OCTOBER

𔄢 The Socialist Party,” by Job Harriman [April 1916] Butler University graduate and Christian minister-turned-lawyer and utopian socialist commune founder Job Harriman launches into another polemic against the intellectuals who run the Socialist Party of America, insisting on the need for its transformation to an adjunct of the organized labor and cooperative movements. In Harriman’s view the SPA was exhibiting 𔄢 a strong tendency to become ever less and less a labor movement and more and more an intellectual and quasi-religious movement” and was thus 𔄢 developing the spirit of the old Socialist Labor Party.” Harriman rails against the idea that the unions and the political party were two independent wings of the worker movement, instead insisting that the 𔄢 political party must be a practical fighting machine for what the class wants now.” Harriman insists that only an organization allowing in the first instance only members of unions or cooperatives and striving the win immediate demands would avoid the degeneration brought by intellectuals. He also argues in favor of using the current military preparedness campaign as an excuse for the arming of 𔄢 all the citizens.”

 

NOVEMBER

“Manifesto of the Socialist Propaganda League of America.” [Nov. 26, 1916] The “Left Wing” of the Socialist Party of America was a long-existing ideological trend, dating back to the 1901 origin of the SPA and before. It was not until the end of 1916, however, in the aftermath of the abject failure of the Second International to avert war and with the slogan of “Preparedness” sweeping America, that this radical fraction began the process of formal organization. The November 26, 1916, meeting in Boston which adopted this manifesto, established a dues-based membership organization, and initiated an official organ called The Internationalist may properly be regarded as the moment of origin of a formal “Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party”—an evolving movement which would in 1918 begin publication of another Boston newspaper called The Revolutionary Age and set into motion the political process leading to the formal splitting of the Socialist Party into Social Democratic and revolutionary Socialist wings in 1919. The manifest states: “The time is passed when our national Socialist parties, bound by old forms and moved by old ideals, can proceed with its old propaganda within the confines of capitalist legality and morals, and expect within these limits to advance the cause of industrial democracy. We are at the dawn of a new era; the day is big with the content of social eruptions, economic and political strikes, revolutions. It is an era in which the class conflict approaches its climax.”

 

“Our Patriotism and Theirs”, by Morris Hillquit [Nov. 4, 1916] Socialist Party leading luminary and Congressional candidate Morris Hillquit responds to charges made by the right that the Socialists are “devoid of patriotism.” To this Hillquit responds that, quite to the contrary, only the Socialists stand for “true and enlightened patriotism.” “True patriotism expresses itself in honest efforts to enhance the happiness and welfare of the great masses of the people, to help them in their struggles for more food, better homes, higher education, larger freedom, brighter, happier lives,” Hillquit states. The candidates of the Republican and Democratic Parties, however, travel the country “prating about ’true Americanism, ‘they wave the American flag with rivaling frenzy, they flatter our national vanity, they appeal to our basest instincts, they foment racial antagonism at home and pave the ground for strife and war with foreign nations. Their agitation is harmful to the people, it is grossly unpatriotic.” The Socialists alone believe in the words of the Declaration of Independence, that government exists for the purpose of ensuring “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to all citizens and that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” While the regime of the capitalist parties exists to preserve “Property, Authority, and the Pursuit of Profits,” the Socialists seek to establish “a government organized to maintain human life and promote human happiness, a government based on industrial as well as political liberty, a true popular government for the benefit of the whole people.”

 

“Choose Hillquit and Berger on First Ballot: Tally of the First Round of Voting for the National Executive Committee of the SPA.” [March 18, 1916] Results of the first round of balloting for the 5 member National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party showed only two candidates receiving a majority of the ballots cast—New York City lawyer Morris Hillquit and Milwaukee publisher Victor L. Berger. Both of these two leading vote-getters tallied over 17,000 votes, far surpassing the just over 10,000 ballots cast for their closest two competitors. The top Left Wing vote-getter was Kate Sadler of Washington state, who drew just over 5,300 votes, narrowly trailing sitting NEC member George Goebel of New Jersey. Santeri Nuorteva, an SP Regular with a Center orientation, drew 5,275 votes, compared with the 3,125 or so garnered by Ella Reeve Bloor, and the fewer than 3,000 votes cast for Cleveland Left Winger C.E. Ruthenberg.

 

DECEMBER

“A Short Cut to Revolution,” by James Oneal [Dec. 23, 1916] This article by Socialist Party of Massachusetts State Secretary James Oneal demonstrates once again that the Left/Right split in the SPA predated American entrance into the European war. Oneal responds to a December 1916 article by S.J. Rutgers in the International Socialist Review announcing the establishment of an organized Left Wing faction in the Socialist Party, with a view to eventual formation of a “new International.” Oneal lists the failings of the Left Wing in Massachusetts during 1913-1914, when they held control of the administration of the state organization, racking up a $1200 debt and damaging or destroying the primary party locals which they controlled. According to Oneal, the Left Wing failed to endorse or support, either organizationally or financially, the recently completed campaign of SP Presidential nominee Allan Benson. Oneal claims that “the formal way provided by the party” for its reform “does not appeal to them for these super-men are superior to referendums, conventions, and constitutions. They must have an inner circle within the party. Composed of Syndicalists, Direct Actionists, IWWs, anti-religious bugs, and a hash of other views, they constitute the queerest collection of opinions that will be found anywhere in the country. The Left Wing had split the organization, Oneal states, with the factions “tearing each other to pieces over ‘proper tactics.’” Oneal warns that “This is a forecast of what may be expected should the ‘revolutionists’ get support elsewhere.”

 

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