The Socialist Party of America

(1919)

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1919

JANUARY

“Now For the Next Step,” by C.E. Ruthenberg. [Jan. 1919] Text of a direct mail piece sent out to subscribers of the Socialist News [Cleveland] by Local Cuyahoga County, Socialist Party over the signature of Sec. C.E. Ruthenberg. Ruthenberg seeks to bolster the subscription roll of the newspaper in order to fund its expansion. The capitalist press was poisoning the minds of the workers, both with regard to the Russian Revolution and as to the nature of the American workers’ movement itself, Ruthenberg states. “There will never be any hope for us unless we can build up newspapers pledged to the interests of the workers which will present the truth about the workers’ cause and offset the lies of the capitalist press.”

The Coming Struggle, by Mary Marcy [Jan. 1, 1919] This article by the co-editor of the recently terminated International Socialist Review gives voice to the revolutionary enthusiasm and illusions that swept the American radical movement in the aftermath of World War I. “To my mind the ultimate triumph of Socialism is as inevitable as the coming of the spring,” Marcy declares. “The capitalist financial system is already crumbling. The spirit of revolution is already spreading beyond the boundaries of Russia into Germany, Bulgaria, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and down to Romania and far into Sweden and Finland.” In response, capital was becoming internationally organized into a single world entity, with a single world army to defend its interests, Marcy says. In order to be effective in the future, “Socialism must become more and more international,” she indicates. Forthcoming conflicts would “rock every nation” and “the greed of the capitalist class, the collapsing financial system upon which it is built, the enforced rebellion of the workers will be our opportunity.” In the coming “real class war” Marcy says that equation of Socialism with electoral politics would be rejected by the working class; that instead the “rebellious force” must be organized and educated in “Industrial Socialism,” which she defines as “shop-control by the workers.”

“The Turning Point in Human History,” by Morris Hillquit [Jan. 1, 1919] &8212; From his convalescence for tuberculosis at Saranac Lake, New York, Socialist Party leader Morris Hillquit greets the party upon the arrival of the new year. Hillquit declares that 1919 “will probably mark the turning point in human history,” complete both with victories and conquests but also with great struggles and trials. Hillquit calls upon the rank and file to meet the coming challenges “like men” — “loyally, courageously, and unflinchingly.” Hillquit greets the workers of the various nations of Europe, with place of honor given to the proletariat of Soviet Russia, for whom Hillquit wishes “unity and power, victory and peace, and deliverance from all reactionary onslaughts, domestic and foreign.” The United States, on the other hand, is characterized as “the rearguard in the onward march of revolutionary international labor.” For the American workers Hillquit modestly hopes the winning of “that position in the government of their country to which their numbers and economic importance entitle them.”

“Russian Soviet Colonies in U.S. to Meet in N.Y.: Second Annual Convention of All-Russians to be held January 6 to 9.” (NY Call) [Jan. 4, 1919] &8212; News account detailing the forthcoming 2nd All-Russian Colonial Conference in New York City. Formally conducted under the auspices of the New York Soviet of Deputies of Russian Workers, the gathering brought together members of the emigre Russian-language speaking Socialist and Anarchist movements. The article notes the existence of a weekly newspaper by the New York Soviet, with a claimed circulation of 5,000 copies, and states that more than 100 branches of the organization had been established across the United States and Canada during the previous year. Headquarters were located at 133 E 15th Street, the article indicates. Charges made by Philadelphia police attempting to connect the radical Russians there with recent bomb incidents were explicitly denied by a spokesman for the group.

Letter to ‘Dr. Ball,’ from John Reed in New York City, January 6, 1919. Previously unpublished letter between war correspondent and future Communist Labor Party leader John Reed and a Socialist correspondent. Reed defers in providing answers specific questions, instead pointing his correspondent to articles on the Russian revolution published in The Liberator in 1918. Apparently the idea for the tome Ten Days That Shook the World (1919) was not formed at this date, as Reed writes “I am very sorry that I cannot help you more, but if I answered your questions I should have to write a book, and I haven’t the time.” Reed notes that the Communists “are Marxians -- as a matter of fact, they call themselves the only real Marxists. They believe in proletarian revolt followed by a dictatorship of the proletariat and the forcible expropriation and socialization of private property.” Reed takes pleasure in the “latest news from Russia” that the Bolsheviks were “whipping hell out of the Allies.”

“1919 Nominations for Members of New York State Committee, Socialist Party” (NY Call) [Jan. 7, 1919] &8212; With the list heavy with names of some of the top figures who would emerge as leaders of the Left Wing Section, this list of nominees for the New York State Committee from Local New York provides some circumstantial evidence that a Left Wing drive was underway for capture of the governing body of the Socialist Party of New York. Those eliminated from the ballot on the basis of the technicality that they had not been SPA members for at least two years included future CLP leaders John Reed and Gregory Weinstein, economist Scott Nearing, Irish radical Jim Larkin, journalist Louis Lochner, and black trade unionist A. Philip Randolph.

“The Situation in Ohio,” by Eugene V. Debs. [Jan. 8, 1919] This article was written for The Ohio Socialist by Gene Debs, essentially the Socialist orator’s hometown newspaper during from the tail end of 1918 into early 1919 during the legal persecution of Debs for his Canton speech. Prohibited from public speaking outside of the court’s jurisdiction, Debs concentrated his efforts on rousing the Ohio Socialist movement. Debs portrayed the situation in the heavily industrialized state of Ohio as “extremely favorable” and noted that he was in the process of speaking to a series of large and enthusiastic crowds. ” Let me ... bid you take advantage of the present favorable situation and combine all your energies to organize thoroughly the class-conscious forces of labor for the mighty task which now confronts it,” Debs urged. Debs also noted the release from prison of leading Ohio Socialists Charles Baker, C.E. Ruthenberg, and Alfred Wagenknecht, “These comrades have been consecrated behind prison bars and will now rise to their full stature in the service of the revolutionary movement,” Debs prophetically noted.

“ International Socialist Delegates,” by Louis C. Fraina [Jan. 11, 1919] This editorial by Louis Fraina in The Revolutionary Age sharply criticizes the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party for arbitrarily appointing Algernon Lee, James Oneal, and John M. Work as delegation to a forthcoming international convention called by Camille Huysmans, while it was Morris Hillquit, Victor Berger, and Lee who had been elected delegates to an altogether different international gathering by party referendum a year previously. “The constitution of the Socialist Party provides for the election of delegates to International Socialist Conventions, it provides several ways in which they may be elected, but it does not provide that the National Executive Committee shall appoint delegates. The appointment of the present men in contrary to the constitution, it is arbitrary and it is illegal,” Fraina charges. He notes that the NEC had been previously approached by various units of the party to call an Emergency National Convention in order to give the membership an opportunity of “expressing their will on all the matters arising out of the present crisis through which the world is passing,” including the question of international affiliation and the selection of international delegates.

Letter to Arthur E. Elmgreen in Chicago from Eugene V. Debs in Terre Haute, Jan. 11, 1919. This Debs document was apparently conceived as an open letter directed to the delegates of the Mooney Labor Congress, convened in Chicago on Jan. 14, 1919. Debs proclaims jailed California labor leader Tom Mooney to be “absolutely innocent” and “the victim of the most infamous conspiracy in American history.” He condemns Gov. William Stephens of California as a “tool of the corporations” and the state’s courts as “debauched to the last degree” and urges united action of the working class and organized labor movement to win the freedom of Mooney and his associate Warren Billings, culminating if necessary in a general strike. “[I]f all entreaties are in vain and all measures fail, then as a last resort let a general strike be ordered and the industries of the nation paralyzed from end to end by an outraged working class determined upon rebuking crime and securing justice. ...The working class and the common people and all who sympathize with them must take this matter into their own hands and fearlessly meet the issue by stopping the wheels of industry long enough to compel the financial bandits and their mercenaries to realize that the honest workers have some rights they are bound to respect.”

Workers and Soldiers Council Organized in Portland. (Oregon Socialist Party Bulletin) [events of Jan. 9-13, 1919]While the organization of “Soviets” in Winnipeg and Seattle in association with general strikes in these cities are remembered as major historical events, less widely noted is a short-lived effort to establish a Soviet in Portland, Oregon. This article from the monthly publication of the Socialist Party of Oregon reprints a solicitation letter written shortly after the Jan. 9, 1919 formation of the “Portland Council of Workers and Soldiers” over the signatures of the organization’s “Temporary President,” Harry M. Wicks (later of Proletarian Party and Communist Party fame) as well as its Recording Secretary, Joe Thornton of the Street Railway Men’s Union. Although decked out in bright red revolutionary bunting, the modest main purpose of the organization seems to have been to provide a mechanism for the integration of returning soldiers into the labor movement and to thereby avoid the growth of right wing “patriotic” organizations and strikebreaking. The entity itself seems to have generally resembled a city central labor council, with all unions entitled to representation on the basis of 1 delegate for every 100 members in good standing, or major fraction thereof. Only a very few meetings of this stillborn organization were held.

“The Necessity of an Emergency Convention,” by Louis C. Fraina [Jan. 18, 1919] Left Wing theoretician Louis Fraina argues that during the recently complete world war, “contradictory elements” had been forced to make alliances; now that the war was over, “the real alignment of the conflicting forces of the world” began to emerge, the struggle between capitalism and socialism. In the revolutionary movements of Russia and Germany, the struggle between socialism and capitalism, had actually taken the form of a “fight between Socialists and Socialists,” Fraina states—with the same group of Majority Socialists that had rallied to their national flags during the world war continuing to lend every assistance to the bourgeoisie in the repression of these new revolutionary movements. The socialist movement was thus split into two camps—on the one hand, the movement headed by Camille Huysmans, who had recently issued a call for a Congress in Europe, to which the Socialist Party’s NEC had named delegates; on the other hand, the Third International called for by the Bolsheviks in Russia, the Spartacus Group in Germany, and their allies. “Socialists are fighting and dying in Europe that Socialism may triumph, mankind is trembling on the brink of worldwide Social Revolution. The action which the American movement takes now will commit it to the policy of Socialism or the policy of counterrevolution,” Fraina declares. He states that “on such a momentous matter it is vitally necessary that the whole American Socialist movement decides on what policy to pursue and the only effective method of so deciding is the convocation of an Emergency National Convention.” He calls for the NEC of the Socialist Party of America to immediately call such a convention and to recall its delegates to the Huysmans-called European Socialist Congress.

“A New Appeal,” by John Reed [January 18, 1919] Substantial essay by famed journalist John Reed about the state of the Socialist Party and the task of the revolutionary socialist movement in America. Reed sees a dichotomy in the ranks of the SPA—“American” members of the petty bourgeoisie and intellectuals and “Foreign-born” workers and intellectuals. He states that due to its vast size and seemingly limitless resources and fluidity of social boundaries “the American worker has always believed, consciously or unconsciously, that he can become a millionaire or an eminent statesman,” no matter how far detached from reality is this premise. The American worker also views his world politically rather than economically, Reed says, having a healthy disgust for the “dirty” politicians of both the Republican and Democratic parties but viewing Socialism as an alien system “worked out in foreign countries, not born of his own particular needs and opposed to ‘democracy’ and ‘fair play,’ which is the way he has been taught to characterize the institutions of this country.” The task of the Left Wing is not to pander for support of American workers at the ballot box, but rather to go to the workers, listen to their needs, and implement a practical program which not only meets those needs but raises the workers’ thinking beyond these immediate wishes—to “make them want the whole Revolution.” It is not the ballot box but “revolutionary direct mass action” in the workplace that will bring about the Social Revolution, Reed states. He concludes that “the workers must be told that they have the force, if they will only organize it and express it; that if together they are able to stop work, no power in the universe can prevent them from doing what they want to do - if only they know what they want to do! And it is our business to formulate what they want to do.”

The Bolshevists: Grave-Diggers of Capitalism,” by C.E. Ruthenberg. [Jan. 29, 1919] Reformatted edition. Ruthenberg, Secretary of the large Local Cuyahoga Country, Socialist Party organization, poses the question whether or not the Russian Bolsheviks actually represented “something new.” While the capitalist press accused them of “anarchy, ...rioting and bloodshed, wholesale murder and destruction” leading to “the collapse of orderly society,” Ruthenberg argues that the Bolsheviks represented instead the consistent application of the established principles of Marxian Socialism. After outlining the basic tenets of Marxism, Ruthenberg declares himself in favor of the latter proposition: “Bolshevism is not something strange and new. It is not a blind, raging force of destruction. If at present its triumph is accompanied by bloodshed and destruction it is because the bankruptcy of capitalism precipitated a cataclysm and the workers are obliged to build the new order amidst the wreckage of the old and with those who profited from their former oppression and exploitation placing every obstacle possible in their path. Bolshevism is Marxian Socialism in action. It is the social revolution underway. It is the workers on the road to victory and a better world.” Ruthenberg later served as the first Executive Secretary of the Communist Party of America.

“A View of the Trial,” by Adolph Germer. [Jan. 22, 1919] National Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party Adolph Germer (in the past a miner and United Mine Workers Union official, in the future one of the key participants in the 1919 Socialist-Communist split) briefly summarizes the results of the Trial of the Five Socialists, in which he was a leading defendant. The Guilty verdict was “disappointing though not in the least surprising,” Germer states, as the jury pool was carefully screened by the prosecution against those with any knowledge of the labor movement and in favor of those “who are instinctively hostile to us.” The trial was not of the individuals named as defendants, Germer says, but rather of the Socialist Party and its principles. Germer is unrepentant, declaring “I have nothing to regret and nothing for which to apologize. If the democracy of which we heard so much and for which we were told we entered this war can be had only through prison cells, I am willing to take my place with countless others who have been denied their liberties because of a conviction.”

“The Background of Bolshevism,” by John Reed [Jan. 25, 1919] On Jan. 15, 1919, over 2 months after conclusion of the World War, Dr. Morris Zucker was convicted of 4 counts of violating the Espionage Act for comments made in a speech protesting soldier attacks on Socialist meetings. In this article in The Revolutionary Age, John Reed addresses the question of factuality and viability of each of Zucker’s “criminal” assertions: (1) “America is becoming today what Russia used to be in the old, old days....” (2) “Here in America they may tear the red flag from our hands, but they only implant it more firmly in our hearts....” (3)”While I confess, my friends, I claimed exemption in America, if I were in Germany or Russia I would only be too proud to fight in the first trench lines...” (i.e., in a Revolutionary Army). (4) “Yes, it is might that we are after....” (5) “Next Thanksgiving Day we will celebrated the fact that the United States recognizes the red flag as the flag of democracy....” With regard to the controversial statement that “it is might we are after,” Reed declares: “When the official organs of justice themselves disregard the law, what is there left but ‘might’? When the political ballot is canceled by the money power which corrupts or nullifies the men we elect to represent and govern us, what is there left but to oppose it with some other kind of power? When, in this ‘land of the free,’ men are sent to prison of 10 and 20 years for political offenses —punishments unparalleled in the Empire of the Russian Tsar—when conscientious objectors are tortured more fiendishly, and military offenders broken more brutally, than ever under the autocracy of the German Kaiser, what are we to do but resist?” Reed only disagrees with Zucker’s assertion that a revolution was proximate.

FEBRUARY

“The Day of the People,”; by Eugene V. Debs [Feb. 1919] “From the crown of my head to the soles of my feet I am Bolshevik, and proud of it,” famously declares Socialist Party leader Gene Debs in this article from Ludwig Lore’s quarterly magazine, The Class Struggle. Debs salutes the Left Wing Socialist leaders of Germany, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, in their struggle against “Ebert and Scheidemann and their crowd of white-livered reactionaries,” acting in concert with German reaction against the revolutionary movement in that country. Now “the battle is raging in Germany as in Russia, and the near future will determine whether revolution has for once been really triumphant or whether sudden reaction has again won the day.” says Debs. “Scheidemann and his breed do not believe that the day of the people has arrived. According to them the war and the revolution have brought the day of the bourgeoisie,” Debs notes, arguing that instead, “The people are ready for their day.... Who are the people? The people are the working class, the lower class, the robbed, the oppressed, the impoverished, the great majority of the earth. They and those who sympathize with them are the people...” Debs declares that “in Russia and Germany our valiant comrades are leading the proletarian revolution, which knows no race, no color, no sex, and no boundary lines. They are setting the heroic example for worldwide emulation. Let us, like them, scorn and repudiate the cowardly compromisers within our own ranks, challenge and defy the robber-class power, and fight it out on that line to victory or death!”

“Problems of American Socialism,” by Louis C. Fraina [Feb. 1919] Lengthy theoretical article by one of the leading lights of the early American Communist movement, Louis Fraina. America had become the greatest capitalist power, in Fraina’s view, with tremendous natural wealth within its borders, twice the financial wealth of its nearest competitor, Great Britain, geographic proximity that would allow it to make a play on the wealth of Central and South America, a large navy and the proven capacity to rapidly generate a large standing army. In short, Fraina declares, “American Capitalism has all the physical reserves for aggression and is becoming the gendarme of the world.” It was therefore pivotal to the world socialist movement to challenge and defeat American capitalism. This task was not being accomplished, however, due in large measure to the petty bourgeois spirit which animated both the Socialist Party and the Socialist Labor Party. These organizations were both slaves to “the illusions of democracy,” failed to aggressively participate in the industrial class struggle, failed to deliver aggressive support of the epochal Russian Revolution, and were trapped in petty bourgeois parliamentarism and anemic daily routine. Instead, it was the task of the Left Wing to revitalize the Socialist Party for the final struggle with capitalism and imperialism. “The revolutionary crisis in Europe is spreading, becoming contagious. It is admitted that if Germany becomes definitely Bolshevik, all Europe will become Bolshevik. And then? Inevitably, this will develop revolutionary currents in the United States, will develop other revolutions, will accelerate and energize the proletarian struggle. The United States will then become the center of reaction; and imperative will become our own revolutionary struggle.” The victory of socialism in America is ultimately essential for the victory of socialism on world basis, in Fraina’s view: “it is necessary that we prepare ideologically and theoretically for the final revolutionary struggle in our own country—which may come in 6 months, or in 6 years, but which will come; prepare for that final struggle which alone can make the world safe for Socialism.” Fraina urges that a revitalized Socialist Party take advantage of the future strike wave by promoting revolutionary industrial unionism, in contrast to the “reactionary trade unionism and laborism” of the Right Wing of the Socialist Party. “The problem of unionism, of revolutionary industrial unionism, is fundamental” since “the construction of an industrial state, the abolition of the political state, contains within itself the norms of the new proletarian state and the dictatorship of the proletariat,” Fraina states. “The fatal defect of our party is that there is no discussion of fundamentals, no controversy on tactics,” Fraina asserts, adding, “Let us integrate the revolutionary elements in the party, an organization for the revolutionary conquest of the party by the party!”

“The Chicago Socialist Trial,” by J. Louis Engdahl . A contemporary account of the Dec. 1918-Feb. 1919 Trial of the 5 Chicago Socialists written by one of the defendants. J. Louis Engdahl was the editor of “The American Socialist,” the official monthly periodical of the Socialist Party of America. He was convicted along with his comrades of violating the infamous Espionage Act and was sentenced to a term of 20 years imprisonment at Leavenworth Penitentiary. This material was first published in the 1919-20 edition of “The American Labor Year-Book,” published by the Rand School of Social Science.

“The Socialist Party on Trial,” by William Bross Lloyd [February 1919] An extensive report of the trial of Beger, Germer, Kruse, Engdahl, and Tucker by the financial angel of the Left Wing, published in the pages of The Liberator. The trial of the five began in Chicago on December 9, 1918, before Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis for conspiracy under the so-called Espionage Law, which Lloyd characterizes as a “clumsily subtle way of lending to the Administration the aid of the courts in enforcing the official war morality.... Criminality under this law consists of any attempt to impugn the idealistic advertisement under which the war is being imposed. And conspiracy is a joint attempt.” Lloyd provides brief character-sketches of the five principle defendants, as well as the judge and the chief accusers, District Attorney Clyne and Assistant District Attorney Fleming. He characterizes the trial as “twenty days of irritating stupidity” wrought by the prosecution, notes that the focus of the attack was on William Kruse, who as head of the Young People’s Socialist League was cast as the leading figure in a conspiracy to subvert conscripton (despite Kruse’s personal decision to register for the draft), and comments extensively on the testimony of defense witness Carl Haessler, a Socialist already convicted and imprisoned under the so-called Espionage Act whom the prosecution approached in an attempt to construct its case against Victor Berger. When the prosecution was rebuffed, retaliatory action was taken against Haessler’s wife, who lost her job as an Illinois teacher.

“The Yipsels and the Socialist Sedition Case: Part 1—The Prosecution’s Case.” by William F. Kruse. [Feb. 1919] One of the biggest show-trials conducted by the Wilson Administration against its radical opponents was the Trial of the Five Socialists—a group of defendants which included former Congressman and NEC member Victor L. Berger, Socialist Party National Executive Secretary Adolph Germer, Secretary of the Young People’s Socialist League William F. Kruse, Editor of the SPA’s official publications J. Louis Engdahl, and former head of the SPA’s Literature Department Irwin St. John Tucker. The five were indicted for alleged violation of the so-called “Espionage Act” on Feb. 2, 1918, and were finally brought before Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis for trial beginning on Dec. 9, 1918—nearly a month after conclusion of the war. This article on the presecutorial hijinks behind the trial was written by defendant Bill Kruse for the monthly magazine of the YPSL. This first installment of a three part series was published in the Feb. 1919 issue of The Young Socialists’ Magazine.

“Party Extends Referendum Time Two Weeks: Socialist Locals Have Until Feb. 23 to Nominate Committeemen and Delegates.” (NY Call) [Feb. 1, 1919] &8212; Formal announcement by the National Office of the Socialist Party of America that the time for nominations for the 15 members of the governing National Executive Committee of the organization were to be extended two weeks, from Feb. 9 to Feb. 23, 1919. This was to be the second election in which five electoral districts were used, with 3 NEC members to be elected from each &8212; the intent being to make it more possible for local leaders to gain election rather than limiting the opportunity a narrow circle of nationally-known publicists. States included in each district are specified and the function of the International Secretary of the party is specified.

Minutes of the New York City Committee, Left Wing Section, Socialist Party, Feb. 2, 1919. Minutes of the first meeting of the New York City Committee of the Left Wing Section, Socialist Party, with Edward Lindgren in the chair. Election of committees took place, including a permanent 4 person “International Committee” consisting of Rose Pastor Stokes, Jim Larkin, Nick Hourwich, and Jack Reed; a 3 member Speakers Committee, including Bert Wolfe, Ed Lindgren, and Max Cohen; and a 5 person Press Committee, of Julius Hammer, Jay Lovestone, Fannie Horowitz, Harry Hiltzig, and a Comrade Spanier. The decision was made to print dues cards and to collect dues of 10 cents per month for members of the organized faction. County Organizers were selected for four boroughs as well as the Russian and Yiddish language branches. John Reed was named New York editor of The Revolutionary Age, published in Boston, with a Comrade Lehman made the circulation and business manager, with wages of $25 a week guaranteed. Temporary committees were established to investigate rental of an office and to put out the Left Wing Manifesto in pamphlet form.

“Declaration to the Members of the Socialist Party of America of the Communist Propaganda League: With comments by Alexander Stoklitsky, Feb. 6, 1919.” While the nascent Left Wing of the Socialist Party of America in the years 1915 and 1916 was grouped around an organization called the Socialist Propaganda League, the Left-Right conflict was submerged under a panoply of greater issues during the years of American participation in the European war. On Nov. 7, 1918, with the war coming to a merciful close, the Left Wing’s struggle against the Regular wing of the Socialist Party erupted anew, starting with the formation of a group based in Chicago called the Communist Propaganda League (CPL). According to this statement of the CPL, the organization was launched by bringing together members of the “Bolshevist Federation of the American Socialist Party” (i.e., the Russian Federation and the various Federations comprised of nationalities of the former Russian empire) as well as “several important active members of the local Socialist movement who thoroughly agree to the program and principles of the Russian Bolsheviks.” The group is said to have been formed to discuss the current situation facing the Socialist Party and “to determine the methods and means of directing our American Socialist Party to the truly revolutionary way.” According to the program of the CPL (included here), the Socialist Party “all in all does not take into consideration to a sufficient degree the importance of mass demonstrations of the proletariat, which are the only means of leading us to the revolution,” but instead lent its support to the “pure parliamentary system.” A key element of the CPL program declared that “Socialistic propaganda must be exclusively the revolutionary class struggle of the proletariat” and demanded an end to “the use of small bourgeois reforms as a basis for the activities of the Socialist Party.” A professional, paid National Executive Committee at the head of the party, close party control over all officers and other officials, and a centralized party press and lecture bureau were also significant demands of the Communist Propaganda League. Nominal Secretary of the CPL was Isaac Ferguson, although it appears that mail was actually sent to the office of Alexander Stoklitsky, Translator-Secretary of the Russian Socialist Federation, at party headquarters in Chicago.

“The End of War,” by C.E. Ruthenberg. [Feb. 12, 1919] This article by the Secretary of Local Cuyahoga County, Socialist Party was published in the official organ of the Socialist Party of Ohio. In it Ruthenberg addresses the proposed League of Nations—specifically its claim that it will be an institution able to abolish future wars. While acknowledging the desire of the capitalist class to avert destructive wars and the revolutions which they may well precipitate, Ruthenberg states that the division of the non-industrial world into “mandatories” would do nothing to alleviate the “inexorable conditions of capitalist production” that causes capitalist powers to compete for foreign markets. “In spite of all the machinery of arbitration and conciliation” the capitalist countries would be driven “to an appeal to arms in the struggle for survival,” Ruthenberg says. He contrasts this with a system in which the full product is appropriated by the workers producing it, which would have no innate dynamic to secure foreign markets, with its products either consumed, traded to other countries for necessary products produced elsewhere, or production contracted through the reduction of working hours.

“What Is the ‘Left Wing’ Movement and Its Purpose?,” by Edward Lindgren. [Feb. 1919] Lindgren, one of the organizers of the Left Wing section of the Socialist Party in New York City, outlines a brief history of the faction in this article published in Louis Fraina and Ludwig Lore’s theoretical journal, The Class Struggle. Lindgren contends that while factions had long existed inside the SPA, firm dividing lines were not drawn up until 1912, when the Right Wing won firm control of the party apparatus and launched a purge around the “sabotage” clause of the party constitution. The test of the 1914 war and failure of the party leadership to act in a principled manner led to an alienation of the rank and file membership of the party, which demanded and received an Emergency Convention in 1917 to declare its antimilitarist principles in no uncertain terms. The violent splits of the socialist movement in Germany (majority socialists/Spartacists) and Russia (Mensheviks/Bolsheviks) made the situation in the American party clear to “almost anyone who understands the theory of the class struggle.” The “Left Wing” group was thus “the logical outcome of a dissatisfied membership—a membership that has been taught by the revolutionary activities of the European movements ‘to compromise is to lose,’” says Lindgren. Includes a “Tentative Program” and “Immediate Demands” of the Left Wing section.

“Manifesto of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party of America: As Modified by Local Cuyahoga County, Socialist Party [Feb. 1919]”. The Manifesto of the Left Wing Section is the fundamental theoretical document of the American Communist movement, an analysis and program that was systematically promoted by an organized faction within the Socialist Party of America intent on moving that party’s orientation from the electoral to the revolutionary socialist path. The original document was collective work written in early February 1919, attributed by the historian Theodore Draper to the pens of Bertram Wolfe and John Reed, then extensively revised by Louis C. Fraina. Whatever its origin, this document was further extensively revised before being published in the pages of The Ohio Socialist on Feb. 26, 1919. Whether these changes were rendered by C.E. Ruthenberg, Alfred Wagenknecht, or some other figure in the Cleveland Socialist Party organization remains unknown—although Ruthenberg would certainly seem the most likely candidate. The version reprinted here compares the text of the “official” New York variation with the revisions made in the document as published in Ohio.

“Report on IWW or Bolsheviki Activities in the District of Massachusetts to William E. Allen, Acting Chief of the Bureau of Investigation in Washington,” by Boston BoI Informant J.S. Peterson [Feb. 13, 1919] This document summarizes Bureau of Investigation reports on “recent developments in the IWW situation in this district”—actually the doings of the revolutionary Socialist movement rather than syndicalist unionists. Individuals reported upon hailing from the Boston area included Louis C. Fraina, Eadmonn MacAlpine, Ludwig Lore, Gregory Weinstein, Nick Hourwich, Santeri Nuorteva, and Peter P. Cosgrove. Publications briefly mentioned include The Revolutionary Age (English), Il Pensiero (Italian), A Luz (Portuguese), Atbalss (Latvian), and Raivaaja (Finnish). Additional coverage is given for the Eastern, Southeastern, and Western regions of Massachusetts. Informant Peterson indicates that the “deportation of leaders may not solve the whole problem of industrial unrest,” instead advocating a betterment of working conditions, housing, and recreational opportunities for the workers. Peterson states that he “has felt very keenly, on attending the various meetings in which the audience was largely foreign born, that to these people the radical meetings, instituted by the local socialists, and charging no admission, were a real enjoyment, purely from the opportunity it gave them on their free day to mingle with their own kind and enjoy the program. It seemed, therefore, that if the trouble had been taken on the part of the community, or some local organization, other than the radical elements, to provide such an afternoon, that the audience might have been as receptive to more healthy doctrines than those promulgated at these meetings.”

“Speech to the Court at the Time of Sentencing”, by J. Louis Engdahl [Feb. 20, 1919] Socialist editor John Louis Engdahl was one of five top leaders of the Socialist Party tried by the federal government for alleged violation of the so-called Espionage Act during the first part of 1919 — the other defendants including National Executive Secretary Adolph Germer, former and future Socialist Congressman Victor Berger, youth section leader William F. Kruse, and Literature Department head Irwin Tucker. All five of the accused were found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in Federal prison by hangin’ Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis — verdicts which were eventually reversed on appeal due to judicial prejudice. This is Engdahl’s speech to the court at the time of his sentencing, as published in a pamphlet issued by the SPA. “I have noting to retract, at this crucial moment in my life. No valid argument presents itself why I should change any statement I have made, either through the printed or the spoken word,” Engdahl declared. His view of the European conflagration in which Woodrow Wilson had embroiled America remained unchanged: “It was a capitalist war. It was born of the imperialistic ambitions of money-mad nations in the grip of the profit system. No nation can join in the struggle to create a free world until it has liberated itself from the social system that breeds both wealth and want, war, and woe.” Engdahl saw the nationalist hysteria associated with American entry into the war as the direct cause of the repression: “For the time being extreme intolerance has usurped the places” of American constitutional guarantees of liberty, he declared. Engdahl depicted the Socialist movement as the vanguard of the 3rd American revolution — the first two being independence from English monarchy and the defeat of the Southern “black slaveocracy.” The legal structure of decaying capitalism was no more capable of rendering sound judgment on the adherents of the new day than the defenders of British despotism or of American chattel slavery had been in their own, Engdahl declared, adding of the prosecution in his case, “Coercion, intimidation, misrepresentation, and falsification — all that, and more, is expected as a matter of course. Our trial, therefore, was no disappointment. No ends were too mean, no act too low, if it only lead to a conviction.”

The Left Wing,” by Jack Carney [Feb. 21, 1919] Short editorial from the pages of Duluth Truth announcing publication of the Left Wing manifesto in the pages of that paper and promising the Left Wing the support of “the comrades of the Scandinavian and the English locals of Duluth” and the paper editorially. The Irish-born Carney writes: “The Left Wing manifesto and program comes at a time when it is most needed. It will arouse those comrades who have left the party disgusted with the opportunism of its leader. It will inspire those who have remained true to the cause of the International, before the war, during the war, and after the war. It will compel those who have stood still, to reconsider their position anew.”

Killing the Socialist Party: An editorial in The Ohio Socialist, Feb. 26, 1919. In January 1919 dues stamps sales suddenly exploded for the Socialist Party, as this editorial in left wing Ohio Socialist notes. Ohio’s sales were up 85% from the figures of the previous month and more than triple those of January the previous year. Interestingly, this does not seem to have been directly related to the party’s referendum election of a new National Executive Committee, hotly contested by the left wing, as the “regular” states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania also seem to have posted unusually large January sales, this article intimates. Some 12,616 Socialist Party dues stamps were sold in Ohio in Jan. 1919, making it the third largest state in membership dues collected, following New York and Wisconsin and ahead of Illinois.

“The Michigan Convention,” by W.E. Reynolds [event of Feb. 24, 1919] This news report by CLP charter member W.E. Reynolds from the pages of the Left Wing weekly, The Ohio Socialist, sheds light on the unique and turbulent history on the Socialist Party of Michigan. On Feb. 24, 1919, 51 delegates gathered in Grand Rapids for the state convention of the Socialist Party of Michigan, Reynolds notes. The convention was a “harmonious gathering of boosters, the utopian element being either absent or without spokesmen,” Reynolds indicates. Michigan State Secretary Bloomenberg resigned and was replaced by former State Secretary John Keracher (future founder and leader of the Proletarian Party). “A platform was adopted without any immediate demands and calling for the abolition of the wages system,” Reynolds notes, and an amendment to the national SPA constitution calling for an end to such social reform planks on the national level proposed. “The convention adopted a part of the Left Wing program in its centering the attention of the abolition of capitalism instead of working for petty reform—but it did not adopt the Left Wing program of urging economic organization amongst the workers,” Reynolds observes.

MARCH

"Fraina to Discuss New Party Policies." [article in Cleveland Socialist News, March 1, 1919] This brief news article in the organ of Local Cuyahoga County SPA documents the touring efforts of Louis C. Fraina on behalf of the program of the newly organized Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party. Fraina, just out from a 30 day jail term in New Jersey for speeches delivered against military conscription in 1917, was to speak three times in one week to Socialist audiences in Cleveland, the largest local organization of the Socialist Party of Ohio. Fraina was to speak on the Third International, the Proletarian Dictatorship in Soviet Russia, and matters relating to Socialist Party tactics, being joined at the first event by Alexander Bilan, later a member of the first five person National Executive Committee of the Communist Labor Party, speaking in Russian.

Minutes of the New York City Committee Left Wing Section, Socialist Party, March 2, 1919. Minutes of the second meeting of the City Central Committee of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party, Greater New York. A fairly mundane meeting, marked by the resignation of Carl Brodsky as organizer of New York County and a decision to send the Left Wing Manifesto to the printer for publication as a pamphlet the next day. Edward Lindgren is dispatched to Boston to work on the Revolutionary Age there. An office was rented out for the group’s headquarters at a cost of $15 per month. Future Communist leaders J. Wilenkin and Rose Wortis make their appearance as delegates. Minutes were compiled by Ella Wolfe as Recording Secretary, wife of Bert.

“Is the ‘Left Wing’ Right? A Letter to the Editor of The New York Call, March 4, 1919,” by Cameron King. The 1919 faction fight within the Socialist Party in general, and the Socialist Party of Greater New York in particular, was wound up in matters of personality, position, and power. This is a rare serious critique of the ideology of the opposite camp by one of the leaders of the New York Socialist Party establishment. King is critical of the contention in the Left Wing manifesto that the Socialist Party should eliminate reform planks from its platform limit itself to agitation for a complete revolutionary overturn of capitalism. He argues that the transition to Socialism will almost certainly be a long and protracted process, with initial victories in cities and several industrial states prior to the achievement of control of Congress and the Presidency by the Socialist Party. In the interval, the Socialist Party must actively improve the lot of the working class, or face defeat at the polls amidst charges of betrayal. Further, King cites a recent pamphlet by Lenin to validate his assertion that there is a roll for the political action of the central state in the administration and control of industry and distribution even after the revolutionary turnover of state power. The “Left Wing” doctrine on political action is inadequate and must be rejected because it does not recognize this essential policy of the pre-revolutionary socialist movement and the post-revolutionary state, King argues.

“Manifesto of the Workers’, Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Farmers’ Council of Buffalo and Erie County.” [adopted March 4, 1919] On March 4, 1919, a short-lived Soviet called the “Workers’, Soldiers’, Sailors’, and Farmer’s Council” was established in Buffalo, New York, producing this manifesto on behalf of 35,000 unemployed workers of the area. A set of “immediate demands” are put forward, including institution of the 4-hour workday; the abolition of the collection of rent, taxes, and interest from unemployed workers; and the provision of office space and meeting halls for use of the Soviet. These were presented as transitional to “the ultimate aim”—“the only solution to prevent a nationwide revolution is to make provision for plans to socialize all industries of America.” A nationwide call was to be issued to all workers to organize on the same plan as the Buffalo Soviet. A total of 38,000 copies of this document were produced and distributed.

“Letter to Eugene V. Debs in Terre Haute from Ludwig Lore in New York City, March 5, 1919.” Letter from Ludwig Lore, first among equals on the editorial board of The Class Struggle, to his new, albeit nominal, co-editor Gene Debs. Lores asks whether Debs might be able to contribute and article “on some American topic” for the forthcoming issue. “I suggest an American subject because I sometimes fear that The Class Struggle is rather in danger of treating too exclusively with the revolutions of Russia and Germany, without sufficient application to conditions at home,” Lore says. Lore offers his opinion on the burgeoning Left Wing movement in the Socialist Party: “You know, of course, that ‘Left Wing’ organizations are springing up everywhere in the party. Although I am in full agreement, as you know, with the fundamental principles that prompt these organizations, I personally feel that at this time they constitute a grave danger, not only to the party, but tot he very cause for which they are being created. So far as I have been able to discover, the membership of our party is radically inclined and will support the revolutionary position. But the propagation by organizations such as these within the party must inevitably, I feel, bring about a split in the movement. A split that will, moreover, not strengthen, but weaken revolutionary socialism in America by driving the rank and file into the arms of Right Wing leaders as a protest against the methods of the more radical minority.” The Socialist Publication Society was to hold a meeting in a few days to determine its formal position towards the Left Wing movement. Later, when the feared split of the Socialist Party became a reality, Lore turned over The Class Struggle to the fledgling Communist Labor Party, which retained him on the Editorial Board for what proved to be one final issue.

Letter to Eugene V. Debs in Terre Haute, IN., from Ludwig Lore in New York City, March 5, 1919. Reformatted edition. Letter from Ludwig Lore, first among equals on the editorial board of The Class Struggle, to his new, albeit nominal, co-editor Gene Debs. After asking for an article on American conditions, Lore raises the matter of the emerging Left Wing movement in the Socialist Party. He is, surprisingly, not an enthusiastic supporter of the organized faction: “Although I am in full agreement, as you know, with the fundamental principles that prompt these organizations, I personally feel that at this time they constitute a grave danger, not only to the party, but tot he very cause for which they are being created. So far as I have been able to discover, the membership of our party is radically inclined and will support the revolutionary position. But the propagation by organizations such as these within the party must inevitably, I feel, bring about a split in the movement. A split that will, moreover, not strengthen, but weaken revolutionary socialism in America by driving the rank and file into the arms of Right Wing leaders as a protest against the methods of the more radical minority.” He invites Debs to submit a short statement of his own views on the matter. (The Class Struggle ultimately endorsed the Left Wing in its next issue, dated Feb. 1919, with co-editor Louis C. Fraina writing the editorial.)

Minutes of the New York City Committee Left Wing Section, Socialist Party, March 9, 1919. Minutes of the third meeting of the City Committee of the Left Wing Section of Greater New York. A move has been made from a monthly to a weekly meeting schedule. Communications have begun to arrive from around the country asking for clarification about the nature of the Left Wing Section and its tactics, with freshly-printed copies of the Manifesto and Program of the Left Wing Section Socialist Party, Local Greater New York being sent out in reply. A decision is made to send someone to visit Eugene V. Debs in person, presumably to explain the situation. Tension is already showing between the Left Wing Section and the New York Call, which rejected an ad for the group, prohibiting its mention as a sponsoring organization in future meeting ads. A three member committee consisting of Jay Lovestone, Bert Wolfe, and Harry Hiltzig is elected to formally appeal this decision before a forthcoming meeting of the Call Association, the membership organization which was the publisher of that newspaper.

“The Growth of the Left Wing,” by Maximilian Cohen [March 8, 1919] A fascinating brief recounting of the history of the Left Wing Section of Local New York by the organized faction’s Secretary, Max Cohen, who was present at the creation. Cohen notes that there had long been a Left-Right division in the Socialist Party of New York, dating back to the days before the world war. The betrayal of International Socialism by the Social Democratic parties of the Second International on the one hand, and the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution on the other, had energized and accelerated the pre-existing division. The support of the New York Socialist Aldermen for the Liberty Loan spurred the struggle between the Left and Right in the New York SPA, and trench lines were dug over efforts of the Left to discipline or formally criticize Conrgressman London for his war position. When a joint meeting of New York City Committees called to address the Aldermanic situation was sabotaged by Julius Gerber, as chairman of the meeting, a walkout ensured. “These delegates and comrades crowded in the corridor and forced Comrade [George] Goebel to give them a meeting room, a thing which he at first refused to do. There the Left Wing Section had its birth as an organization,” Cohen states. A 14 member committee was elected to draft a temporary manifesto and program. An all-day convention was called for Feb. 15, 1919, and it was on that day that the Left Wing Section was formally launched, with the Manifesto and Program revised for publication, organizational rules adopted, officers elected, and The Revolutionary Age certified as the official organ of the group.

“A Proletarian Dictatorship vs. Parliamentarism,” by Alexander Bilan [March 5, 1919] Article from the pages of The Ohio Socialist by future founding member of the National Executive Committee of the Communist Labor Party Alexander Bilan. Bilan states that “It is a mistake to believe that parliamentarism is a synonym for democracy. On the contrary, we find that where the parliamentary majority rules it is not democratic, and where it is approaching democracy parliamentary government becomes a weak institution.” Victories of working class candidates in capitalist parliamentary elections do not lead to true democracy, Bilan observes, but rather to a powerless life in the margins. “As long as the working class representatives are few in number they are merely disturbers of the peace of the gay bourgeois company, to whom nobody is willing to listen unless compelled to. If the bourgeois have enough confidence in their strength and the support of the troublemakers is weak, they simply throw them out of the parliamentary body,” he notes. If, on the other hand, working class representatives are elected in sufficient number, their votes can become decisive for certain reform legislation, although the question of their limits in participation soon arises. “The working class is denied the possibility of gaining a majority of the seats in parliament as long as the constitutions drawn by the ruling class exist,” Bilan states. “Where free press, free speech, and freedom of assemblage exist, parliamentarism has played its part, just the same as has the capitalist system on the economic field. The best agitation and propaganda forces of the working class have to be employed outside of parliament in great mass meetings.... It is necessary that the rising power, the working class, organize as a class politically, but with the firm conviction that parliaments represent the dictatorship of the capitalist class, which must be replaced by the dictatorship of the working class. This dictatorship of the proletariat arouses the ire of the capitalist class because it abolishes all privileges and puts everybody in one class,” Bilan concludes.

“A Left Wing—And Why: A Statement of Cause and Effect,” by N.S. Reichenthal [March 12, 1919] A lengthy and intelligent letter to the editor of the New York Call seeking a measured and open-minded approach to the emerging Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party. Reichenthal states that he is neither with the Left Wing and the “state within a state” in the Socialist Party nor a blind, epithet-spewing “loyalist.” To these latter, “all those who are crudely attempting to change or modify party policy and tactics are rank disrupters, anarchists, or syndicalists” to be purged—a mentality which Reichenthal believes is akin to the anti-liberal patriotic frenzy of the war years or the sectarian Socialist Labor Party regime in the factional war of 1899-1900: “Therefore, comrades, let’s stop talking nonsense and imitating DeLeon and our own dear Security League. Let’s discuss principles and tactics, not personalities and hare-brained metaphysics.” Reichenthal states that the platform of the Socialist Party from 1900 to the one adopted in 1917 became steadily more “practical,” to the point where “all reference to internationalism, to the party itself being the ‘Left Wing’ of the international proletariat striving to overthrow the capitalist state, is entirely eliminated.” Combined with opportunistic local platforms and less-than-stellar performance in office by elected Socialist officials has been “disappointing and very disheartening, and seem to justify the conclusions arrived at by some that mere parliamentary action as encouraged and practiced by the Socialist Party is a snare and a delusion.” On the trade union front “we became mere apologists for Gompers’ unionism, and our policy compelled us to keep silent or defend many rotten deeds on the part of certain unions and their officials,” resulting in the factional war of 1912-13 and the departure of thousands of supporters of the IWW and revolutionary industrial unionism. The Left Wing Section emerged as a direct response—cause and effect—to these factors. Reichenthal states that he has changed his own mind on these things since “we live in the midst of the revolution. Only action, revolutionary action, counts” and “the Russian Bolsheviki have demonstrated what a resolute, though ‘ignorant,’ proletariat and peasantry can do.” Reichenthal calls for an honest discussion of the merits of the argument of the Left Wing Section rather than mechanically resorting to “parliamentary tricks” or “reorganization” to stifle dissent in the manner of Daniel DeLeon.

“Left Wing Are Distruptionists,” by Joseph Gollomb. [March 12, 1919] Text of a long letter to the Editor of The New York Call, in which SPA member Joseph Gollomb attacts the ideology and tactics of the Left Wing Section and its leaders in the struggle for control of the party apparatus in New York City. Gollomb charges that the so-called “Left Wing Section” is an internal enemy of the Socialist Party, “the spirit and purpose of old Michael Bakunin.” These “anarchists, IWWs, and SLPs” have flocked into the SPA “not out of conversion, but with blackjacks behind their backs. They have organized a body within the party, with delegates from different branches, Central Committees, Executive Committees, State Committees, a National Committee, constitution, and membership cards, part for part with the organization of the party proper, with mandates on their members to be carried out at the meetings of the party.” Gollomb cites concrete examples of Left Wing tactics at SP branch meetings, with specific charges directed at Nicholas Hourwich and Jim Larkin. Gollomb advises immediate action to stop the seizure of the party by an organized minority.

“Jobless Face Shotguns in Hands of Police: Meeting of Unemployed in Niagara Square is Ruthlessly Suppressed: Soldiers’, Sailors’, Workers’ and Farmers’ Council Denied Right of Assemblage—Many Thousands of Hungry Toilers Throng Streets Converging on McKinley Monument.” [events of March 6-10, 1919] The confrontation between the civic authorities of Buffalo, New York and the short-lived Buffalo Soviet proved to be a one-sided affair, as is documented in this article from The New Age, weekly organ of Local Buffalo, Socialist Party. A demonstration was called by the Workers’ Council for March 10, 1919, to be held at the McKinley Monument in Niagara Square, downtown. The gathering was announced in advance in a letter to Mayor George S. Buck (reproduced here), and a request for facilities for a meeting of the demonstrators was made; Local Buffalo, Socialist Party was called into action to facilitate the demonstration on behalf of the Soviet’s organizing committee. However, no such accommodation was made and the meeting of the Buffalo Soviet was banned by the city council and Mayor Buck, and a cordon of shotgun-bearing policemen were dispatched to prevent the planned meeting. Although thousands of workers milled in the streets surrounding the plaza in response to the distribution of 38,000 leaflets announcing the meeting (an unlikely estimate of 40,000 is reported here), police prevented a concentration at the plaza with little trouble or opposition.

“After the War—What?” by C.E. Ruthenberg [serialized Dec. 1918-March 1919] Serialized over a 3 month period, this article represents the longest single work written by Cleveland Left Wing Socialist leader C.E. Ruthenberg—rightfully remembered by history as a skilled organizational administrator rather than a theoretician. Written originally for the Ohio Socialist (complete runs of which have not survived), this work was preserved en toto as a reprint in the Buffalo, NY New Age. Ruthenberg argues that “the halo of capitalism has been smashed by the war” and the de facto socialist organization of key industries by government due to wartime expedience had shattered the myth of the economic structure’s permanence and unchangeability. A widespread demand had emerged for a fundamental retooling of American economic society in the immediate postwar period—a program of the working class opposed by a capitalist class which sought a restoration of the economy to the status quo ante bellum. Ruthenberg outlines at length the instability, inefficiency, and injustice of the old capitalist form of organization and contrasts the efficiency of wartime collectivism, to which Ruthenberg proposes the addition of democratic social control. Ruthenberg declares that the government’s action during the war with regard to the transportation and communications industries had demonstrated the correctness of the Left Wing Socialist declaration that “When we get ready to take over the industries, we’ll just take them”—this was exactly what the government had done during wartime, according to Ruthenberg, albeit temporarily. Whether the former owners of industry were compensated with Liberty bonds to be taxed out of existence in 10 years or industry to be expropriated without compensation was a matter of little import to Ruthenberg. He asserts: “Industry must no longer be conducted as a private business for profit, but must become a coordinated, collective process for the purpose of supplying human needs and comforts. Such a transformation can only be accomplished by taking the ownership of the national resources and means of production and distribution out of the hands of the present owners and vesting the ownership in the people collectively.” Ruthenberg soft-pedals his belief in the ultimate necessity of revolution as opposed to parliamentarism to achieve the fundamental reorganization of the economy, only noting in his final installment that “the idea that Socialism would be established through a series of legislative acts extending possibly over a decade or two, has been shown to be an illusion. Socialism will not be legislated into existence but will be established by a mass movement of the workers in the industries. The legislative acts will merely give the accomplished fact the stamp of approval as the will of the majority. The struggle of the working class will henceforth be a political struggle for control of the state because it must gain control of the government before it can hope to establish democracy in industry.”

"Packed Meeting Holds Up Action on Left Wing Program." [event of March 16, 1919] News account from the Cleveland Socialist News of a March 16, 1919 meeting of Local Cuyahoga County addressed by Louis C. Fraina. Fraina sought the Local — the largest unit of the Socialist Party of Ohio — to endorse the Manifesto and Program of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party. About 325 party members were gathered, including about 175 new members of the local’s Russian Branch. The Russians, said to have had a poor understanding of the English-language proceedings, were led by group leaders and acted as a bloc, voting in accordance with directives and shouting down debate. The meeting was effectively disrupted, with only a set of rules adopted providing for a vote on the Left Wing Manifesto as a whole as a basis for party policy and no action taken on the adoption of the program at that time. A follow-up meeting was called for March 30 for further discussion of the Left Wing program and final action on its proposed adoption.

“’Parliamentarism’ and ‘Political Action,’,” byJay Lovestone and William Weinstone. [March 17, 1919] Former City College of New York Young People’s Socialist League leaders Jay Lovestone and William Weinstone co-authored this lengthy letter to the New York Call in response to New York Socialist leader Cameron King’s critique of the Left Wing Manifesto published earlier in those pages. Lovestone and Weinstone conceive of the radical movement as being divided between “moderates” and “socialists.” The pair conclude that “the moderate contends that the industries can be socialized by means of the present bourgeois state... Our conception of socialist political control is, to quote Marx, ‘a transition period, in which the state cannot be anything else but a dictatorship of the proletariat.’ We hold with the Communist Manifesto that ‘the proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of this state—i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class.’... It is not by attempting to solve the insolvable, capitalism’s contradictions, but by ‘teaching, propagating, and agitating exclusively for the overthrow of capitalism and the necessity of instituting of the proletarian dictatorship’ that socialism can be attained!”

“’Wants a Conference,” by J. Codkind [March 18, 1919] Letter to the Editor of The New Yok Call in reply to the long March 12 letter of Joseph Gollomb. Codkind, a Left Wing member of New York City’s 17th Assembly District Branch states that Gollomb is a purveyor of inaccuracies, indicating that attendance at business meetings of the the 17th AD Branch had increased rather than decreased over 1918 and that no business had been conducted by the Left Wing in the wee hours. Codkind states: “Undoubtedly, there have been unfair tactics employed. In my opinion, this is much more prevalent among the Right Wingers than the Lefts, but both sides are equally guilty. Why people on both sides - undoubtedly honest and sincere in their convictions - should descent to the use of these methods is more than I can understand... Let us stop calling each other names. Let us act like real men, and not like kids. Let us face the absolute fact - that both sides are honest and sincere. Let us try to calm ourselves; and let both sides elect or select about five delegates to hold a conference through which our differences may be settled without a party split.” Codkind suggests that the delegates to such a conference might be chosen by the factional caucuses of the Central Committee of Local New York.

“Eugene V. Debs’ Speech at West Side Turn Hall, Cleveland, Wednesday, March 19, 1919.” Stenographic news account of the March 19, 1919, farewell speech of Socialist orator and publicist Eugene V. Debs before an audience of 3,000 in Cleveland, Ohio. Debs was soon to be imprisoned for having violated the so-called Espionage Act for a speech against militarism delivered in June 1918 in Canton, Ohio — this despite the fact that by this time the war in Europe had come to a conclusion over four months previously. “I am going to speak to you as a Socialist, as a revolutionist, and, if you please, as a Bolshevist,” Debs declares, noting that in Soviet Russia for the first time in history the working class stands unbowed and in control of the state apparatus. It is for this specific reason that he and his comrades were being jailed, Debs intimates. Debs states he is making his appeal to the masses rather than to the Supreme Court, which he characterizes as “begowned, befettered, bewhiskered old fossils, corporation lawyers, every one of them.” Debs declares it “the finest thing I know is to carry yourself as a man — face humanity, look up into the sun and not feel ashamed of yourself; walk straight before the world, and live with it in terms of peace; look at yourself without a blush. Have you ever tried it? If you have, you are a Bolshevist.” Debs declares that the working class paid the economic and physical costs of the recently concluded European war but that it was the master class making the terms of peace. “Russia is making a beginning; the Soviet is just an example,” Debs states, allowing that the Bolsheviks “have shed some blood, they have made some mistakes, and I am glad they have. When you consider for a moment that the ruling class press of the world has been vilifying Lenin and Trotsky, you can make up your mind that they are the greatest statesmen in the modern world.” He deems his forthcoming imprisonment to be a necessary tribute to be paid to the revolutionary cause.

Locals Cooperate to Buy National Headquarters. (Ohio Socialist) [March 19, 1919] One of the pieces of common property fought over most bitterly during the protracted divorce proceedings of the Socialist and Communist organizations was the newly obtained national headquarters building, located at 220 Ashland Blvd. in Chicago. This brief fundraising blurb, apparently originating from the national office, notes that the party sought to raise a $40,000 headquarters fund from its members, with a minimum suggested donation of $1.00 and all donors of that amount or more to receive in exchange an “ownership certificate.” During the bitter 1919 National Convention in August this headquarters facility down the street from the convention hall was used as a staging grounds for the Regular faction, marshaled by National Secretary Adolph Germer and NEC chief James Oneal. Includes a published photo of the ponderous Gothic facility.

“Consul of Russian Republic Here to Open Trade with US; Authorized to Spend $200,000,000: His Official Statement of Conditions Lays Ghost of Lies and Slanders of Violence About Soviet Rule and Its Aims...” (NY Call) [March 21, 1919] Initial report in the Socialist Party’s New York Call announcing the formation of the Russian Soviet Government Bureau, headed by Ludwig C.A.K. Martens. Announcement of Marten’s appointment as the official representative of the Soviet government to the United States was made March 20, 1919, according to the article, with Martens having been informed of the decision by cable “about three months ago” (i.e. at the end of December 1918). Martens attempts to whet the interest of the American capitalist class with a promise of an initial $200 million in purchases, paid up front in gold. Stating that previously Germany had been far and away the largest trading partner of the old Russian regime, in the light of Germany’s own economic problems “in a trade sense, as well as in a political sense, Russia is starting anew.” On behalf of the Soviet government, Martens seeks a negotiated end to the intervention and blockade of Russia. He declares Soviet Russia to have been the subject of “false and often absurdly silly reports about the nature of the institutions and measures” taken against its opponents, while acknowledging the Soviet government having had to “adopt stern measures against people who continuously and openly plot for a re-enslavement of the Russian workers and who resort to methods of violence in their fight.” The article indicates that Martens had forwarded his credentials to the State Department in Washington, DC for decision.

“Letter to Morris Hillquit in Upstate New York from Adolph Germer in Chicago, March 22, 1919”. Historians of American Communism running the gamut from Theodore Draper to William Z. Foster have depicted Morris Hillquit as the master puppeteer behind the expulsions, suspensions, and split of the Socialist Party in 1919. As this letter from SPA National Executive Secretary Adolph Germer indicates, Hillquit was actually out of the loop during the critical months of 1919—at a sanitarium at Saranac Lake, New York, recovering from a bout of tuberculosis. Rather than the far-seeing General calling all the shots, Hillquit was resting and recuperating, receiving periodic updates of information by mail. In this letter, Germer notes that since the imprisoned Eugene Debs was $1400 in debt, the Socialist Party would be retaining him on the payroll at the rate of $50 a week, with periodic articles promised and some small chance of eventual repayment. Germer also expresses surprise at Kate O’Hare’s decision to accept nomination for International Secretary and run against Hillquit in the 1919 SPA election, a reversal of her expressed opinion of a fortnight earlier. Germer also updated Hillquit on the plans of the Left Wing section, noting that based on information received from New York party leader Julius Gerber, “they are making a well organized campaign to capture the district. What is true of District 1 is true of every other district. The impossiblists are determined to capture the party. If they cannot do it by capturing the National Executive Committee, they intend to do it in convention. As usual, they have no sense of responsibility and are of the opinion that the all important thing is to ‘propagate,’ regardless of consequences.”

“A Basis for Discussion: Letter to Editor of the New York Call, signed by David P. Berenberg et al., March 23, 1919.” [NEW EDITION] With an organized Left Wing Section beginning to organize itself in the Socialist Party, a rather eclectic assemblage of 13 of the party’s leading lights attempted to stave off factionalism and a potential split by moving the party to the left in response to grassroots demands. Signing alphabetically, headed by David Berenberg, this group adocated the rapid convocation of an emergency national convention, the elimination of reform planks, the adoption of a uniform national program which would “agitate exclusively for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of an industrial democracy,” the renouncing of any international congress called by so-called “moderate socialists,” and the adoption of new radical party literature in line with these new tactics. Signatories include those who would be instrumental in the Regular faction’s fight against the Left Wing Section in 1919 (Berenberg, Walter Cook), founding members of the Communist Labor Party (Ludwig Lore, Albert Pauly), future communists after the 1921 split (Benjamin Glassberg, Scott Nearing), among others.

“Letter to S.J. Rutgers in Moscow from unknown New York correspondent ‘F.’ with note from Ludwig Martens in New York, March 21 & 24, 1919.” This is a fascinating handwritten archival document rescued from illegibility, written by an adherent of the Left Wing Section with a name initial” F.” (not Fraina) to Seybold Rutgers, in Moscow for the founding of the Communist International.” F.” notes that the Socialist Propaganda League had been terminated, replaced by an organized Left Wing Section, which would be transmitting credentials to Rutgers to serve as its delegate to the founding convention. ” F.” notes that he had asked the” International Relations Committee of the Left Wing Section” for a brief outline history, which is included here in full. This history notes that the Manifesto of the Left Wing had its roots in a February 15, 1919, convention in New York City. A postscript is added by Ludwig Martens noting” Since my appointment with all my heart and soul I am in the work. Doubtless we shall have results very soon.” Martens adds that” We need all information in regard to your needs in machinery, supplies, etc. I think we will have the best chances in the world to create here a great organization which will be of greatest use for economical development of Russia.”

“A Basis for Discussion: A Letter to the Editor of The New York Call by 13 Members of the Socialist Party, March 23, 19191919”. With the internecine war heating up in the ranks of the Socialist Party, an effort was made by some members associated with the “Center-Left” to work out the programmatic differences between the Regulars and the insurgent Left Wing in an orderly manner. This open letter to the daily New York Call lists 9 assertions of principle around which a newly radicalized party might unite. The letter declared for a uniform declaration of principles, agitation for socialism only and elimination of reform planks from the platform, new party literature, propaganda for industrial unionism, and enforcement of party discipline upon elected Socialist officials. Particularly interesting is the ideological range of the signers of the statement, including founding members of the Communist Labor Party (Moses Oppenheimer, Albert Pauly), future members of the Workers Party of America (Scott Nearing, Ludwig Lore, Benjamin Glassberg), and a couple of names associated with the Anti-Left Wing movement (David Berenberg, editor of the New York Socialist, and Walter Cook, Secretary of the Socialist Party of New York who presided over the SEC that purged Left Wing Locals and Branches later in 1919).

“Minutes of the Central Committee of the Socialist Party of New York County, Meeting of March 25, 1919.” Minutes of a single meeting of the governing body of Local New York, Socialist Party. Resolutions honoring the Hungarian Soviet revolution and greeting and promising support of Soviet Russia’s new representative to the United States Ludwig C.A.K. Martens are passed. Of primary interest is the esoteric matters of the jostling for seats on the Central Committee between Left Wing and Regular factions, with an effort by the 8th Assembly District branch to recall Regulars John Block, Algernon Lee, and Louis Waldman and replace them with Left Wingers Max Cohen, Hyman Goldberg, and Fanny Horowitz rejected by the Central Committee upon protest that the recall was not regularly conducted. A new election of representatives to the Central Committee of Local New York is to be held by the 8th A.D. branch before such delegates are to be seated, the meeting decides. Also included is the lengthy report of a committee to investigate a disturbance in the 2nd Assembly District Yiddish language branch, said to have been related to incompatible personalities, marked by flooding of the branch by members of other New York Yiddish branches and by an unprecedented transfer to the 2nd A.D. Yiddish branch of 16 members from the Russian language branch.

Fighting the American Bolsheviki (Ohio Socialist) [March 26, 1919]On Feb. 1, 1919, Attorney General Thomas Gregory pulled the plug on the American Protective League, an officially recognized private auxiliary to the nation’s law enforcement and intelligence apparatus which had emerged during World War I. In response, the Cleveland APL created a successor organization, the Loyal American League. Both the radicals behind the Ohio Socialist and the LAL conservatives were eager to see the American situation through the Russian prism, with the LAL declaring its intent to fight “socialism, anarchy and bolshevism” and to work for the deportation of “traitorous alien and anarchist alien” elements. The “policy of Lenin and Trotsky” to be opposed by the nationalists is defined loosely: “to seize all public utilities, to fully maintain or increase war wages, to reduce working hours, to increase employers’ liabilities, and to force the employment of labor on public works.” This, of course, provides fodder for the revolutionary socialists, who call the Loyal American League “un-American” and declare: “The capitalists say that if you demand better wages, shorter hours, and the right to work you are disloyal and a traitor and if you are an alien you ought to be deported. Answer them by organizing your power and sweeping them into oblivion.”

“Assembly Votes to Spend $50,000 on Bolshevism Hunt: Socialists Ridicule Bill — Probe Sleeping Sickness, and Start with Legislature Is Claessens’ Amendment — Save Money, We’ll Tell You, Says Solomon.” (NY Call) [March. 26, 1919] Unsigned news story in the Socialist New York Call marking the establishment of the Lusk Committee by the state legislature on March 26, 1919. Facing landslide support for the measure among the two “old parties” in the Albany, Socialist Party Assemblymen Gus Claessens and Charles Solomon took to the floor to ridicule the proposal, urging a probe of sleeping sickness in the legislature which had caused such a high rate of absenteeism and lack of care in the affairs of the state. Solomon provocatively declared: “As far as I am concerned if there is any virtue in Bolshevism, I don’t care whether it was born in Russia or Germany or anywhere else. I am ready to receive it with open arms for the virtue there is in it.... To the extent that what you call Bolshevism is opposed to capitalist government, the Socialist Party as represented in this chamber is in agreement with that purpose, and you gentlemen can make the most of it.”

“Proposal Ambiguous and Incomplete,” by Algernon Lee. [March 29, 1919] Letter to the Editor of the New York Call by Lee, a founding member of the Socialist Party of America and leading figure of the New York constructive socialist faction. Lee takes issue with a proposal made by 13 members of the New York Left Wing for a reasoned settlement of party differences rather than proceeding down the path of mudslinging and factional trench warfare. Lee accuses the 13 of having advanced a “creed” and a “statement of ready-made conclusions,” of being “ambiguous and incomplete” in their demand to eliminate all social reform planks from the party platform, and of sidestepping the fundamental questions of whether America would face a revolutionary crisis in the near future and whether a majority of the populus would support the program of a revolutionized Socialist Party in the crisis. If the crisis were instead to be fought between a revolutionary minority and a reactionary minority, Lee states that there was no consideration of which side was apt to win, and based upon that likelihood, whether the revolutionary crisis was to be sought or avoided by the party.

“Minutes of the State Executive Committee, Socialist Party of New York, Meeting of March 26, 1919.” These minutes are most important for what is not included — nary a word on the Left Wing Section or any hint the split which was to rupture the New York organization in a matter of months. Sitting on the outgoing SEC was Alexander Trachtenberg, later one of the principles of the CP-affiliated International Publishers. A list of nominees for the 9 member SEC appears; included, among the long list, a number of future Left Wing luminaries: Joseph Brodsky, Louis Boudin, Benjamin Gitlow, Ludwig Lore, Scott Nearing, Albert Pauly, and Alexander Trachtenberg. Majority control of the new SEC remained in the hands of the SP Regulars, however, with drastic consequences for the Left Wing movement in the state.

“An Evening’s Experience,” by Max Schonberg. [March 31, 1919] An interesting and rather illuminating first-hand report of hardball tactics employed at a March meeting of the 3rd-5th-10th AD Branch of Local New York, with “Big Jim” Larkin in the chair. Schonberg is sharply critical of Larkin’s “shameful tirade of cheap, personal abuse” directed towards Joseph Gollomb, who had the floor representing a contrary position for 10 or 15 minutes. Larkin is also criticized for failing to follow correct rules of parliamentary procedure and for speaking against a motion made by 15 or so regular members against the Left Wing leadership of the branch, during the course of which “he began a vicious attack of bitter invective and vituperation upon each of the individuals whose names were appended to it.” Later, Larkin is said to have rushed down from the platform with the intent of beating up Gollumb.

“Letter to the Editor of the New York Call by Evans Clark in New York City, March 27, 1919.” With his name used as a political football by adherents of the Regular and Left Wing factions of the Socialist Party in the party press, research director for the Socialist members of the New York State Assembly Evans Clark wrote this letter to the New York Call to clarify his views. His words are prescient: “I believe that the criticisms of party theory and the general program of the “Left Wing” are, in the main, sound. I believe that they should be discussed in every branch and local. But I am heartily opposed to organized divisions in the Socialist Party. A Left Wing is desirable, but a Left Wing Section is suicidal. Organized divisionism subordinates principles to an unseemly squabble for personal and political power. It is inevitable. Organized division breeds organized opposition, hatred, bitterness, wrangling, and utter confusion. Either the party or the division must always die, if these methods are pursued.”

“Deportation — Where?” by John Reed [March 30, 1919] Deportation is “the most modern and most fashionable method employed by tyrants to get rid of their rebellious subjects,” John Reed declares in this article in the Sunday magazine section of the Socialist Party’s New York Call. He traces recent use of the practice to atrocities committed by the Turks against the Armenians and by the Germans against the Belgians, noting deportation’s gaining of favor in Bisbee, Arizona (expelling 1,200 striking miners and their sympathizers to the desert) and Coatesville, Pennsylvania (where the black population of several hundred was expelled after the war). Now, Reed notes, it is foreign-born strikers who are being deported by the American government to the countries of their birth. But where? In the case of the Russian-born being held at Ellis Island for deportation, “If they are deported to any party of Russia, except Soviet Russia, they are doomed to certain death, either at the hands of their own master-class, the Finnish White Guards, or the Allied troops.” Only by direct deportation to Soviet Russia via the Baltic Sea would these detainees avoid the fate of Mexican revolutionaries under the Roosevelt administration — who were sent across the Rio Grande to be shot down by the forces of Mexican strongman Porfirio Diaz. Reed calls for the American government to open its frontiers to “those foreigners who want to leave this monstrous industrial tyranny of ours, where the laws are seemingly made to be obeyed by workingmen only.” In such a case, Reed contends, “the ’alien agitators’ will go home, and there will be such a rush for the seaports that there won’t be enough ships to carry them.”

“Party Tactics,” by Morris Zucker. [March 31, 1919] Letter to the Editor of the New York Call from Zucker, a prominent member of the Left Wing Section. Zucker is encouraged at what he sees as “almost unanimous acclaim” of the Left Wing Manifesto by the rank and file of the Socialist Party. He sees, however, a “Centrist element” which adheres to the Left Wing program but who “are opposed to the tactics of the Left Wing within the party as likely to cause a split in the organization.” Loyalty to principle must take precedence over loyalty to the SP organization, Zucker contends, and a split on programmatic lines appears inevitable: “if, after making every honest and honorable effort, the Socialist Party does not, in substance, accept the program of the Left Wing, then it becomes the solemn duty of the Left Wing to organize a new party upon the basis of its principles and program. The party is merely an instrument for the accomplishment of a certain end, and not an end in itself.” Zucker challenges the Right and Center factions to call a general party meeting of the various locals of Greater New York to debate the question, “Resolved: That the Socialist Party shall endorse and adopt the manifesto of the Left Wing as an expression of its principles and policies.”

“Soviet Consul Again Greeted by Big Crowds: Martens Asserts that Soviet Russia is Now Supported by All Parties.” (NY Call) [event of March 31, 1919] Short news account of the second public appearance in New York City by Ludwig Martens, newly appointed Soviet Consul to the United States. Speaking before an enthusiastic overflow crowd, Martens spoke in Russian, and asserted that Right Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks had come over to support the Soviet government in the face of foreign intervention, owing to the “great dangers it involves to all liberty in Russia.” He was joined on the platform by Louis Basky, a leading Hungarian-American radical, who spoke on behalf of the ongoing Hungarian Revolution (the Soviet government being in power in Hungary at the time). There was “only one way to help the Hungarian and Russian Soviet governments,” according to Basky, that being “to revolutionize America” and to “wage an uncompromising class war against capitalism.” Meeting chairman Nicholas Hourwich drew great applause for stating the “Left Wing proposes to bring Bolshevism to America,” according to the article.

“Service Men in Second Raid on People’s House: People Disperse Mob—Lee Blames Hyland for Trouble—Scab Herders in Crowd.” (NY Call) [event of April 7, 1919] Organized mob violence by returned American soldiers was not just a phenomenon of small towns and isolated places, this article from the New York Call indicates—it was used as a tool even in the urban mecca of New York City. On April 6 and April 7, 1919 efforts were made by uniformed bands of military personnel to invade and ransack the headquarters building of the Socialist Party’s Rand School of Social Science, under the banner of anti-“Bolshevism.” Another building, offices of the Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines’ Protective Association was, in fact, vandalized and looted. The Call’s report indicates that a Canadian soldier named “Shelly,” said to be an organizer of strikebreakers for the Tugboat Operators in the current harbor strike, was suspected as the ringleader behind these operations. Socialist New York City Alderman Algernon Lee places the ultimate blame upon Mayor John F. “Red Mike” Hylan for obliviously making “factless statements that breed prejudice” about the radical movement, thereby helping to stir up “mob spirit.”

APRIL

“Letter to the Left Wing Section of Greater New York from Amy Colyer, Assistant Secretary pro tempore of Local Boston, Socialist Party regarding The Revolutionary Age, April 1, 1919.” Esoteric letter from a responsible authority of Local Boston, Socialist Party—publishers of the main organ of the Left Wing Section, The Revolutionary Age —to the Left Wing Section of New York, which sought the move of the publication to that more important center. Colyer relates the results of a resolution passed the previous evening by Local Boston which stated “Local Boston intends to keep The Revolutionary Age in Boston, until a National Convention of Left Wing organizations shall be held. Organizations taking part in said convention should agree with the tactics of Bolshevik Russia and the Left Wing Manifesto as published in the March 22 [1919] issue of The Revolutionary Age. Delegates in said Convention should have voting power in proportion to membership represented. Local Boston intends to turn over the paper to the executive body elected by such Convention.” (The publication was in fact moved to New York City after the June Conference of the Left Wing, where it was merged with John Reed and Ben Gitlow’s New York Communist, effective with the issue of July 5, 1919.)

“Toledo Crowd Compels Release of Socialist Speakers: Audience Aroused Because Denied Freedom of Speech Disarm Policeman and Marches on Police Station.” [events of March 30, 1919] News report of a little-known event of the turbulent year 1919 — a near-riot in Toledo, Ohio, caused when the mayor arbitrarily decided to deny Eugene Debs uses of a city auditorium which had been rented out to a local union and transferred to the use of the Socialist Party. Even though Debs was ill in Akron and unable to make the trip, the facility was locked up by the city administration. A great mass of people, unable to attend an indoor rally at which state organizer Charles Baker was to speak, moved to a city park nearby — where they were met by virtually the entire Toledo police department, who began arresting one person after another as they mounted the McKinley Monument and began to speak. The crowd swelled to as many as 10,000 people and grew more and more restive as the Socialists decided to take a stand for free speech by sending an endless list of speakers to the front, thus filling the jail and force the issues. Over 70 people were arrested and police control of the vast throng was slipping. To avert a riot, the city administration negotiated with Socialist leaders, who insisted upon the release of all those arrested in exchange for their work to pacify the mob. The mayor made this concession and the mood of the crowd was turned from anger to jubilation at the free speech victory won.

“Service Men in Second Raid on People’s House: People Disperse Mob — Lee Blames Hylan for Trouble — Scab Herders in Crowd.” (NY Call) [NEW EDITION] [event of April 7, 1919] News report from the Socialist New York Call detailing the April 7 raid on the Rand School of Social Science — an adult educational facility operated in close connection with the SPA. The object of repeated repressive efforts, the Rand School was seen in an exaggerated way as a linchpin of Socialist authority and power by enemies of the radical movement in New York. This raid on the school, the second of the year conducted by organized bands of military personnel, is said to have been headed by a right wing Canadian soldier allegedly in the employ of the Tugboat Owners’ Exchange as an agent for the hiring of strikebreakers. The invading soldiers shredded posters on the walls inside the Rand School building, stole office supplies and money and the records of the school, and smashed plate glass windows — creating an estimated $1,000 worth of damage. The mob was dispersed by the New York police department, although no arrests were made for the vandalism committed. Educational Director of the Rand School and New York Alderman Algernon Lee blamed the city’s mayor, John Hylan, for inciting the attack through his publicized rhetoric “referring to foreigners preaching murder and destruction.” “These alarmist statements not based on fact are breeding prejudice and mob spirit,” Lee declares, adding, “the Mayor does not seem to realize the danger of his utterances.”

“Enemy Outside, Not Inside: A Letter to the Editor of the New York Call, April 7, 1919,” by William M. Feigenbaum Socialist Party journalist William Feigenbaum writes to editor of the New York SP daily announcing that he had now taken a position in the “Left Wing” controversy that was sweeping the party—in support of the “Regular” faction. Feigenbaum sarcastically remarks of the “Left Wing” that “most of them are such veterans in the movement, with such a record of fully six months each...that they must of necessity know all about us. They know that we are hidebound, reactionary, bourgeois, and no good generally. How do they know it? From our actions? Our thoughts? Our records? No. There is a better test. We are old-fashioned enough to care for the party that has meant so much to us. That is inexcusable to them. We have the illusive fetish of ‘unity’ and they (or many of them) in their superior way, will have us understand that there is something better than unity. And that is, jamming down an artificial ‘program’ at all costs—even at the cost of wrecking the movement, if they can accomplish it in no other way.” Feigenbaum asserts that the Socialist Party will stand upon the principles of class struggle and anti-militarism, but sees the Left Wing as comprised of newcomers who do not know the temper of the Socialist Party and who are intent on provoking a needless split. “Is this difference of opinion a sufficient basis for the wild accusations and countercharges that we are treated with today? I think not. And the vast majority of the comrades think not. The enemy is outside. Not inside,” Feigenbaum states.

“Sidelights on Toledo Free Speech Fight,” by Thomas Devine [events of March 30, 1919] Valuable participant’s memoir of the March 30, 1919 Debs Rally Gone Awry in Toledo, Ohio. City Councilman Devine provides a colorful description of the events of the afternoon and evening, which was apparently triggered when the police interpreted a ban on Debs’ use of a city auditorium as a ban on the constitutional right of Toledo Socialists to assemble and speak. When a Socialist soldier named Frank Serafin was roughly arrested by the police, the mood of the crowd turned hostile. Devine and Secretary of Local Toledo, Socialist Party, Frank Toohey were the two individuals with whom the city negotiated at the 11th hour to avert the riot which they nearly created. Devine characterizes the crowd as both orderly and disciplined and blames the trouble on Mayor Schreiber’s poor decision to ban the Socialists as well as the local police for their unconstitutional behavior and excessive tactics. The jubilee in the streets with the freed soldier Frank Serafin hoisted aloft as a hero of liberty is characterized by Devine as the end to “a perfect day.” A letter from the mayor to the Toledo Safety Director is appended in which Schreiber in which he states that “The order issued from the executive department closed Memorial Hall to Eugene V. Debs, but that was the full extent of the order” and that police had overstepped their authority by attempting to ban the further outdoor meeting of the Socialists, noting the “right of free speech is a fundamental right, clearly guaranteed by the constitution of the United States, and one to be jealously guarded. It prevails everywhere, both in public and in private places.”

“A Reply to Algernon Lee: Letter to the Editor of the New York Call,” by Moses Oppenheimer [April 3, 1919] Veteran Socialist Moses Oppenheimer responds to Algernon Lee’s critique of the “Basis for Discussion” Letter to the New York Call, of which Oppenheimer was a signatory. He declares that “under the opportunist leadership of men like Hillquit, Berger, Ghent, and Robert Hunter, the struggle for [ameliorative] reforms has gradually overshadowed and supplanted the demand for the abolition of wage slavery. More and more it has resulted in petty tactics for vote catching. Berger’s Old Age Pension bill was a glaring exhibit of opportunist incapacity.” Oppenheimer argues that the worship of the ballot by the SP “opportunists” ignores the fact that half of the working class in America is disfranchised through lack of citizenship. “This lame policy of the opportunists follows logically from their desire to be considered safe and sane and respectable,” Oppenheimer declares, adding “The old roar of opportunism led us nowhere, except to barren failure.... The time for picayune politics is irrevocably gone.”

“Socialist Party Tactics and Policies: A Speech at Hunt’s Point Palace, Bronx, NY — April 4, 1919,” by Louis Waldman New York Assemblyman Louis Waldman, a staunch adherent of the SP Regular faction, shared a platform in the Bronx with Left Winger Benjamin Gitlow at a meeting called to moot the factional controversy in the party. A stenographer was present to preserve these speeches — Waldman’s later being reprinted a month later in the factional newspaper the New York Socialist, edited by David Berenberg. Waldman presents a well-ordered summary of the Party Regulars’ view of the controversy. Waldman denies he is a “Right Winger,” adding “To my knowledge there is no such thing. I am aware of the fact that there is a group who organized and call themselves the ‘Left Wing.’ There is the Socialist Party and this so-called ‘Left Wing.’” He ironically asks of his factional opponents: “You say the Socialist Party did not captivate the imagination of the workers because it was not revolutionary enough. Very well; what was the remedy? If we are weak because we have not been revolutionary enough, why is it that the SLP, claiming to be the 100% revolutionary article, has not only failed to captivate the imagination of the working class, but has gone down to ruin?” Waldman adds only 3 million of 18 million industrial wage-workers are unionized and asks “if the only reason the some 15 million workers are not organized is because the AF of L is not revolutionary, what about the Industrial Workers of the World? Why has it not crystallized this industrial revolutionary movement? The IWW had since 1905 to do it. Heaven knows they were not short on revolutionary phrases, if that is what the American working class wants.” Waldman states that there is no revolution in sight and that only by fighting for immediate demands to correct the most grievous deficiencies of capitalism can the workers be won to the socialist movement. “I want to tell you cynical comrades we live in a time when we have not got the courage to face reality and our own convictions. We live in a time when we are afraid to listen to the truth. We deliver revolutionary speeches in a time when we cannot train ourselves in revolutionary action.... That is what the party is suffering from.” He advises that “if our platform is not revolutionary enough, if our resolutions are not revolutionary enough, the thing to do is not to destroy the party, but to change them, as party members, within the party, and not as an outside organization foisting its will on the party.”

“Open Letter to Louis C. Fraina in Boston from Adolph Germer in Chicago,” published April 2, 1919. Testy reply of Socialist Party Executive Secretary Adolph Germer to comments levied against him by Louis Fraina in the March 8, 1919 issue of The Revolutionary Age. Germer declares that “It is a thousand times easier to circulate a falsehood, and create distrust, than it is to instill confidence in the honesty and integrity of those who have been selected, wisely or unwisely, to administer the affairs of the Socialist Party. It seems to be human nature to believe that persons in official party positions always have ‘ulterior motives.’ There are also persons who regard it as a greater duty to carry on an internal quarrel, regardless of the consequences to the movement, than to enlist new converts to our cause.” He outlines his personal opposition to an Emergency National Convention of the SPA in 1919, citing factors of cost and a previously planned platform and nominating convention in 1920. Germer states that Fraina’s assertion that Germer had administratively disqualified the referendum motion of Local Queens County, NY to hold a 1919 convention was erroneous. He also indicates that the Socialist Party’s effort to reach out to other organizations to generate mass pressure upon the Wilson regime to “regain victims for the wartime victims” (a United Front action, it should be noted) was a higher priority than holding a national convention to take a stand on international issues. Germer further indicates that the call for the convention is rather a matter of factional power-politics, writing “One of the champions of the convention idea put it very bluntly the other day when he said: ‘We want to see who is boss in the party.’ Others have expressed it more tactfully.”

“BoI Agent Account of a Mass Meeting of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party: Minneapolis, MN,” by Frank O. Pelto [April 13, 1919] This document chronicles the debut meeting of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party in Minneapolis on April 13, 1919. On the motion of Latvian socialist Charles Dirba (later Executive Secretary of the Communist Party of America), a committee was elected to arrange a mass meeting in honor of May Day 1919, “and if possible a demonstration.” World war veterans in the party were to be appealed to to march in uniform in the parade in an effort to preempt police repression of the march. Next on the agenda at this meeting of about 75 Twin Cities Socialists was consideration of a Left Wing Manifesto, called the “Resolution of the Left Wing of the Twin Cities” (reproduced in full here). This resolution made the following “General” demands: (1) Revolution, nor Reform; (2) Revolutionary Mass Action, not mere Parliamentarism. (3) No Compromise in or out of the Party; (4) Dictatorship of the Proletariat, not Constituent Assemblies or Coalition Government; and (5) International Working Class Solidarity and Struggle Against the Capitalist Class at All Times, not limited by any nationalistic considerations. The resolution was passed and then Dirba addressed the gathering on the subject of the difference between “the so-called Left Wing Movement and the so-called Reform Socialists.” According to Pelto, “another speaker took the floor who put a little dissension in the ranks by stating that the Left Wing Movement was drifting away from the principles upon which Socialism was built.” Dirba answered by matching Marx quotation with Marx quotation. A.L. Sugarman was then given the floor, and he characterized Dirba’s opponent as a “2-by-4 Non-Partisan Leaguer,” provoking hostile comment and leading to the meeting adjourning in a state of disorder.

“New York State Committee, Socialist Party Holds Annual Meeting: Walter Cook Elected State Secretary—Locals Affiliating with Left Wing Have Charters Revoked—Asks National Convention.” [held April 13, 1919] Account of the seminal April 1919 annual meeting of the New York State Committee, which effectively made affiliation with the Left Wing Section a party crime meriting expulsion. The key resolution was proposed by David P. Berenberg of Local Queens County, calling for the State Executive Committee to revoke the charter of any local affiliating with the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party or permitting any of its affiliated branches to do likewise. Berenberg’s proposal spurred hours of heated debate, with the Party Regular faction winning the test of strength with the Left Wingers by a vote of 24-17, with 2 abstentions. The meeting also elected Walter Cook of the Bronx as State Secretary and a new State Executive Committee, consisting of Theresa Malkiel of New York; Simon Berlin, New York; Herbert Merrill, Schenectady; Nicholas Aleinikoff, New York; Esther Friedman, Bronx; James Sheehan, Albany; F.A. Ariand, Albany; Jacob Hillquit, New York; and Julius Gerber, New York. A group of resolutions on contemporary issues, reprinted here, were also passed.

“Socialists of Buffalo as One Man Swing Over to Left: The Largest Meeting of Party Members Ever Held Endorses Program Promulgated by Left Wing of Local New York.” [event of April 13, 1919] This article from Buffalo Socialist Party weekly The New Age chronicles the move of the Buffalo party into the ranks of the fledgling Left Wing movement at a meeting held April 13, 1919. A special meeting held to consider the Left Wing program of Local New York, which was approved by a unanimous vote according to the article. The resolution sought the elimination of social reform agenda, declaring instead that “the party must teach, propagate, and agitate exclusively for the overthrown of capitalism, and the establishment of Socialism through a proletarian dictatorship.” Demands were made for a party-owned press, repudiation of the Berne international in favor of a new international incorporating the Bolshekiks of Russia and the Spartacans of Germany, and for the immediate convocation of an Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party.

“New York State Committee, Socialist Party Resolution on the Left Wing Section, Adopted April 13, 1919.” On April 13, 1919, the State Committee of the Socialist Party of New York gathered in Albany for its annual meeting. A resolution was proposed by David Berenberg of Local Kings County which denounced and effectively banned the Left Wing Section as an organization “in violation of the spirit of the constitution.” The New York State Executive Committee was instructed by Berenberg’s resolution to “revoke the charter of any local that affiliates with any such organization or that permits its sub-divisions or members to be so affiliated.” A heated debate followed which continued until 4:30 pm, with the final tally showing 24 in favor, 17 opposed, and 2 abstaining. This decision paved the way for a factional civil war in the Socialist Party of New York, which erupted immediately.

“Revolutionary Romanticists: Letter to the Editor of the New York Call.” by Ralph Korngold [April 14, 1919] This letter to the New York Call by well-known SPA Regular Ralph Korngold attacks “certain literary gentlemen in New York, Boston, and elsewhere” for their impatient desire to immediately conduct a revolution in America: “They want it right away. They are tired of voting. They are tired of teaching the masses how to vote. They sneer at ballot box victories, laugh at ballot box defeats, speak with disdain of ‘parliamentarianism’ and parliamentary methods. They find education too slow a process, so they propose as a substitute Billy Sunday’s method—hysteria.” Korngold likens these individuals to “impatient children,” anxious to abandon one game for another. “The IWW was their plaything but yesterday; today it is the Soviet; tomorrow ‘mass action,’” Korngold declares, adding “When you point out to them that the Socialist Labor Party, which has just received Lenin’s approval, has had a more radical program, and has had even less success, they brush the fact aside with contempt. What care they for facts? Let us have the tom-toms, and hysteria, and barricades in the streets.” At root, Korngold says, is the “anarchistic contempt of majority rule” because “they know they are the minority and have not the patience to await the test of discussion and time.”

Letter from Adolph Germer in Chicago to Morris Hillquit at Saranac Lake, NY, April 17, 1919. A very important letter from the National Executive Secretary to NEC member and leading party luminary, Morris Hillquit, then recuperating from tuberculosis at a sanitarium at Saranac Lake, New York. Germer acknowledges Hillquit’s critiicism of the party leadership and states the primary difficulty is one of lack of communication with party members, which the SP’s Bulletin and The Eye Opener and first class mail stopped by Chicago postal authorities while the press of the Left Wing Section seemingly has free access to the mails. Germer states that most of the party’s growth is in the language federations, particularly the Russian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian, while “we are not reaching the American worker who, after all, is needed to achieve the revolution.” Germer notes a new form of campaigning for referendum seconds and remarks on the first example of bloc voting for a slate of candidates, in this case 16 ballots from a Russian Branch of Local Willimatic, Connecticut. He notes that a motion has been made for a meeting of the NEC May 24 and states the “very important matter” of establishing “the organization to hold title of property for the property” remains. It is clear throughout that ideas and information with regard to the 1919 faction fight are flowing from Germer in Chicago to Hillquit in New York, not vice versa, contrary to the theme of the secondary literature of the 1919 faction fight.

“Letter from Adolph Germer in Chicago to Morris Hillquit at Saranac Lake, NY, April 17, 1919.” A very important letter from the National Executive Secretary to NEC member and leading party luminary, Morris Hillquit, then recuperating from tuberculosis at a sanitarium at Saranac Lake, New York. Germer acknowledges Hillquit’s critiicism of the party leadership and states the primary difficulty is one of lack of communication with party members, which the SP’s Bulletin and The Eye Opener and first class mail stopped by Chicago postal authorities while the press of the Left Wing Section seemingly has free access to the mails. Germer states that most of the party’s growth is in the language federations, particularly the Russian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian, while “we are not reaching the American worker who, after all, is needed to achieve the revolution.” Germer notes a new form of campaigning for referendum seconds and remarks on the first example of bloc voting for a slate of candidates, in this case 16 ballots from a Russian Branch of Local Willimatic, Connecticut. He notes that a motion has been made for a meeting of the NEC May 24 and states the “very important matter” of establishing “the organization to hold title of property for the property” remains. It is clear throughout that ideas and information with regard to the 1919 faction fight are flowing from Germer in Chicago to Hillquit in New York, not vice versa, contrary to the theme of the secondary literature of the 1919 faction fight.

“Socialist Tactics?” by John Reed [April 19, 1919] In the debut issue of The New York Communist,Left Wing Socialist John Reed editorializes about the fact that Secretary of Local New York Julius Gerber had spoken against the Left Wing Section by reading from an original copy of the Left Wing City Committee’s meeting minutes. While “the Left Wing is not a secret organization” and the minutes would be subsequently published, Reed notes, “the important point is that an official of the Socialist Party reads from copies of minutes that he had no title to possess, to one of the highest delegate bodies of our organization. It was obvious to everyone present that he had not come by his copy openly, yet he was allowed to proceed without anyone making a protest.” Reed sees as hypocritical the fact that the Socialist Party protests against government and private labor espionage, but “ sits open-eared and prepares to act on the information” when its own officials practice similar espionage. “Are these the methods the Right Wing intends to use inn the future? Does the membership of the party support these methods?” Reed asks.

“The Party Situation in New York,” by John Reed [April 19, 1919] The April 13, 1919, annual session of the New York State Committee effectively banned the Left Wing Section in the party, instructing the State Executive Committee to revoke the charters of all locals and branches supporting the Left Wing manifesto. This article by John Reed provides other details about the factional civil war in the Socialist Party of New York. First and foremost, Reed notes that membership access to the party was being restricted by the Party Regulars: “In the past the party has been very lax regarding the admission of new members, practically anyone who signed an application blank being admitted without question. This fact has often been pointed out by many of those members who now constitute the Left Wing, but without result. But those who suggested a change in the method of admitting new members had no idea of handing the control of the growth of the party in this city over to a few handpicked individuals.” The filtering of Left Wingers at the time of their attempted entry of the party is “a direct attempt by those at present in control to perpetuate themselves,” Reed believes, and he charges that hundreds of applications have been held up for factional reasons. A historically valuable first-hand account of the “inquisition” of the “amateur Overman Committee” to which new applicants in New York were forced to submit in the spring of 1919 is provided in full. Reed also charges that the Regulars engaged in other unscrupulous tactics in the factional fight, including failure to allocate the requisite number of seats on the City Central Committee to branches believed to be dominated by Left Wing sentiment; gerrymandering party districts to minimize Left Wing power; and banning of mention of Left Wing meetings or advertising of the Left Wing press from the dominant Socialist Party publications of New York City—The Call and The Jewish Daily Forward.

“One Reason for an Organization Within an Organization: A circular letter to factional allies from Julius Gerber in New York, April 19, 1919.” With the decision made for factional war to the knives in the Socialist Party at New York by decision of the State Executive Committee at its seminal meeting of April 13, 1919, the Regular faction of the Socialist Party commenced to organize itself. The primary leader of this faction was Julius Gerber, Secretary of the Socialist Party of New York County, who sent this organizational letter to a limited number of factional allies on April 19. In Gerber’s view, “The reason the Left Wing has grown and is making converts is because they have an organization that does nothing else. They have their organs that give their side. They act as a group while we have neither organization, nor press (The Call should not be used for factional purposes) and our comrades act as individuals. Result is chaos on our side, organization, discipline, and success on their side.” Gerber indicates that “The situation in the party is rather critical at this time, and it is almost too late now to stem the tide,” noting that “the so-called Left Wing is determined to either capture or split the party.” Gerber believes that “A split in the party will at this time do irreparable injury to our party and to the Cause, while the control of the party by these irresponsible people will make the party an outlaw organization, and break up the organization.” He calls for an organizational meeting on the night of April 21 at the home of the Rand School of Social Science, in advance of the critical meeting of the Central Committee of Local New York. “At this meeting the die will be cast as far as Local New York is concerned. We ought to decide beforehand. We ought to know what we are to do,” Gerber declares.

“State Committee Proposition: Letter to the Editor of the New York Call.” by L. Basky [pub. April 23, 1919] Left Wing Hungarian Socialist Federation member L. Basky writes to the New York Call about the April 13, 1919, ruling of the New York State Committee finding the Left Wing Section to violate “the spirit of the constitution” and instruct its Executive Committee on that basis to revoke the charter of any local that affiliates with the Left Wing Section or which permits its subdivisions or members to be affiliated. Basky calls for the decision of the 24 members of the State Committee majority to be put to a referendum vote of the Socialist Party of New York. “The Left Wing is not a counter-organization to the Socialist Party,” Basky states, but rather a reflection of the sentiment “that it was high time to set the party abreast of the revolutionary events” and “to make it a useful instrument in the darkest and bitterest and most critical hours of the class struggle instead of making it what the Social Democratic Party of Germany turned out to be—the last fortress of the dying capitalist system.” Changing the party’s course required organization and a program, Basky notes. This program is reducible to a set of concrete propositions, he feels: “To abolish all reform planks in the Socialists’ party platform; to strictly adhere to an uncompromising class struggle, the last phase of which will be the dictatorship of the proletariat; to propagate revolutionary industrial unionism; to have the party own all its official papers and institutions; to repudiate the Berne Congress and to elect delegates to an international congress proposed by the Communist Party of Russia.” He calls for an electoral test to determine whether these values reflect majority opinion in the Socialist Party. However, “The fight is on,” Basky notes, adding “I welcome the attack of the State Committee. We at least know some of those we would have to face in the critical hour. Might as well fight it out now, whether they or the Left Wing represents the party. Let us find out right now who is with us and who is against us.”

“An Answer to Moses Oppenheimer: Letter to the Editor of the New York Call,” by Israel Amter [April 25, 1919] In this letter to the New York Call, Left Winger Israel Amter takes on Centrist Moses Oppenheimer and his associates for bolting a recent meeting of Local Bronx, Socialist Party. “These comrades seem unable to grasp the first elements of democracy,” Amter declares, adding “They complain that the meeting elected Dr. [Julius] Hammer to the chair for three consecutive sittings. It would appear obvious to anybody but a Right Winger that his constant re-election was due to the confidence of the assemblage in Dr. Hammer and to the democratic notion of majority rule.” Amter complains that after three meetings of Local Bronx held to discuss tactics and the Left Wing Manifesto, Oppenheimer and his comrades were intent upon “dilly-dallying” and “preventing the assemblage from determining its own will” by sending the matter to a handpicked committee of 15 for further discussion. Amter indicates that the Left Wing Manifesto is “merely a basis upon which we can get together for revolutionary action” and adds that “no claim is made that it is a perfect document.” Amter thunders that the Left Wing “shall not rest till the Socialist Party of America not only stands for, but lives up to, the revolutionary ideas that it originally propagated. We shall not rest till all the compromisers, surrenderers, and traitors have been swept out of the party. And do not forget that there are many more of this class in the party than left it in the wake of those arch-revolutionists, Russell, Spargo, Walling & Co.”

“The Pink Terror, Part 1: The Rape of the 17th Assembly District Branch,” by John Reed [events of April 17-23, 1919] With the April 13 decision of the New York State Executive Committee behind them, the Regular faction set about purging the Socialist Party of New York of Left Wing Locals and Branches. First on the list was the 17th Assembly District Branch of Manhattan—the largest branch of Local New York, with about 400 members in good standing. Prompting action was an April 10 branch meeting which voted to recall the branches officials, have extended discussion of party principles, and elect new officers—a motion which Reed states was approved by a vote of 27 to 7 (although Reed later notes that the branch’s quorum was 46). Some of these recalled officials appeared before the Executive Committee of Local New York and requested the branch to be reorganized—Left Wing EC member Julius Codkind being “beaten up” and expelled from the meeting in the process. The 17th AD hall was padlocked by order of the Executive Committee of Local New York prior to the weekly meeting of April 17, and on the next day branch members received a letter from the Socialist Party of New York County announcing the reorganization of the 17th AD branch at a special purging meeting held that same evening. Some 150 members showed up at this meeting and were forced to turn in their party cards. Each was questioned whether they were “a member of the Left Wing.” Reed states that only 30 of those present were invited into the reorganized branch. This small group received a letter inviting them to another special meeting to reorganize the 17th AD branch, to be held April 20, with admission by presentation of the notification letter only. This meeting was guarded by 2 NYC policemen, Reed says, who made sure the banned Left Wingers were physically excluded from the meeting. Reed states that the episode concluded on April 23, when a moving van swept up to 17th AD branch headquarters and removed the furniture, also under police protection.

“The Situation in Local New York,” by David P. Berenberg [event of April 22, 1919] Participant’s account of the April 22 meeting of the Central Committee of Local New York. The first test of strength came with the election of the chairman, with Regular U. Solomon defeating Left Winger Max Cohen, 39 to 19. A protest was of the credentials of the delegates from the 17th Assembly District branch, the subject of a recall on the one hand and a branch reorganization on the other. A protracted debate of over an hour was conducted on the matter, the delegates of the 17th AD ultimately retaining their seats. Once it was clear that the majority was lost, the Left Wing proceeded to engage in dilatory tactics, says Berenberg, raising repeated points of order, challenging decisions of the chair, and demanding or fighting roll call votes in order to disrupt the meeting. “The hall was crowded with visitors—mostly young boys and girls whose membership in the party is from a month to about a year,” Berenberg states, and the Left Wing played to the crowd in an attempt to an environment in which no business could take place. “A motion was made and seconded and carried that the Central Committee adjourn subject to the call of the Executive Committee, and that the Executive Committee of Local New York be instructed to reorganize Local New York, and put it on a working basis before it calls the next meeting of the Central Committee. This motion was carried by a vote of 71 to 36, whereupon the meeting was adjourned,” Berenberg writes, adding that the pandemonium generated by Left Wing committeemen and supporters attracted the attention of the police, who subsequently cleared the room.

MAY

“Left, Right, and Center”, by Dennis E. Batt [May 1919] Michigan Left Wing leader Dennis Batt analyses the ideological schism in the ranks of the Socialist Party of America. He frankly attempts to view the American party in the light of European experience and in that means to “profit by the events which have taken place” and “understand which groups in our own movement represent counterrevolutionary tendencies.” The “Right” Batt sees as exemplified by Victor Berger, Seymour Stedman, and National Secretary Adolph Germer—reformists with the sole aim “to make the conditions of the workers’ slavery a little more endurable.” This they have attempted by building a “great vote-catching political machine” and “consciously and deliberately obscured the class character of the socialist movement” by forging alliances with the petty bourgeoisie. The “Center,” on the other hand, is held to be “an even greater problem than the Right,” according to Batt. He states that the Centrist socialists accept a part of the program of the revolutionary wing, but possess a “natural tendency to compromise” and attempt to build “harmony and unity” with the socialist Right. This forced compromise of “fundamental principles” represents a grave danger to the socialist movement, in Batt’s view. The Left Wing of the Socialist Party was experiencing great growth; whatever its limitations, “the trend is in the right direction and unless we allow enthusiasm to get the best of our heads we will succeed in placing the Socialist Party upon a sound basis,” Batt predicts. The greatest error of the emerging Left is a tendency to predicate its program “upon the idea that the revolution is just around the corner”—an event for which Batt sees no evidence in current American capitalism. He advocates the establishment of study groups by every Socialist Party Local to assimilate the enthusiastic new members into the socialist movement.

“Debs Goes to Prison”, by David Karsner. [May 1919]. Text of a pamphlet privately published in New York in May 1919, probably compiling material previously published in pages of The New York Call. Author David Karsner was the editor of the Call’s Sunday supplement and a biographer of Debs. He travelled to Terre Haute to make the trip with Debs to Cleveland and thenceforth to prison in Moundsville, WV. Karsner was one of four friends of Debs making the journey with the Socialist writer and orator to the prison gates—along with J. Louis Engdahl (who published a similar memoir), Alfred Wagenknecht, and Debs’ brother-in-law, Arthur Bauer. Includes a number of direct quotations of Debs and other interesting and historically valuable observations about the trip.

“Debs in Prison: The Story of Convict No. 2253, Eugene Victor Debs,” by J. Louis Engdahl. [May 1919]. First section of a pamphlet published by the National Office of the Socialist Party in May 1919, almost certainly reprinting material which first appeared in the pages of The American Socialist, which Engdahl edited. This is one of two first-hand accounts of the transfer of Eugene Debs from custody in Cleveland, Ohio, to prison in Moundsville, WV, a cloak-and-dagger operation involving a high-speed automobile chase and multiple train transfers as the authorities sought to elude Socialist protesters. Includes a number of direct quotations from Debs’ last day of freedom, including his last message, “Tell my comrades that I entered the prison doors a flaming revolutionist, my head erect, my spirit untamed, and my soul unconquered.”

“Manifesto and Program of the Left Wing Section Socialist Party, Local Greater New York.” [pamphlet version, circa May 1919] The main programatic document of the Left Wing Section, Socialist Party, was the “Left Wing Manifesto,” authored in January or early February by Louis C. Fraina, Bertram Wolfe, and others. The text of the document evolved slightly over time, eventually taking final shape as the content of this pamphlet issued by Local Greater New York. This is the full text of the Left Wing Manifesto and Program as published in the May 1919 pamphlet.

“The Left Wing Manifesto,” by David P. Berenberg [May 1919]. David Berenberg, an instructor at the Rand School of Social Science, was one of the leaders of the anti-Left Wing movement in the Socialist Party of New York. He started a weekly newspaper in response to John Reed’s New York Communist called the New York Socialist. (Reed later returned the favor by issuing a parody issue of the New York Socialist and sneaking a stack into the Rand School bookstore for distribution!) t was in the pages of the NY Socialist that this lengthy analytical critique of the “Manifesto and Program of the Left Wing Section” was published in serial form. Berenberg’s critique was doubtlessly influential among party regulars in the hothouse that was Socialist Party politics in New York city during the spring and summer of 1919.

“The Pink Terror, Part 2: The Pillage of the 18th-20th Assembly District Branch,” by John Reed [event of April 25, 1919] Having purged and reorganized the 17th AD Branch, the reorganizers in New York set their sites on the 18th-20th AD Branch, located in Harlem. The branch’s meeting of April 25 was characterized by Reed as “orderly,” and it elected 6 new delegates to the Central Committee of Local New York. Reed states that the “Right Wing” declined to run for these positions, that 8 candidates were nominated and 6 affiliates of the Left Wing Section were elected. “The unanimous action of the Right Wingers showed that there was some sort of scheme on foot, so after the meeting the Propaganda Committee proceeded to copy the records of the branch, for fear that Alderman Calman and his moving van might swoop down and carry them off,” Reed notes. This foreboding proved well placed, he adds, as the very next day the Financial Secretary’s desk was broken into and party records were removed. The branch’s facility was then padlocked. A meeting of the (Left Wing) branch was held on Sunday, April 27, at which it was decided to allow the Executive Committee of Local New York “to remove the furniture or take any other illegal action they pleased,” but that under no circumstance would the Executive Committee’s authority to reorganize the branch be recognized. “By the time this paper is off the press, we expect to hear that the 18th-20th AD has been thoroughly “reorganized,” and that the great majority of the rank and file has joined the Party Bread Line,” Reed concludes.

“The Executive Committee’s Statement: A Response to the Communique Issued by the EC of Local New York, Socialist Party” by Maximilian Cohen [May 8, 1919] Lengthy reply by Left Wing leader Max Cohen to the May 8 circular letter of the Executive Committee of Local New York which vilified the Left Wing Section and announced a party purge in the form of “reorganizations.” Cohen states that the Executive Committee, headed by Julius Gerber, “is absolutely without any authority to reorganize any branches in New York, until the referendum issued by the State Committee has been passed.” He indicates that the rush to suspend various Left Wing branches is little more than an effort to manipulate the result of this pending referendum. The assertion that the city Central Committee had ceded its authority to its Executive Committee and instructed that body to reorganize Local New York is called by Cohen “a deliberate lie,” complete with falsified meeting minutes published in David Berenberg’s organ, The Socialist. Cohen gives his first-hand account of the pivotal April 22 meeting of the Central Committee of Local New York, and the heated debate there over the reorganization of the 17th AD Branch—the largest single branch of Local New York. The so-called “Right Wing’s” position that adequate opportunity existed for alteration of party policies within the structure of the party organization is dismissed by Cohen as the illusory promises of a political machine intent on holding power: “They do not wish to revise the party’s policies and tactics if they can help it; certainly they are not for the abolition of social reform planks; they are not for repudiating the Second International, they are not for affiliating with the Third International, called by the Communist Party of Russia (Bolsheviki). They are not for making revolutionary industrial unionism a part of its general propaganda.” To the claim of the Regular faction that the Left Wing had formed “an organization within the organization,” Cohen responds not with a denial but with an accusation that the Regulars had themselves formed “an organization outside of the organization,” consisting of quasi-party institutions such as the New York Call and the Rand School of Social Science over which the rank and file had no control, these being controlled and carefully guarded by the SPA’s ruling clique. Cohen calls for the recall of the Executive Committee of Local New York and Secretary Gerber and for a “no” vote on the pending party referendum to expel the Left Wing Section.

“Circular Letter to the Members of Local New York, SPA, from the Executive Committee of Local New York, SPA.” [May 8, 1919] This is an official communication from the Executive Committee of Local New York about the purge it was engaged in against branches and individuals endorsing the manifesto of the Left Wing Section. “Your Executive Committee is compelled to take unusual and vigorous measures to combat the disruptive efforts of an internal faction, which seeks to dominate the party by undemocratic and unsocialistic methods,” the circular letter declared, adding “The so-called ‘Left Wing Section’ has a definite organization, with white membership cards, with branches within the party branches (wherever it has been able to form such), with a Central Committee, officers, treasury, and press, parallel with and in opposition to those of the party.” This constituted a “party within the party,” the communication of the Executive Committee declared. Such a situation was deemed a menace, for “openly ridiculing all ideas of democracy, they have sought to impose their will upon the party by the systematic use of machine methods utterly inconsistent with majority rule or party unity and self-discipline.” The Left Wing Section was said to make use of dilatory tactics and rowdyism to disrupt meetings and to make use of factional discipline and unit voting to win majorities in ill-attended branch meetings. The situation necessitating the reorganization of the 17th Assembly District Branch is discussed in detail. While the assertion is made that there was “no intention on the part of the Executive Committee to censor opinions or to prevent free discussion of party questions,” a decision had been made to cancel the scheduled May 13 meeting of the city Central Committee and to reorganize the whole of Local New York. “This committee will begin with such branches as are affiliated with the “Left Wing Section.” No one will be excluded because of his opinions, but no one can retain a double membership, in the party and in the so-called ‘Left Wing Section,’” the communique ominously declares.

“Division That Weakens: Letter to the Editor of the New York Call,” by Charles Hardy [May 9, 1919] This letter to the editor of the New York Call is presented as a bit of a horror story, the tale of a paper member of the 3rd Assembly District Branch, Bronx, attending a meeting of his organization and being met with a $100 assessment towards new headquarters, which Hardy states he was able “through hard bargaining” to reduce to $25. Hardy states that he read the Left Wing Manifesto and found it uninspiring; for example, it endorsed industrial unionism as if that were a major step forward, even though this was “something that the Socialist Party has done long before they dreamed of it; but that is only a display of ignorance on their part, and we can readily forgive them since they are so short a time in the Socialist Party.” Local Bronx subsequently held a general membership meeting on the Left Wing Manifesto which was addressed by Ben Gitlow for the Left, Moses Oppenheimer for the Center, and Louis Waldman for the Right. “The only one who spoke on the subject properly was Waldman, for he has spoken on the issue and left out personalities. He has shown conclusively that we are being separated by a little egotistic group of men who are carried away with the enthusiasm of what is happening in Europe, overlooking the present economic conditions and the psychology of the workers in America,” Hardy says. At two further meetings of Local Bronx, “the behavior of the Left Wingers was uncouth and disgusting,” says Hardy. “They came to the meetings organized and prepared to cram into the throats of those assembled their manifesto at any price and without discussion.” Chairman of the 3 meetings was Julius Hammer, a man who “disregarded all parliamentary ruling procedures,” in Hardy’s opinion. Hardy asserts that the Left Wing’s “slogan that dooms them to fail” is: “We have organized within the party to capture the party, and if we cannot capture it, we will smash it.” Hardy declares that the forthcoming Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party “shall provide the necessary equipment for the party that will prevent a few disrupters in the future from organizing within the party, which naturally leads to a division that weakens our forces and defeats our purpose when facing our real enemies—the capitalist class.”

“The Cleveland May Day Demonstration,” by C.E. Ruthenberg [May 10, 1919]. A disturbing tale of the crude and premeditated exercise of force and violence by a coordinated circle of conspirators against a law-abiding citizenry. On May 1, 1919, the Socialist Party of Ohio sponsored a massive May Day parade, in which a goodly number of unions and thousands of individuals participated. Despite disruptions by right wing provocateurs, including one wildly brandishing a handgun, the carefully-planned assembly was completely peaceable. This calm was shattered by the premeditated action of the Cleveland police department and their conservative vigilante allies, who violently attacked the marchers, crushing them with horses and beating them with clubs. In the melee which followed, two marchers were murdered by the police and scores arrested, and the headquarters of the Socilaist Party of Ohio was vandalized under the winking eyes of the Cleveland constabulary. C.E. Ruthenberg, Secretary of Local Cuyahoga County, Socialist Party, was charged with “causing a disturbance” in connection with this violent episode of state savagery, which he ably chronicles here.

“A Statement,” by Max S. Hayes [May 17, 1919] Published statement by long time Socialist stalwart Max Hayes explaining the thinking behind his decision to resign from the Socialist Party on May 7, 1919. Hayes lists three principle reasons for his decision: 1. A disagreement with the strongly anti-militarist St. Louis Resolution of 1917; 2. A fundamental disagreement with the Left Wing platform, a document which Hayes states was “foisted upon Local Cleveland largely by an element who were in the party organization less than 3 months and many of whom are not voters and who are admittedly anarchistic in their tactics”; and 3. A disagreement with the “foolish tactics” displayed at the May 1, 1919 parade in Cleveland, an event which culminated in a riot ending in 2 deaths and the ransacking of Socialist offices in the city by Right Wing mobs. “The SP officials seem to have deliberately invited trouble that might have been avoided by the use of ordinary tact,” Hayes states, noting that civil liberties had been curtailed by the local regime in response to the troubles. “I am not an apostate and have not recanted my principles and ideals. The Socialist Party, and certainly not the Left Wingers, control no patent or copyright on socialism, which philosophy I shall continue to advocate most sincerely,” Hayes declares. Includes a short biography of Max S. Hayes.

“First Authentic News of Cleveland May Day Demonstration,” by Hortense Wagenknecht [event of May 1, 1919] Valuable first-hand account of the May Day 1919 Cleveland Riot—the result of an unprovoked attack by Cleveland police and ultra-nationalist “patriots” against a peaceful procession and assembly of thousands of working class Clevelanders held under the auspices of the Socialist Party. Hortense Wagenknecht—at the time the temporary State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Cleveland—contends that the police attack was made against the assembly of supporters gathered in the Cleveland town square, rather than the more committed (and potentially more aggressive) marchers. “No more than 200 of the marchers in the parade ever entered the Square,” Wagenknecht states. Mounted police and army trucks drove straight into the crowd, swinging drawn clubs. Fist-fights erupted and gang violence was practiced by the forces of so-called “law and order” against the demonstrators. “Those who attacked the marchers in every instance we can learn of, were not the bystanders, but police, detectives, APLs, soldiers, sailors, and hoodlums, who were selected for the work beforehand. These last were in the main youths from the ages of about 14 to 25 years, and many were drunk. Soldiers stood about in groups in many sections, pointing out to these ruffians who were willing to do their bidding, any who appeared to be ‘Reds’ or who had on red ties or badges. These were torn from the persons wearing them, and if protest was made by the wearer, the soldiers rushed to the spot and a free-for-all fight ensued. Hundreds of men were without hats and collars, and showed the marks of having their ties removed by these defenders of DEMOCRACY. Streets and sidewalks were strewn with bits of red cloth, with here and there spatterings of blood.” Two were killed and hundreds hurt in the riot.

Shrinking Shrimps by J.O. Bentall [May 16, 1919] Writing from Crow Wing County Jail in Brainerd, Minnesota, 1916 Socialist gubernatorial candidate Jacob Bentall delivers this short essay glorifying his fellow Socialist political prisoner Gene Debs in positively hagiographic terms. Debs is likened to Socrates, Jesus Christ, Galileo, and Lincoln by the former Christian Socialist and future Communist Oppositionist Bentall. Debs is depicted as a man who could no more be put into a dungeon than “they could get the Atlantic Ocean into a washtub.” By way of contrast, those who legislated against, investigated, arrested, tried, and upheld the conviction against Debs are called “the shrinking shrimps of capitalism”— vanishing from view just as Debs grew in stature through his imprisonment. The campaign of repression had only turned the working class into a “class conscious, wide-awake, clenched-fisted, fighting-mad, victory-bent, irresistible, unconquerable, unified mass,” in Bentall's words. “Gag law and tyranny did overnight what we have been trying to do for half a century.”

“The Socialist Task and Outlook,” by Morris Hillquit [published May 21, 1919]. One of the seminal documents of the 1919 internal political struggle in the Socialist Party of America, first published prominently on the back page of the New York Call on May 21, 1919, This, Morris Hillquit’s so-called “Clear the Decks” article, has been (wrongly) characterized by historian Theodore Draper as a directive for a party purge. Hillquit, one of the leading figures of the SPA and an individual with an enormous amount of personal influence within the organization, weighed in on the faction fight between the “Left Wing” and their opponents here, stating that a split of the SPA was inevitable owing to the establishment of the “Left Wing” as a “schizmatic and disintegrating” movement within the party. Instead of conversion of their opponents, this group refused cooperation in favor fo an effort to “capture” the party organization in a sort of “burlesque on the Russian Revolution,” Hillquit stated. As a result, it would be “better a hundred times to have two numerically small socialist organizations, each homogeneous and harmonious within itself, than to have one big party torn by dissensions and squabbles, an impotent colossus on feet of clay.” Hillquit called for the Left Wing to split “honestly, freely, and without rancor.”

“Minutes of the State Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of New York, Special Meeting of May 21, 1919.” Special meeting of the New York SEC called for the purpose of canvassing the vote on pending party referenda. State Secretary Walter Cook submitted a number of samples of ballots submitted by Ukrainian and Russian party branches for the inspection of the committee indicative of ballot box stuffing. Vote were cast, according to Cook, “entirely out of proportion to the dues stamps purchased by such locals during the last three months, but also showing that the individual ballots on their very face were either signed by one or a group of persons, or marked by the same person. The same mark appears on about fifty ballots in ink from one language local, while the signatures were mostly in pencil.” In another case, ballots were submitted by a Russian language branch without an electoral meeting of that unit having been held. “In view of the above it was decided that the Secretary should correspond with the different locals having language branches, demanding a tabulation of the vote on the national referendums by branches, English as well as foreign languages; and also arrange to have all locals turn into the State Office the individual ballots from all their branches,” the minutes indicate. In addition, “a statement should accompany same, explaining that the tabulation so filed was but tentative and that a final tabulation would be filed later, as soon as all the facts in connection with the irregularity of the vote on both referendums have been gathered together.”

“Socialist Party in Swing to the Left,” by Robert M. Buck [events of May 17-18, 1919] This short news snippet from the Labor Party of Cook County’s official organ documents the heated proceedings at the recently completed convention of the Socialist Party of Cook County. The gathering had been dominated by a Left Wing majority, Buck states, with “William Bross Lloyd, multimillionaire” presiding and “Isaac E. Ferguson, lawyer” steering “the radical element to their triumph.” The gathering had nearly erupted in a riot the first day of the gathering, Buck observes, “but the Sunday gathering was peaceful and orderly, after the withdrawal of the moderate delegates, led by Seymour Stedman.” “There was talk of a dual organization during the heat of the conflict, but so far as could be learned no definite steps have yet been taken,” Buck notes.

“Report to the NEC,” by Adolph Germer [May 24, 1919]. The “nationality card” is played here for the first time by the National Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party of America, Adolph Germer. In the face of the overwhelming defeat of the old and familiar faces in the 1919 elections for the SPA’s National Executive Committee, and with barely a month left in the lame duck outgoing NEC’s constitution term of office, Secretary Germer sounds the alarm, noting that over half of the party’s paid membership is affiliated with foreign language federations for the first time and declaring this “an abnormal and unhealthy condition.” Germer further cries fraud on the part of the language groups, citing a 70% rate of growth in five carefully selected Slavic and Baltic language federations between dues stamp sales in April 1919 relative to December 1918. Germer charges that the members of the five mentioned federations (Russian, Ukraianian, South Slavic, Lithuanian, and Latvian) “do not vote, but are voted by the ‘leaders’—voted en bloc, with mathematical uniformity—and all one way.” Germer states that the question of whether the Socialist Party is to become the tail of its constituent language federations “must be frankly faced and wisely solved” by the outgoing NEC.

“Indicting the Left Wing: A Speech to the NEC,” by James Oneal [circa May 27, 1919]. On May 27, 1919, the lame duck National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America unilaterally suspended the entire memberships of seven constituent language federations, consisting of over 20,000 dues-paying rank-and-filers. This is the lengthy speech of NEC member James Oneal of New York to the gathering—which included Translator-Secretaries of the affected federations and Left Wing NEC members Alfred Wagenknecht and L.E. Katterfeld. Oneal provides a brief history of previous “Left Wing” movements within the Socialist Party (all of which came to grief, often with leading participants jumping to the other side of the barricades). Oneal also sharply criticizes the current “Left Wing” Section for a lack of patience, a dictatorial attitude and an unwillingness to adhere to the spirit of the Socialist Party, a failure to follow the constitution of the party, and a pattern of destructive behavior. Oneal cites several articles of the SPA constitution in making his case—none of which seem particularly germane to the actual factional situation existing in the party. The constitutionality of NEC action to put aside election results and to suspend entire federations is discussed not at all, it should be noted. Regardless, this is one of the most intelligent and extensive discussions of the thinking by a NEC member with regard to the insurgent Left Wing Section. The speech was taken stenographically at the meeting and reproduced in the pages of the factional weekly The New York Socialist at the behest of members of the NEC.

“Clearing the Decks: An Editorial in the New York Communist, May 24, 1919.” Editorial reply to Morris Hillquit’s “The Socialist Task and Outlook” from pages of the New York Communist,, edited by John Reed. The “clever politician” Hillquit is said to have “emerged from his long retirement” to issue this “semi-official declaration” in the New York Call. “Now as ever, Hillquit is attempting to carry water on both shoulders; he flirts with the revolutionary sentiment that is now dominant in the movement; he coquettes with Proletarian Dictatorship in Russia and Hungary, while spurning it nearer to home; he implies a mild reproof to the majority socialists of Germany; he mentions the St. Louis platform and immediately sheers away, fearful of this test if applied to the “leaders” of the party,” the editorial states. In the postwar world, Hillquit is said to have seen the United States the strongest capitalist country in the world, with its liberal regime having become reactionary and the reformist protest movement having collapsed. To Hillquit, “it appears that the failure of peace, the governmental persecution and repression, the obscurantism of the capitalist press, terrorism, unemployment, and intensified exploitation will soon awaken the American workers;” he sees the Socialist Party’s task as propaganda and organization, awaiting an awakening of the American working class, the editorial indicates. After years of advocating “unity,” Hillquit and the SP leadership are said to have moved to advocacy of a split: “After months of agitation the Left Wing has broken down the opposition and succeeded in having a referendum taken on the necessity for a National Emergency Convention. The present attitude of the rank and file forecasts that such a convention will be another St. Louis, and Comrade Hillquit and the other ‘leaders’ doubt whether they can weather another storm. The only thing left is to split the party before the convention.” According to the editorial, the Regulars were engaged in a conscious attempt to “disfranchise the revolutionary section of the membership, expel its spokesmen” and thereby make the party safe for its “official junta.” But the Left Wing was in the driver’s seat: “we refuse to split the party, that is not our purpose. We will capture the party and if the Right Wing wants to split, it must do the splitting, it must break away from the party. The rank and file is behind our position, we are the party, and when the time comes for clearing the decks we will handle the mop.”

“Jersey Socialist Convention Names Farr for Governor; Harwood Offers Resignation: Resolution Introduced to Condemn Expulsion of Slavic Language Federations—New International of Left Wing European Parties Endorsed.” [May 30, 1919] This is a news account of the 19th Annual Convention of the Socialist Party of New Jersey, held May 30, 1919 in Newark. The convention was characterized by State Secretary Fred Harwood as a Left Wing gathering, moderated by organizational influences. Harwood resigned the post of State Secretary at the convention due to an excessive workload, and the body elected Walter Gabriel of Newark as his successor. A resolution condemning the action of the NEC of the Socialist Party for expelling the state organization of Michigan and suspending 7 language federations for having endorsed the Left Wing manifesto was deferred in view of the lack of definitive information on the situation. A resolution proposing the election of the state committee by lower party bodies rather than by at large balloting of the membership was passed and referred to the State Committee for study. Another resolution proposed “the formation of shop committees, organization by industries, and election of industrial councils to prepare for taking over the large enterprises now in capitalist hands,” according to this news report. The body seems to have walked a fine line between the factions, formally approving the principles of the Left Wing manifesto but condemning “a white card and separatist organization” within the Socialist Party.

“Clear the Decks! An Editorial in The Revolutionary Age, May 31, 1919.” by Louis C. Fraina Left Wing leader Louis Fraina offers his perspective on the party controversy and Morris Hillquit’s seminal article, “The Socialist Task and Outlook.” Fraina observes that “Branch after branch of Local New York, affiliated with the Left Wing, has been expelled; and now the National Executive Committee, in session in Chicago, expels the whole Socialist Party of the state of Michigan, with threats of other expulsions.” He states that these actions are “partly a criminal attempt to steal votes from Left Wing candidates, in order that the moderates may be ‘elected’” as well as “a desperate attempt to ‘isolate’ the fires of revolutionary socialism.” Fraina alleges that these actions are part of an orchestrated plot which is “formulated by that master strategist of the moderates, Morris Hillquit.” Fraina accuses Hillquit of cleverly appropriating revolutionary socialist language—but with an ulterior motive, for “every statement has a reservation.” Fraina calls this “a sinister maneuver to mobilize indefinite revolutionary sentiment in the party for the moderate representatives” of the party leadership. Fraina accuses the SP leadership of hypocrisy: “They stigmatized the Left Wing as a secessionist movement, as working to split the party; but now, realizing that the Left Wing is conquering the party for revolutionary socialism, for the Bolshevik-Spartacan International, the moderates are adopting the policy they malignantly ascribed to the Left Wing—split the party!” Fraina states that the Left Wing is perfectly willing for the SP Regulars to secede and join the ranks of the Labor Party; this, however, is not the intention of the waning leadership, as “they wish to retain control of the party, even if it is necessary to expel the bulk of the membership.” These individuals are characterized by Fraina as “social-gangsters and traitors to socialism,” practitioners of the same tactics as those used by the Ebert-Scheidemann pro-war socialists in Germany. “Clear the decks! Clear them—Clean,” Fraina implores organized the Left Wing of the Socialist Party.

JUNE

“The Socialist Party of America,” by R.W. Housley [June 1919] &8212; Lengthy analysis of the turbulent situation in the American socialist movement written by a well-informed member of the impossibilist Socialist Party of Great Britain for members of that organization through its party press. Housley notes that pro-war elements had split away from the Socialist Party of America during the war and anti-war members had split into liberal pacifist and revolutionary camps. The growth of the Left Wing movement is seen as a promising development, although its eclecticism is dismissed as no great improvement over the eclecticism of the SPA itself. Unsurprisingly, Housley is hotly critical of Louis C. Fraina and his conception of “Mass Action,” declaring as “absurd” his assertion that the working class is “instinctively revolutionary” and dismissing the Mass Action idea as an amorphous “shibboleth” useful as a means of postponing more serious debate among different sections of the Left Wing Section. The impossibilist Socialist Party of Michigan headed by John Keracher is singled out for praise and its entire February 1919 platform is reprinted in full in this article as is the passage of its constitution calling for the expulsion of “any member, Local, or Branch of a Local, advocating legislative reforms or supporting organizations formed for the purpose of advocating such reforms.” In the best impossibilist tradition, even this SPGB-inspired program is singled out for two paragraphs of nit-picking criticism, however.

“To Prevent Disruption of the Party.”” [Motions by Local Cuyahoga County, Socialist Party, June 1, 1919] Immediately after conclusion of the National Executive Committee’s May 24-28, 1919 quarterly meeting in Chicago, at which the 7 Left Wing language federations were suspended and the Socialist Party of Michigan expelled from the Socialist Party, action was taken by the Left Wing to overturn the arbitrary and unconstitutional action. On Sunday, June 1, 1919 a joint meeting of the membership of the numerous branches of Local Cuyahoga County was held in Cleveland, with C.E. Ruthenberg elected chairman of the meeting. This set of resolutions were passed, propositions to be published for seconds of other locals from around the country in accordance with the party constitution’s provisions for membership control through referendum voting. Four proposals were made in all: (1) Rescinding the Michigan expulsion; (2) Rescinding the Federation suspensions; (3) Rescinding the decision not to tabulate the 1919 party vote and instructing the NEC to do so; and (4) Rescinding the NEC’s effort to place party-owned property irrevocably in the hands of a 9 person board of directors serving staggered 3 year terms (i.e. with no electoral takeover possible for six years). This constitutional check upon usurped executive authority ultimately proved too slow and cumbersome to stop the outgoing NEC’s de facto organizational coup.

“Scuttling the Ship: A Statement of the Seven Suspended Language Federations, June 2, 1919.” This is the joint protest statement of the 7 affected Language Federations of the SPA (Russian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Polish, Hungarian, South Slavic, and Latvian) in response to the May 27 action of the party’s National Executive Committee to unilaterally suspend the entire memberships of these organizations. The “autocratic 7” members of the National Executive Committee who approved this action on “over 30,000 dues payers” are rebuked for failing to provide notification, time for preparation, or a trial. In addition, the NEC bloc of 7 suspended the party elections and expelled the Michigan organization of nearly 6,000 without trial, locked up the party headquarters in the hands of a private holding company outside of party control, and arbitrarily threw the Translator-Secretaries of the affected federations out of party headquarters without allowing time for them to locate new quarters. “In short, this group of seven National Committeemen, drunk with power they assumed, feeling aggrieved because these federations dared to criticize the National Executive Committee, made themselves guilty of an act which will discredit them forever in the International Socialist movement,” the joint statement charged.

“Letter to Morris Hillquit at Saranac Lake, NY, from Adolph Germer in Chicago, June 2, 1919.” **revised 2nd Edition—expands footnote, adds photo, corrects typos** Very illuminating letter from the National Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party to leading luminary Hillquit, then convalescing from tuberculosis at a sanitarium in upstate New York. Far from being the puppeteer behind the seminal June 24-30 plenum of the SPA’s governing National Executive Committee, the disabled and out-of-the-loop Hillquit is here informed of the results after the fact. Germer sees Russian Federation Translator-Secretary Alexander Stoklitsky as the chief mover behind the Left Wing movement within the federations, with Joseph Stilson of the Lithuanian Federation his chief accomplice. “I had a private talk with the Translator-Secretary of the South Slavic Federation [George Selakovich] and I concluded from what he said that he regretted having become involved in this controversy,” Germer notes, adding “the others, I believe, were drawn into it without fully realizing what the result would be.” Alfred Wagenknecht of Ohio is portrayed as the chief protagonist for the Left Wing among the Anglophonic element.

“Circular Letter to Michigan Locals and Branches of the Socialist Party of America from Adolph Germer, Executive Secretary. [June 3, 1919] With this letter, Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party Adolph Germer notified the primary party organizations of state of Michigan of their having been expelled from the SPA by the governing National Executive Committee on May 24 for actions measures adopted at the state party convention. “The National Office will proceed at once with the reorganization, so that you will have representation at the National Convention of the Socialist Party to be held in Chicago on August 30th,” Germer coyly notes. “At once call a special meeting of your Local or Branch...and inform us, without delay, whether you repudiate the section of the Michigan constitution above referred to and accept the present National Platform and Constitution as your guide until it is changed in the regular way,”Germer demands. “Keep in mind that whenever a movement like ours grows and is on the verge of triumph, discordant elements creep into it and play into the hands of the enemy. This has happened time and time again. We have weathered it all. There is nothing surprising or disheartening about it,”Germer notes.

“The National Executive Committee Acts,” by David P. Berenberg [June 4, 1919]. Unsigned editorial in the New York Socialist, presumably penned by editor David P. Berenberg, reporting the decision of the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party to revoke the charter of the organization of the Socialist Party of Michigan, thus effectively expelling the state from the party. This decision was made on Saturday, May 24, 1919, by a 7-3 vote, ostensibly on the grounds that the insertion of a plank in the state constitution instructing the Michigan State Committee to revoke the state charter of any local or branch “advocating reforms” put the entire state organization in violation of the national constitution of the Socialist Party. Michigan was a hotbed of the Left Wing section, and the purge of the Michigan organization was the first of a number of countermeasures taken by the NEC in response to the growing Left Wing movement in the party.

“The National Committee Meeting,” by James Oneal. [June 4, 1919] The Socialist Party’s most aggressive anti-Communist member of the NEC explains the actions of that body at its seminal May 24-30 plenary session, a riotous meeting which saw the expulsion of the entire Socialist Party of Michigan and the suspension of the party’s Russian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, and South Slavic Language Federations—a majority of the members of the entire organization. “Filled with an emotional ecstacy over the Russian revolution,” these groups had formed a coalition intent on establishing “a dictatorship within the party,” says Oneal. Citing examples, Oneal notes that election fraud in the 1919 SPA election was rife and the NEC justified in terminating the election and taking action against the Left Wing. “What is facing the Socialist Party is an anarcho-syndicalist revival that should play into the hands of capitalist reaction and give our enemies an opportunity to outlaw any socialist movement. Where the ‘Left Wing’ has developed it has driven out many members through sheer disgust,” Oneal observes.

“Call for a National Conference of the Left Wing.” [Published June 4, 1919] This is the call for the holding of a National Conference of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party, issued jointly by Local Boston, Socialist Party (Louis C. Fraina, Sec.); Local Cleveland, Socialist Party (C.E. Ruthenberg, Sec.); and the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party of New York City (Maximilian Cohen, Sec.). The call indicated that all locals (or minority groups of locals, should a local refuse to participate) should elect 1 delegate for every 500 members, with no group to elect more than four delegates. Acceptance of the Manifesto of the Left Wing of the Socialist Party of Greater New York was provisionally to be the acid test for participaton. The meeting was to discuss the crisis in the Socialist Party and to agree upon action thereon, to discuss ways and means to prevent the SPA from affiliating with any international organization other than the “Bolshevik-Spartacan Communist International,” to establish some sort of “national council or bureau” to receive and disseminate information. A declaration of principles was also to be drafted—although the actual meeting did not accomplish this latter task. Maximilian Cohen handled the formal correspondence related to this meeting, which was held in New York City.

“Debs on Prisons and Prisoners,” by David Karsner [event of June 7, 1919] New York Call journalist and future Debs biographer David Karsner provides an account of his 4th and final visit to the imprisoned Socialist leader at Moundsville penitentiary in West Virginia. The genial warden, Joseph Z. Terrell, accompanied Karsner to meet Debs in his room inside the prison’s two story hospital building, exchanging heartfelt pleasantries and sheepishly accepting a fistful of cigars from the generous Hoosier. Debs was wearing his own clothing, rather than prison garb and had a small shelf of neatly arranged books and a bouquet of flowers next to his writing table, while a magazine picture of Jesus Christ was tacked next to his bed. Debs seems to have transformed imprisonment into a practical test and ultimate confirmation of his socialist faith. His perspective of his fellow convicts glows in a quasi-religious light. As for the guilty among him, Debs declares to Karsner: “What sinless, spotless saint among us may pronounce them wicked and sentence them to hell? The very lowest and most degenerate of criminals is not one whit worse than I. The difference between us is against me, not him. All of my life I have been the favored one, the creature of fortune. We both did the best we could and the worst we knew how, and I am the beneficiary of society, of which he is the victim.” The zeal and passion of a religious martyr burns within Debs. “I belong in this prison,” he says. “I belong where men are made to suffer for the errors of society. I have talked about this thing and these social conditions all of my life, and now I am glad to have the opportunity to live out in practice the words I have spoken so many, many times. I belong to this stratum of society. The roots of the social system are here. They are nowhere else. These men - and I know many of them by their first names now - were workmen. For the most part they have been used and exploited. When they had nothing more to give, when they had given their all, when they strove to make the very best of a bad bargain and erred, society put them out of sight.” Debs asks Karsner to convey to his comrades that he is “all right here” and living an active and fulfilling life in service to his fellows. Includes photo of the Moundsville prison hospital in which Debs lived and worked.

“Forty Thousand Expelled by Seven,” by L.E. Katterfeld, Alfred Wagenknecht, and Louis C. Fraina [published June 7, 1919] An “official” Left Wing perspective of the May 24-30, 1919 plenum of the Socialist Party’s National Executive Committee—written by the two “minority” members of the NEC along with Left Wing leader Louis Fraina. The decisions and motivations of the “Willful Seven” are outlined, including the expulsion of the Michigan state party without trial, the arbitrary suspension of seven language federations in an effort to control the tenor and outcome of the forthcoming Emergency Convention, the locking up of party assets in a factional “holding company” not subject to party recall, and the unconstitutional abrogation of the SPA’s 1919 referendum vote for officials. The statement indicates that “the ‘moderates’ on the National Executive Committee show no realization of the problems of the International Revolution. They do not see the need of reconstructing the Party policy in accord with the experience gained by our comrades in Europe, or, at any rate, do not act toward that end.” Party members are called to stay in the party and to “build, build, build,” since the “sabotage” of the “Willful Seven” is intended to cause the Left Wing to desert the party.

“The Counterrevolution in the Party: Report of the NEC Sessions in Chicago,” by I.E. Ferguson [June 7, 1919] The definitive account of the seminal May 24-30 plenum of the Socialist Party’s National Executive Committee which expelled the Socialist Party of Michigan and suspended the entire memberships of the Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Hungarian, and South Slavic Socialist Federations. Ferguson, one of the principles of the Left Wing movement, is scathing in his review of the machinations of the outgoing NEC. Ferguson sees the NEC as an accumulation of frigtened and vindictive officeholders, spurred into frenzied and thoroughly unconstitutional action by the sudden realization that the reins of control of the party were slipping from the hands of the Right and into the hands of the Left Wing movement. The list of objectively illegal actions is impressive: Michigan expelled befor e a pending referendum confimed the action of its state convention, the Hungarian and South Slavic Federations suspended based on the signature of a single official (the Translator-Secretary of each) on a document protesting the action of the NEC. At root is a transparent effort to control the forthcoming Emergency National Convention of the Party by expelling political opponents, Ferguson indicates, the dirtiest of power politics.

“Italian Federation Endorses NEC Action: Resolution on the Expulsions and Suspensions of the Left Wing Section, June 8, 1919.” At its June 8, 1919, meeting the Executive Committee of the Italian Federation passed a resolution on the crisis in the Socialist Party, which was already marked by the suspension of the entire state organization of Michigan and the suspension of seven of the Slavic, Baltic, and Finnish federations of the party. While on the one hand the suspensions and expulsion were seen as justifiable for fairly clear violations of the party constitution, the actions of the NEC were called “too drastic and very unwise” since they were taken by a retiring NEC which was itiself called to stand down by the very same constitution. “In justice to all concerned and to show that the Socialist Party plays fair at all times and in all things it could, we believe, have found a less drastic way of disciplining these organizations and put the whole matter before the coming national convention for final solution,” the resolution stated. The resolution was mailed out to the members of the NEC and the parties concerned by John LaDuca, the Translator-Secretary of the Italian Federation.

“The Enemy Within,” by Abraham Tuvim [June 11, 1919]. The bitterness of the faction fight between the Left Wing section and the Socialist Party regulars in New York state is made clear in this article from the New York Socialist by adherent of the SP Right Abraham Tuvim. Tuvim details the actions of a June 2 meeting of the New York City Committee in repudiating the New York Call as a Socialist newspaper and deciding to move forward to the holding of a New York “City Convention” in contradiction of the instruction of the New York State Executive Committee on the matter. The meeting, which included at least two non-members of the SPA, according to Tuvim, voted 12 to 3 in favor of repudiation, leaving the question of recognition of the New York Communist as an official organ to the forthcoming City Convention. Tuvim calls the Left Wing Section a “counterrevolutionary and disruptive group” bent on “destroying our Party and its institutions” and states that “there must be no quarter” in the fight between Socialist Party loyalists and the insurgent Left Wing faction.

“Letter to Adolph Germer in Chicago, from Ludwig Katterfeld in Dighton, Kansas.”w [June 10, 1919] In this brief communication, Socialist Party NEC member L.E. Katterfeld requests Executive Secretary Adolph Germer—a factional foe —to poll the newly elected members of the NEC with a view to their holding an organizational meeting on July 1, 1919, the first day of their term of office under the party constitution. “I urge a meeting of the new NEC at this earliest possible date so that without loss of time we may call a halt to the party wrecking activities of the expiring committee,”Katterfeld notes in the comment section attached to his motion. Knowing full well that Germer would be unlikely to circulate this motion to a group of individuals whose election had been recently abrogated by the seated NEC, Katterfeld asks for Germer’s immediate notification if he did not poll the members of the newly elected committee.

“Why the Foreign Language Federations Were Suspended,” by David P. Berenberg [June 11, 1919]. While accompanied by brief editorial comment in support of the decision, this article presents the full text of the landmark resolution of the Socialist Party’s National Executive Committee to suspend seven of the organization’s Language Federations for a list of specific alleged violations of the party’s constitution. Includes footnotes containing the complete text of each cited constitutional section so that the reader may better determine the merit or lack thereof of each particular charge levied by the NEC.

“Foreign Federations,” by David P. Berenberg [June 11, 1919]. Unsigned editorial in the New York Socialist, presumably penned by editor David P. Berenberg, attempting to justify the action of the Socialist Party’s National Executive Committee decision to summarily suspend the entire memberships of seven language federations from the party ultimately due to the endorsement of the Left Wing Manifesto by leading officials or sections of each. “These federations are made up of people who have had no experience whatsoever in political life at home. Being composed of a disfranchised group, and exercising no suffrage here, they naturally feel that the ballot is a useless scrap of paper, and that nothing can be accomplished by political action,” Berenberg states, adding that such individuals provided a fertile field for syndicalist and anarchist propaganda. The suspension of the seven federations was a strong measure necessary for the preservation of the party, according to Berenberg, who adds that the party would have the capacity to ratify or overturn this decision at its forthcoming Emergency National Convention.

“A Rebuke from Prison,”” by Emil Herman [June 14, 1919] Imprisoned member of the Socialist Party’s governing National Executive Committee Emil Herman of Washington registers his protest of the “arbitrary and unconstitutional action” of the NEC in suspending 7 of the party’s foreign language federations, expelling the Socialist Party of Michigan, and determining not to even count the vote from the 1919 party elections at its quarterly meeting held May 24-28 in Chicago. He notes that the vote had not been properly challenged and that constitutional guidelines for suspensions and expulsions were ignored. He further protests the “undemocratic, unparliamentary, and un-Socialistic procedure” of using his own honorary “presence” owing to federal incarceration for political activism to constitute a quorum where none existed so as to engage in these rogue actions.

“Immediate Demands,” by Louis Waldman [June 14, 1919]. Prominant New York Socialist Louis Waldman (later one of the “5 Expelled Assemblymen of 1920”) takes on the Left Wing’s call for the elimination of immediate demands from the platform of the Socialist Party. Waldman notes that only nine months previously, at the NY Socialist Party State Convention, such Left Wingers as Bertram Wolfe, John Reed, and Eadmonn MacAlpine had voted in favor of immediate demands as part of that state’s platform; now, despite no changes on the domestic or international front to merit such a shift, immediate demands were bitterly oppsed. Waldman asserts that the antipathy of the Left Wing to immediate demands was misplaced, and that partial victories in the struggle for the improvement of the lives of the workers—when the ultimate goal of complete emancipation through Socialism is maintained—actually served to increase the class struggle and by implication the class-consciousness of the workers. Waldman dismissed the charge that immediate demands were inherently conservative, noting that the construction of revolutionary industrial unions by the most revolutionary segment of the union movement, the IWW, made extensive use of small actions for limited demands as part of their program of organizational development.

“Stevenson’s ‘Personally Conducted’ Raid: An Editorial in the New York Call, June 15, 1919.” This editorial from the New York City Socialist Party daily declares that “responsibility for the raid on the Soviet Bureau rests squarely on the shoulders of just one man”—Archibald Stevenson. “He headed the band of private detectives and state constabulary that invaded the Soviet office. They all took orders from him directly. Every detail of the raid was under his specific direction,” the editorialist asserts. Stevenson is revealed as a zealous member of the Union League Club in New York, which had moved that group to action pushing for a broad investigation of radicalism in the state. Stevenson had been appointed chairman of a special committee of that club established for that purpose and had parlayed this position into fame through testimony before the Overman Committee of the United States Senate and a decisive place in the Lusk Committee established by the New York legislature to investigate radicalism in the state. Stevenson had gained a measure of infamy (and a rebuke from Secretary of War Newton Baker) by reading into the testimony a list of 60 names of individuals which he, in his own judgment, proclaimed to be “pro-German,” “even though he knew this act would damage them, no matter how false the allegation.” The editorialist declares that “What is needed today is not so much a public investigation of the Soviet Bureau—it has never shunned legitimate investigation—but a thoroughgoing probe of Archibald E. Stevenson and his underground activities.”

“Letter to Ludwig Katterfeld in Dighton, KS from Adolph Germer in Chicago.”[June 17, 1919] Socialist Party Executive Secretary Adolph Germer responds in no uncertain terms to Ludwig Katterfeld’s attempt to convene a meeting of the disputed “new”National Executive Committee of the SPA: “With reference to your motion to call a meeting of the new National Executive Committee on July 1st [1919], let me say that I cannot submit this constitutionally or otherwise. Even if the election had not been attended by the worst kind of corruption and fraud, the new National Executive Committee would have no authority to make any motions until July 1st. Of course, I am not at all surprised that you would submit such a motion and when you did so, you knew that it was entirely out of order and that I had no right to send it out by wire or by mail. It is further evidence that you have no respect for the party laws - at the same time charging others with violating the constitution. Your motion is indeed suggestive but it will be well for you to know that your game with miscarry. There will be no meeting of what you may consider the ‘new’ National Executive Committee at party headquarters on July 1st”

“Letter to the Editor of the New York Call,” by Irvin D. Cline [June 17, 1919] This letter to the New York Socialist Party daily expresses strong indignation over the National Executive Committee’s decision to expel the Michigan state organization and to suspend 7 language federations from the party, while the New York State Executive Committee took parallel action against Locals Buffalo, Rochester, Bronx, Kings, and Queens. “Just think of it! One-half of the membership of our party thrown out or suspended because they dared think otherwise than the officialdom of the party!” Cline declares. The debate over the philosophy and tactics advocated by the Left Wing was a manifestation of an international controversy, Cline observes, and the matter “should be thrashed out by the coming National Emergency Convention and its recommendation submitted to a referendum vote of the membership.” However, the Regular faction of the party had chosen to intervene. “The rank and file has been for a long time more radical than its leaders,” Cline notes. “The Left Wing crystallized this sentiment into an organization for the purpose of making a more efficient effort to bring about a change. The rank and file began to flock towards them. The politicians in our party, those holding office and those aspiring to hold office, those employed by the party or the party-endorsed institutions, began to see their grip on the party machinery slipping and have resorted to drastic and in some cases questionable tactics far worse than those of which the Left Wing are alleged to be guilty.” Cline states that he is not one of those affiliated with the Left Wing. “I agree with them in many things. In some I disagree. But I believe that it is unjust, undemocratic, unfair, and unsocialistic for one side which controls the machinery of the party to throw out the other side before the entire matter has been thoroughly discussed and the membership of the party given an opportunity to vote.”

“’The Willful Group of Seven,’,” byDavid P. Berenberg [June 18, 1919]. Unsigned front page commentary from the New York Socialist, presumably penned by editor David P. Berenberg. Here Berenberg responds to an article in The Communist by L.E. Katterfeld and Alfred Wagenknecht concerning the hearing of the seven federations prior to their suspension by the National Executive Committee. Berenberg contends the hearing was fair, conducted over a two day period, with Translator-Secretary Joseph Stilson of the Lithuanian Federation answering the charges seriatim on behalf of the other federations, who advised him and contributed to his arguments. Berenberg also defends the decision of the National Committee to place the Chicago headquarters of the Socialist Party in the hands of a nine member private holding company to place this asset out of reach of the Left Wing Section in any subsequent “capture” of the organization. Berenberg denies that there is any sort of “tidal wave” of the rank and file membership of the Socialist Party on behalf of the ideas of the Left Wing Section and describes an alleged model by which a Local of 1,000 members is captured by a small handful of “fanatics” through insuation and disruptionist tactics. “Socialist Party members might as well recognized that there can be no compromise with these factionalists,” Berenberg states, noting “if the Left Wing is successful it will drag the Socialist Party underground where it will disappear.”

“Present Party Officialdom Overwhelmingly Repudiated by National Referendum. (A Tabulation of the 1919 Socialist Party Election).” [June 18, 1919] In the spring of 1919, the Socialist Party of America conducted a referendum vote to elect new officers for the organization, in accord with the constitution fo the group. The term of office of the outgoing National Executive Committee, International Delegates, and International Secretary was set to expire on June 30, 1919. The Left Wing Section organized to elect its slate to the open positions and thus shift the line of the Socialist Party from the “constructive socialist” Center-Right that had historically dominated the party’s high offices to the “revolutionary socialist” left. When the results of the election began coming in, National Executive Secretary Adolph Germer and the outgoing NEC quickly cried fraud, arbitrarily invalidated the vote, and instructed State Secretaries not to tabulate the results. A series of suspensions and expulsions of ideological opponents followed. Knowing full well that they had swept the elections, the Left Wing Section through its Cleveland organ The Ohio Socialist independently polled the various State Secretaries as to the vote in their state and published the results. While the State Secretaries of the large states of Illinois and New York refused to comply with the request of the Left Wing Section, enough states did send in thier tallies for a very telling summary to be published. This document lists the vote for International Delegates and International Secretary by individual states, showing a massive defeat for the candidates loyal to the outgoing NEC. Numbers have been retabulated by computer for publication here, correcting a substantial published undercount of the vote for Morris Hillquit for International Secretary.

“The Crisis Within the Party,” by Jack Carney [June 19, 1919] Carney, the Editor of Truth, a radical weekly from Duluth, Minnesota, believes he has isolated a problem in the Socialist Party—lawyers and intellectuals. “Seymour Stedman, John M. Work, Victor L. Berger, and a few more of the NEC seem to think that it is their special duty to lead the rank and file. Now that the rank and file are alive to their policy of opportunism, they are in danger of being ousted at the coming election of a new NEC. Therefore in order to ensure their re-election, they expel all those that are in any way opposed to their opportunistic tactics,” Carney declares. “The Social Revolution will never be achieved by simply electing a mayor in Dubbtown,” Carney asserts. “The revolution will be a success when we have the workers organized and conscious of their strength to run industry. Therefore it naturally follows that the workers must work to set themselves free. That means that there is no room in our movement for lawyers, intellectuals (?), and other unnecessary beings that capitalism has created.” The journalist Carney’s opinion on the worthiness to the movement of the intellectuals Karl Marx and Frederich Engels or the lawyer Vladimir Ul’ianov is not recorded. “If the Left Wing wins out, then there is no room for Stedman, Hillquit, Berger, and their hangers-on,” Carney declares. “Let us not be sentimental about this matter, but act like men and women and for the sake of the revolution let us act straight. The surgeon who shoves in the knife and digs down deep, soon heals the wounds.”

“Speech at a Mass Meeting: Madison Square Garden—June 10, 1919,” by Dennis Batt The Lusk Committee of the New York legislature was immediately active in building a case against radical political and labor organizations with a nexus in that state. Surveillance was conducted at public meetings—including stenographic reports of speeches, such as this one by Left Wing leader Dennis Batt, made at a mass meeting held at Madison Square Garden (probably held in protest of military intervention in Soviet Russia). Batt brings down the house when he exclaims: “We cannot expect, and neither do we expect, anything but a fight, and a very nasty fight from the capitalist class. We do not expect anything from them, except their iron heel, if they will give it to use, because we know...that there is only one thing that the capitalist class of this or any other country understands, there is just one argument that they can listen to—and that is power. You can appeal to them and to their sense of justice. You can argue about right and wrong, but until such time as the working class of America has generated the force to overcome the position, until such time we will have to put up with such outrages as the raid upon the Bureau of the Soviet government, as the imprisonment of Eugene Victor Debs.”

“Circular Letter to the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America from Adolph Germer, Executive Secretary.”[June 21, 1919] This short letter from the Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party of America to the sitting members of the National Executive Committee (whose terms were constitutionally set to expire on June 30, 1919) passes along the content of a telegram from Left Wing NEC members Ludwig Katterfeld and Alfred Wagenknecht to the Socialist Party of Massachusetts charging the NEC with “flagrant procedure and violation of the party constitution”in excluding “40,000 members of our party.” The aid of the Massachusetts party is solicited. Secretary Germer adds the remark that “in all the propaganda sent out by Katterfeld, Wagenknecht, and Fraina”the claim is made that “nearly 40,000 members were expelled.”Germer states that “according to our records”the action recently taken by the NEC “involves around 27,000”

“Minutes of the New York State Executive Committee, SPA: New York City—June 21, 1919.” Official published record of the June meeting of the governing body of the Socialist Party of New York. The minutes make clear that the split of the Socialist Party in New York state was already an accomplished fact: the Central Committee of Local Bronx “decided to notify all branches that they must withdraw all delegates to the Central Committee who are members of the ‘Left Wing,’ and all branches affiliated with the ‘Left Wing’ section must withdraw or stand suspended.” State Secretary Cook stated that he had attended a meeting of Local Queens “at which Organizer Paul was very bitter in his denunciation against the State Executive Committee. Paul did not submit a single letter of the State Executive Committee to the party meeting.” The State Executive Committee, summarily and without charges, hearing, or trial, “empowered” State Secretary Cook “to use all efforts to reorganize Local Queens.” Similarly, minutes of Local Buffalo had been received by Cook indicating the adoption of the Left Wing manifesto, which was met by immediate passage of a resolution “that the State Secretary be instructed to proceed to reorganize Local Buffalo as soon as possible.” Cook was also instructed to reorganize Locals Utica and Rochester, the minutes note. Some 16 branches of Local Kings County had been reorganized, according to Cook, in addition to Local Bronx. National Secretary Adolph Germer had been informed of these reorganizations and asked to contact branches affiliated with non-English federations still not suspended, “particularly those of the German and Finnish, that they must affiliate with the locals recognized by the State Committee, and that they must withdraw their delegates and recognition from the ‘Left Wing’ locals, and should they fail to do so, these branches be suspended from their respective federations.”

“Frameup of Radicals Laid to Lusk Probers by Resigning Aide: Official Translator Quits Post, Asserting Committee Does Not Seek Truth But Tries to Influence and Arouse Public Opinion—British Secret Service Chief Examined Papers, Is Charge.” [June 22, 1919] This article will be of interest to specialists in espionage and counter-intelligence—a news report from the Socialist Party’s New York Call reprinting the press release of Feliciu Vexler, a Romanian-born linguist who abruptly resigned his post as a translator for Lusk Committee over what he characterized the “methods of the former Tsars of Russia” being pursued by the committee in their self-proclaimed attempt to “bust up the whole Socialist and radical gang.” Vexler charges that British intelligence was working hand in glove with Archibald Stevenson, the driving force of the raid on the Russian Soviet Government Bureau. According to the news report, members of the raiding crew told Vexler frankly that “their purpose in making the raids was not to find the truth, but to ‘frame up’ a case against all radical groups in New York through the public press, and to show as plausibly as possible that a coordinated movement for the ‘overthrow of the government’ of the United States exists.” Includes Vexler’s complete press release and an account of a brief interview conducted with Vexler personally, during which Vexler stated “it appeared to me to be an attempt to ‘frame up’ certain persons for public obloquy.... Stevenson told me it was his purpose to link together all the various radical movements in an attempt to show that a widespread conspiracy existed by which it was intended to overthrow the government.”

“Letter to Marion Sproule, State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Massachusetts from Adolph Germer, Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party of America.”[June 25, 1919] In this letter to the State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Massachusetts, SP Executive Secretary Adolph Germer passes along news of the expulsion of the Massachusetts Party by the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party in a vote of 8 to 1. “I am sure the revocation of the charter was not unexpected in view of the action taken by your recent State Convention, which constitutes a repudiation of the Socialist Party platform and a violation of the sections above cited,” Germer tells the Left Wing State Secretary, Ms. Sproule. “The revocation of the charter cancels the election of delegates to the Special National Convention to be held in Chicago, August 30th, 1919,”Germer notes as a casual aside. The voiding of a large Left Wing delegate slate was, of course, the entire reason for the NEC’s rush to draconian action, Germer’s crocodile tears about regretting the necessity of the action notwithstanding.

“British Provost Marshal Aided Lusk Probers with Documents: Nathan, Who Took Leading Part in Raid, Just a ‘Junior’ Officer: Head of Organization Says He Furnished Record of Martens but Didn’t ‘Butt In.’”; [June 25, 1919] This article from the New York Call follows up on linguist Feliciu Vexler’s charge that British intelligence was working with Archibald Stevenson and the Lusk Committee in their raid on the Russian Soviet Government Bureau and their attempt to link various liberal and radical persons and institutions in a grand conspiracy plot. The Call reporter went to the office of the British consulate attempting to find a certain “Nathan” on the staff, purported to be the head of British intelligence in America. The reporter ironically interviewed Norman Thwaites, who was ironically William Wiseman’s chief intelligence officer in the US. Despite two other employees playing dumb to the reporter, Thwaites obligingly acknowledged that there was a “junior” of unspecified duties on his staff by the name of Nathan—actually his top assistant specializing in gathering data on nationalist and radical movements and individuals, Robert Nathan. Thwaites told the reporter he “wasn’t sure of Nathan’s initials, but thought they were J.R.”—and stated that Nathan had “taken some records concerning L.C.A.K. Martens to the raiders” following the seizure of documents from the RSGB. Thwaites is quoted as saying “this office had nothing whatever to do with the Lusk Committee” and that “this office would not think of butting into such an affair as this. Even if we had been invited to participate—though, since this is not our business, I don’t see why we should have been—I should have absolutely refused to take part.”

“Duncan Brands Hanson as Liar and Impostor: Strikebreaking Mayor Stripped of Patriotic Veneer by Seattle Union Leader.” [event of June 25, 1919] This is a New York Call report of a public speech by Seattle trade unionist James Duncan, who takes aim at the city’s self-promoting king of the red baiters, former Mayor Ole Hanson. Hanson is called a “liar” for pretending to have broken the Seattle general strike of 1919, which was called off by the unions themselves. Duncan lets fly in front of a delighted standing room only crowd in New York City: “Ole Hanson is a liar. Ole Hanson is an imposter parading as a patriot. Ole Hanson had nothing to do with the calling off of the strike. If he says so, he is imposing himself upon the good nature of the people. Ole Hanson is the biggest four-flushing politician. He’s about as big a liar as ever came down the pike.” Duncan also sticks up for Bolshevik Russia in his speech, saying: “America and Russia have something in common. They were both born out of revolution. We can look each other in the eye. American workers should wish the Russian workers well and should aid them as well as they know how... We don’t say that we want Bolshevism in America, but if the workers want Bolshevism in Russia, it’s their right, and their privilege. And we should say: ‘Hands off and give them a chance.’”

“Minutes of the National Left Wing Conference: New York City,” by Fannie Horowitz [events of June 21-24, 1919] These rather skeletal minutes only hint at the great controversy that gripped the June National Conference of the Left Wing in New York City, but still managed to provide a rough outline of the factional conflict. Division first took place over the question as to whether the various language federations would be allowed their own voting delegates, in addition to those federationists already elected through regular channels. The federation delegates were seated with voice and vote, yet remained in the minority at the Conference. A “National Council of the Left Wing” was elected, none of the 9 members elected being a Federationist. This body replaced an “Emergency National Council” elected earlier that same day, which had included no fewer than 2 Federation representatives. The evening of the second day the main bone of contention became clear— the tactical question of whether the organized Left Wing Section should continue its fight to enforce its victory in the abrogated 1919 party elections by fighting out the matter at the forthcoming Emergency National Convention of the party (reporter in support of this idea being would-be Executive Secretary Alfred Wagenknecht); or whether the Left Wing should immediately declare itself “the Communist Party of America” and endorse the already existing Michigan call for a September 1, 1919, founding convention to formalize the organization (reporter being Nick Hourwich). A resolution proclaiming the establishment of the Communist Party of America was hastily drawn up by C.E. Ruthenberg and Hourwich. After lengthy discussion, this resolution was defeated and the the tactic of continuing the fight within the Socialist Party thus endorsed. Contrary to popular belief, the Federationists and Michiganders did not immediately bolt the conference over the issue, however; nor, truth be told, did they technically bolt the convention at all. Participation continued briefly, with Michigan partisan Dennis Batt resigned from the Manifesto Committee on the afternoon of the third day. Only at a later session that night did the Federationists Hourwich and Alex Stoklitsky resign their committee posts and was an announcement read indicating that 31 Federationist delegates had “decided to withhold their activities from the Conference until such time as they see fit to resume them.” The Federationists remained present throughout— perhaps in an effort to ensure their travel expenses would be covered, perhaps in hopes that the tactical decision causing the split would be reconsidered. It was only at the end of the session held the 4th day that Latvian Federationist John Anderson [Kristap Beika] resigned from the Organization Committee. At the conclusion of the Conference, a formal split was looming rather than an accomplished fact.

“Another Victory for Uncompromising Socialism: New National Executive Committee of Left Wing Socialists.” [June 25, 1919] The results of the SPA vote for National Executive Members in the party’s five electoral districts (arbitrarily voided by the outgoing NEC) were also independently gathered, tabulated, and published by the Left Wing Section in their weekly publication The Ohio Socialist. These results showed a strong Left Wing majority in the candidates who should have been elected: “These tabulations show that Fraina, Hourwich, and Lindgren were elected upon the new National Executive Committee from the First District; Ruthenberg, Prevey, and Harwood from the Second District; Keracher, Batt, and Lloyd from the Third District; Nagle, Millis, and Hogan from the Fourth District; Katterfeld, Wicks, and Herman from the Fifth District.” Of these, only the 3rd district candidates plus Harwood in the Second District and Herman in the Fifth, were Left Wing Candidates. Had the election not been invalidated, this evidence demonstrates fairly conclusively that the Left Wing Section would have “captured” the party via the democratic will of the membership in the Spring 1919 election.

“‘Report of the National Left Wing Conference (Extracts — Part 1): New York — June 21-25, 1919,’” The unity of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party was shattered by the coup of the outgoing NEC of the Socialist Party in the late spring and summer of 1919, suspending and expellling tens of thousands of party members. These members thrown outside the organization were less inclined to remain steadfast to a strategy of winning over the organization through normal internal processes of party decision-making, instead seeking immediate establishment of a new Communist Party. This material, published in the August 2, 1919 issue of the organ of the Left Wing Section, The Revolutionary Age, provides a range of perspectives on the situation facing the left wing from the time of relative unity of purpose. Includes the speeches of Louis C. Fraina, Dennis Batt (Michigan Party), I.E. Ferguson (Sec. of National Left Wing Council), John Ballam (Massachusetts Party), Alexander Stoklitsky (Russian Federation), and Harry Hiltzik (Jewish Left Wing Federation). Most interesting of the group are the perspectives of Ballam and Ferguson, who at this time were still staunch advocates of conducting the fight within the SPA. These two later became founding members of the Communist Party of America.

“Imprisoned Member Protests NEC Action: Herman Characterizes Expulsion of Michigan State Organization and Suspension of Language Federations as Undemocratic, Unparliamentary, and Unsocialistic,” by Emil Herman [June 26, 1919] Alfred Wagenknecht and Ludwig Katterfeld were not the only members of the Socialist Party’s 15 member National Executive Committee who objected to the NEC’s draconian action taken in June of 1919 suspending 7 of the SPA’s language federations and expelling the Michigan state organization. This letter from imprisoned NEC member Emil Herman of Washington reveals that Herman shared the misgivings of the two Communist Labor Party founders. Herman expressly records his “no” vote against these actions and writes: “The NEC has at all its meetings seen fit to consider as ‘present’ all its members who are by action of the government prevented from personally attending. As an expression of sentiment and comradely sympathy I, as one so detained, appreciate this graceful tribute very sincerely. But when, as appears from the minutes of the recent NEC meeting, this imaginary ‘presence’ is made use of in an attempt to constitute a quorum when no quorum exists, in order to make wholesale expulsions from the party and to deprive the membership of expression through the referendum, I am constrained to protest, and this most vigorously, such an undemocratic, unparliamentary, and unsocialistic procedure. Surely as Socialists we cannot afford to stoop to the use of such petty, political trickery, nor should we wish to do so.”

“Report of the State Secretary to the 1919 State Convention of the Socialist Party of Ohio,” by Alfred Wagenknecht and Hortense Wagenknecht [June 27, 1919] This summary of the activity of the Socialist Party of Ohio demonstrates just how little structural difference existed in practice between such a “Left Wing” state socialist party as this and the “Regular” organizations of other states. Speaker routing, literature sales, campaign organization, operation of the state office, and maintenance of the party press were the main concerns of both. That such an organization would be suspended within days by the outgoing NEC , essentially to prevent participation of a 19 member Left Wing delegation in the forthcoming Emergency National Convention, illustrates the raw power politics which motivated the national leadership of the party. The interesting takeaway here is the size and strength of the Ohio Socialist, the largest party-owned weekly in America with a circulation of 20,000 and running in the black economically. This publication would follow the Socialist Party of Ohio out of the SPA and into the Communist Labor Party, where it would become (successively) The Toiler, The Worker, and The Daily Worker. A complete financial report is included, which shows a comparatively small shift from “regular” dues stamps sold to “foreign branch” dues stamps sold — indication that at least in this state no tidal shift in membership composition took place.

“Letter to the New York Call ... including Full Text of Letter to NY State Secretary Walter Cook, dated June 12, 1919,” by Nicholas Aleinikoff [June 27, 1919] Perhaps the most vocal supporter of the besieged Left Wing section of the Socialist Party sitting on the New York State Executive Committee was Nicholas Aleinikoff. Aleinikoff was sharply critical of the perceived unconstitutional behavior of the SEC and State Secretary Walter Cook in their draconian reorganizations of locals endorsing the Left Wing manifesto. On June 12, Aleinikoff addressed a letter to Cook formally objecting to the decisions taken by the SEC at its May 21 meeting against Locals Kings, Queens, and Bronx. Aleinikoff states that these actions were “taken in clear violation of the provisions of the state constitution” as “there was no evidence before the committee that any of the locals above mentioned had willfully adopted and adhered to a constitution or platform in violation of the national or state constitutions of the Socialist Party.” Cook did not transmit Aleinkoff’s objections to the full state committee however, basing his action upon a constitutional provision banning appeals by SEC members to the full State Committee (a decision formally approved by the SEC at its June 21 session). The actions of the SEC and Cook are said to have been based upon vagaries of matters having merely “come to their attention” rather than upon formal investigation, preference and defense of charges, and decision based upon these hearings. Aleinikoff appeals to The Call to publish his communication as the only means possible for him to communicate with the rest of the New York State Committee, given the obstruction of State Secretary Cook.

“Ohio Socialist Convention Makes Party History: Endorses Left Wing Program and Instructs Delegates to the National Convention to Work for its Adoption by that Body.” (Ohio Socialist) [events of June 27-28, 1919] Summary of the 1919 annual convention of the Socialist Party of Ohio, which endorsed the Left Wing Manifesto of the Left Wing National Conference, prompting the group’s unconstitutional expulsion by the outgoing National Executive Committee. Assembling in Cincinnati, the convention broke into committees for work. After hearing the report of State Secretary Alfred Wagenknecht, the Committee on Program and Municipal Platform reported the Left Wing Manifesto, which was debated throughout the entire first evening before being approved by a vote of 47 to 7. “It is not meant, nor for that matter is any left Wing Program so far adopted meant, to constitute a Socialist Party platform. The program is a criticism of past party tactics and a statement of changes which are essential if we are ever to function as the party of the working class,” this article in The Ohio Socialist insists. Resolutions condemning the NEC’s expulsion of the Socialist Party of Michigan and suspension of 7 Left Wing foreign language federations were also passed, among other matters. Conduct of the State Office of the party was approved and the delegates “adjourned in the greatest enthusiasm.”

“Resolution on Party Controversy: Adopted by the State Convention of the Socialist Party of Ohio, Cincinnati, June 28, 1919.” The full text of the “Resolution on Party Controversy” adopted by the Socialist Party of Ohio brings home the inevitability of a split of the Socialist Party of America. Unless the Regular faction of Executive Secretary Adolph Germer and the outgoing National Executive Committee was defeated in its attempt to control the forthcoming Emergency National Convention, Ohio delegates were instructed to join the September 1 convention called to form a Communist Party. Moreover, in the event of Ohio’s participation being blocked from the convention or the postponement of the convention, the Socialist Party of Ohio was to affiliate with the new organization established September 1. The campaign of suspensions and expulsions conducted by the Regular leadership is called “a desperate effort on the part of the repudiated national officers of the party and their satellites in similar positions in state and local organizations, to maintain their control of the party in spite of the will of the rank and file.” The possibility of Ohio’s expulsion from the SPA is acknowledged, with the organization to immediately begin buying its dues stamps from the National Council of the Left Wing in this eventuality.

“Answers Aleinikoff: Letter to the Editor of the New York Call,” by Walter M. Cook [June 28, 1919] New York Socialist Party State Secretary Walter Cook is quick to answer the charges of State Executive Committee member Nicholas Aleinikoff that the SEC had engaged in unconstitutional practices in its May 21 move against Locals Kings, Queens, and Bronx. “Comrade Aleinikoff claims the SEC did not have “evidence” before it when taking action. A sub-committee was appointed to secure that evidence and no one ever before denied that these locals have not adopted the Left Wing manifesto as their official platform and affiliated themselves with that organization,” writes Cook. “Certainly the body which has the power to issue a charter has also the power to revoke same for good and sufficient reasons,” Cook adds. “Had Comrade Aleinikoff (and others of a similar mind) lived up to the duties of the office he held in the Socialist Party, and had studied the state and national constitutions, as faithfully to defend them against the avowed purpose of the party’s internal enemies to “split” off from what a few individuals styled the Right, as he is now doing in playing for time with them, he would hardly have left the Socialist Party as he has done,” Cook concludes.

JULY

“The Parting of the Ways” , by Dennis Batt [July 1919] Fundamental splits of Socialist parties are inevitable, writes Michigan Left Wing Section leader Dennis Batt in this article from The Proletarian: in some countries this takes place before the revolution and in others during the revolution itself. The reason, Batt indicates, is that at some point in the process “the understanding minority becomes the majority, and is in a position to take control of the organization, a split is imminent; for the petty bourgeois-minded conservatives within the ranks of the Socialist movement can not, and will not, accept a real Socialist position. Rather than do so they would wreck the organization.” The Socialist Party of America was at this juncture currently, he writes. Instead of performing what Batt believed to be the fundamental task of a Socialist party—”training and organizing the working class for the conquest of political power”—the SPA had filled its platform with “all kinds of nonsensical reforms, old age pensions, government ownership, penal reforms, etc., etc., ad naseum.” This had the effect of attracting non-Socialist elements to the party, individuals who had proven their instability and disloyalty in times of crisis. The NEC of the Socialist Party is singled out for its hypocrisy in allowing its petty bourgeois allies to flirt with the Non-Partisan League, in clear violation of the SP loyalty pledge, while at the same time expelling adherents of the Left Wing Section for purported violation of the same pledge. The “National Office clique” falsely claimed to be constructive, actually constructing nothing, and have “even been unable to develop a press fit to read,” Batt bitterly complains. This series of failures resulted in the repudiation of the “reactionaries in office” in the 1919 Party election, an event which prompted the NEC to show “their true colors—a genuine black streaked with yellow” by invalidating the vote and proceeding to suspend and expel their opponents. “We congratulate them upon their maintaining control at the expense of wrecking the organization. They have expelled or suspended nearly 40,000 members and will expel that many more in order to remain in the saddle of power,” Batt declares, adding “the split in America has come.”

“Testing the Water” , a cartoon by Art Young [July 1919]. ***PDF GRAPHIC FILE (460 k.) This cartoon by Art Young appeared in the July 1919 issue of Max Eastman’s monthly,The Liberator. Untitled in the original, the drawing features a geriatric “U.S. Socialist Party” sitting beneath the tree of “petit-bourgeois respectability” dipping his toe in the “Communist International” pond.

“Let Party Membership Function Now,” by L.E. Katterfeld [July 2, 1919] With the Regular-dominated outgoing National Executive Committee well on the way to stacking the August 1919 Emergency National Convention through mass expulsion of Left Wing members, L.E. Katterfeld makes an appeal to Ohio Socialist locals to second Local Cuyahoga County’s motions to reverse controversial NEC actions. Katterfeld bitterly notes the hypocrisy of the NEC, which on the one hand asks the rank and file to “wait for the convention” to make a determination on its actions, while at the same time accelerating its program of suspensions and expulsions. Katterfeld — himself one of just two Left Wing members of the NEC — reveals that the NEC is in the process of a referendum by telegraph to summarily expel the Socialist Party of Massachusetts. The New York and Connecticut State Committees were similarly selectively targeting their Left Wing members for expulsion, Katterfeld notes. He indicates that in May the NEC had already discussed postponement of the convention if it could not capture a majority in the run-up to the event. Katterfeld argues that if a protest is to be made about the 1919 party elections, the correct procedure should be first to tally and announce vote totals, then to level protests, then to appoint a disinterested body to investigate the charges. Instead, he declares that the NEC has “usurped powers that are not theirs” and “trampled roughshod over all constitutional limitations.” He optimistically asserts that “no matter how many thousands the party officialdom ‘discipline’ with its paper expulsions, of those that remain the Left Wing will still be the majority,” making the Left Wing “unconquerable.”

“The Left Wing and the Truth,” by Adolph Germer [July 2, 1919]. The National Executive Secretary makes a spirited defense of the decision of the party’s governing National Executive Committee to expel the state organization of Michigan for violation of the constitution of the Socialist Party. Germer quotes the newly revised constitution of Michigan and its mandate that “any member, local, or branch of a local, advocating legislative reforms or supporting organizations formed for the purpose of advocating such reforms, shall be expelled from the Socialist Party” and notes the patent contradiction of this clause with the national constitution of the SPA. Germer notes that neither of the two Left Wing partisans on the NEC —- Alfred Wagenknecht and Ludwig Katterfeld—disputed the fundamental validity of this charge and details how the Michigan State Secretary, John Keracher, rushed to the May 1919 meeting of the NEC in Chicago and then refused to answer questions that might have put the position of Michigan in a more favorable light. Germer further quotes correspondence from a Detroit Jewish branch suspended by the Michigan Executive Committee to confirm the reality of the Michigan position in actual practice.

“Left Wingers Capture the Ohio Socialist Convention: Resolve to Rule or Wreck National Party—’Communist Party’ to Be Formed,” by Joseph W. Sharts [events of June 27-29, 1919] On June 27-28, 1919, the Socialist Party of Ohio held its state convention in Cincinnati. The gathering was attended by about 55 delegates—the big majority of which were supporters of the Left Wing movement in the Socialist Party. This news account by SP Regular Joseph Sharts notes that the convention, after 3 hours of debate, voted 47-7 in favor of a pre-prepared state program presented by C.E. Ruthenberg of Cleveland which “declared unequivocally for the ‘Left Wing,’ viz. for limiting political action, relegating it to a mere auxiliary and subordinate position under industrial action, cutting out all agitation for immediate palliative measures, such as municipal ownership, and insisting upon the abolition of the entire capitalist system through the dictatorship of the proletariat.” The day following the convention was held the Ohio state picnic of the Socialist Party, which was addressed by Ruthenberg, Charles Baker, Margaret Prevey, and John Keracher of Detroit.

“Manifesto of the Left Wing National Conference: Issued on Authority of the Conference by the Left Wing National Council.” [July 5, 1919] This lengthy document is the second of two “Left Wing Manifestos”—not to be confused with the earlier and better known “Manifesto of the Left Wing Section of Greater New York.” This second manifesto was issued on behalf of the June 1919 National Conference of the Left Wing, held in New York City, and it attempts to provide a theoretical analysis of the situation facing the Revolutionary Socialist movement in America in the midst of the rapidly changing events of the summer of 1919. It was this explicit document—not the earlier manifesto—that was published in the pages of The Revolutionary Age and which was cited as the basis of the prosecution of the editors and leaders of the Left Wing for purported violation of the so-called New York “Criminal Anarchy” law. The manifesto posits a dichotomy between “dominant Moderate Socialism” and “revolutionary Socialism.” As for the former, “Moderate Socialism is compromising, vacillating, treacherous, because the social elements it depends upon—the petite bourgeoisie and the aristocracy of labor—are not a fundamental factor in society; they vacillate between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, their social instability produces political instability; and, moreover, they have been seduced by Imperialism and are now united with Imperialism.” By way of contrast, “Revolutionary Socialism does not propose to ‘capture’ the bourgeois parliamentary state, but to conquer and destroy it. Revolutionary Socialism, accordingly, repudiates the policy of introducing Socialism by means of legislative measures on the basis of the bourgeois state.... As long as the bourgeois parliamentary state prevails, the capitalist class can baffle the will of the proletariat, since all the political power, the army and the police, industry and the press, are in the hands of the capitalists, whose economic power gives them complete domination. The revolutionary proletariat must expropriate all these by the conquest of the power of the state, by annihilating the political power of the bourgeoisie, before it can begin the task of introducing Socialism.”

“The National Left Wing Conference,” by Louis C. Fraina. [Published July 5, 1919] Originally an unsigned report from the pages of The Revolutionay Age, attributed to Fraina based upon his editorship and content. This article details the First (and only) National Conference of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party, held in New York City from June 21-24, 1919. The session was attended over 90 delegates hailing from about 20 different states. The opening address was given by Fraina, who said that “the proletarian revolution in action has modified the old tactical concepts of Socialism; and the inspiration of the Bolshevik conquests, joining with the original minority Socialism in the Socialist Party, has produced the Left Wing.” Includes a discussion of major issues at the Conference, first and foremost the question of whether to proceed immediately to the formation of a Communist Party or to continue the struggle for control of the Socialist Party’s Emergency National Convention in the face of mounting expulsions, reorganizations, and suspensions. Interesting mention of a dismissed alternative in which the Central Committees of the Language Federations would have each been entitled to a seat on the governing National Council of the Left Wing. Defeated on the question of immediate formation of a party and a federative National Council, 31 delegates of the Federations and Michigan caucused and declined further participation from the third day, thus moving towards a factionalized movement in September.

“Minor Ordered Released by US Army Officer: All Charges Against Him Understood to Have Been Dropped—May Return to Paris.” (New York Call) [July 7, 1919] After over a month in detention to answer charges leveled by the British that he had spread radical propaganda among British and American troops, this article announces journalist Robert Minor’s release by army officials “after word had been passed from officialdom believed close to the Peace Commission.... Lincoln Steffens, who assisted in the report handed the American peace commission on Russia, learned of Minor’s arrest and sought the aid of Colonel House, the President’s confidential adviser, to secure Minor’s liberty.... The father of Robert Minor, Judge Minor of Texas, also appealed to the government, and after a month’s confinement the journalist was finally set at liberty.” The account states that “no official announcement has been made concerning Minor’s release, but it is understood that all charges against him have been dropped and that he will immediately return to Paris.”

“Minnesota Socialists Expel Van Lear for War Stand: State Referendum by 1,500 to 800 Also Reads His Local Out of the Party.” (New York Call) [July 8, 1919] This news report details the expulsion from the Socialist Party of former Minneapolis mayoral candidate Thomas Van Lear by referendum vote of the Socialist Party of Minnesota by a margin of approximately 1,500 to 800. The charges for the expulsion of Van Lear were his pro-war activities and his repudiation of the majority report of the St. Louis Convention and for having joined the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy, the article notes. State Secretary Charles Dirba (later a top leader of the Communist Party of America) is said to have declared the vote to be both a repudiation of Van Lear’s policies and an approval of the policies of those he termed “the educators.”

“Minutes of the Meeting of the New York State Executive Committee, Socialist Party of America, Sunday, July 13, 1919.” In the summer of 1919, the State Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of New York conducted a series of charter revocations of many of the state’s local and county organizations which supported the program of the Left Wing Section or refused to terminate participation of members of locals affiliated with suspended language federations. These revocations were followed by immediate “reorganizations” of locals hostile to the Left Wing Section and loyal to the SPA’s Old Guard. These minutes of the July 13 meeting of the SEC in Albany detail the repressive measures taken against to following groups: Local Kings County, Local Queens County, Local Utica, Local Syracuse, Local Rochester. In a related matter, tension ran hot over an editorial run by Ludwig Lore in the New Yorker Volkszeitung represented as urging Socialists in Kings and Queens Counties not to recognize the actions of the State Executive Committee in reorganizing those organizations, but rather to remain loyal to the deposed organizations. An interest esoteric tidbit: a proposal to hold an emergency New York State Convention—presumably a tactic that would have benefited the Left Wing Section—failed on a tie 12 to 12 vote of the State Executive Committee, with future member of the Communist Party Alexander Trachtenberg voting in the negative. In his vote, which effectively defeated the proposal, Trachtenberg joined such Old Guard stalwarts as Julius Gerber, Bertha Mailly, Benjamin Orr, Barney Berlin, Morris Hillquit, and Louis Waldman. Had Trachtenberg voted the other way, the crushing polices of the New York SEC would have been fought out and decided on the convention floor.

“‘Left Wing’ Convention is as Secret as Paris Conference: Next Move of Faction Will be Attempt to Capture Socialist Party’s Emergency Convention in August, says James Oneal,” by James Oneal [July 15, 1919] The Socialist Party regulars kept a close eye on the development of the Left Wing Section throughout the summer of 1919. This report on the Left Wing National Conference held in New York City from June 21-24, 1919 pays close attention to internal divisions within the “Left Wing” camp. The anglophonic element of the Left wing Section “were up against the same proposition” previously faced by the Socialist Party, in Oneal’s view—an attempt by the foreign language federations to achieve double representation on the governing Left Wing National Council and to thus control the organization. Oneal notes that the Left Wing had altered its program at the gathering, but had no specific details about the changes rendered. As early as this date, six weeks before the Emergency National Convention of the SPA, Oneal offers political analysis that is eerily prescient: “...[U]unless the Socialist Party is willing to submit to the dictatorship of the ‘Left Wing,’ the latter is prepared to organize its motley elements into another political party. The split, in other words, is here and the ‘lefts’ have made doubly sure of it. It is just as well that they have, as one year of a Communist Party that talks of the ‘conquest of the bourgeois state by the revolutionary mass action of the proletariat’ cannot live in this country as a political organization of the working class. It will be driven underground. It cannot remain on the ballot in any state as soon as this program becomes generally known. It must become a secret society.” Oneal adds that the heterogeneous Left Wing was held together only by “common hatred of the Socialist Party.” As soon as the Emergency Convention was concluded, “they will be thrown upon their own resources and they can be relied upon to tear each other to pieces,” Oneal predicted.

“Ruthenberg is Jailed Under New Ohio Law: Socialist Locked Up on Charge of “Criminal Syndicalism”—Called War “Mass Murder.” (New York Call) [July 18, 1919] In the evening of July 18, Cleveland Socialist leader C.E. Ruthenberg was addressing a local crowd, making his first speech of the 1919 mayoral campaign. About 30 minutes into his speech he was interrupted by a squad of policemen headed by Chief of Police Smith, who placed Ruthenberg under arrest for allegedly violating the new Ohio Criminal Syndicalism Law. Six others were also held “for investigation by Federal authorities” as a result of the operation, which was aided by the Right Wing “Loyal American League.” At issue was Ruthenberg’s statement that World War I had been a period of “mass murder.” “If it is possible for the government to take over the steamships and railroads, telephone and telegraph lines and other public utilities in time of war in order to make mass murder more efficient, why is it not possible for these same industries to be publicly controlled for the common good of all in times of peace?” candidate Ruthenberg had asked. A further reminder that American civil liberties were not granted on a platter by forefathers in powdered wigs and defended by uniformed soldiers of the standing army abroad, but rather were fought and won over time by frequently unpopular (and sometimes despised) political radicals who had to courage to hold forth unpopular truths in the face of massive pressure by the armed state and its conservative vigilante allies, a vengeful judiciary, and an apathetic citizenry.

“Socialist Party of St. Louis Makes Appeal for Unity in Organization: Party War Record Does Not Justify ‘Wing’ Row, is Plea.” [July 19, 1919] A lengthy and thoughtful summary of the case against the factional war launched by the Socialist Party’s insurgent Left Wing made by Local St. Louis, an organization comprised of SPA Regulars. “While the world war was on we never heard of a Left Wing nor of a Right Wing,” the statement declares, as during the days of discouragement of 1914-16, the Socialist Party “remained true to the Red Banner of Internationalism,” while after American entry into the conflict in 1917 the party went further and issued a “revolutionary declaration” against the conflict. The SPA had suffered for its principled anti-militarist stand: papers had been suppressed, the National Office had been raided, and leaders and rank and filers alike had been hauled before the courts by the Woodrow Wilson regime. There was simply no claim to be made against the party for failure to stand true to its values during the war, the St. Louis appeal notes. Furthermore, the party had loyally supported the Russian Revolution from its earliest phase in March 1917 until the present day. “Mass meetings were held, demonstrations in behalf of Soviet Russia were arranged, our Socialist press gave all possible support to counteract the sinister work of the American capitalist press,” Local St. Louis notes. The party’s position had been taken actively to the American people. “The capitalist class failed to break up our Socialist Party by attacking it from the outside and by vicious persecution. Attempts will now be made to try the destructive work from the inside. There are many ways of procedure, which are best known to the secret agents and agents provocateurs. It is unfortunate that at this most critical time, when the Socialist Party ought to show a united and solid front to resist the offensive of destruction launched by our common enemy, our organization should be checked and hindered in its work by a so-called Left Wing movement, and that a ‘White Card’ underground organization should be formed in the party. We can see neither rhyme nor reason in such a sideshow movement,” Local St. Louis declares.

“Long Live the Soviet Republic!” An Editorial in The Milwaukee Leader—July 19, 1919. The Socialist Party daily The Milwaukee Leader and its founder and editor, Victor L. Berger, have been regarded as hailing from the SPA’s Right Wing, generally by those who have never seen the paper or read Berger. In reality, Berger and Hillquit composed a SPA Center—anti-militarist in sentiment, analytically Marxist, internationalist in perspective (the true SPA Right Wing departed en masse in the aftermath of the St. Louis Emergency Convention of 1917). Although not written by Berger, who was in the midst of legal proceedings for purported violation of the so-called Espionage Act, this editorial in Berger’s paper emphasizes once again that whatever the ideological and personal differences were between the dissident Left Wing Section and the establishment SPA Center, political perspective on the nature of the Bolshevik Revolution and the role of American Socialists with regard to that revolution was emphatically NOT part of the equation. In 1919, all factions of the Socialist Party of America were in solid support of Lenin and Trotsky and their cause. This editorial accuses President Wilson of practicing “the opposite of what he preaches” by rendering aid to the interventionists in Soviet Russia. “It is because Soviet Russia is a Socialist nation.... Should the Socialist government of Russia be allowed to succeed and become permanent, its good example to the workers of the other countries would be such that these workers would establish Socialism in their countries, too. Therefore, the Soviet government of Russia must be destroyed...”

“Call for a National Convention for the Purpose of Organizing a Communist Party in America.” [July 19, 1919] This is the text of the extensive “Federations-Michigan Convention Call” for the formation of an American Communist Party. The call states that “the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America has evidenced by its expulsion of nearly half of the membership that they will not hesitate at wrecking the organization in order to maintain their control.” These suspensions and expulsions had made it “manifestly impossible to longer delay the calling of a convention to organize a new party,” notes the call, but unfortunately “the majority of the delegates to the Left Wing Conference in New York meekly neglected to sever their connections with the reactionary National Executive Committee,” instead continuing to “mark time as Centrists in the wake of the Right.” No other course was possible than the immediate formation of a Communist Party in Chicago at a convention to begin Sept. 1, 1919. A set of organizational principles and an organizational program are provided. The call specifies that convention representation is to be on the basis of one delegate for each organization, and one additional delegate for every 500 members or major fraction thereof.

“On the Party Horizon,” by Alexander Stoklitsky [July 19, 1919] Translator-Secretary of the Russian Federation Alexander Stoklitsky takes aim at the “Centrists” who continue to follow the strategy of “capturing the Socialist Party for revolutionary socialism.” Stoklitsky mocks: “Every bridge leading to the old, rotten structure of opportunism must be destroyed.... The capture of the old party for ‘revolutionary socialism’ is but a declaration of war upon windmills by the Don Quixotes of the Center.” Stoklitsky asks, “Why capture the old party? Is the name of the Socialist Party so dear to the working class? No. The name of the Socialist Party is no longer dear to the proletariat. Years of reformatory and treacherous activity have covered it with mud and slime.” Further, the SPA’s structure and apparatus is unsuited for the revolutionary movement and its literaturere “only fit to be destroyed.” Stoklitsky declares that “BECAUSE THE SPLIT IN THE PARTY IS AN ACTUAL FACT IT BECOMES OUR SACRED DUTY TO CONSTRUCT A COMMUNIST PARTY.” Stoklitsky offers an analysis that would be dominant in the CPA over the next three years, declaring the American Socialist movement had, in parallel of the Socialist movement of Europe, split into three tendencies: Right, Center, and Left. However, Stoklitsky equates the dominant SPA Party Regular tendency of Hillquit and Berger (anti-militarist, Marxist opponents of the national regime) with the pro-war, government Majority Socialists of Germany, calling them “Right.” Similarly, the revolutionary socialists continuing their effort to win control of the Socialist Party in hopes of converting it to a revolutionary socialist are rather speciously equated with the Independent Socialists in Germany as “wishy-washy Centrists” who are pursuing a “pitiful” strategy. “Down with the Socialist Party! Down with the wavering Center! Long live the militant Communist Party of America!” Stoklitsky declares.

“Adolph the Truth Seeker,” by John Keracher [July 19, 1919] In contrast to the barrage of ultra-Left hostility vented by Alexander Stoklitsky in the same issue of the official organ of the faction of the Federation-Michigan alliance, Michigan leader John Keracher is surprisingly temperate in his criticism of SPA Executive Secretary Adolph Germer and his cohorts. Germer is said to be a man of honest opinions and sincere convictions—albeit one willing to engage in a campaign of half-truths and distortions to bolster his cause. The central fact of the crisis in the Socialist Party in the Summer of 1919 was this, Keracher believes: “the membership has voted the old gang out of office, and they prefer to split the party rather than give up their control!” Everything else is a pretext to justify this naked grab for power, Keracher believes. The issue behind the suspension of the Jewish Branches of Local Detroit had been misrepresented in the SP party press by Germer, Keracher indicates. The SPA’s NEC had taken draconian actiona against Michigan with factional purpose; queries made by Michigan State Secretary Keracher had been answered dishonestly. The Emergency Convention in Michigan which had followed the NEC’s revocation of the Michigan charter had been legally called, contrary to the assertions of Germer. In the final analysis, all of the NEC’s arguments are nothing more than “quibbling,” in Keracher’s estimation: “This split, which they deliberately precipitated, was inevitable due to the development going on within the party. What difference does it make if the division takes the form of expulsion or withdrawal? Those who desire to participate in real socialist propaganda will send delegates to Chicago on September 1st [1919] to organize the Communist Party of America.”

“Local Cleveland’s Referendum,” by James Oneal [July 22, 1919] Immediately after the Socialist Party’s NEC abrogated the 1919 election, expelled Michigan, and suspended the entire memberships of 7 of the party’s language federations, the Left Wing Section sprang into action, with Local Cleveland, Ohio putting forward a party referendum aimed at overturning the NEC’s actions within 24 hours. This article by NEC member and arch-anti-Left Winger James Oneal challenges the competence of those supporting such an effort, asking, “have any of these members seen the evidence upon which alone the suspensions were made? Have they seen the mass of evidence regarding election frauds? Not at all. Here are questions that involve the violation of the party constitution and party principles. A general vote of the members cannot decide whether the evidence was sufficient to warrant our actions.” Oneal calls for the matter to be decided not via referendum but at the forthcoming Emergency National Convention (a gathering that clearly would be stacked in favor of the party administration, not accidentally). Oneal characterizes the Left Wing Section as a rival political organization, banned by party statute, rather than as an organized faction within the SP. He mockingly refers to the Left Wing Section a “self-constituted ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’” and encourages locals to throw their request for seconds to their referendum “into the wastebasket.”

“Proclamation of the Finnish Socialist Federation,” by Henry Askeli [July 23, 1919] This lengthy manifesto issued by Henry Askeli of the Finnish Socialist Federation, while not fully endorsing the Left Wing Section and its program, effectively puts the majority Regular faction of the Socialist Party on notice that an adjustment of the party’s ideological course to the left is demanded. The Finns express a position very close to that of the Left Wing on the taboo issue of “force and violence,” declaring: “Violence and bloodshed do not make any movement revolutionary, and essentially they have noting in common.... But in its attempt to capture political power the working class cannot reject any weapon and the form of its revolution will finally depend upon prevailing conditions, and especially upon the opposition directed against its right of suffrage, other political rights, and against all other activities for gathering the forces of the working class, and against is endeavors for social reform.” The leadership of the Finnish Federation — largest language group in the Socialist Party including perhaps 10% of total party membership — further provocatively declares: “Be the form whatever it may by which the transfer of power will occur, the rise to power of the organized workers will be followed by an era of proletarian dictatorship.” The “absolute parliamentarism” of the Regular faction is “condemned,” and the Finnish Federation announces that “mass action of the working class is shown by history to be the principle form to which the struggle will lead.” The Finnish Federation declares itself to be of the Left Wing with this document, but the contend that party unity is “the all important matter” and acknowledge that “the organizing of a distinct organization within the party as such is a crime against the spirit of the constitution.” Nevertheless the Finns “condemn the expulsions absolutely” and demand restoration of full rights immediately to those suspended or expelled from the party on the basis of “mere contentions, and without any formal investigations and hearings.” The NEC had struck a blow “with a few strokes of the pen which disrupts the party completely,” the Finns declare.

“People Ready for Socialism; Party Starting Work—Germer.” [July 24, 1919]. As the faction fight heated up in the summer of 1919, National Executive Secretary Adolph Germer travelled from Chicago to New York City for consultations with leaders of his faction. This article contains the content of an interview which Germer granted to the New York Socialist Party daily, the New York Call. Germer held a “rosy” view of the SP’s immediate future: “The situation as it existed last winter was wonderfully promising. If we had been able to remain united, nothing would have been too much to hope for. The time is ripe, and rotten ripe, for our propaganda. But the internal discussions and wranglings have sterilized our efforts to a very large extent.” Germer added that “There are thousands of old-time Comrades who had relapsed into inactivity, and who are only awaiting some stirring event to recall them to life. The time has come now. When the party gets rid of its internal disorders, when the decks are cleared, when we point our craft at the goal, we will be ready for work, and they will come back to us.” Germer exuded confidence as to the future result of the forthcoming Emergency Convention of the party: “The national convention that will meet on August 30 will take a strong stand, a resolute stand. Then, all those who do not care to remain with us can go their way. We will go our way, as we have always gone.”

“The National Left Wing,” by Isaac E. Ferguson [published July 25, 1919] An open letter from the Secretary of the National Council of the Left Wing Section, established by the June 1919 National Conference of the Left Wing held in New York. Ferguson announces that the National Council is to conduct “the work of publicity and preparation on a national scale” for the August 30 Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party, to be held in Chicago. “The Left Wing triumph in the party elections makes emphatically clear what the membership wants.... It must not be annulled by the brazen dictation of a repudiated National Executive Committee which insists upon ruling the party in spite of the ending of its term on July 1st.” The dual strategy of the National Council that was to lead to the division of the Communist movement into two rival parties is already in evidence; Ferguson states “The Left Wing must control the regular party Emergency Convention, with the delegates instructed by the membership to undo the manipulations of the old NEC to join the party unreservedly with the Communist International, and to adopt a program of revolutionary socialism for all party activities. Or, if three-fourths of the party shall be expelled or suspended by August 30th, as appears now to be a definite possibility, or if the Emergency Convention shall be sidetracked by the rump NEC, the Left Wing delegates from all over the country must be brought together to organize an American Party of Communism.” Ferguson pleads for donations to the National Council and notes that 25ö Special Propaganda Stamps are for sale.

“One Lie Nailed,” by Ludwig E. Katterfeld [July 26, 1919] Left Wing Section partisan Ludwig Katterfeld goes on the offensive in response to a charge by NEC member James Oneal that the outgoing National Executive Committee was not repudiated by the referendum of 1919—the results of which were suppressed by the self-same outgoing NEC. Katterfeld asserts that in reality, the 20,764 votes independently tabulated by The Ohio Socialist from 26 reporting states represented nearly “TWICE AS MANY” votes as the same states produced in the previous year’s national election. Oneal is further tweaked for having received a mere 1,726 votes in those same 26 states, as compared to the tally of 16.074 racked up by the leading vote-getter in the race, John Reed. Katterfeld pulls no punches in making his charge: “In view of these facts, what becomes of Oneal’s assertions and allegations? I commend these figures to our would-be “historian” James Oneal. Was he ignorant of these facts, or did he deliberately lie in his efforts to defend the defeated and discredited party officialdom and to prejudice the membership against the Left Wing and Revolutionary Socialism?”

“Report to the Incoming National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party on the Party Press and Publishing, Lyceum Bureau, and Party School,” by L.E. Katterfeld [July 27, 1919] There is a tendency to see the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party as intent upon seizing the Socialist Party and utterly deconstructing its form and substance. This report of Ludwig Katterfeld to the sole physical meeting of the “new” NEC elected by the abrogated party election of 1919 offers a tantalizing glimpse of what seems to have far more constrained initial objective of the faction. Rather than construction of vanguard revolutionary organization, Katterfeld posits a modest restructuring of the Socialist Party along its traditional lines. Katterfeld advocates a systematically planned party-owned press based on regional territories instead of the current “anarchistic” system of competing private newspapers. Katterfeld postulates the division of the country into geographic districts, each served by a weekly paper which was to be developed to the point of daily frequency. These territorial papers were to cooperate in the costly task of news-gathering. An extremely low-cost national propaganda paper was to be published by the party itself in addition to a periodic paper to the national membership. The SPA was also to seek negotiations with Charles H. Kerr & Co. with a view to bringing that Marxist publishing house under party auspices and was to further study the economics of owning its own physical plant (unlike Kerr & Co., which jobbed out its press work). The Party was also to once again take over the routing of national speakers, replacing the current system based upon individuals negotiating their own lecture tours. Finally, Katterfeld advocates the immediate establishment of a party-owned training school to immediately set about training hundreds of young party members as speakers and efficient local secretaries. “In the past these duties have fallen largely upon those who received special training in a capitalist environment before they become Socialists. Practiceless lawyers, pulpitless preachers, and busted businessmen have almost had a monopoly of these positions and thereby influenced our movement our of all proportion to their number. The way to overcome this condition is to train up our own young people, working men and women who were Socialists first,” Katterfeld asserts.

“Letter to Adolph Germer in Chicago from Alfred Wagenknecht in Chicago, July 29, 1919.” The constitution of the Socialist Party of America called for a new term of office of its governing National Executive Committee to begin July 1, 1919. The outgoing NEC had refused to tabulate the votes reported by SPA State Secretaries, however, and had instead began a mass campaign of suspensions and expulsions of their Left Wing opponents. A substantial, albeit partial, tabulation was compiled by the Left Wing and published in the June 18, 1919, edition of The Ohio Socialist, and a group of ostensible winners named based upon these returns. Ostensible winner of the balloting for Executive Secretary Alfred Wagenknecht called the “new” NEC together for its first physical meeting in Chicago, where it met July 26-27, 1919. The group passed the resolution transmitted to the SPA’s National Office here: “”That the office of the National Executive Secretary be declared vacant inasmuch as the present incumbent refuses to perform his duties as National Secretary by refusing to tabulate the vote in referendums expressing the will of the membership and further refuses to recognize the regularly elected National Executive Committee.” This communication was signed by Alfred Wagenknecht as “Executive Secretary, Pro Tem.”

“Circular to All Locals, Branches, and Young People’s Socialist Leagues from Alfred Wagenknecht, July 29, 1919.” Official communique of the New National Executive Committee and Executive Secretary pro tem Alfred Wagenknecht mailed to all units of the Socialist Party of America and its youth section. The circular notes that “the national constitution ended the term of the old National Executive Committee on July 1st [1919]” and announces that “the new National Executive Committee met in Chicago on July 26 and 27, reversed the actions of the old committee in its attempt to wreck the party, reinstated all expelled state organizations and suspended federations—more than 35,000 members in all—and renewed the call for an Emergency National Convention, to be held August 30th.” While the circular states that “ the new National Executive Committee will take charge of this convention,” it is not clear that Wagenknecht&Co. did any more than arrange to rent a room downstairs from the main convention in Machinists’ Hall—preparations remained firmly in the grasp of standing Executive Secretary Adolph Germer and his allies. Mileage money is promised by the new NEC to convention delegates and the circular solicits contributions and loans from party units to the new NEC.

“Letter to Adolph Germer, Executive Secretary SPA, in Chicago from Fred Krafft, Member NEC SPA, in Ridgefield, NJ, July 29, 1919.” This brief note from Socialist Party National Executive Committee member Fred Krafft to Executive Secretary Adolph Germer illuminates the politics behind the scenes leading to the suspension of the entire Socialist Party of Ohio by the outgoing NEC (which was to have retired according to the party constitution as of July 1, 1919). Krafft writes: “You ask me to wait a few days with the motion which I made to revoke the charter of Ohio. Let me say that I regret very much not to have made this motion several weeks ago, and especially so since reading the action of the ’new’ NEC. These fellows mean business and they proceed regardless of what we think about their actions, and it is high time to disregard their opinions in whatever we do, or contemplate to do. If the NEC deserves any censure in the entire controversy, it is because of its misplaced tolerance and hesitancy.”

“Excerpt of Testimony Before Executive Session of the Lusk Committee of the New York Legislature by Archibald E. Stevenson, Associate Counsel, New York City—July 31, 1919.” Archibald Stevenson was the chief researcher of the radical movement employed by the Lusk Committee of the New York legislature in 1919-20 (and author of the committee’s massive 4 volume final report). This brief passage of his testimony before a closed session of the committee goes far to explain the aggressive repression delivered by the committee upon the Socialist Party and its affiliated institution, the Rand School of Social Science. When asked whether the SP had split into “two so-called wings,” Stevenson responds: “In the last 6 or 8 months the Socialist Party has been split on a question of tactics. The more conservative of the present membership of the Socialist Party remaining in what is termed the Right Wing of that party, and the more impatient or virulent organizing what is now known as the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party. The only difference between these two sections that is apparent from a study of the controversy is that the members of the Left Wing are more outspoken in their desire for immediate and direct action methods for obtaining socialism. It must be borne in mind, however, that both Right and Left Wings took this revolutionary stand, and consequently it should be understood that the Right Wingers are not the conservative evolutionary Socialist who were either expelled or resigned from the Socialist Party at the time of the St. Louis Convention [April 7-14, 1917].”

“The Split in the Socialist Party,” by Joseph B. Stilson [July 30, 1919] The Translator-Secretary of the Lithuanian Socialist Federation, one of the leading players in the 1919 crisis in the SPA, provides a lengthy perspective on the history of the party split. One of the definitive views of the thinking of non-Anglo members of the Left Wing Section, Stilson (arguably) dates the origin of the conflict to the 1916 Presidential candidacy of Allan Benson, a referendum-nominated SP candidate who dodged all mention of the class struggle, in marked contrast to the fire-and-brimstone rhetoric of perennial party nominee Gene Debs. Stilson saw the war as an important turning point in the radicalization of the SP rank and file, one that tipped the majority of the party against its centrist office holders. Faced with electoral defeat in the party election of 1919, the SP leadership began acting in a manner befitting of Tammany Hall, expelling and suspending its opponents without trial, backed by the flimsiest of excuses, hypocritically framed. “That these politicians knew that the Left Wing had been in existence for over two years was frankly admitted by [NEC member George] Goebel, who said that he kept on his files a copy of each manifesto, program, and paper of the Left wingers. It was evident therefore that the Left Wing was tolerated as long as it did not threaten the control of the reactionary machine... Only when the Left Wing touched the nest of the Opportunists did it become a ‘violation of the party Constitution,’” Stilson asserts.

AUGUST

“The National Convention,” by Ludwig Lore [Aug. 1919] With the Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party due to start at the end of the month, Ludwig Lore holds little hope for a successful victory for an insurgent Left Wing in this editorial in his theoretical quarterly, The Class Struggle. When the Left Wing first demanded an Emergency National Convention, “it still seemed possible to follow the example of our Italian and Norwegian comrades in this country” in realigning the standing Socialist Party, as the majority of the rank and file was clearly in support of the revolutionary movement in Europe and “ready to support a radical departure from the methods that have hitherto prevailed in the American Socialist Party.” However, the outgoing National Executive Committee had read the same tea leaves and taken action, expelling entire state organizations for their Left Wing views (OH, MA, MI, PA [?]), suspended entire language federations, pursued a selected purge in New York, and allowed the tiny organizations of the “reorganized” states the same massive delegate allotment to which they had been entitled based upon their pre-purge membership. Lore’s assessment is sanguine: “Under these circumstance the outcome of the convention can hardly be doubtful. Packed as it will be by representatives from ‘reorganized’ states and locals who will be little more than mouthpieces of the powers that be in the Socialist Party, we doubt whether even the strong revolutionary element that will come from the West and from some states in the East will be numerically sufficiently strong to win out over their Right Wing opponents.” “The parting of the ways has come,” Lore declares, as “the brutal violation of the party autocracy of all who differed with them has left no other choice.”

“Left or Right?” by Ludwig Lore [August 1919] In this lead article from Ludwig Lore’s theoretical quarterly, The Class Struggle, editor Lore states that it is “hardly accurate” to refer to the current controversy in the Socialist Party as a battle between “Left” and “Right,” since “the small group of bona-fide social-patriots that our movement harbored have either left it voluntary or been expelled” already. The “political sins” of the so-called “Right Wing” in the current controversy were those “of omission rather than commission”—failing to crystallize vast anti-war sentiment in America at the time of American entry into the War into a mass movement for economic and political liberation; failure to enforce party discipline on Congressman Meyer London on anti-war measures in Congress; failure to greet the Russian revolution with public demonstration and public declaration of allegiance.” The policy of the NEC Regulars was in actual fact “the typical ‘Centrist’ position,” Lore declares. The controversy in the SP itself is international in nature, between one set of views represented by State Socialism and gradual growth of socialism through “democratic cooperation” with capitalism and the other by the physical wresting of power from the capitalists by the class-conscious working class and the establishment of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” “Between these two points of view there can be no compromise. Between them the Socialist must choose—and his choice must determine, once and for all, his course of action,” Lore declares.

“Why the New Party?” by Oakley C. Johnson [Aug. 2, 1919] Elected State Secretary of the expelled Socialist Party of Michigan emphasizes the depth of the split that had developed within the Left Wing movement between the Majority “Left Wing” still working to win control of the Socialist Party and the Minority Federation-Michigan group intent on the immediate formation of a distinct Communist Party of America at the Sept. 1 convention which it had called in Chicago. Johnson writes that “these would-be revolutionists shout ‘All power to the Left Wing!’ What a miserable paraphrase of the Russian slogan ‘All power to the Soviets!’ The comrades now organizing the Communist Party prefer to be something more than a mere ‘wing.’ At a time such as the present, when the most momentous turning point in the world’s history is before us, we cannot dilly dally along as a mere faction within a party. We cannot longer handicap ourselves in such a way, but must build up NOW an organization which shall function efficiently as ‘the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties...’” Johnson lists a series of criticisms of the tactics of the Majority: (1) capture of the SPA by the Left would be practically impossible due to expulsions and suspensions made by the outgoing NEC; (2) even if possible, capture of the SPA was inadvisable due to the party’s “reactionary” reputation; (3) there was no need to remain in the SPA to reach the rank and file, which had already heard the Left Wing’s message; (4) the psychological moment for action had arrived, and a delay of 2 or 3 months would “vitally affect the progress of socialism for the next decade.” In contrast, “What is needed is a revolutionary party, small if need be, but united upon Marxian principles, thus forming a nucleus around which the working class can unite. It is impossible efficiently to unite conflicting programs, to harmonize unharmonious principles. The only party that can function in a social crisis is one absolutely united on principle and method.”

“Minutes of the National Council of the Left Wing Section: New York City—August 4, 1919.” The 7 member executive of the June 1919 National Conference of the Left Wing, the National Council, was initially intended to conduct its affairs by mail through use of executive motions. However, the proximity of a quorum of the group to New York City led to the convocation of several physical meetings. This document offers the minutes of the last of these physical sessions, held August 4, 1919. Three anti-Federationist New York members (Ben Gitlow, Jim Larkin, Max Cohen) dominated the proceedings, with Secretary I.E. Ferguson in a consistent minority position given the absence of his co-thinkers C.E. Ruthenberg, John Ballam, and Bert Wolfe. A motion by Larkin to publicly respond to the “untruthful statements” made by the Russian Socialist Federation against Ludwig Martens’ Soviet Russian Government Bureau was passed 3-1. Ferguson was challenged by Larkin and ex-officio member Eadmonn MacAlpine over statements he purportedly made to a gathering of the Jewish Socialist Federation, in which Ferguson seems to have depicted the August 30 Emergency National Convention as no more than a tributary leading to the actual convention, to be held Sept. 1 to establish a Communist Party. A motion by Larkin to terminate the National Council for Ferguson having thus abrogated its mission died by a 2-2 vote, Cohen joining Ferguson in favor of continuing the institution. A motion providing that Gitlow and Larkin be provided with space in The Revolutionary Age to air their factional position was approved.

“Executive Motions of the Left Wing National Council: August 5, 1919.” A day after having been raked over the coals by Jim Larkin and Ben Gitlow for his attempt to patch up the split in the Left Wing movement by supporting the Sept. 1 Communist Convention, Secretary of the Left Wing National Council Isaac Ferguson put forward three executive motions to the entire body: (1) Ending physical meetings of the National Council in New York by setting August 29 in Chicago as the date of the next gathering; (2) Constituting Ferguson, C.E. Ruthenberg, and Max Cohen a committee of 3 with the authority to assist in organization of a Sept. 1 convention to form a Communist Party; and (3) Ending all further appropriation of funds by the Left Wing National Council outside of payment of expenses already incurred until the time of the August 29 physical meeting. “The time has come for the majority of the Council to assert itself decisively against the dilatory tactics of a minority which insists on bringing within the Council meetings a rehash of every little New York squabble between the Federation politicians and those who are characterized by the Federationists as the Left Wing politicians. We must complete the convention arrangements at once,” Ferguson declares. Ferguson is particularly bitter about the insistence of National Council members Larkin and Gitlow and their associate John Reed to “intrude controversy about the Martens office into the work of the National Left Wing Council.” While acknowledging that a statement made by the Russian Socialist Federation against the Martens bureau is “scandalous,” Ferguson asks whether the National Council must “abandon ourselves to the sport of Larkin in hunting down the lies of the Russian Federation.” Ferguson declares: “ If there is anything in this Martens issue, and this I think has been grotesquely exaggerated, it certainly is no legitimate affair of the National Council. Let anyone search the record of the Left Wing Conference to show how it comes within our mandate, and he will find absolutely nothing.”

“Minutes of Executive Motions of the Left Wing National Council: August 5-12, 1919.” Text of the various motions of the Left Wing National Council made by mail during the first half of August and the results of the balloting on the same. The minority faction consisting of Ben Gitlow and Jim Larkin declined to vote on any measure, indicative of a termination of their activity with the National Council—a position reflected by Larkin’s Aug. 4 motion to declare the work of the National Council terminated due to Secretary Ferguson’s support of a Sept. 1 Communist Convention. Ferguson’s 3 propositions made Aug. 5—including naming a convention committee to help arrange the Sept. 1 Convention—were unanimously approved by the 5 other members of the National Council. An Aug. 9 motion by Max Cohen to accept the resignations of Gitlow, John Reed, and Eadmonn MacAlpine from The Revolutionary Age was approved by a majority of 4 (Ruthenberg not voting), and an Aug. 12 motion by Cohen to remove Reed and Gitlow from their positions in charge of the Left Wing National Conference’s labor paper, The Voice of Labor, was approved by an identical vote.

“Circular Letter ‘To All Members of the Socialist Party’ from Executive Secretary Adolph Germer, Aug. 8, 1919.” Reply of National Secretary Germer to the provisional National Executive Committee who were denied their seats on the NEC when the outgoing NEC abrogated the 1919 party elections. Self-proclaimed “Executive Secretary pro tem” Alfred Wagenknecht and his cohorts are charged with being “professional schemers” engaged in a “frame-up to wreck the party by trying to force action in an irregular way before the Special National Convention.” As for Wagenknecht, he is said to have had “a professional training in stirring up party controversies. His reputation dates back to his scholarship under the famous Dr. [Hermon] Titus of Seattle, and there is nothing new or surprising in the part played by him now.” Wagenknecht&Co. are charged with sabotaging the party by calling for a withholding of dues payments and convention assessments from the current National Office. Germer declares: “The convention will clear the decks. The membership will then learn who it is that is wrecking the party. Don’t let professional troublemakers and political schemers capture you with appealing phrases that they hypocritically use... Never was there such an opportunity to carry on our revolutionary propaganda. The country is seething with unrest. Dissatisfaction with the present economic order is prevalent everywhere. Our opportunity in this crisis is thrown to the winds by political intriguers, who put their personal ambitions above the party’s interest. Any one, or any group, that will split us into “wings” or factions, when hundreds of our comrades are in prison, hundreds more on the way, commits little short of treason to the Socialist Party and to the case of working class internationalism, and merit our scorn and contempt. They serve no one but the capitalists.”

“Letter from Samuel F. Hankin in Chicago to Benjamin Gitlow in New York, Aug. 18, 1919.” Communication from Chicago Left Wing leader Samuel Hankin to New York leader Ben Gitlow. Hankin assures Gitlow that the Chicago movement remains true to the previous strategy of continuing the struggle inside the Socialist Party, rather than throwing support over to the convention of the Communist Party of America. Hankin sarcastically notes that “We have been fortunate enough to have amongst us the ‘brains’ and ‘big men’ of the already officialled ‘Communist’ Party, and we know the kind of a revolutionary party they will organize.” Hankin seeks information about the financial situation of the Left Wing Section and its organ, The Revolutionary Age, as well as details of the political dance between “the Lefts” and the “Communists.” Hankin also notes the recent failure of Louis Fraina to speak in Chicago as scheduled: “One reason is because we did not allow a traitor to the Left Wing speak from a Left Wing platform, and the second reason is because when he heard that we would not allow him to speak, he sent in his declination as a speaker for the evening.”

“Letter to Adolph Germer in Chicago from Morris Hillquit at Saranac Lake, New York, August 9, 1919.” This short and relatively mundane letter reveals that Socialist Party Executive Secretary Adolph Germer was in contact with staunch SP Regulars and attorneys Morris Hillquit and Seymour Stedman about technical issues surrounding the forthcoming Emergency National Convention in Chicago. Hillquit believes that Stedman does not follow the idea of the temporary and permanent convention. Hillquit writes: “A Credential Committee will of course have to be elected, but elected by whom? Not by the persons who happen to present themselves with alleged credentials, for such persons are not delegates until they have been seated preliminarily or permanently. It is quite likely that at our emergency convention double delegations will appear from several states or localities, each contesting the credentials of the rival delegations. Shall they all be permitted to take a part in the election of the Credentials Committee?” It is the task of the Executive Secretary to compile a preliminary listing of all unchallenged delegates, Hillquit notes, and it is these unchallenged delegates who shall constitute the temporary convention and elect the Credentials Committee that will settle issues of contested mandates. Hillquit’s letter is factual, legalistic, and utterly devoid of factional plotting. He closes with a note that “I have not been able to do much work of late, but expect to take up the drafting of a tentative platform within a week or so.”

Letter of John Reed, et al. in New York to C.E. Ruthenberg in Cleveland, August 11, 1919.” Archival letter attributed to the typewriter of John Reed attempting to bring Left Wing National Council member C.E. Ruthenberg of Cleveland up to speed as to the rapid developments of August 1919. Reed and his associates are extremely hostile to I.E. Ferguson, Secretary of the National Council, stating that Ferguson had “consistently sabotaged the position taken by the majority at the Conference, and who on several occasions stated that unless some basis for compromise with the Federations could be found, he would resign from the Council and accept the minority position.” Thereafter Ferguson and Revolutionary Age editor Louis Fraina “entered into unauthorized negotiations with the Federation politicians” leading to the “surrender” to the Federations, who had structured the method of electing delegates in a manner designed to assure effective control of the new organization. Ruthenberg had been “manipulated by the tricky attorney [Ferguson] whose object has been from the first to surrender to the Federation-Michigan minority,” Reed and his partners claimed, noting that one August 5 executive motion of Ferguson to end all physical meetings of the National Council had overridden the decision the previous day to bring out of town members of the National Council together to hash out their differences in person, while another naming a Conventon Committee of three had the effect of expelling Gitlow and Larkin from decision-making authority, resulting in complete victory for the Federations’ convention scheme.

“Letter of John Reed, et al. in New York to C.E. Ruthenberg in Cleveland, August 11, 1919.” Archival letter attributed to the typewriter of John Reed attempting to bring Left Wing National Council member C.E. Ruthenberg of Cleveland up to speed as to the rapid developments of August 1919. Reed and his associates are extremely hostile to I.E. Ferguson, Secretary of the National Council, stating that Ferguson had “consistently sabotaged the position taken by the majority at the Conference, and who on several occasions stated that unless some basis for compromise with the Federations could be found, he would resign from the Council and accept the minority position.” Thereafter Ferguson and Revolutionary Age editor Louis Fraina “entered into unauthorized negotiations with the Federation politicians” leading to the “surrender” to the Federations, who had structured the method of electing delegates in a manner designed to assure effective control of the new organization. Ruthenberg had been “manipulated by the tricky attorney [Ferguson] whose object has been from the first to surrender to the Federation-Michigan minority,” Reed and his partners claimed, noting that one August 5 executive motion of Ferguson to end all physical meetings of the National Council had overridden the decision the previous day to bring out of town members of the National Council together to hash out their differences in person, while another naming a Conventon Committee of three had the effect of expelling Gitlow and Larkin from decision-making authority, resulting in complete victory for the Federations’ convention scheme.

“Minutes and Executive Motions of the Left Wing National Council, August 4-12, 1919.” The Left Wing National Council was the executive committee established by the National Conference of the Left Wing held in New York, June 21-24, 1919. Originally a 9 member board, by August the Council had evolved into a 7 member group, headed by Secretary Isaac E. Ferguson and including John Ballam, Max Cohen, Benjamin Gitlow, Jim Larkin, C.E. Ruthenberg, and Bert Wolfe. The National Council was deeply split over tactics to be followed with respect to the Socialist Party, with Ferguson and a majority of the Council persuing accomodation with the suspended Language Federations of the Socialist Party, and a minority consisting of Gitlow and Larkin and their friends on the staff of the Revolutionary Age, Jack Reed and Eadmonn MacAlpine. With the August 30 Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party approaching and plans proceeding for a September 1 foundation of a Communist Party based upon a convention call electing delegates in a manner virtually guaranteed to ensure the dominance of the Russian Language Federation over the new organization, the division on the National Council assumed the nature of trench warfare. This document provides the minutes of the last physical meeting of the National Council (Aug. 4), and the executive motions which followed—a path which ensured a split between those pursuing “capture” of the Socialist Party and those seeking formation of a wholly new Communist organization.

“Revised Minutes and Executive Motions of the Left Wing National Council, August 5-12, 1919.”

“Letter to Alfred Wagenknecht in Cleveland from Julius Gerber in New York City, August 12, 1919.” A blistering response by the Secretary of the Socialist Party of New York County to Alfred Wagenknecht’s first circular letter to all branches, locals, and YPSL groups in the name of the “New National Executive Committee”—those who would have emerged victorious if the 1919 party referendum had not been abrogated by the outgoing party NEC. Gerber states that both Wagenknecht and his associate Ludwig Katterfeld had been present at the meeting of the NEC at which an Emergency National Convention was scheduled for August 30, 1919. “If you and the people behind you, including your so-called NEC, do not trust the rank and file of the party, and are afraid that you will not be able to control the Emergency Convention...then why should the rank and file trust or have confidence in you or the people back of you?” asks Gerber. Wagenknecht is accused of (1) holding multiple paid positions in the Socialist Party simultaneously, national and state; (2) having created the Organization and Propaganda Department and occupied the position of director of that department in the National Office as a pretext for obtaining the party’s mailing list; (3) having obtained this mailing list without authorization, and used it for the purpose of splitting the party; (4) having planned to split the SPA at least as far back as January 1919; (5) forfeited any claim to moral or financial support by practicing ballot box stuffing and manipulation of membership lists. Wagenknecht’s comrades are accused of having misrepresented themselves (Edward Lindgren), lied and taken actions in contradiction to the instructions of their state committee (Fred Harwood), or called for the improper channeling of party funds (I.E. Ferguson). The Socialist Party of New York County would send delegates to the Chicago convention who “will do all in their power to clean the party and the Socialist movement of the United States of all self-seekers, all those who are in the movement for what personal gain or glory they can get out of it, and of all those who were or are in our party not to help build a working class political organization to educate and organize the workers of the country for their emancipation, but to obstruct the growth of such organization, and who, when they could not rule, are now trying to ruin the party,” Gerber warns.

“National Council and NEC: An Open Letter to A. Wagenknecht in Cleveland from Louis C. Fraina in Boston, Aug. 13, 1919.” An open letter published in the pages of The Revolutionary Age by its editor, Louis C. Fraina, addressed to the insurgent Temporary National Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party, Alfred Wagenknecht. Fraina resigns his place as a member of the newly elected (unofficial) National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party and is harshly critical of the failure of Wagenknecht and his compatriots to alter their strategy of fighting for control of the Aug. 30 Emergency National Convention of the SPA. Fraina charges that original plan implied that “the new NEC would assume complete control of the Convention”—a gathering “other than the convention of the old NEC.” Instead, “your decision, as Temporary Secretary of the new NEC, to old ‘our’ convention in the same hall as [SPA Executive Secretary] Germer’s breaks the plan completely. Any Left Wing delegates who now go to the Emergency Convention are going to the convention of Germer & Co., packed by the moderates in order to secure control for counterrevolutionary socialism.” With the Socialist Party of Ohio expelled from the SPA by the outgoing NEC, Wagenknecht would not even have access to the convention floor, Fraina stated. The solution was for the NEC to resign and endorse the call for a Sept. 1 convention to establish a Communist Party of America, in Fraina’s view.

“Letter of John Reed and Ben Gitlow in New York to the Labor Committee of the Left Wing National Conference, August 13, 1919.” Letter written by Reed with Gitlow sent out to the other 7 members of the Labor Committee established by the June 1919 National Conference of the Left Wing. Reed outlines the factional politics in the National Council of the Left Wing, pitting Secretary Isaac Ferguson, Revolutionary Age editor Louis Fraina, and their allies on the Council (John Ballam, Max Cohen, and Bertram Wolfe) against the National Council minority of Gitlow and Jim Larkin, along with their allies Reed and Eadmonn MacAlpine. At root is a battle over the strategy to be followed—continued struggle within the Socialist Party for control of the August Emergency National Convention vs. the immediate formation of a Communist Party in accordance with a Joint Call which virtually guaranteed dominance of the Russian Federations due to the method of delegate selection prescribed. Reed and Gitlow feel the minority of the National Council had been unjustly excluded from participation and the labor publication approved by the National Conference, The Voice of Labor, had been abandoned. “We believe that if anything comes out of Chicago, it will be a Party or organization formed at the National Emergency Convention, or from the delegates to that Convention; and not to the Communist Party crazy-quilt gathering,” Reed and Gitlow state.

“Letter from James P. Cannon in Kansas City, MO to John Reed and Ben Gitlow in New York, August 16, 1919.” The reply of National Conference of the Left Wing Section Labor Committee member Jim Cannon to the letter of John Reed and Ben Gitlow of August 13 to the committee. Cannon offers his “complete endorsement” of the decision of Reed and Gitlow to begin producing The Voice of Labor despite the efforts of the majority of the National Council to halt the launch of the publication, calling the first issue of the publication “the biggest thing, in my opinion, that has come out of the national conference.” Cannon states that the stands of Reed, Gitlow, and Larkin “in the whole controversy with the Federations...are so much in accord with my own opinion—and with that of the great majority of the membership, without a doubt—as to entitle you to the gratitude of those who look upon the socialist movement as an instrument for revolutionary propaganda to the working masses and not as a football of power-seeking bosses and fixers.” Cannon writes that the decision of the majority of the National Council to endorse immediate formation of a Communist Party of America according to the terms of the Federation-Michigan alliance will be repudiated since it surrenders control of the Left Wing to “those who cannot lead an American movement anywhere but into the ditch.”

“Letter from Stankowitz in Pittsburgh to John Reed and Ben Gitlow in New York, August 19, 1919.” The reply of National Conference of the Left Wing Section Labor Committee member Stankowitz, an immigrant industrial worker from Pittsburgh, to the letter of John Reed and Ben Gitlow of August 13 to the committee. Stankowitz, expressing himself as well as he is able in broken English, takes a middle position between the Federations wanting immediate formation of a Communist Party and the position of Reed, Gitlow, and Larkin. “Comrades that are trying to unite [the] minority and the majority of the Left Wing may be wrong, because we instructed them to issue a call to the Emergency National Convention [of the Socialist Party], and then form the Communist Party on the floor of the Convention if it was captured, etc., but they may be right, because the more one studies this fight within the Party, the more he learns that we never will have a [chance] to capture it for everything is on the side of [the] ‘Centrists’ and ‘Rights.’” On the other hand, “I don’t blame you comrades for taking the stand you took, for you are trying to satisfy the will of [the] delegates that expressed their will to fight in [the] Party.” Stankowitz is a great supporter of Reed and Gitlow’s The Voice of Labor, calling it the “best labor paper that has ever been put before the working class in America” and noting that he had almost sold his initial order of 500 copies. “Whatever happens, our future propaganda should be in factories, mines, mills, etc., and if the Communist Party does not unite with radical Industrial Unions, she will be a failure,” Stankowitz concludes.

“Letter from L.E. Katterfeld in Dighton, KS, to John Reed in New York City, Aug. 19, 1919.” An important letter detailing the thinking of the future Communist Labor Party element of the Left Wing Section heading into the August Emergency National Convention of the SPA. Katterfeld tells Reed that while the Left Wing National Council now felt the fight to win control of the Socialist Party was “futile,” the struggle should be continued nonetheless. “Even if we were sure to lose there we should make an honest effort because that is the ONLY way that we can demonstrate to the great mass of the membership of the Party who ARE revolutionary that they can not realize their aspirations within the Socialist Party. If we split off before then there will be tens of thousands that should be with us but that will not follow us out,” Katterfeld argues. Reed is to make sure that all elected New York Left Wingers attend the convention to challenge the right of the New York regulars’ machine (the “Gerberites”) to represent the “reorganized” locals. Katterfeld pegs the odds of success of seating every elected New York Left Wing delegate at 10-to-1, and that the Left still has a “very good chance to win” at Chicago.

“The Party Situation: Editorial in The Oklahoma Leader..” [August 9, 1919] The primary Socialist newspaper in the state of Oklahoma does its best to get its readers ready for a coming split of the party in this short editorial. Noting scornfully that the organized Left Wing faction has a National Secretary and a National Executive Committee, the editor notes that the Left Wing has declared a split at the August 30 convention to be inevitable: the Left Wing states either the Left Wing will control the convention and force Regulars to bolt “by the implacability of our policy” or else the Regulars will control the convention and the Left Wing will bolt to “constitute its own convention and organize a new Communist Party.” Quoting The Revolutionary Age, the Leader editor notes the Left Wing has pronounced that “there is no compromise conceivable.”

“Circular Letter from Alfred Wagenknecht in Cleveland to ‘All National Convention Delegates,’ August 19, 1919.” With the Emergency National Convention fast approaching, National Executive Sectretary pro tem Alfred Wagenknecht sent this circular letter to elected delegates in an attempt to organize the Left Wing Section for action against the Center-Right alliance loyal to National Executive Secretary Adolph Germer and the outgoing NEC of the party. For this purpose offices were rented at Machinists’ Hall in Chicago—site of the August 30 convention—and a caucus meeting was called for August 29, 1919, at 8 pm. This meeting was organized “so that all delegates that denounce the acts of the former National Executive Committee and who are in sympathy with the principles for which nearly half the party membership was suspended and expelled, may discuss the necessary steps to take” at the Emergency Convention, Wagenknecht indicated.

“Excerpt of a Letter from Victor L. Berger in Milwaukee to Morris Hillquit at Saranac Lake, NY, August 20, 1919”. Two of the biggest bogeymen lurking in the CP’s mythology of the 1919 Socialist Party split were Morris Hillquit and Victor L. Berger, held to be the grand chessmasters who manipulated lesser players. This perspective is not in accord with objective reality. This is a valuable glimpse behind the scenes, correspondence from Wisconsin publisher and party leader Berger to the ailing HIllquit, recovering from tuberculosis at a sanitarium in upstate New York, written a mere 10 days before the start of the decisive Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party. Berger blames the moderate wing of the party for the current discord: “We have always played too much with the revolutionary phrase. In this game of would-be radical phrases, the one who can play the game the hardest will naturally win. And the emptier the barrel the louder the sound. I am sick and tired of the business. If there is to be a revolution some day, I and my crowd will surely be there. But that continuous threat of a ‘revolution’ reminds me of a man who is continuously brandishing a revolver which is not loaded.” Berger notes the difference between the young communist Marx and the mature socialist and remarks to Hillquit that “those who believe in communism, not in socialism, should be kind enough to start an organization of their own, which, by the way, the consistent fellows among them have already done.” Berger wishes the Russian Bolsheviki well but does not believe that their experience is tranferable to America. He believes neither in dictatorship, the Bolshevik concept of an Internationall, nor the Berne International—“cowed by the war patriots and completely dominated by English Laborites,” whom he characterizes as “weak sisters” and “dull.” As for the SPA Emergency Convention: “What the outcome of our convention in Chicago will be, I don’t know and don’t care—because Wisconsin is in a good position to go it alone for awhile, and to for a new center for crystallization.”

“Former National Executive Committee Thinks It Rules by Divine Right: Sits Like a King Upon the Throne and Calmly Votes to Expel Ohio,” by Elmer T. Allison [Aug. 20, 1919] Opinion piece from the pages of the Ohio Socialist attributed to co-editor Elmer Allison on the pending expulsion of the Socialist Party of Ohio from the Socialist Party of America. The Ohio party was charged with three transgressions, Allison notes, including recognizing suspended language federations as part of the organization, failing to send funds collected from sale of special convention assessment stamps directly to the National Office, and deciding in convention to affiliate with the Left Wing Section. “All of the above alleged “crimes” are acts of the recent state convention of the Ohio party. These acts have not yet been ratified by the state membership, and will not become acts of the state party until so ratified. Balloting upon these acts does not close until the last of August,” Allison notes. Nevertheless, the outgoing NEC, who according to the SPA Constitution Article 3, Section 3, had their term terminate effective July 1, 1919, was rushing to expel the Socialist Party of Ohio ahead of the forthcoming Emergency National Convention. Regardless, the state’s 16 delegates would be sent to Chicago to “pick up the pieces” of the party shattered by the suspension and expulsion happy former NEC, Allison notes.

“Open Letter ‘To All Party Members’ from Alfred Wagenknecht, Socialist Party Executive Secretary pro tempore.” [pub. Aug. 20, 1919] The Executive Secretary of the dissident Left Wing Section claiming victory in the 1919 SP election published this communique “to all party members” in the pages of the friendly Socialist press. Wagenknecht points out the constitutional July 1, 1919, date of termination for the outgoing NEC and reemphasizes that State Secretaries should not transmit special convention assessment funds to the outgoing NEC and its Executive Secretary, Adolph Germer, but should rather send these monies with the delegates themselves to the convention. For example, Wagenknecht notes, the outgoing NEC was even then in the midst of expelling the state organization of Ohio from the Socialist Party, adding that “had Ohio sent the proceeds from the sale of convention assessment stamps to Adolph Germer, it would have lost this money, for it would never have been paid to the Ohio delegates to defray their fare to the convention.” Furthermore, the Left Wing had no denial to make with regards to the allegation that it made use of bloc voting, emphasizing that such tactics were not fraudulent and additionally had been the very mechanism by which Adolph Germer had been elected as Executive Secretary in the previous election. Germer “did not protest at that time because he won by it. He protests now because he and his fellow moderates lost by it,” Wagenknecht states. Wagenknecht charges that the call of the outgoing NEC to “wait for the convention” to decide the party controversy is brazenly hypocritical, noting that although the Left Wing is supposed to wait, “in the meantime...the former National Executive Committee plus Germer, DO NOT WAIT until the national convention before carrying out their plans. They ‘expel’ right and left in an effort to make the national convention ‘sure’ for them.”

“Communique to the NEC of the Socialist Party of America Announcing the Result of Committee Motion No. 56 from Executive Secretary Adolph Germer, Aug. 20, 1919.” Executive Secretary of the outgoing NEC Adolph Germer announces the result of NEC member Fred Krafft’s August 13 motion to expel the Socialist Party of Ohio from the Socialist Party of America (this immediately ahead of the August 30 Emergency National Convention of the SPA). The motion passed by a tally of 8 to 1, with committeeman Wagenknecht refusing to vote and 5 others not submitting ballots. Those voting for the Krafft motion included Victor Berger, Dan Hogan, Morris Hillquit, Krafft, James Oneal, Abraham Shiplacoff, Seymour Stedman, and John Work. Includes the verbatim explanations made by Berger, Hillquit, Krafft, Oneal, Stedman, and Wagenknecht appended at the time of the submission of their ballots.

“Letter to Samuel Hankin in Chicago from Benjamin Gitlow in New York, Aug. 20, 1919” Letter from National Left Wing Council member Benjamin Gitlow to the head of the Left Wing Section of Local Cook County (IL), Socialist Party Samuel Hankin. Gitlow relays the information that “the majority of the National Left Wing Council—Ferguson, Wolfe, Cohen, Ballam, and Ruthenberg—have capitulated to the [Federationist-Michigan] Minority Group who bolted and afterwards sabotaged the National Left Wing Movement.” Gitlow depicts this decision as a crass financial maneuver: “They imagined that their capitulation would bring immediately a tremendous sum of money to them from the Federations for the support of their activities and The Revolutionary Age. So they made me resign at once, not even giving me an opportunity to clear up matters and put themselves in control as a Managing Committee of the paper.” This ploy failed, however, and funding was not forthcoming; therefore, The Revolutionary Age had been terminated. The financial situation of the Left Wing was dire and the split in the movement had raised Gitlow’s hackles: “There are no funds at present. There are a large number of debts. It is really outrageous to think what a small group of compromisers can, in a period of two months, do to a sentiment that was fast crystallizing throughout the country into a solid, unified, revolutionary movement.” Gitlow saw the future founders of the Communist Party of America as “weak and opposite in principle.” “They are only concerned about perpetuating their little, petty political advantages,” he declares.

“Letter to Patrick S. Nagle in Kingfisher, OK from Adolph Germer in Chicago, Aug. 21, 1919.” This letter from Socialist Party Executive Secretary Adolph Germer to his factional ally Patrick Nagel in Oklahoma demonstrates that there was very little mystery with regards to the probable strategy of the Left Wing Section at the forthcoming SPA Emergency National Convention in Chicago. “The ‘Left Wingers’ have rented halls in the same building, but on the first floor. Our convention is on the second floor. I don’t know just what their program is, but I am inclined to think that they are going to survey the line-up of delegates and if they find themselves in the minority, which according to present calculations they will, they are going to withdraw to their hall and then decide what course to follow,” Germer writes. “They have rented the downstairs hall for three days. In those three days they are going to try to influence as many delegates as they can reach to leave the Socialist Party convention and go with them to the Communists,” he accurately predicted, although not envisioning that the Communist Party convention would block unity with the Socialist Party Left Wing group.

“A Message from Convict No. 9653,” by Joseph W. Sharts [Aug. 21, 1919] In August 1920, State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Ohio, Alfred Wagenknecht, dispatched Marguerite Prevey of Akron and Joseph Sharts of Dayton to Atlanta Federal Penitentiary to obtain imprisoned Socialist leader Gene Debs’ signature on legal documents seeking his release on a writ of habeas corpus on the basis of his punitive transfer from Moundsville (WV) Federal Penitentiary to Atlanta. At his first meeting with the committee (including Debs’ Atlanta lawyer) he hesitated, asking for time to think about the proposal. The next day, Debs again balked, asking for 30 more days to further consider the matter. With regards to the Left/Right factional war in the Socialist Party, Sharts quotes Debs as saying that “he had implicit faith in the intelligence of the rank and file of the movement and their ability to come to a common understanding without any compromise of revolutionary principles; and that their present differences can be reconciled.” Debs finds fault with the position of both sides in the factional war, with Sharts indicating that Debs felt that “One side in the present controversy has overemphasized industrial action at the expense of political action. But the other side has overemphasized political action to the exclusion of industrial action and has temporized too much with craft unionism.” The principle of state autonomy was supported by Debs as a possible means of determining whether each state adopted or failed to adopt a program including “immediate demands.”

“Germer’s Grand March,” by Jack Carney [Aug. 22, 1919] In the last weeks before the Socialist Party’s 1919 Emergency National Convention in Chicago both sides in the impending battle jockeyed for position, the outgoing NEC attempting to reorganize summarily various state organizations and the Left Wing attempting to elect solid delegate slates of their own. This article from the Left Wing Duluth, MN weekly Truth by editor Jack Carney details the attendance of meetings in Minnesota by the Executive Secretary of the Regulars, Adolph Germer. On Sunday, August 17, Carney states that a “secret meeting” of the State Executive Board was held with Germer in attendance, at which “all referendums of the party that have just been voted upon were declared illegal”—including a referendum which recalled the State Executive Board and elected a solid Left Wing slate for Minnesota to the SP Convention. A follow up official meeting of the SEB on August 18 was “disbanded” by State Secretary Charles Dirba, who “was wise to their game,” Carney states. “Germer endeavored to use strong arm tactics, but he was unable to do so because there were other comrades present that would have been able to settle matters somewhat unevenly,” Carney adds. An appeal was issued for Left Wingers to attend an emergency Minnesota state convention to be held August 24 in Minneapolis, at which “the rank and file of the party must decide what it is going to do.” Carney includes a complete vote count for the recently concluded Minnesota convention delegate election, showing a smashing victory for the candidates of the Left Wing, by an average margin of about 5 to 1.

“Report on the Minnesota Organization to the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America from Adolph Germer, Executive Secretary, Aug. 22, 1919.” Executive Secretary of the outgoing NEC of the Socialist Party relates his recent trip to Minneapolis at the behest of the Regulars on the State Executive Board of the Socialist Party of Minnesota. Germer states that on the evening of August 17 a “membership meeting” was held, at which “a number of the ‘Left Wingers’ were present and indulged in their usual tirade and misstatements, but the vast majority of the meeting was with us.” The next evening, the State Executive Committee met and State Secretary Charles Dirba announced the result of a number of recently concluded party referenda in the state, including one which recalled the entire State Executive Board in question. The recalled committee refused to recognize the legality of this vote, however, citing the fact that Dirba allowed members of language federations suspended by the National Executive Committee of the SPA to vote. The recalled SEB and Germer thereupon bolted to meet in another office, at which they declared the position of State Secretary vacant and named S. Friedman as temporary State Secretary of Minnesota.

“The Martens Affair: Report of CEC Representative Gurin to the 5th Regular Convention of the Federation of Russian Branches, Communist Party of America: Detroit, MI—Aug. 22, 1919.” The published historiographical literature indicates there was bad blood between the Russian Socialist Federation headed by Translator-Secretary Alexander Stoklitsky and Secretary Oscar Tyverovsky and the Soviet Russian Government Bureau in New York headed by Ludwig Martens. Little background has been provided, a crude grasp to expropriate Soviet funds has been intimated. This report by Russian Federation CEC member Gurin to the 5th Convention of the RF presents the full tale of the battle between the Russian Federation and the Martens Bureau for the first time. Rather than a grab for cash, the antagonism between Martens and the RF is depicted as the by-product of a struggle to submit the one-man managed RSGB to workers’ control, the members of the RF seen as expatriate but fully vested members of the Russian working class abroad. Free of any external supervision and inspection, Martens had made a series of “errors,” Gurin states. Particularly galling was the fact that for every staff position at the RSGB, “Martens has appointed either a Right Wing Socialist or an impartial person. You will find there an anti-Bolshevist Nuorteva, Lomonosov, and Mensheviki—old man [Isaac] Hourwich [father of Novyi Mir editor Nicholas, incidentally], who sheds tears at the thought of the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, and the well known [Morris] Hillquit.” Gurin continues by noting “We are not against the inviting of bourgeois experts to these jobs. But at the very moment when any blind man could see that any day there might be a break in the Socialist Party, filling vacancies in the local Soviet mission by Right Wing Socialists would mean that the sympathy of the Soviet Bureau was with the Right Wing Socialists in their struggle with the Left. Just think! The representatives of Revolutionary Socialism in the US supports the Right Socialists in their struggle with the Revolutionary Socialists!” After a stream of orators spoke on the question, almost universally expressing condemnation of Martens for failing to submit to workers’ control of the activities of his bureau, Martens had been given the last word in the debate, not subject to ordinary time limit. “Comrade Martens in his reply continued to state that he could not fulfill the demands of control over his activity... His opinion was that he as a representative of Soviet Russia had a right to present any demands to the Federation and the Federation must execute them.” Martens asked the RF to renounce its demands for supervisory control over the activities of the RSGB. In the reply to debate, reporting CEC member Gurin unleashed a withering barrage at Martens: Martens had thrown representatives of the RF out of his office, had threatened to have his opponents blacklisted in Soviet Russia, had broken his promises, and had refused to submit to the reasonable authority of the Russian revolutionary socialist movement in America. A resolution was moved declaring that “all the activities of Comrade Martens as a local representative of the Russian worker-peasant government, as well as the activity of the Bureau and its clerks, must be under the complete control of the local Bolshevik (Communist) organizations.” This resolution was approved in a massive landslide by the RF, 127 in favor, 8 opposed, and 15 abstaining.

“The Left Wing Answers,” by I.E. Ferguson [Aug. 22, 1919] National Left Wing Section leader I.E. Ferguson takes on 7 commonly leveled charges against adherents of the Left Wing. He states that the Left Wing does not seek to destroy Socialist Party unity—rather that the organization has long existed on the basis of a “false unity.” Rather the Left Wing seeks to build unity on a new set of principles. Thus, the Left Wing does not, as charged, play into the hands of the capitalists, but rather threatens the capitalists by building a united and focused revolutionary organization. With regard to the purported affection for revolutionary phrases, Ferguson replies that there is nothing wrong with this, that the phrase sometimes leads to action: “It is when the revolutionary phrases seize the mind of the masses and become translated into revolutionary action that the proletariat wins its triumphs.” The charge that American workers are not ready for revolution is dismissed as a salve for the “nervous fears of the timid and cautious.” The important thing, Ferguson declares, is that America needs a revolution and that objective conditions for this social revolution were ripening. The charge that the Left Wing advocated the use of violence is dismissed as a false argument; violence in the labor movement was the product either of “ capitalistic provocation or by individual act unrelated to the organization propaganda or tactics.” The allegation that the Left Wing had no constructive program was parried with the assertion that the “catalog of occupational and administrative reforms” of the reformist Socialists was “constructive of nothing, unless it be a more efficient Capitalism, a better-ordered slavery of the wage-worker.” On the other hand, “The Left Wing declares that the first constructive step is the establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Only after this step can there be proletarian democracy and socialization of industry,” according to Ferguson. Finally, to the charge that the Left Wing was an emotional response to the Russian Revolution, Ferguson answers that while “there is a large element of emotionalism” in the response to the Russian Revolution, “such emotionalism is the very life of our movement. It must be tempered and tested. But without it we would not be a movement of flesh and blood, but a sectarian creed of abstract dogma.”

“The Left Wing Unites,” by Louis C. Fraina [Aug. 23, 1919] In this unsigned editorial from Revolutionary Age, Louis Fraina makes known the decision of a big majority of the Left Wing National Council to join the “Federation of Russian Federations” in calling a Sept. 1, 1919 convention to establish a Communist Party of America. In joining in the issuance of the call for the new party, Fraina states that the “split of the real Communist elements of the Left Wing” was effectively liquidated. “The agreement on a joint call for a convention to organize a Communist Party on September 1 unites the Communist elements in the Left Wing, gives each the opportunity of casting off their non-Communist adherents, and uniting all the Communists irresistibly for the conquest of power in the new party,” Fraina asserts. This move towards immediate unity was made necessary by the failure of the Left Wing-dominated “new NEC” of the Socialist Party to issue a call for convention under their own auspices; thus, those Socialists coming to Chicago on August 30 would be attending a convention which had been called and effectively packed by the outgoing NEC, with certain defeat in the offing. Only 2 bitter anti-Federationists on the National Council (Jim Larkin and Ben Gitlow) out of the total of 7 remained committed to the old tactic of attempting to win at the Socialist Party Convention and refused to join in issuing the call. “Some of the problems in dispute are still unsolved, but they will be solved at the Communist Party Convention,” Fraina notes, adding that “It is indisputable that the old party is not in accord with revolutionary Socialism. Deprived of the stimulus of the Left Wing agitation in the party, it must more and more rely upon counterrevolutionary moderates, more and more become a Labor Party in fact if not in name.” Fraina declares that “the controversy within the Left Wing must now end; the few comrades on both sides who are disgruntled with the decision to unite are acting against the Communist Party.”

“Call for a Convention for the Purpose of Establishing the Communist Party of America,” signed by I.E. Ferguson and Dennis Batt. [Aug. 23, 1919] The National Council of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party of America, established in the summer of 1919 as a central organization for the organized Left Wing movement in the SPA, found itself deeply divided over tactics. One group—predominantly anglophonic and tending to be individuals not yet suspended or expelled from the party by Executive Secretary Adolph Germer and the outgoing NEC—sought to stay in the SPA through the Chicago Convention, attempting to win control of the party or winning as many party members to the cause as possible if the effort should prove a losing proposition. The other group—consisting in large measure of the members of the 7 suspended Language Federations and the suspended state party of Michigan—sought an immediate break with the SPA and formation of a new Communist Party. Ultimately, those favoring immediate action won the day on the Left Wing National Council, and this convention call for the formation of the Communist Party of America was issued and published in the press. The rapid pace of events is emphasized by the fact that this call, which outlined an organizational perspective and defined the basis for participation in the Founding Convention of the CPA, was published in the Revolutionary Age barely a week before the start of the Chicago convention.

“Notification to the Socialist Party of America of Changes to the State Executive Board of the Socialist Party of Minnesota by Charles Dirba, Secretary.” [Aug. 25, 1919] On Sunday, August 24, 1919, an Emergency Convention of the Socialiist Party of Minnesota was held in Minneapolis at which it was decided to make the recent referendum vote recalling the State Executive Board (Regular faction) effective immediately. A new 7 member Left Wing SEB was elected including future Communist Party stalwart Clarence Hathaway. “Please take immediate notice of this,” Left Wing State Secretary Charles Dirba writes.

“Ohio State Organization Expelled from Party.” (NY Call) [Aug. 25, 1919] Short news tidbit buried on page 7 of the New York Call making note of the seemingly trivial detail that the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party, slated to leave office on June 30, 1919, had expelled the entire Socialist Party of Ohio “for repeated and flagrant violations of the state and national platforms and constitutions of the party.” This action conveniently took place about 1 week before the gathering of the SPA’s Emergency National Convention in Chicago. “Under the guidance of a small, compact, and well-oiled political machine, headed by two individuals named Ruthenberg and Wagenknecht, the party has been repeatedly sabotaged and its work crippled. The violations have become so intolerable that, upon request of a large number of loyal Socialists of the Buckeye state, the charter of the state organization has been revoked and the Socialists who are loyal to the organization are reorganizing upon the basis of the Socialist platform and constitution,” the unsigned article notes.

Notification to the Socialist Party of America of Changes to the State Executive Board of the Socialist Party of Minnesota by Charles Dirba, Secretary.

Bylaws of the Federation of Russian Branches of the Communist Party of America [August 1919]. This is the complete text of the constitution approved by the Federation in August 1919 at its 5th Convention in Detroit. This document sheds light upon the organizational structure of the Russian Federation, one of the most important institutions in the Communist Party of America.

“Report to the National Executive Committee, Socialist Party of America,” by Adolph Germer [August 27, 1919] Extensive “State of the Party” report by Executive Secretary Adolph Germer of the Socialist Party to the members of the outgoing NEC on the eve of the 1919 Emergency National Convention. Germer provides state-by-state assessments for Michigan, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Ohio—the critical regions of conflict between the Regular and the Left Wing factions. Germer recounts developments in the struggle of the provisional NEC to obtain control of party headquarters from Germer. He notes that the Left Wing had rented a hall and committee room in the same building being used by the SPA for its Emergency National Convention for three days, Sept. 1-3. “The reasons for renting a hall and rooms in the same building in which the National Convention is held, of course, are obvious and need no comment,” Germer states. Germer makes specific recommendations about the party constitution, conventions, international relations, dues, and the place of the language federations. With regard to the latter, Germer indicates that “One of two things should be done, either the language federations should be made autonomous bodies and have a working relation with the Socialist Party, or the federations as such should be abolished and the propaganda and organization work should be conducted by language organizers employed directly by the party and under the control of the party.” Germer provides a summary of financial affairs which shows the party over $20,000 in debt—mostly owed for the recent purchase of party headquarters and to the party’s women’s propaganda fund, which had been raided to balance the budget. Of particular value is a state-by-state summary of actually paid dues by month for the period January to July 1919. These statistics indicate that with all the suspensions, expulsions, and a dues strike by the Left Wing, between April and July paid membership in the SPA had plummeted from well over 100,000 to just under 40,000.

“"The Communist Party of America,,” byNicholas I. Hourwich [Gurvich], Aug. 26, 1919.This is the report delivered to the Federation of Russian Branches in August 1919 at its 5th Convention in Detroit. The son of a long-time Socialist Labor Party member, Isaac Hourwich, Nicholas Hourwich was formerly on the 3 member Editorial Board of the Russian Federation’s newspaper, Novyi Mir, and was named responsible Editor by the 5th Convention. He was active in the Left Wing Movement and a founder and leading figure in the Communist Party of America from 1919.

“The Socialist Party Convention: An Editorial in the New York Call,” by James Oneal [Aug. 27, 1919] Editorial from the New York Call by one of the primary leaders of the SPA’s Regular faction in the 1919 factional war. “It is certain that the convention will simply be a formal recognition of a schism within the organization which has been developed by skilled propagandists,” Oneal confidently predicts. “Just as at the beginning of the war a hysterical type developed and separated from the movement, so the end of the war brings with it a similar type determined on the same course,” Oneal declares, emphasizing that this dissident Left Wing is “by no means harmonious” and is rent with internal divisions of its own. “A temporary truce has been formed upon the basis of organizing a party of their own without any further activity within the Socialist Party. This will again throw them together, and in the absence of the one tie that held the groups together, a common antagonism to the Socialist Party, it is fairly certain that they will not maintain unity for any long period. The reason for this is the multiplicity of views they must try to reconcile, and these views diverge so much that permanent reconciliation is practically hopeless,” Oneal presciently asserts. Oneal foresees the party “adjusting itself” with respect to program and policies, due to changing conditions “in keeping with a militant, fighting organization of the working class.”

“New Jersey Delegates to the Convention.” [Aug. 29, 1919] Short list of the candidates for delegate to the Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party of America hailing from the state of New Jersey, including the vote count for each. A delegation (with the exception of Krafft) committed to radical reorientation of the party but opposing the tactics of the organized Left Wing Section was the result of the vote, the veracity of which was never challenged by the Regular faction (although leading vote-getter Fred Harwood was challenged at the convention for having sat with the “new” NEC at its sole physical gathering, July 26-27, 1919). Elected as delegates were: Valentine Bausch, Stephen Bircher, Fred Harwood, Frank Hubschmidt, Frederick Krafft, Henry Petzold, Patrick L. Quinlan, Rose Weiss, and Louis F. Wolff. A number of these ultimately bolted the SPA convention to the founding convention of the Communist Labor Party, while Fred Harwood, after being seated late in the SPA’s proceedings, threw up his hands and went home in disgust, quitting the radical movement.

“Party Delegates Ready to Meet Big Problems at National Convention,” by Herman Michelson [Aug. 29, 1919] Initial coverage of the forthcoming Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party of America by the correspondent of the New York Call. Michelson covers the report of Executive Secretary Adolph Germer to the outgoing National Executive Committee in Chicago on the eve of the convention. Starting 1919 with a paid membership of over 109,500, the Socialist Party had lost nearly 70,000 members through suspensions, expulsions, and disorganization accompanying the factional war. Germer portrayed the catastrophic decline in the most neutral light possible, stating that the reduced figure “cannot be taken as a legitimate showing, due to the internal controversy.” Michelson likewise gave the Regular faction every benefit of the doubt, noting that while “the membership has been cut down almost two-thirds; the National Office is practically without funds; the forces of reaction are ever welding their ranks closer in their united assault on the party,” nevertheless “the spirit manifest here tonight, on the eve of the convention, is one of energy, enthusiasm, and hopeful, vigorous work to rebuild a still greater party in 1920 than the one which polled nearly 1 million votes in 1912.” Michelson contributes the information that the Regular faction had commenced the convention’s work in advance of the opening of the actual gathering, observing that “in a dozen rooms at headquarters committees are at work preparing resolutions, reports, platforms, and a manifesto of the party’s position” and adding that “all this will speed up the work of the convention tremendously.”

“Socialists Open Convention After ‘Lefts’ Are Ousted: Police and Department of Justice Take Notes as Party’s Proceedings are Opened in Chicago—Important Committee is Selected,” by Herman Michelson [Aug. 30, 1919] Coverage of the first day of activity at the Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party of America by the correspondent of the New York Call. After witnessing a single day of activity on the convention floor, electing a chairman of the day, listening to opening remarks from Seymour Stedman and Executive Secretary Adolph Germer, and naming a Credentials Committee, reporter Michelson seems ready to declare victory and go home. He optimistically declares: “Very little remains of the Left Wing as a rival or even a disrupting force in the party. It is practically certain there will be no Left Wing convention. The convention will adopt a stand, expressed in a manifesto that is expected to satisfy all those in the Left Wing who are contending for what they believe to be revolutionary principles. The others probably will be gathered back into the folds of the various “progressive” wings of the old parties, from which they emerged to play a brief role as ultra-revolutionists.” Michelson relates the tale of “clearing the hall” in advance of the convention’s opening as follows: “John Reed, prominent in the councils of the Left, tried to brush past Julius Gerber of New York, who was aiding in the seating arrangements. Gerber demanded that Reed get an admission card, and they got into a brief tussle, in which several other Left Wingers thought they would aid Reed. This was the only disorder that occurred, despite the lurid stories sent out by the press associations. Gerber, seeing that an attempt was being made to rush the convention, determined to clear the hall. A squad of policemen had been detailed to the convention by headquarters, and he asked them to get everybody out, which they did, without difficulty or violence.”

“’Left Wing’ Attempt to Capture Convention Hall Proves Failure.” (NY Call) [Aug. 30, 1919] This unsigned account of the first day of the convention of the Socialist Party of America (possibly contributed by Call editorial page editor James Oneal) offers an alternative account of the legendary “clearing the hall” incident. Rather than threatened fisticuffs between Reed and Gerber at the door, this rather less colorful version has the convention hall successfully infiltrated by “John Reed and a picked company of free-lances.” The article states that “some 50 men and women occupied Machinists’ Hall auditorium, disporting themselves in the delegates’ seats without benefit of credentials. When, half an hour later, Adolph Germer, National Secretary of the Socialist Party, and his staff arrived to open the convention, they were confronted with the choice of either surrendering the hall to the Lefts or of insisting on their right to the auditorium.” The onus of having to call in the armed forces of reaction to clear the hall is shifted from Executive Secretary Germer in this version of events, which maintains that “Germer felt that the problem rested with the management of the hall, and the management, recognizing the Socialist Party as entitled to what they had contracted for, asked the intruders to get out. The Lefts refused, whereupon the management obliged the Lefts by letting them pose as they planned and called in two corpulent policemen. With smiles of triumph wreathing their faces, the Lefts then went into caucus to capitalize their martyrdom.” Text of a printed statement from the Left Wing subsequently distributed to convention delegates is included. The article baits a number of the Left Wing leaders for their fashion sense and social origins, including as targets of ridicule “John Reed, always picturesque in his Norfolk-cut suit and hatless; Rose Pastor Stokes, in neat tailor-made blue; Maximilian Cohen, crisp and cool in his Palm Beach suit of light tan; Louis C. Fraina, with his neatly trimmed Van Dyke beard; Max Eastman, sunburned and debonair in blue serge—these are the leaders in this offshoot of the ‘revolutionary proletariat’ as against the ‘bourgeois’ Socialist Party.”

“Minnesota Group Seated But Denied Vote by Convention: Socialist Emergency Gathering in Chicago Sustains Action of National Executive Committee—Telegrams of Greetings Sent to Debs, Mrs. O’Hare, and Hillquit: Big Vote Cast Favors Referendums B and D: Evidences of Widespread Frauds in Balloting are Charged in Investigation of Practices of Suspended Sections of Party—Bloc Voting Said to Be Prevalent,” by Herman Michelson [Aug. 31, 1919] The highlight of the 2nd day of the Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party of America was the protracted debate on the seating of the Minnesota delegation, a controversy which brought into play most of the big issues about the authority of the National Executive Committee to impose its will upon state organizations. This report by the correspondent of the New York Call saw the result of the debate, seating with voice but no vote a substitute delegation appointed by a contested State Executive Committee over a delegation elected by party referendum of Minnesota Socialists as decisive. Reporter Michelson declares that this action effectively “puts the stamp of approval by the convention on the action of the National Executive Committee in expelling [sic.] the 7 foreign language federations from the Socialist Party.” The tepid response which met Rhode Island Left Winger Joseph Coldwell’s 2 pm declaration of a delegate bolt over the convention majority’s decision to conduct business before all credentials challenges were resolved is the object of much mirth on the part of Michelson, who proclaims it “a very mild affair” prematurely conducted over a “perfectly trivial excuse.” The unanimous report of the committee investigating the 1919 party referendums was read by Otto Branstetter, Michelson notes, alleging “serious frauds in balloting” but making no concrete recommendations.

“What’ll Folks at Home Think of this ‘85-45’ in Convention Wrangle?” by Eugene Wood [Aug. 31, 1919] Valuable first-hand account of the proceedings of the pivotal Credentials Committee (Committee on Contests) of the Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party, headed by Judge Jacob Panken of New York. Wood contrasts the quite and understated style of the committee with the frequently boisterous pontification indulged in by the various spokesmen of challenged delegations—“’thrillers’ who swing their arms and talk about ‘class-conscious revolutionary movements’ and use a Madison Square Garden voice to carry four feet.” The hearings were held in public in one of the rooms of the old Illinois club, attended by often cheering spectators. Wood notes that “These who cheer and handclap and rejoice when the smashing and shattering of the Socialist Party is proposed will form part of the membership of the Communist Party, if it doesn’t split into too many divisions. It is calculated that there are at least 6 divisions already in sight. It is believed that this is not so much a split as a fringe, or a broom, or some other word expressive of a complete frazzle.” Wood sees the impending split as an inevitability: “The moment the decision of the Committee on Contests is announced and it doesn’t suit them, they blow the whistle and pull ‘em all out, and go down to Blue Island Avenue or wherever the ‘Communist’ convention is to meet, and start in, and we shall have to teach ourselves to call ‘em ‘Mister.’ ‘What’s the use, if you’re 85 [delegates] and we’re 45?’ they ask. And that seems to end it with them. The only thing to consider is the folks at home, who have been Socialists when it cut deep to be a Socialist. The question is, what’ll they think about it all?”

“Statement on the Situation of the Socialist Party in Philadelphia,” by Charles Sehl [July 20, 1919] Brief account of the Left-Right factional war which took place in the Socialist Party of Pennsylvania by a SPA Regular active in reorganized Local Philadelphia. Spurred by advice personally delivered by NEC Regulars James Oneal and George Goebel, a July 13 informal conference on the party situation had been followed by an immediate secret “executive session” of the State Executive Committee. The Pennsylvania SEC had determined to follow the path taken by the SEC of New York State, ordering State Secretary Birch Wilson to travel to Philadelphia and to arbitrarily revoke the charter of Local Philadelphia, the majority of which had endorsed the Left Wing manifesto. Local Philadelphia had refused to recognized the authority of the State Secretary in this matter, and Wilson had immediately moved to reorganize a rump of 300 “loyal” members of the party as a new Local Philadelphia. Those joining Wilson’s new (truly white card) local had to sign the following loyalty oath, not provided for in the state party’s constitution: “I, the undersigned, declare that while a member of the Socialist Party I shall be guided by the National and State Platforms of the Socialist Party. I do not belong to any organization within or without the party which has a platform or constitution in violation of the National constitution or the State constitution of the Socialist Party. I am not and have not been a member of the so-called Left Wing.” The reorganization of the organization was approved by a rushed telegram vote of a non-quorum of the State Executive Committee. Thus was New York’s Tammany-style power politics made “legal” in Pennsylvania. The Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party was less than 6 weeks away.

“Introductory Remarks to the 1919 Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party of America: Chicago, IL—August 30, 1919,” by Adolph Germer The 1919 Emergency National Convention was a landmark in the history of American radicalism—the event at which the split of the Socialist Party of America into “Socialist” and “Communist” organizations was finalized. The convention proved to be a one-sided battle, with the Regular faction in control of the National Executive Committee and key State Executive Committees and able by means of wholesale suspensions and expulsions to dominate the delegate roster and to further perpetuate itself by means of delegate challenges and tight control of the body’s Credentials Committee. Here, for the first time, are the remarks made by Executive Secretary Adolph Germer, field general of the Regular faction, at the opening of the convention. “Tremendous changes in thought” had taken place in the 5 years since the outbreak of World War I, Germer states—changes which had augmented the preexisting factional divisions of the party. The situation had made the convocation of a gathering to set party policy and program in the new world situation and to thus “unite the working classes of this country, that we might follow the splendid example set by our comrades in Russia,” Germer states. Germer hastily adds that this is not to say that Russian tactics are to be emulated in the greatly different American political and economic conditions—“our methods will have to be somewhat different in accomplishing our goal,” Germer indicates. Germer declares that disagreement over tactics is only part of the ongoing factional controversy in the SPA, adding that this situation is not discouraging to him: “I always believed that this factional division leads to healthy methods, provided it is not carried to the extent where the organization is torn into parts and shreds, and leaves us an easy prey to our common enemy.” Unfortunately, Germer continues, “personal slanders and conspiracies against individuals that have been engaged in for no other reason than to break down the confidence of the membership” in the party’s elected leadership. These Left Wing critics offer “no specific statements, but general gossip, rumor, suggestion, innuendo,” says Germer, adding that he welcomes an open investigation by the convention of the activities of its National Executive Committee in the previous months.

“ Keynote Address to the Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party of America: Chicago, IL — August 30, 1919,” by Seymour Stedman The first order of business of the seminal 1919 Emergency National Convention was the election of a chairman of the day, a post handily won by Regular Seymour Stedman over Left Winger Joseph Coldwell of Rhode Island, by a vote of 88-37. Upon his election, Stedman delivered the traditional keynote address to the gathering. Stedman recounts the history of the previous 5 years, in which the workers of Europe, “many of them drilled in economics by Marx and Engels.” went to war against one another. The Socialist Party of America stood out by way of contrast, Stedman indicates, adopting the St. Louis Resolution against the war and standing true to its principles despite the “attacks of the mob on the streets, or rage from the [judicial] bench.” Rather than be erased by the initial repression, despite losses of numerous locals in small town America, the membership of the Socialist Party soon began to grow. “This served to provoke more desperate measures against us,” says Stedman. “Our National Office was raided again and again. Small papers of the workers were suppressed; foreign language papers were suppressed. The privilege of the mails was denied to our leading dailies. Our members were arrested, jailed, convicted and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. The liberties which we were supposed to enjoy were throttled, and constitutional guarantees we found to be merely academic declarations.” Stedman’s tone is measured, mentioning the Left Wing insurgency almost as an aside, accusing this group of “misjudging entirely the psychology” of the American working class movement. This group “commenced an agitation in the party; not solely to bring before our national convention their propositions, but to declare that they alone held the secret of success and to impose it upon the party; and upon refusal of the membership to accept their proposition to launch a new political party. With many of them this has been carried our in the formation of the Communist Party.” The split of the SPA is thus judged by Stedman to be an accomplished fact from the opening gavel of the 1919 convention.

“Minutes of the Left Wing Section of the 1919 Convention of the Socialist Party of America.” [Aug. 29-31, 1919]. The 1919 Chicago Convention of the SPA pitted two organized factions against one another, the group of “Regulars” around National Executive Secretary Adolph Germer and the outgoing NEC and the “Left Wing” faction around newly elected National Execuitve Secretary Alfred Wagenknecht and the incoming NEC—a group whose legitimacy was biitterly challenged by their outgoing counterparts, who refused to recognize the results of the 1919 election and who launched a series of suspensions of “Left Wing” Federations and states in an effort to rid the party of what they perceived as an alien influence. These are the meeting minutes of the Left Wing section from the time of their first organized caucus in Chicago on Aug. 29 until the issuance of a convention call for establishment of a new Communist Party (specifically, the Communist Labor Party) on August 31.

“Report to the National Convention of the Socialist Party of America by the Special 1919 Election Investigating Committee: Chicago, IL—Aug. 31, 1919.” The May 24-30 meeting of the NEC which expelled the Socialist Party of Michigan and suspended 7 language federations from the Socialist Party of America also appointed a 4 member special committee to study the question of election fraud in the 1919 party election which it terminated, the committee to report back to the Emergency National Convention scheduled 3 months hence. This is the report of the committee to the assembled delegates in Chicago. While the report confirms the claim of the Left Wing that it had won a big majority of the 15 seats on the SPA’s governing National Executive Committee “on the face of the returns,” as well as sweeping the 4 International Delegate positions and voting to affiliate with the Communist International by a margin of more than 6-to-1, the special committee cites a litany of electoral irregularities said to have been systematically perpetrated by several of the suspended federations. This report was approved unanimously by the convention and used as a rationale for a complete restructuring of the party constitution and the election of a new 7 member “temporary” NEC by the convention itself. The margin in the resolution on international affiliation was so wide as to remove any question of the validity of its passage, and was declared adopted. This document includes explanatory footnotes by Tim Davenport which argue against several of the assertions made by the special investigating committee.

“ Debate on Seating the Minnesota Delegation at the Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party of America: Chicago, IL — August 31, 1919.” From the opening gavel there was little, if any, drama about the outcome of the 1919 Emergency National Convention. The so-called “Right Wing” Regulars had maneuvered themselves into a position of clear control in the face of a Left Wing split over strategy towards to the convention. Despite its preordained outcome, there was drama and a defining movement at the Socialist Party convention, however, — the extensive debate over the Credentials Committee’s recommendation as to the seating of the Minnesota delegation. It was during this debate that the various philosophies and ethical orientations within the Regular wing of the party became clear, as the loyalists attempted to navigate a split without losing the party’s democratic soul. Basing their case upon affidavits from 4 Minnesota locals that they had not received ballots for the election for convention delegates from State Secretary Charles Dirba and the acknowledgement that members of suspended language federations had participated in the vote, there were some who favored the adoption of the Credentials Committee report, setting aside the Minnesota election of a Left Wing delegation and instead seating the alternative slate hastily named in an extra-constitutional manner by the Regular State Executive Committee of Minnesota. Others loyal to the Regular faction stood strongly for the principle of rank and file democracy, defending the slate elected by the membership of the state in spite of the delegation’s ideological coloration, the alleged and acknowledged electoral irregularities, and the decision of the Minnesota Left Wing delegation not to accept seats in any event (their spokesman Jack Carney having told Jacob Panken’s Credentials Committee to “go to hell.”) The Left Wing perspective was advanced by delegates from Illinois and New Jersey. Behind the debate lay the question of whether the Socialist Party’s National Executive Committee had the ethical authority and legal right to arbitrarily suspend 7 language federations of the party in the first place. The stenographic report reveals a certain complexity and diversity of thought among adherents of the Regular faction which has been little appreciated in the literature. Includes an Art Young pen-and-ink caricature of the leading lights of the dominant New York delegation and a photo of iconoclastic Duluth editor Jack Carney.

SEPTEMBER

“The Struggle in the USA” by “A.K.” [Sept. 1919] &8212; Detailed dissection of Socialist Party of America written by a committed partisan of the impossibilist Socialist Party of Great Britain for its party press. The commentator notes that the SPA&8217;s Right Wing supporters of the war had left the party or been expelled and were now writing for their own set of journals. Gene Debs is dismissed as an unprincipled wobbler and Morris Hillquit and his associates a pro-war worshiper of democracy in the abstract. The Left Wing Section is judged little better, declared to incorporate “every variety of fool and freak, just like the Right Wing.” The June National Conference of the Left Wing section is dismissed as a “miserable farce” owing to its nature as a “sordid struggle for control.” Louis Fraina is depicted as an opportunistic advocate of ill-defined non-Marxist concepts like Mass Action and Industrial Unionism and editor of a “parrot-like” paper which blindly reprinted Lenin and Trotsky. The Left Wing language federations are characterized as theoretically ignorant and similarly infatuated with the Russian model. Only the (impossibilist) Socialist Party of Michigan merits praise for its general ideology and willingness to immediately break with the “rotten” Socialist Party. This is offset by the Michiganders&8217; alliance with the numerically-larger language federations and their subsequent adoption of a program emphasizing industrial unionism and mass action rather than patient Marxian education.

“The National Emergency Convention Through Yipsel Eyes”, by William F. Kruse [September 1919] Participant’s report of the Socialist Party’s 1919 Emergency National Convention in Chicago by the former National Secretary of the Young People’s Socialist League. Kruse, elected by the Socialist Party of Illinois as a delegate to the convention, relates the story of the SPA gathering in Machinist’s Hall through the prism of his former organization. He indicates that he and other friends of the YPSL were able to persuade the Constitution Committee and then the convention itself to liberate the YPSL from formal Party control by deleting constitutional provisions that the YPSL “shall be under the control and direction of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party,” in favor of language establishing a “Director of Propaganda and Education among the young” who “shall organize and cooperate with the existing Young People’s Socialist Organization for the extension of propaganda and education among the young people.” In this way it was hoped that the YPSL might be able to steer its way clear of the factional war that was decimating and disorganizing the adult socialist movement. Kruse also makes mention of the “Minority Report” on international affiliation that he put forward with Louis Engdahl. He emphasizes the commonality between Majority and Minority perspectives: “All agreed that the Second International was dead. All repudiated absolutely the Berne Conference. All agreed that the new International would have to be organized upon the definite and rigid basis of the class struggle. All repudiated the social patriots who had stood by their warlords in time of test and struggle. All agreed that those who entered coalition governments with the bourgeoisie could not sit in the International. The distinction came on the point of whether the Third International should come into being through the call issued by the Communist Party at Moscow, or upon some subsequent call...coming from some other source among the revolutionary socialist parties of Europe.”

“An Open Letter to All Yipsels”, by William F. Kruse [late September 1919] This open letter, sent out by former YPSL National Secretary Bill Kruse to all of the organizations state organizations and circles, provides important details about the history of the organization in the turbulent months around the Socialist Party split in the summer of 1919. As the Aug. 30 Emergency National Convention of the SPA approached, YPSL National Secretary Oliver Carlson polled the state and local YPSL organizations as to their intentions should the Socialist Party split. A clear consensus indicated that the YPSL should attempt to steer a middle course through organizational independence. When this split became a reality at the end of August 1919, Carlson unilaterally removed himself from the National Office, instead having the Post Office transfer mail service to his home, from which he attempted to establish de facto YPSL headquarters. This arrangement proved unsatisfactory to the Socialist Party which was paying his weekly salary—mail stacked up and went unanswered, the Young Socialists’ Magazine began to become irregular, and Carlson’s long unexplained absences caused the SP’s NEC to first suspend his paychecks and then terminate his employment by the party altogether. Bill Kruse was convinced to take over the National Office’s “Young People’s Department” and resume editorship of the YSM —although Kruse was careful to explain in this open letter that he made no claims to be the National Secretary of the organization. “The Socialist Party regrets exceedingly to part company with its younger comrades at this time, but feels that the Yipsels know best what will help maintain the integrity of their organization. If by this step the young comrades can avoid the fratricidal strife that has torn the older movement, the Party will put no obstacles in the way of such a step,” Kruse states.

“Report of the National Executive Committee to the Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party of America: Chicago, IL—Sept. 1, 1919,” by James Oneal Text of the report of the NEC to the Emergency National Convention, justifying the committee’s action in abrogating the party’s 1919 electoral referendums and launching a series of suspensions and expulsions which led to the loss of approximately 70,000 of the party’s roughly 110,000 paid members between the first of the year and the date of the convention. NEC member Oneal, one of the leaders of the Regular faction in the intra-party conflict, recounts the days since the St. Louis Emergency National Convention of 1917, marked by the “desertion and betrayal” of the party by its “small Right Wing” and the launching of mass government repression in an attempt to crush the SPA and eradicate its press. A new period began with the collapse of the Central Alliance and the end of the war, in Oneal’s estimation. In this period “a systematic campaign of falsehood” was waged against the Socialist Party and its leadership by a faction within the party, which falsely claimed that the party was allied with the Berne conference of pro-war Socialist Parties and insulted its officials as “Noskes” and “Scheidemanns” looking to drown the revolutionary workers in blood. “In no single instance has this faction attempted to buttress these attacks with any official declarations of the party,” Oneal declares, noting the party’s consistent support for the revolutionary movement in Germany and Russia. Oneal characterizes the Left Wing as “disrupters” who conducted “organized and systematic treachery” for the purpose of “capturing the party.” They had shunted aside party veterans, sabotaged the party’s efforts to hold an amnesty convention on behalf of its political prisoners, and made use of “vicious and corrupt practices in the recent referendum elections,” Oneal charges. “We have no apologies to make to the Left Wing or any of its wings. The National Executive Committee has tried to make the best of the most trying situation the party has ever faced. It welcomes honest criticism and differences of opinion. But for those who have wrought ruin in their confessed attempts to ‘rupture the party,’ it voices the opinion of the honest members in saying that such conduct is a gross violation of Socialist ethics, Socialist solidarity, and Socialist principles.”

“Convention Voids Referendum C by Unanimous Vote: Delegated Decide to Choose Temporary National Executive Committee as Soon as Party’s Constitution is Rewritten by Convention: New Balloting Will Be Instituted for Officials: California Delegation Fails in Its Attempt to Bolt Gathering—Seated Envoys Who Participated in ‘Communist Convention’ Will be Permanently Excluded Today by Herman Michelson” [Sept. 1, 1919] Front page account of the 3rd day of the Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party by the correspondent of the New York Call. Michelson reports on the convention’s unanimous vote to set aside the results of the 1919 party referendum for National Executive Committee on the grounds of electoral irregularities. Michelson notes that “State Secretaries from as far apart as Kansas and Massachusetts told of branches voting twice the number of their members; of voting en bloc in which ballots were marked and signed by the same person throughout; of refusal to allow the investigating committee to see the actual ballots; of ballots being destroyed on the plea there was not room to store them; and other procedure claimed to be highly irregular.” He adds that “when the unanimous roar of approval invalidated the referendum, the convention launched into an ovation, presumably for itself and its own good judgment in ordering a new deal.” Later in the day, after this decisive action had been taken, the decision was made to overrule the recommendation of the Panken Credentials Committee and to seat the elected Left Wing delegation from California. This group declined to accept their seats, however, sending James Dolsen as its spokesman. “We will not take our seats,” Dolsen declared, “unless all duly elected delegates are seated, until the packed delegates from several reorganized states be reduced, nor until the convention ceases to act under the guardianship of the Chicago Police Department.” An appeal was made for delegates to abandon the Socialist Party convention for that of the Communist Labor Party downstairs in the same building; this earnest request met with no response, Michelson states.

“Socialist Convention Held at Chicago,” by Joseph W. Sharts [Sept. 1, 1919] Valuable first-hand account of the pivotal 1919 Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party beginning in Chicago on Aug. 30, 1919. Sharts, a SP Regular lacking the pugnacious attitude common during the summer of 1919, tells the tale of dominance of the convention by an effectively-run machine. “Along the left-hand side of the room ran a railing, and out beyond this railing were the seats for the spectators. Here the “Lefts” were packed, pressed, crammed, suffocating; while inside, although the big hall was full, there was comfortable elbow-room,” Sharts writes. The pivotal test of strength came in the election of the contest committee, which was headed by Right Winger Jacob Panken of New York. As the contest committee slowly and methodically conducted its inquisition of challenged delegates and acrimony erupted on the floor of the convention upstairs, “an ominous sound” began to be heard from the billiard room downstairs—”the singing of songs, sharp outbursts of applause. The Left Wingers have started their rival convention without waiting the action of the old organization on the contests.” A press deadline unfortunately limits Sharts’ account to the early stages of the convention.

“Statement Subscribed to the Delegates of the Emergency Convention by the Delegates of the State of California.” [September 1, 1919] A document from the CLP/UCP archive seized by the New York Bomb Squad and the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Investigation in April 1921. This statement was apparently read or distributed to the 1919 Emergency National Committee by the California delegation, a Left Wing body denied the seats to which they were elected by the machine of outgoing National Executive Secretary Adolph Germer. Despite being elected by overwhelming majorities of uncontested locals in their states, and despite not being opposed in person by an opposition delegation, the California delegation was ejected from the convention floor by the Chicago Police and forced to stand for hours in an anteroom where they could not hear the proceedings for which they had travelled 2,000 miles to attend. All the while, ” packed delegations from other states occupied the convention floor,” the statement declared. The Contest Committee stalled a decision on the California delegation for two days, thus preventing them from participation, eventually coming in on the third day of the gathering with a recommendation to deny the delegation their seats. This was overturned by action from the floor by delegates who were held to have woke up to the “despotic procedure steamrollered by the officialdom of the convention.” The California delegation demanded that all contested delegations be seated, that the representation of the packed delegations from “reorganization states” be scaled down to the number of votes to which they were entitled based on actual paid membership, and the removal of the Chicago Police was demanded. The delegation—which included Max Bedacht, James Dolsen, and John C. Taylor—ultimately refused their seats and bolted the SPA convention to help establish the Communist Labor Party.

…Socialist Party Wins Primary Contest in All But Few Districts: Manhattan and Bronx Boroughs Carried Completely by Regular Organization Candidates.&38221; (NY Call) [Sept. 2, 1919] Lest there be any doubt about the inevitability of a split of the Socialist Party in the summer of 1919, here are the voting results of the Socialist Party’s Sept. 2, 1919 primary election in New York City. In this election the Left Wing Section fielded and promoted a full slate of candidates against the SPA’s Regulars (who touted their own slate in the pages of the New York Call). Even as the Socialist Party was in the process of shattering at the Chicago convention, the Regulars were scoring a decisive victory in the primaries—with the battle between the factions contested with particular vigor in Brooklyn. In duels between prominent figures, journalist William Morris Feigenbaum topped Left Winger Bert Wolfe in the 6th Assembly District, 61-42, while future Assemblyman Charles Solomon beat Harry Waton 228 to 38 in the 33rd Assembly District. In the 59th Aldermanic District of Brooklyn Abraham Shiplacoff decisively defeated Left Winger Morris Zucker by a count of 516 to 74. Other prominent figures of the nascent Communist movement falling in the primary included Ludwig Lore, Edward Lindgren, and Will Weinstone.

“Convention May Name Debs Today for Presidency: Nomination Will Be Submitted to Referendum of Party Membership Upon His Acceptance of Candidacy, Resolution Proposes. Choice of Running Mate Will Probably Be Put Off: Drastic Revisions Sure to Be Made in Constitution—Special Bureau to Deal with Relations to Economic Organizations Regarded Certain of Creation,” by Herman Michelson [Sept. 2, 1919] The New York Call’s staff correspondent from the Chicago Emergency National Convention reports on the activities of that gathering’s 4th day. Full rosters of the various committees were named and the day was dominated by committee work. Text of a cable to Ludwig Martens of the Soviet Russian Government Bureau is included, expressing the best regards of the Socialist convention and wishes for success in the establishment of friendly relations between the peoples of the United States and Soviet Russia. Michelson is preoccupied on the question of whether the Emergency Convention would nominate Gene Debs as its Presidential standard-bearer for the 5th time (it ultimately did not; instead Debs was nominated by the 1920 Convention). A complete list of delegates “present and taking part” in the SPA convention (that is, excluding delegates who were challenged and rejected, those refusing to assume their seats, those bolting, and those who missed roll call) is included, listing 128 names of regular and fraternal delegates to the convention for which 200 delegates were originally authorized.

“The Chicago Convention: An Editorial in the New York Call, Sept. 3, 1919.” This editorial in the New York Call from the time of the Socialist Party’s Emergency National Convention provides numeric detail illustrating the magnitude of the “regrettable” party split: “The report of Secretary Germer, showing that of the 200 delegates allotted to the convention, 136 were entitled to seats without a contest, indicates the extent of the schism in the party. But even this figure does not tell the whole story. About 103 of these uncontested delegates are said to be ‘Regular.’ That is, they stand for the Socialist Party organization, but among them are a considerable number who are uncertain of their course and reserve judgment on matters in controversy. Some have positive convictions that the expulsions of several state organizations and suspension of language federations were not justified, and it will require strong evidence to convince them.” The remaining 33 uncontested delegates were “strongly sympathetic to the so-called Left Wing,” the editorial continues, adding that “some of them may be won over if the evidence is strong enough to justify the expulsions.” The preposterous claim is made by the editorialist that “every delegate entitled to a seat, no matter what his views are, was seated” at the convention.

“Convention Urges US to Recognize Republic of Erin...: Formation of Socialist Press Syndicate Favored: Question of Naming Debs for Presidency Put Over Until Today—Resolutions Adopted Demand Berger Be Seated in Congress and Denounce Recent Race Riots,” by Herman Michelson [Sept. 3, 1919] The New York Call’s day-by-day account of the Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party in Chicago continues in this coverage of Day 5. Reporter Michelson emphasizes the recommendation of the convention’s Press Committee that a nationwide Socialist press syndicate be established for the collective gathering of news on behalf of the daily press affiliated with the SPA—standing at 10 papers and slated to rise to a dozen in the coming year. If there had been such an organization of the Socialist press, the present crisis in the party would have been averted, Press Committee chairman Eugene Woods claimed. Michelson also reports the findings of a special committee headed by Left Wing sympathizer Rose Weiss of New Jersey which was given the task of investigating whether the delegations of the “reorganized” states of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, and Michigan were packed by the party officialdom. “The committee found that 4 states were entitled to a representation of 69 and only 61 delegates seated on the floor of the convention,” Michelson reports. The news account includes full text of the Press Committee Report as well as resolutions adopted in favor of Irish national liberation, condemning race rioting, and demanding the seated of elected Congressman Victor L. Berger by the House of Representatives, which had denied him his seat on political grounds.

“Supplementary Report of the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America to the Emergency National Convention: Chicago, IL—September 4, 1919.” The Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party demanded of the outgoing National Executive Committee a supplemental report justifying its actions of expulsions and suspensions which took place at its May 24-30, 1919 meeting in Chicago. This is the second of the two reports of the NEC, signed by 8 of the 15 members of the committee, written in the unapologetic and combative language of NEC member James Oneal, who delivered the report to the gathering. “The federations attempted to usurp power that belongs only to the general membership and conventions and such power as is delegated to the National Executive Committee between conventions. Either the National Executive Committee had to accept the offending federations as a self-constituted supreme court with power to veto our decisions, or else suspend the federations,” the report asserts. The report declares that the charges made that the federations had no opportunity to defend themselves to be false and adds that Michigan State Secretary John Keracher had declined an invitation of the NEC to reopen the matter of the Michigan expulsion in order to present contradictory evidence. The expelled state of Massachusetts had at its convention sent representative voting delegates to the National Conference of the Left Wing in June, a banned “party within the party,” and the expelled state of Ohio had been “the worst offender of all” through its call through its State Secretary, Alfred Wagenknecht, to withhold funds from the national organization. “For the National Executive Committee to acquiesce in all these actions would have been for its members to surrender the party organization and the convention to those responsible for them. We had to act as the National Executive Committee or vacate,” the report declares. The NEC’s abrogation of the 1919 party election had already been justified by the convention’s accepting of the report of the special investigating committee that “gross frauds” had been committed and the charge that the Emergency Convention had been “packed” was without merit, the report adds.

“Party Manifesto Demands Amnesty and End of Blockade Against Russia Be Instituted by US Immediately: Document Reaffirming Solidarity with Revolutionary Workers of World Adopted Unanimously by National Socialist Convention at Chicago...: National Executive Committee Rebuked by Gathering for Expelling Language Federations and State Organizations Without Appealing to Their Members,” by Herman Michelson [Sept. 4, 1919] During the 6th Day of the Socialist Party of America’s Emergency National Convention in Chicago, the delegates unanimously adopted a manifesto of the party which New York Call reporter Herman Michelson characterizes as “the most revolutionary the party has ever drawn up, and one certain to bring back into the organization thousands of members temporarily outside of it, either because their local organizations were expelled or by reason of what Lenin has called ‘the intoxication of the revolutionary phrase.’” Upon adoption of the document, “the convention broke into an ovation that lasted for several minutes, winding up with three cheers for the Socialist Party,” Michelson notes. An extremely controversial supplemental report of the National Executive Committee was also delivered and debated, detailing the NEC’s aggressive policy of suspensions and expulsions which stripped upwards of 70,000 members from the SPA’s ranks in a few short months. The convention approved the report by a vote of 53 to 8, concurring that “the administration of discipline was necessary and justified, but feels that had the National Executive Committee made a sufficient effort to acquaint the membership of the suspended and expelled organizations with the facts and endeavored to have them repudiate their officials that many of the members now outside the party might have remained in.” The view of William Henry of Indiana is cited as being typical of that of convention delegates: “"There is little doubt that the National Executive Committee was absolutely right in its action. But that action was very bad tactics.”

“The Socialist Party Manifesto,” by James Oneal [Sept. 4, 1919] A lite and breezy opinion piece written from Chicago by the New York Call’s lead editorialist, James Oneal. Oneal considers the recently-adopted “Manifesto of the Socialist Party"—an aggressively-phrased document written in large measure to stave the attrition of the SPA’s more radical members. Oneal, the dominant leader of the SPA’s Regular faction in 1919, admits as much here, calling the manifesto “a splendid document” which “will tend to rally members who have been uncertain of the outcome of the convention” as well as those blinded by the appeals of patriotism during the war years. “The old isolation of the United States is gone, gone for the Socialists and the exploiters of the country,” Oneal declares. He notes that now that America was integrated into world imperialism henceforth American Socialists will have to give as much attention to matters such as militarism and colonialism as the European Socialists have.

St. Louis, Missouri Local Completely Reorganized [events of Aug. 13-25, 1919] Published in The New York Call, vol. 12, no. 247 (Sept. 4, 1919), pg. 7.

“Parleys Fail to Effect Fusion of Communists: Both Groups Stand Pat on Original Declarations — Chicago is Adopted as Seat.” (NY Call) [Sept. 5, 1919] This unsigned report from the New York Call documents squabbles at the founding conventions of the rival Communist Party of America and Communist Labor Party. In the CPA’s case the cause of dissension was the location of party headquarters, with the Russian Federationists of New York City breaking ranks with their caucus in supporting NYC over Chicago—a proposal which was defeated. The CLP fought over the composition of its NEC, with a first outcome that included moderates Ludwig Lore and Marguerite Prevey bitterly denounced by a bloc of New Yorkers including Jack Reed and Ben Gitlow as constituting an impediment to unity with the more radical CPA. A new election was held as a result of this attack, the article indicates, with a new 5 member NEC approved that included Max Bedacht and Edward Lindgren in place of Lore and Prevey.

“Party Repudiates Berne Parley, Calls for New Conclave: Convention Goes on Record As Favoring Eugene Debs For Presidential Candidate in 1920 and Ends Its Sessions...: National Executive Officials Instructed to Appoint Committee of 7 to Draw Up Statement of Principles and Working Platform...” by Herman Michelson [Sept. 5, 1919] The final day of the Socialist Party Emergency National Convention is reviewed by the New York Call’s reporter on the scene, Herman Michelson. During its 7th day, the convention delegates unanimously declared themselves in favor of Gene Debs as the party’s Presidential standard-bearer in the coming 1920 campaign, but left the matter of formal nomination to a convention to be convened for that purpose in the coming year (the revised party constitution calling for annual conventions in lieu of the previous quadrennial gatherings). The issue of international affiliation was debated and a majority resolution adopted for referral to the party membership which called for SPA affiliation to a “reconstructed Socialist International” in which “only such organizations and parties should be given representation which declare their strict adherence by word and deed to the principle of the class struggle.” The majority resolution added that “to such an international must be invited the Communist parties of Russia and Germany and those Socialist parties in all countries which subscribe to the principle of the class struggle. No party which participates in a movement coalition with parties of the bourgeoisie shall be invited.” This majority resolution was ultimately defeated by vote of the party membership in favor of an even more radical minority resolution authored by Illinois delegates Louis Engdahl and Bill Kruse, calling for affiliation of the SPA to the Third International. A 7 member “provisional National Executive Committee, which is to function until the next national convention in 1920, or until a permanent committee is elected” was named by the convention, consisting of William Brandt, William Henry, John Hagel, Edmund Melms, James Oneal, George Roewer Jr., and Oliver Wilson. Substantial changes in the party constitution were made and referred to the membership for ratification by referendum, including a provision that the new Executive Secretary of the Party was to be named by the NEC rather than directly elected by the party membership, as had previously been the case.

“Circular Letter to All Locals and Branches of the Socialist Party of America from Alfred Wagenknecht, Executive Secretary of the CLP, circa Sept. 10, 1919.” This communique was sent out by Executive Secretary of the Communist Labor Party Alfred Wagenknecht immediately after the formation of the CLP to all local units of the Socialist Party, seeking their affiliation with the new organization. “The Left Wing delegates whom you sent to Chicago to attend the convention of the Socialist Party were thrown out of the convention hall by the police in command of the Socialist Party National Secretary. These Left Wing delegates, 82 in number, then organized the legal Socialist Party convention, under the direction of the new National Executive Committee which you elected and in obedience to the mandate of the National Left Wing Conference, organized the Communist Labor Party, the logical outgrowth of the fight for Left Wing principles made in the Socialist Party by the majority of its members,” Wagenknecht declares. Wagenknecht advocates the immediate call of a meeting of each local body for the sole purpose of considering the constitution, program, and platform of the CLP and for decision on the question of affiliation. “Take your stand with us in a united revolutionary movement. Out all ties that bind you to that kind of socialism which has made Scheidemann and Kerensky infamous.... The old Socialist Party is dead. The new party is virile with the spirit of those who know no compromise,” Wagenknecht implores.

“Resolution of Local Essex Co., NJ, Voting Confidence in Harwood’s Integrity: Meeting of Sept. 6, 1919.” In the evening of Sept. 6, 1919, Local Essex County, New Jersey held a special meeting to hear the report of Fred Harwood, delegate to the Emergency National Convention whose election had been challenged by the convention’s Credentials Committee. Harwood—one of the 15 who had been elected to the National Executive Committee in the abrogated party election of 1919—had been subject to a barrage of criticism for having sat at the one meeting of the “new” NEC, chaired by “Executive Secretary pro tem” Alfred Wagenknecht in July. Harwood had been denied the right to answer this criticism from the floor of the convention and had left the gathering and returned to New Jersey in protest, despite his election eventually being upheld by the convention. At the meeting “Harwood expressed his feelings regarding the treatment which he received from certain individuals influential in the councils of the convention, and stated that as a result of this treatment he was thoroughly disillusioned, and could no longer work in the same organization with them. He stated that he was publicly called a thief and a crook by a man that is recognized as one of the foremost Socialists of America [Victor Berger], a man who does not know him personally, and therefore was in no position to make such unwarranted charges, and still less able to prove them.” As a result, Harwood had tendered his resignation as secretary of Local Essex. After extended discussion, the local voted by a wide majority to refuse to accept Harwood’s resignation, and unanimously approved a resolution attesting to Harwood’s honesty, integrity, and good intentions and to protesting the actions of the individuals who “so shamelessly slandered him.”

“Convention Inspires Socialists to Build Mighty Party Anew: Reconstruction Now Keynote of Movement as Delegates Return Home to Intensify Local Organization Work.” (NY Call) [Sept. 7, 1919] It is regrettable that this account of the Chicago conventions from the summer of 1919 is unsigned, for it adds free and easy and whimsical portraits of tense and overwrought gatherings. The writer notes several important technical details—the fact that fully three days of seven had been spent just getting the credentials war at the Socialist Party convention resolved, the fact that a new orientation towards the trade unions through establishment of a Committee on Economic Organization, details of the revised party constitution, which was to end direct election of the governing National Executive Committee. First-hand glimpses are offered of the Communist Labor Party convention, including a comical take upon the Ohio CLP’s dilemma of voting for its own candidates on the November ballot under the Socialist Party’s banner, with Communist Party of America Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg at the top of the ticket. A folksy description contrasting the demeanor of the aggressive New York and laid back Wisconsin delegations at the SPA’s Emergency Convention adds spice, complete with charming descriptions of Milwaukee Socialists Ed Melms, Dan Hoan, and Victor Berger.

“Socialist Party Convention.” (Editorial from The New York Call) [Sept. 9, 1919] Self-congratulatory editorial from the pages of the New York Call, probably but not definitely written by the paper’s chief editorialist, James Oneal. The editorial calls the newly formed Communist Party of America “an anomaly in the history of working class parties” in that it is an organization established by foreign-born workers in an attempt to win power by gaining the mass support of a native-born population. Moreover, hostile constituent elements comprise the CPA, the editorialist notes, including an electorally-oriented but programatically impossibilist Michigan organization and language federations believing in imminent revolution while eschewing politics altogether. The rival Communist Labor Party is portrayed as a “wavering center” between the SPA and the CPA, comprised of Ohio and Washington delegations and a “few scattering delegates” from elsewhere. This group bolted one convention only to be excluded from the other and were a patched-together assemblage held together only by an amorphous conception of “political action.” No long term party could be maintained around such a vague concept, the editorialist asserts. The Socialist Party, by way of contrast, is said to have repudiated the weak 2nd International and “without a dissenting voice, maintains its position of aid and endorsement of the genuine fighters for Socialism and the working class in Russia, Germany, and other countries, while opposing all groups that support counter-revolution or who sanction support of coalition governments.” The editorialist expresses confidence that “the sincere members who have been misled during the past few months will return” to the Socialist Party’s ranks.

“Left Wing Left Far Behind in Primaries.” (NY Call) [Sept. 12, 1919] Final, official vote counts from the unprecedented primary election battle in New York City between the slate of the Socialist Party Regulars and the slate of the Left Wing Section. Unlike the initial report of the vote count published by The Call a week earlier, this includes the names of the entire Left Wing slate. One or two of the very few races captured by the Left Wing shifted back to the Regulars in this final count.

“Strength of the Two Left Wing Parties.” (Communist Labor Party News) [circa Sept. 15, 1919] This short article pronounces the Communist Labor Party’s view of the membership status of the CPA and CLP at the time of their formation. The article correctly notes that” only an estimate of the strength of each can be given at this time for the exact membership can not be ascertained until both organizations have functioned for some months and then only upon the basis of dues stamp sales.” The CPA is said to consist largely of members from the language federations:” Russian, 6,500; Ukrainian, 3,500; South Slavic, 3,000; Lithuanian, 6,000; Lettish [Latvian] 1,500; Hungarian, 2,400; Polish, 2,000,” plus” a few thousand English-speaking members” for a total estimated membership of the Communist Party of” about 28,000.” This estimate is reasonable. The count of its own CLP organizational ranks is highly inflated however, based upon Anglophonic state memberships plus” the greater portion of the German Federation membership, with a Left Wing of” about 5,000, plus” the Italian Federation, 1,000; and the Scandinavian Federation, 3,000.” Thus,” the membership of the Communist Labor Party equals, if it does not exceed, that of the Communist Party,” the article writer optimistically (and wrongly) declares.

“National Secretary Germer’s Letter of Resignation: Retiring Party Official Gives Reason for Quitting Post at This Time—Is Under 20 Years’ Prison Sentence,” by Adolph Germer [Sept. 18, 1919] With the exception of factional leader James Oneal, the members of the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party stood down after the Emergency National Convention which began August 30, 1919, and a new NEC was elected to govern the organization. National Secretary Adolph Germer was not far behind them, submitting this letter of resignation to the newly named “Temporary NEC” little more than 2 weeks after the convention closed. “Much has been made of the claim that the old National Executive Committee precipitated the controversy within the party in order to keep itself in power,” Germer declares, noting that “the report of the special committee that investigated the election frauds fully vindicated the course of the old National Executive Committee. Those who questioned the motives of the National Executive Committee in holding up the election for party officials, suspending the 7 foreign language federations, and expelling Michigan and Massachusetts were proven malicious slanderers and professional disrupters.” The decision by the outgoing NEC to terminate the 1919 election of party officials was “unanimously endorsed by the recent national convention, which included a large number of the Left Wing delegates.” Germer announces that “I assume my full share of the responsibility” for the halting of the election, suspensions, and expulsions, and that he would follow the example of the outgoing NEC by standing down as Executive Secretary, effective Oct. 11, 1919, “or sooner if the NEC can make arrangements to have a successor take over the affairs of the National Office.”

“Steel Strike May Begin Labor’s Last Big Battle With Industrial Barons: Bitterness and Violence Seen as Certain Results—Wilson’s October 6 Conference Mildly Amuses Wall Street Interests,” by Laurence Todd [Sept. 20, 1919] Laurence Todd of the Federated Press sets the table for the Great Steel Strike, scheduled to begin the day after publication of this article. Todd notes with approval the decision not to delay the strike until after the October 6 scheduled start of Woodrow Wilson’s Conference Industrial Relations, noting that the ranks of participants had been stacked with leading opponents of organized labor under the guise of representatives of the “public.” Todd also notes that the red-baiting of strike organizer William Z. Foster had begun—“the game is to present him as a dangerous anarchist.” In contrast to the stillborn October 6 conference, Todd holds hope for a “genuine and sincere conference on the future of the railroad industry” in support of the Plumb Plan to be led by Frederic C. Howe. A grassroots movement in favor of a Labor Party and Farmer-Labor cooperation is noted, with state labor organizations in five states already having declared “for union with the organized farmers in the coming political campaign.”

“’Death for Me or Release for All,’ Says Debs: ‘I Trust in My Comrades,’” by Joseph W. Sharts [event of Sept. 20, 1919] News account of a follow-up visit to imprisoned Socialist leader Gene Debs at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary by Dayton, Ohio Socialist Joseph Sharts. Sharts’ visit was to receive the final word from Debs about whether to proceed with a habeas corpus appeal on his behalf—a procedure put on a 30 day delay by Debs at an August 21 meeting with Sharts and Marguerite Prevey. Debs declines to allow action taken for him as an individual by his comrades: “”I have studied this matter for 30 days. Every instinct in me is against my making an individual fight for liberty while my comrades rot in jail! Woodrow Wilson and his political crowd sent me here from Moundsville [WV] to kill or break me. I shall stay until I die or he is forced to release us all. My faith is in the rank and file of my comrades.” With regard to the split in the ranks of the Socialist Party, Sharts quotes Debs directly: “’The rank and file of the Socialist movement have no quarrel with each other,’ he declared. ‘It is the leaders always, and those who want to be leaders, who keep up factional differences and stir up new ones.’”

“Impressions of the Convention,” by James Oneal [events of Aug. 30-Sept. 5, 1919] This article by leader of the Socialist Party’s Regular faction, James Oneal, provides a review of the party’s life in the months leading up to the August 30, 1919, Emergency National Convention. Oneal charges the Left Wing with a breach of faith for abandoning the Socialist Party when it was under external attack by the US government, despite its maintenance of a consistent and principled anti-militarist perspective during the world war. While Oneal allows that “many of those who had in the meantime attached themselves to the insurgent forces were thoroughly sincere in their belief that the Socialist Party had in some way betrayed the historic aims of the Socialist movement,” he charges that the Left Wing had never provided evidence of any sort documenting the validity of their position. Outside of a few lapses of individual members from the party and its cause, the Left Wing’s criticism had amounted to nothing more than “highly emotionalized attacks which at times bordered on hysteria,” Oneal charges. “The insurgent group displayed the same sort of mental distress and irrational conduct that the deserters who left the party shortly after the entrance of the United States into the war. Both constituted an irrational reaction to the great events transpiring in Europe. Thousands of party members who were not swept off their feet undoubtedly felt the impress of the European upheaval and at certain moments were inclined to permit their emotions to sway their reason.” Oneal claims that the outcome of the Emergency National Convention was not determined until its third day, when at last “normal judgments began to return and became more and more stable.” The chief cause of this change was the “sobering effect” of certain delegates “demanding admission and then refusing to take their seats when given them”—“something that had never been witnessed in a Socialist convention before.” The unanimous vote accepting the controversial report of the special investigating committee on the 1919 party referendums is characterized as another pivotal moment in the history of the convention: “When the negative vote was called for there was silence for a moment. Then the convention burst into a roar of applause,” Oneal recalls. “No convention in the party’s history was ever characterized by so many dramatic moments and so much tense feeling and uncertainty, for the first few days of this one,” Oneal declares.

“Morris Hillquit Returns After 14 Months’ Recuperation; Looks Fine.” (NY Call) [event of Sept. 22, 1919] While certainly not of the same world-historical importance as the meeting of the returning Lenin at the Finland Station by the Bolshevik faithful, there is a certain faint echo of the event depicted in this news report from the New York Call detailing the meeting of Socialist Party leader Morris Hillquit at Grand Central Station in New York after his 14 months’ illness and recuperation in upstate New York. At 7:45 am, “about 40 of [Hillquit’s] close friends and party officials, together with committees from some of the branches, greeted him with enthusiasm. The cheering was so great that an impromptu meeting gathered around the Socialists, from which Hillquit laughingly escaped with his companions.” In attendance were such heavy-hitters of the Socialist Party as Executive Secretary Adolph Germer, Secretary of Local Greater New York Julius Gerber, NEC member George Goebel, and representatives of various party units and institutions. “Flowers were sent by many of the branches, and someone laughed and wondered where the rice was,” the reporter notes. “When asked his opinion upon the League of Nations, the steel strike, the Left Wing, the chances of the Reds copping the world’s pennant, and of the Shantung settlement, Hillquit said: ‘Let’s all have breakfast.’ The announcement was greeted with cheers.” The party thereupon adjourned to the Grand Central Station restaurant for bacon and eggs.

“We Are All Socialists: Split Need Not Weaken the Movement—Let Us Waste No More Time In Quarreling, but Throw Our Whole Strength Into the Fight on Capitalism,” by Morris Hillquit [Sept. 22, 1919] This article in the New York Call marked Socialist Party leader Morris Hillquit’s return to active party life after a 14 months’ illness and recuperation at a sanitarium in upstate New York. Hillquit weighs in publicly on the 1919 party split for the first time, taking a benign position on the bitter factional struggle, which Hillquit characterizes as “unfortunate but unavoidable.” The division of the party had been “an accomplished and irrevocable fact many months ago” and the various Chicago conventions had done “nothing more than recognize the fact,” Hillquit notes. The departure of the Left Wing from the ranks of the Socialist Party did not mean that their loss to the Socialist movement, however, nor need it necessarily mean a weakening of that movement. “Our newly baptized “Communists” have not ceased to be Socialists even though in a moment of destructive enthusiasm they have chosen to discard the name that stands for so much in the history of the modern world. They are wrong in their estimate of American conditions, their theoretical conclusions, and practical methods, but they have not deserted to the enemy. The bulk of their following is still good Socialist material, and when the hour of the real Socialist fight strikes this country, we may find them again in our ranks,” Hillquit declares. Hillquit urges against an preoccupation with factional infighting: “The quarrels of political stepbrothers are always more violent than those of political strangers. It is to be hoped that the Socialist Party at least will effectively resist the temptation, for nothing could be more ruinous to the Socialist movement than frittering away its energies and resources on internecine strife,” Hillquit cautions. Hillquit upbraids those who have taken the party’s dirty laundry to the capitalist press: “Our quarrel is a family quarrel and has no room in the columns of the capitalist papers, where it can only give joy and comfort to the common enemy.”

“The Foreign Language Federations in the Socialist Party: What Should the Relation Be Between Non-English Speaking Groups and the American Workers?” by Andrew Pranspill [Sept. 23, 1919] A thoughtful and provocative reassessment of the role and function of language federations in the Socialist Party of American in the aftermath of the great split of 1919. Pranspill, formerly the Secretary of the SPA’s tiny Estonian Federation and now secretary of Local Astoria, New York, argues that each of the federations are actually nothing more than a dreaded “organization within an organization,” in which the participant members have their own set of nationally-determined concerns and further reflect the general concerns of the foreign worker in America, rather than the issues which concern the American working class as a whole. For perhaps the first time in the Socialist Press, the real cause of growth of the Russian, Ukrainian, and other language federations in late 1918 and early 1919 is correctly identified: “They have joined the Socialist Party because they want to go back to their old country. ‘The workers in Russia have overpowered the capitalists and all the exploiters, and in the struggle they have not spared their lives.... What will you say on your return when the Russian comrades ask you “What good did you do in America?"’ These are the arguments one almost invariably hears at the Russian propaganda meetings. The reason they so eagerly flock to the Socialist Party is their desire to go back to Russia.” The publications of these foreign language groups are dominated by news of the old country, while the news of the American movement is given short shrift. No matter how radical the positions it takes, the American party will never be radical enough for such foreign workers, Pranspill declares, since the federationists held the anglophonic membership in even greater contempt than English speaking workers hold for their foreign brethren on the basis of national chauvinism. “Why should then the federations pay dues to the party for merely supervising their work? They need no supervision. To do that is an insult to them. This state of affairs naturally breeds discord and dissatisfaction. The Socialist Party in America should stand on its own feet. It should not have any foreign federations inside of itself.... It is a condition detrimental to both the party and to the federations. The best thing to do is to leave them alone. Let them have their platform if they wish, and let them do whatever they please. No matter how revolutionary the foreign federations may be, no matter how perfect their organization, the American workers will not be led by the foreign federation. The Socialist Party must represent the workers in America, not some homesick immigrants. It must speak to the American workers in the terms of their grievances,” Pranspill declares.

“Seattle Labor Forces Removal of Warden Who Tortured Wells: Halligan to be Ousted from McNeil Island as Result of Physician’s Report of Terrible Brutalities Practiced on Political Prisoners.” (NY Call) [Sept. 24, 1919] News report indicating that the scandalous treatment meted out to Seattle Socialist and wartime political prisoner Hulet Wells had ended in removal of O.P. Halligan as warden of the federal penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington. Wells, an opponent of conscription, had been jailed and sentenced to two years in prison even before passage of the 1917 Espionage Law. There he had been assigned to a work crew with the task of felling and cutting one cord of wood per man per day. Physically unable to perform this task, Wells had refused the duty and been consigned to a subterranan punishment cell, where for nearly two weeks in inadequate sanitary conditions he had been forced to undergo stress position and food deprivation torture—limited to 14 ounces of bread plus water per day. His wife had alerted the Seattle labor movement to her husband’s plight and a public scandal had erupted, ending with the warden’s replacement by the former chief of the Washington state penitentiary at Walla Walla.

“National Yipsel Head Under Charges.” (NY Call) [Sept. 27, 1919] Brief news snippet from the pages of the New York Call announcing that charges had been brought against Oliver Carlson, head of the Socialist Party’s youth section, by William Kruse, former head of the Young People’s Socialist League ("Yipsel"). “The charges are that he has not occupied his office, although regularly drawing his wages; that he has had his official mail directed to his home, and that he refused to occupy his seat at the national convention, but attended the convention of a party formed as a rival to the Socialist Party instead,” the article states. Kruse had been placed in interim charge of the YPSL organization. The article ironically notes that Bill Kruse had himself recently been “the leader of the “Left Wing” element in the national convention, but that he refused to bolt the party.”

“Minutes of Meeting of Local Hudson County, NJ, held Sept. 28, 1919.” Minutes of the first post-convention meeting of Local Hudson County, NJ—including the cities of Hoboken and Jersey City, across the river from New York City. New Jersey’s delegates to the 1919 Emergency National Convention staked out an intermediate position between the Left Wing Section and the Regulars, generally supportive of the former but seeking to continue work within the Socialist Party rather than to bolt. With the resignation of left wing supporter State Secretary Fred Harwood—discouraged by the course of the party convention—Milo C. Jones was named his replacement. The minutes reveal that the National Office of the SPA was $5,000 in debt and the State Office of the Socialist Party of New Jersey $1,000 in debt. Nine branches of the organization were found to have joined the Communist Labor Party and their charters were subsequently removed. A statement to the party written by convention delegate Rose Weiss was approved by the local and is reprinted in full here. The Weiss resolution declared: “We wish emphatically to protest at the manner in which the convention was conducted. The exclusion of the minority faction, the evasion of the issue as to the right of the National Executive Committee to revoke chargers and suspend members at will, the holding of secret caucuses, and the passing of machine slates for the election of committees, the unwillingness to face the issues squarely, manifest tendencies which, if not checked, will give rise to a despotism within the party as dangerous and as undesirable as that prevailing in the capitalist parties.”

“To Our Comrades In Kings County! Open Letter from Headquarters, Local Kings County, Socialist Party.” [Sept. 30, 1919] Open letter published on the party page of the New York Call from the Brooklyn Socialist Party organization inviting members who had left for factional reasons during the Left Wing split to rejoin the party. The unnamed author observes that the Socialist Party Regulars had been accused by the Left Wing of supporting the regime of Philipp Scheidemann in Germany, the failed Berne International, and of opposing the Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia—not one of which was true, as proven by the actions of the recently completed Emergency National Convention. Nor had the Left Wing been barred from the convention, as “the records...show that quite a minority of delegates with Left Wing sympathies were seated without any contest and helped to organize the convention.” The new dual Communist parties were already beset by factional strife and “cannot live,” the writer contents, while the Socialist Party was “still growing” in Kings County. Despite having been slandered by the opposition “we also recognize that many comrades were honest and conscientious in taking the course they did,” the writer notes, adding: “There is no desire to indulge in a policy of vengeance. A few of the leading offenders who were responsible for the injury will be excluded. But the mass of the honest members are welcome in the party at any time they desire to join.”

“Socialists to Vote for Left Wing Nominees: Members of the Seceding Groups Were Put on the Ticket at Primaries: State Executive Committee Calls for Working Class Unity at Polls.” (NY Call) [Sept. 30, 1919] Although the regular faction of the Socialist Party of New York resoundingly defeated the slate of the Left Wing Section in the first primary election in party history (held Sept. 2, 1919), there were some Left Wing candidates in Brooklyn, Queens, Rochester, and Buffalo who emerged triumphant. After the first week of September, these "Socialist Party nominees" were no longer members of the party, having left for the rival Communist Party of America or Communist Labor Party. The question arose: What were oyal party members to do about these non-Socialist Party Socialist nominees? The State Executive Committee pondered the issue and decided to endorse the voting of a straight party ticket, including departed dissidents. "Forget the personalities and wage the strongest campaign we have ever yet put up," the New York SEC advised. "It is believed that the result of the action will be a warmer and more cordial feeling between the factions," the article of this short piece in the New York Call opines.

“Open Letter to James Pontius in Sedalia, Missouri from William L. Garver in Springfield, Missouri.” [circa Sept. 30, 1919] With the Socialist Party's 1919 Emergency National Convention in the rear view mirror, State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Missouri at last feels free to offer his own assessment of the recent party crisis. The split Garver attributes to the personal leadership ambitions and enmities of Left Wing Section leaders Ludwig Katterfeld and Alfred Wagenknecht. If the Socialist Party was not radical enough, these leaders and their followers could simply have joined the Socialist Labor Party, Garver suggests, since its historic leader Daniel DeLeon had been lauded by Lenin and it had maintained a delegate at the founding congress of the Communist International in March 1919. Garver calls the "so-called Communists" "paper revolutionaries" and notes that whereas in Russia the revolution was based around a land program and was backed by a cooperative movement including 48,000 societies. The Communists had neither and furthermore dismissed such matters as insignificant. "They want all or nothing," Garver complains. The Socialist Party's role remains education of the working class and the role of the unions should be to train workers for the eventual management of industry and to develop a cooperative network for the distribution of goods in the post-revolutionary future, Garver indicates.

OCTOBER

“The German-Speaking Branches in New York: Most of the German-Speaking Comrades True to the Socialist Party are Reorganizing — Others Divide Up Between Communist and Communist Labor Parties,” by G.A. Hoehn [Oct. 1, 1919] Socialist Party Regular G.A. “Gus” Hoehn, editor of St. Louis Labor, gets his German-American readership up to date with affairs in the Socialist Party’s German-language branches in New York in the aftermath of the September 1919 party split. Hoehn details the story of Ludwig Lore, formerly an IWW organizer who became Herman Schlueter’s successor as editor of the daily newspaper of the German Federation, the New Yorker Volkszeitung. “When John Reed, Fraina, and others decided to put the Socialist Party on wings, Lore joined the ‘Left Wing,’ which was his privilege. But he always pretended he would defend the unity of the Socialist Party and his only object was to get the party into a radical revolutionary position,” Hoehn writes. With the split, Lore went with the Communist Labor Party established by Alfred Wagenknecht and his associates, publishing accounts of the CLP convention in the Volkszeitung. As a result, Hoehn notes, many German branches of New York went over to the CLP en bloc, having received no legitimate information from the Socialist Party in the Lore-dominated daily. Hoehn was brought to New York by SPA loyalists from September 20 to 26, 1919, to represent the party’s position in person to the German branches, being joined at a large meeting on Sunday, September 21 by Executive Secretary Adolph Germer. The CLP and CPA also had representatives in attendance to state the cases of those organizations. The end result of the debates was a split of the German-language branches between SPA and CLP branches, with the latter retaining control of the Volkszeitung. Hoehn nevertheless held up hope that error would be recognized and that the supporters of the Communist movement would subsequently return.

“Report of the Missouri Delegates on the National Emergency Convention to the Membership.” [events of Aug. 30-Sept. 5, 1919] Brief report by W.M. Brandt, G.A. Hoehn, Caleb Lipscomb, Jacob Kassner, Missouri delegates to the Socialist Party’s Emergency National Convention to the members of the Socialist Party of Missouri. “We find that the action of the National Executive Committee in holding up the referendum on the election of a new National Executive Committee last May was not only fully justified, but extremely proper. It saved the party from total destruction. We examined the returns and heard the report of the special committee elected to investigate the charge of fraud, which report was adopted by unanimous vote of the delegates, and find beyond doubt that the most shameful frauds were perpetrated, mostly by some of the foreign language federations, and largely under the direction of American citizens,” the report declares. The report also cites financial improprieties on the part of the suspended language federations, but optimistically asserts “aside from the financial condition of the party, we feel that it is in better condition than ever before.”

“Otto Branstetter Named Secretary of Socialist Party: Edmund Melms Sees Huge Increase Coming in Party Membership.” (Milwaukee Leader) [Oct. 1, 1919] Following Adolph Germer’s mid-September resignation as Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party, the party’s governing 7 member “temporary” National Executive Committee quickly moved to fill the vacancy. Their choice was was long-time Oklahoma party functionary Otto Branstetter. The decision was announced to the SP daily, the Milwaukee Leader, by NEC member Edmund Melms, returning home from the NEC’s quarterly gathering in Chicago. “Encouraging reports were received from Ohio, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Indiana, and California, an from indications it will be only a short time when the Socialist Party of the United States will witness a new growth and a tremendous increase in membership, as the result of overcoming the recent troubles forced upon it,” Melms optimistically told the paper. Melms proclaims the Communist Labor Party to be a stillborn organization: “The so-called Communist Labor Party is dead. One of the strongest states that it claimed was Ohio, and that state is hopelessly lost to it. Some of the strongest industrial cities have repudiated it. In Cleveland, in the city and country convention just held, the Left Wingers [CLP] were able only to muster the votes of 3 delegates seated in the convention.” Plans for aggressive expansion of the SP’s membership ranks are noted by Melms.

“Be a Socialist—Join the Party,” by Otto Branstetter [Oct. 6, 1919] This article by new Socialist Party Executive Secretary Otto Branstetter provides an excellent example of the relatively simple agitational literature which that organization issued in copious quantities. It also provides a window upon the dominant SPA ideology in the months following the September 1919 party split. Branstetter draws parallels the Socialist Party to several broad membership social and fraternal organizations—the Methodist church, the Masons, the trade union local. The notion of the SP as a “vanguard party” is entirely lacking in this construct; rather, joining of the Socialist Party (and paying its dues) is seen as a matter of civic duty for those sharing the socialist vision. Branstetter declares: “I know of but two reasons why a man who calls himself a Socialist does not join the organization. The first is that, while he believes in the principles of Socialism, he does not realize the need of the party organization. In this case he has missed the essence of Socialism—cooperation, organization, concerted effort, and united action on the part of the working class for their own advancement and their own emancipation... If, on the other hand, he realizes the need of organization ... and then he refuses to get into that organization which he knows to be necessary—he is unfaithful to his principles, to the party and to his class, and is unworthy of being called a ‘comrade’ or a ‘Socialist.’” Branstetter states epigrammatically that “It is well to agitate, it is good to educate, but it is absolutely necessary to organize.” The activity of the broad Socialist Party in the electoral sphere is seen as the mechanism for the victory of the Socialist system, the SP “a political movement that will become a power for the benefit of the working class in your city and in the nation.”

Democracy and the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat,’” by Joseph Gollomb [Oct. 13, 1919] Socialist Party loyalist Joseph Gollomb takes on the main ideological concept advocated by the nascent Communist movement, the primary objective of establishing a “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” in the transition to Socialist society. Gollomb quotes statements made in very recent months by leading Left Wing writers Max Eastman and John Reed indicating a belief in the alternative conception of “Democracy” and states that “ a change in a few months or even years from a conviction of the beauty of political democracy to a contempt for it suggests less a growing mind than a spinning top. One can’t help wondering what the next 4 months will do to the present fashion. And a year or two from now?” Gollomb quotes a conversation had recently with John Reed in which Reed is held to have agreed freely with the premise that due to the lack of “class-consciousness” on the part of a great part of the American proletariat, “Dictatorship of the proletariat ... means practically dictatorship by the [Left Wing] Socialists.” By way of contrast, the [Regular] Socialists “have fought dictators and dictatorships until the very name makes our neck feathers stand on end. For years we have cried and agitated that the cures for the ills of democracy is more democracy and still more democracy.” As for Russia, the desperate measures adopted of necessity of the Bolsheviks had little to do with the situation in prosperous and swaggering America, Gollomb states, although “our peddlers of the phrase would try to vend here and now what the Russians have resorted to only in the most desperate of their emergencies!”

“A Message From Debs: Letter to the NEC of the Socialist Party of America, October 9, 1919,” by William Henry On the morning of Oct. 5, 1919, Socialist Party NEC member William Henry of Indianapolis visited fellow Hoosier Gene Debs in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Henry wrote this letter to the other members of the NEC about his visit. With regard to the 1919 split of the Socialist Party, Debs is quoted as saying, “have seen this coming for some time and am not at all surprised. Everything will come out all right; the rank and file are all right. The principle is the big thing.” Debs is said to have been cut off from all Socialist and radical publication and Henry further alludes that “IWW and Bolshevik prisoners” were held in another building at the penitentiary—although Debs is known to have been in close contact with fellow prisoner Joseph Coldwell of the Communist Labor Party, at a minimum. Debs is said to have been in good spirits but to have lost weight during his incarceration. Debs emphasized his refusal to accept any conditions placed upon his early release: “If I should agree to say nothing, and crawl through a small hole, sacrificing principle and my conscience, then I could get out; but if I should crawl out through a small hole, then I would be only the size of the hole when I did get out. I am coming out of here all right. Tell the comrades to be in good cheer, and work for the cause. Tell them I love them all. Tell them I feel good, and the authorities of the prison are treating me as well as the rules will permit.”

“Letter to Johnson H. Meek in Yarrow, MO from William L. Garver, State Secretary of the SP of Missouri in Springfield, MO, October 16, 1919.” The State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Missouri William Garver justifies the Socialist Party of America’s decision to proceed to a split at its 1919 Emergency National Convention in this letter to a party member elsewhere in the state. ” Garver has confidence in the forthcoming 1920 political campaign and its prospects for success, something he deems which would have been “hampered and held back if the elements that have lost hope in political action had had a dominating influence in the party.” While the Communists have abandoned the political process for “mass action,” Garver professes his continued faith in an electoral road to power, declaring: “I contend that the American people can still use the ballot and get the police and army in their control through political action if they want to.... I am ready and willing to use force, but I want to have the public opinion of the masses of the people on our side when the force is used, and the only way to have it is to have the force clothed with the legal power. Let us get the police force and the army and navy in our power and on our side.” Garver deplores the factional war waged by the Left Wing against the Regular, calling it “the most regrettable thing” the way in which “sincere comrades swallow without apparent question the accusations hurled at the old-time workers who for 20 or even 30 years have worked for the upbuilding of the Socialist Party. Along comes someone who has not had his ambition for leadership gratified and makes charges against the officials, and immediately the rank and file, who have developed such abnormal faculties of criticizing the exploiters and capitalists, cannot help but use the same critical faculties upon their own comrades.”

“In Defense of Representative Government: Speech to Congress,” by Victor L. Berger [Oct. 17, 1919] This is a lengthy defense speech made by Congressman Victor Berger before the House of Representatives, which was in the midst of proceedings to unseat him from the seat to which he had been elected. Berger asserts that it is not his personal case but the principle of representative government itself which is to be decided. His trial before Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis and a handpicked jury had been inherently unconstitutional and a travesty of justice, the likes of which were not to be equaled by either Tsarist Russia or the Kaiser’s Germany, Berger asserts. Worse yet, Berger had been right in his analysis of the European War as an imperialist adventure. Berger cites various statements made by Woodrow Wilson against American entry into the European bloodbath in 1916 and observes that “Mr. Wilson was re-elected President of the United States in November 1916 with the slogan that ‘He kept us out of war’; and after all this, he pushed us into the war a few months later.” The war had cost America billions of dollars, 326,177 killed and wounded, and gained America nothing. The world was not “made safe for democracy” as Wilson had cravenly sloganized, but rather an imperialist peace had been imposed by Britain and France, Berger notes. “What has America gained except billions of debts and a hundred thousand cripples? And we have lost most of our political democracy. Can anybody think of a single thing, worthwhile, that we have gained through this war?” Berger asks. For his consistent opposition to the conflict, Berger was to be denied his seat in Congress. He states: “I believe it is foolish to expect any results from riots and dynamite, from murderous attacks and conspiracies, in a country where we have the ballot, as long as the ballot has not been given a full and fair trial. We want to convince the majority of the people.... And we know that one can kill tyrants and scare individuals with dynamite and bullets, but one can not develop a system in that way. Lenin and Trotsky are finding this out to their dismay. Therefore, no true Socialist ever dreams of a sudden change of society. We may have revolutions, if neither the capitalists nor the workmen make good use of their brains, but greater than all revolutions is evolution. We know perfectly well that force serves only those who have it; that a sudden overthrow invariably breeds dictators; that dictatorship can promote only subjugation, never freedom.” Berger asserts that “The future belongs to some form of Socialism.” The actions of Congress to unseat an elected representative ran the risk of discrediting the democratic option in the eyes of the working class, Berger states, bolstering those who believed that “direct action” was required to usher in socialist society. “It will depend on our rulers whether we shall have an orderly evolution, which I have always preached and propagated, or a violent revolution, which we Socialists have always tried to avoid,” he says.

"Letter to E.M. Wormley in St. Joseph, MO from William L. Garver, State Secretary, Socialist Party of Missouri in Springfield, October 18, 1919." Open letter from the State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Missouri, William Garver, to a member of Local St. Joseph explaining the causes of the 1919 Left Wing split as he understood them. Garver places the main cause of the split in the explosive growth of the SPA’s foreign language federations in the aftermath of the Russian and Hungarian revolutions. “Many members of these federations are not naturalized citizens of the country, could not vote, and as a natural result did not have much confidence in the vote ever getting anything. This was accentuated by the knowledge that the Russian and Hungarian revolutions had been secured without the vote. The feeling grew stronger and stronger that the vote was no good,” Garver indicates. “About this time some members of the party who had given up hope in political action for quite a while coined the term Mass Action, and this term was taken up as showing a method better than political action,” Garver adds, noting that this idea appealed to the federationists, who secretly named a slate in the elections for party office and voted for it en bloc. Acting upon evidence of gross irregularities, the results of this election were set aside, Garver continues, with an emergency convention called to settle the matter and “the old committee holding in the meantime, because they would naturally hold until their successors were seated.”

“Rethinking the Labor Party,” by John M. Work [Oct. 20, 1919] Thinking in the Socialist Party about the possibility of active cooperation with the fledgling Labor Party movement began in 1919, as this column by former SPA National Executive Committee member John Work demonstrates. Work directly quotes the letter he wrote to the 1919 Emergency National Convention of the SPA, calling on the organization to “make it legal for a Socialist Party member to belong to the Labor Party or the National Non-Partisan League, without forfeiting his membership in the Socialist Party.” These were organizations that “are headed straight for Socialism, and will duly arrive if we assist them,” Work asserted—but no delegate to the 1919 Convention followed up on his suggestion. This article was written by Work for publication in the Milwaukee Leader to further advance this idea. “Fundamental changes in the social system are going to be made one of these times. If we want to imprint our ideas upon these changes, we must place ourselves in a position where we can do so. Otherwise we shall look on while others do it. Splendid isolation doesn’t suit me a little bit. I want to help build the new social order. To do so, I am willing to work with all other organizations that are willing to federate for working class purposes,” Work states.

“An Interview with Hillquit.” (article from the Reading Labor Advocate) [October 1919] This is said to have been the first interview granted by Socialist Party leader Morris Hillquit in more than 14 months (Hillquit being stricken with tuberculosis and to have stepped back from vigorous political activity for the duration of his stay at a sanitarium in upstate New York). Hillquit asserts the existence of three basic forms of Socialism in the world: “the Russian, the German, and the English. The Russian form is what has come to be known, quite unscientifically, as Bolshevism. The German form is largely parliamentary, while the English form, while it is political to a degree, is largely industrial.” These three basic forms of Socialism emerged under differing historical circumstances but were gradually converging. With regard to the Russian Revolution, Hillquit observes that “The revolution came when it did because of the circumstances of the case, and it took form, not as the revolution had been dreamed for years by the Russian revolutionists, but in an entirely different form. Kerensky could not succeed. He was miserably weak. But Lenin is a great man; in a very real and a very important sense, he is an opportunist, and he met things as he found them.” There was but one choice for Socialists in Russia, Hillquit asserts—the support of the Bolshevik Revolution. “That is why the Socialists who do not belong to the Bolshevik faction are rallying around the Soviet government with all their hearts to fight off the forces that threaten it. That is why Martov is trying to bring about a unity between all Socialist groups, to work out a Socialist regime supported by all the Socialists in Russia,” Hillquit states. As for the United States, Hillquit declares that “we are, as usual, the rear guard of the revolutionary workers’ movement. But things are speeded up these days. Fifty years of evolution is encompassed in a year these days. We may expect anything.”

“Rhode Island Party Reorganized: One Week’s Whirlwind Campaign Puts State Back Into Socialist Ranks.” (NY Call) [events of Oct. 20-25, 1919] The Socialist Party experienced a brief interlude of euphoria in the aftermath of the 1919 party split, marked by rosy vistas of rapid recovery of organizational size and energy with the departure of the organization’s dissident Left Wing. State and local organizations were rapidly reorganized for the newly purged SPA and the outlook seemed positive. This report from the pages of the New York Call details the efforts of Socialist Party organizer William Kruse to relaunch the organization in Rhode Island, a state which previously went over to the Communist Labor Party by a vote of 60 to 30 at an October 1919 state convention. Bill Kruse arrived on the scene on Oct. 20, and within a week had successfully managed to reconstruct a state organization with 9 branches (5 English, 2 Finnish, 2 Yiddish). A colorful account of an Oct. 24 YPSL meeting is included, featuring what seems to have been a spontaneous emergence of the sort of obnoxious disruptionism that would come to characterize the factional warfare of the American Left over the two subsequent decades: “After a motion to adjourn by the CLP members was defeated, about 8 of them arose and stamped noisily out of the room, yelling and singing. They went to the room above where they stamped on the floor and yelled ‘Bolshevik’ and sang ‘The Internationale’—very much out of tune... The meeting was held successfully, even after the bolters came back into the room to make more noise there.” “Even those Yipsels who were sympathetic with the CLP were disgusted at such tactics,” it is remarked.

“Left Wingers Invited to Rejoin Party.” (Walter Cook) [Oct. 29, 1919] It is simple to interpret Socialist Party of New York State Secretary Walter Cook’s appeal to Left Wingers to return to the ranks of a revitalized party as a crass bid by the now-impoverished SP for dues money, the organizational apparatus having just been safely ensconced in the hands of Oneal, Gerber, and the SP Regulars. However, Cook’s appeal may be also interpreted as a Hillquitian olive branch to those who had previously been dissatisfied with party tactics but who were at heart loyal to the SP organization—those who had been inadvertently cast aside in the suspensions of Left Wing branches and locals and their hasty reorganization (the New York Call in the same issue ran a display advertisement from the Communist Labor Party announcing its own organizational meeting, a sign of an effort towards coexistence between the feuding radical siblings). Secretary Cook (himself later a member of the Workers Party of America) notes that, unlike the practice during the run-up to the Emergency National Convention, it is not necessary for suspended members seeking readmission “to re-sign any application for membership or sign any new statement or pledge.” Cook states that “in order to retain their continuous and unaffected party membership, [suspended members] are earnestly requested to attend the meeting of the branch or local in their respective districts at their earliest convenience for the purpose of paying up such back dues as may have accumulated during the period of their inactivity and to have the branch authorize its secretary re-enroll them.... We appeal to you, therefore, comrades, to renew your activity within our ranks and assure you of a warm welcome back to your former places in the party.”

NOVEMBER

"U.S. Senate Resolution No. 213." [adopted Oct. 17, 1919] J. Edgar Hoover’s campaign for the arrest and deportation of alien radicals did not occur in a political vacuum, this resolution of the United States Senate makes clear. On October 14, 1919, conservative forces in the Senate introduced this resolution calling upon Attorney General Mitchell Palmer to “advise and inform the Senate whether or not the Department of Justice has taken legal proceedings for the arrest and deportation of aliens” who had “attempted to bring about the forcible overthrow of the Government of the United States” and “preached anarchy and sedition” in print and via the spoken work. This was, it was believed by the Senators, a exercise in pursuing “a deliberate plan and purpose to destroy existing property rights and to impede and obstruct the conduct of business essential to the prosperity and life of the community.” The resolution passed the Senate three days later.

"Speech Honoring the 2nd Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution: Brownsville Labor Lyceum, NYC — Nov. 7, 1919," by James Oneal There are a number of reasons that the Socialist Party split in 1919. Not included on this list was any difference in viewpoint between Socialist Party Regulars and Left Wing Socialists over the nature and fundamental justice of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. This is absolutely not a matter of debate: both factions were strongly supportive of the October Revolution in 1919, with the Regulars only gradually moving to a position of hostility, particularly after the show trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries in 1922. This November 7, 1919 speech in honor of the 2nd anniversary of the Bolshevik by the most Regular of the Regulars, National Executive Committee member James Oneal reiterates the point. Oneal notes that it took from 1776 to 1783 — seven years of “chaos, disorder, violence, and dissolution” — for the celebrated American Revolution to consolidate itself. Despite the similarity of the American revolutionary process to its Russian counterpart, Oneal finds one important difference: “We are accustomed in this country to glorify all bourgeois revolutions, all capitalistic revolutions are gloriﬁed, are worshiped, but any revolution that proposes to emancipate working men and peasants, are denounced and are anathematized, and they try to strangle it in the blood of those who achieve them.” Oneal declares that “in Russia the red banner of freedom flows above 150 million human beings, and it will stand as a beacon light to all the peoples of the world; and because it will serve as a beacon light, for that reason the diplomats and the bankers and the ﬁnancial oligarchy and the international imperialists intend to crush it if they possibly can. Russia is an inspiration of the working class, to the working class of the world.”

“Proclamation on the 2nd Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution,” issued by the SPA National Executive Committee [Nov. 7, 1919] This proclamation by the governing NEC of the Socialist Party should once and for all bury any notion that the 1919 party split was over the issue of “Communism” or the Left Wing’s disharmonious “support of Soviet Russia.” Documentary evidence makes amply clear, beyond any shadow of doubt or debate, that ALL ELEMENTS OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF AMERICA WERE SUPPORTIVE OF THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION IN THE 1917-1920 INTERVAL (and a great many through the 1922 show trial of the Socialist Revolutionary Party leaders, despite constant antagonism from Moscow and the American Communist movement). This declaration, issued by the so-called “Right Wing” NEC in honor of the 2nd Anniversary of the November Revolution, proclaims: “In all the annals of human history there never has been a more heroic struggle of the masses against such tremendous odds as that waged by the revolutionary republic of workers and peasants. From the hour of the proclamation of the Soviet republic, it has met the hostility of the world imperialists—German, Allied, and neutral alike. Our Russian comrades have decreed the abolition of the rule of capital, finance, and landed junkers in the life of Russia. They have repudiated the crimes of the imperialist statesmen and renounced the proposed annexations of the former criminal regime. Against the counterrevolution they have stood in arms, defending the Socialist fatherland, the only fatherland the workers can ever have to defend. The Soviet republic’s repudiation of the intrigues and crimes of the imperialist diplomats has provoked the hatred of the ruling classes of the world... Surrounded by a ring of bayonets, blockaded and denied the foodstuffs and raw materials essential for its economic and social life, interned from the world by the lying bourgeois press of the capitalist nations, forced to divert its energies to military defense, menaced within by the intrigues of the counterrevolutionist, maligned and slandered by the infuriated international thieves, the Socialist Soviet Republic of Russia bears aloft the banner of internationalism and serves as an inspiration for the workers of all countries.”

“Socialist Russia Against the Capitalist World,” by Morris Hillquit [Nov. 7, 1919] American Communism’s favorite whipping boy, Socialist Party leader Morris Hillquit, caricatured for decades as a loathsome Right Winger, offers the following thoughts on the occasion of the 2nd Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution: “When the Socialist workers and peasants of Russia assumed control of the government of the vast domain of the former Tsars the hapless people of the country were miserably succumbing to the cumulative weight of age-long oppression and rapacity, a monstrously voracious war, and a treacherous and incompetent bourgeois regime. The class-conscious workers of Russia determined to take the government of their country into their own hands and to make a clean sweep of all exploitation and all exploiters of human toil. The class-conscious capitalists of Europe and America were fully alive to the challenge of their rule. Thereafter it was war between Socialist Russia and the capitalist world, a war of aggression on the part of the foreign capitalist governments, a war of defense on the part of the Russian people. The world has never seen a war so desperate and persistent, so ruthless and brutal as the unconfessed, unsanctioned, and uncivilized war which the capitalist powers have been waging against Soviet Russia in the 2 years of its existence.... And the Socialist Republic of Russia lives. The 2nd Anniversary of its birth finds it strong and stable, confident and invincible, dreaded and cursed by the oppressors of all lands, acclaimed and cherished by the forward-looking workers of all nations and races. Hail, Soviet Russia! The bright proletarian hope, the symbol of the new world spirit and new world order!”

The Story of the Egg,” by Morris Hillquit [Nov. 28, 1919] A Socialist parable from the New York SPA leader, provided to illustrate that “A country can be educated, led, and transformed into Socialism, but it cannot be driven, lured, or bulldozed into it. The Socialist conception of the world process is evolutionary, not cataclysmic. Socialism has come to build, not to destroy.” Hillquit likens the development of one mode of production inside of the previous epoch to the development of an embryo within a chicken egg, gradually transforming itself from one form to another. “As soon as the latter develops sufficient strength and sense, it just cracks the old shell from the inside. The shell breaks into a number of fragments with great noise, the rebellious chick jumps out, and to the superficial observer this act appears to be the revolution which has converted the egg into the chicken. As a matter of fact, however, the actual revolution has taken place in the gradual growth of the chicken embryo at the expense of the egg substance,” Hillquit writes. Socialist propaganda is like the hen, developing the egg into its subsequent form. “Should the hen become impatient or get into her feathery head a syndicalist notion to ‘hasten the process,’ and should she attempt to break the shell before the time, she would only destroy the embryonic life of the chicken,” Hillquit warns, concluding that “No system of society can be transformed into a Socialist commonwealth unless it has in it the germs of a social order, and on the other hand, no system of society will grow into a Socialist state unless planfully directed to it.”

“Inside Story of Cincinnati Raid: American Legion Rioters Led by Professional Strikebreakers; Machinists’ Desk Rifled,” by Joseph W. Sharts [event of Nov. 18, 1919] Dayton Socialist journalist Joseph Sharts makes like Paul Harvey and offers “the Rest of the Story” about the November 18, 1919 gutting of the Socialist Party’s office at Cincinnati by a Right Wing mob. Most of the gang of 300 were members of the Robert E. Bentley Post of the American Legion, Sharts charges, a group which marched en masse down Vine Street at 10:30 pm after having assembled to make plans. “Then began the systematic plunder and pillage of Socialist properties. Bundles of radical literature were brought out and heaped up in the street on the tarwood pavement and set afire by the young gentlemen, who had never read a line of Socialist literature in their bright young lives. Policemen were present under the leadership of Lieutenant Messerschmidt; but the eminent respectability of the mob and the “patriotic” nature of the performance, as well as the unpopularity of the party whose property was being burglarized and plundered, caused the police to stand politely aside.” The gang had been headed by Jack Manly, secretary of the Cincinnati branch of National Metal Trades Association, and Algie Cooper, a professional strikebreaker, Sharts states, noting that the local of the International Association of Machinists had rented space in the Socialists’ hall. In the course of the raid, conducted under the watch of the police, Sharts charges that a desk belonging to the Machinists and containing confidential papers “was broken open and rifled of its contents, while literature lay piled around it untouched!”

“Enter: The Labor Party,” by Charles Merz [events of Nov. 22-25, 1919] Summary of the November 22-25, 1919 Chicago convention which established the Labor Party of the United States. Merz indicates that the results of the convention surpassed expectations, with local Chicago delegates outnumbered 10 to 1 by delegates from out of town. Moreover, these delegates represented a broad spectrum of AF of L craft unions, including 175 miners, 65 representatives of the railway brotherhoods, and 40 machinists — just three of the 55 unions in attendance. The new party adopted anti-fusion rules similar to those of the Socialist movement, banning endorsement of the political candidates of other parties and calling for the expulsion of any Labor Party member accepting the endorsement of another party. The governing National Committee was to consist of two delegates from each state — including, for the first time of any American political organization, a requirement that one of these delegates be a woman. Although the convention call recommended a short platform, the actual document adopted by the convention proved lengthy, with 30 planks including a call for broad nationalization of large scale industry, abolition of the US Senate, reduction of the veto power of the Supreme Court, sharply graduated income and inheritance taxes, a prohibition of child labor, abolition of the Espionage Act, and a reintroduction of the freedoms of speech and assemblage, among other objectives.

DECEMBER

“The Issue is ‘Americanism vs. Bolshevism,’” (probably) by Oscar Ameringer [Dec. 6, 1919] Front page piece of campaign agitational literature from the Milwaukee Leader answering the conservatives’ attempt to smear Socialist Congressional candidate Victor Berger with the taint of Russian Bolshevism. Rather than flinching, the writer—probably Oscar Ameringer, but possibly Berger himself—returns the rhetoric in kind, revealing the so-called “Americanism” of the so-called “100% Patriots” to be a fraud. The words of the Declaration of Independence are cited and real “Americanism” defined as “democratic government by the consent of the governed.” This is contrasted with the anti-democratic, anti-libertarian, racist actions of the anti-radical Right: “Jingoism is not Americanism. Race hatred is not Americanism. Mobbing foreigners is not Americanism. Lynching opponents is not Americanism. Obeying blindly the brutal Wilson-Palmer-Burleson combination is not Americanism. Declaring our form of government is perfect is not Americanism. Foaming at the mouth about Bolsheviki and IWW is not Americanism.Painting churches and homes yellow is not Americanism. Breaking up peaceful assemblies by mobs of ex-soldier boys is not Americanism. Destroying the freedom of expression by packed juries is not Americanism.” The denial of Victor Berger his rightfully won seat in Congress by the alliance of Republicans and Democrats is deemed “a flagrant violation of fundamental Americanism,” and such subversions of the democratic process is presented as dangerous and conducive to the development of a culture of revolutionary violence. The writer argues: “There are but two ways for the forces of evolution—expansion or explosion. All history is but the recounting of the struggle of the new against the old. And always the new cried for light, for air, for room to grow. And always the old, in tottering self-conceit, denied the new a place in the sun, until the youthful giant burst his bonds and killed his parents. Must we, too, refuse the guiding light of history and tread the path that leadeth to destruction?”

“Berger Vote Soars; Leads by 4,722: Socialist Gets 14,004 Ballots While Harmony Man Gets 9,282: Bolo Bodenstab Proves to be Weak Candidate: Fusionists Fight.” [Dec. 9, 1919] On Monday, Dec. 8, 1919, voters of the 5th Congressional District in Wisconsin went to the polls in a primary election to name the candidates for a Dec. 19 general to fill the open seat of Victor L. Berger. Berger had been denied his seat in Congress won in the fall 1918 election by the combined action of the Republicans and Democrats. To increase their chances of stopping Berger’s re-election to the vacant seat on the basis of a plurality, the Republican and Democratic County Committees met and agreed upon a united “fusion” candidate, running on the Republican ticket, Henry H. Bodenstab. Voters of the Wisconsin 5th resoundingly rejected the anti-democratic shenanigans of Congress by rewarding Berger with 14,004 votes of the 23,286 cast and he headed for the general election in a position of strength.

“Wake Up, Americans!” by William F. Kruse [Dec. 10, 1919] Agitational article from the pages of the Milwaukee Leader attempting to build public support for the cause of Kate Richards O’Hare, Bill Haywood and other imprisoned members of the IWW, conscientious objectors imprisoned during the war, and Eugene V. Debs and other members of the Socialist Party subjected to state suppression by the Wilson regime and its allies. Kruse indicates that there are nearly 1500 of such “political prisoners in a political democracy,” almost all of whom were convicted not of any crime against person or property, but rather of various forms of criminalize speech or thought. “Wake up, Americans! Your institutions are in danger. Political freedom is being destroyed by those who at any cost, even to the destruction of the republic and its civil liberties, would maintain themselves in political and economic power. As long as any man or woman can be imprisoned for “unorthodox” political opinions, you yourselves are not safe—your turn may come next,” Kruse warns. He urges the mass writing of letters to President Wilson, Congress, newspapers, unions, churches, and clubs. “Nowhere else in the world, save in reactionary Japan, is there such vindictive and relentless punishment of political offenders. Shall we travel in this company?” Kruse asks.

“People’s Rule Upheld in Berger Victory: District Returns Socialist to Seat Congress Refused: Big Business routed by 4,806 Votes, as Balloting Shows Gain of 6,548 for Socialist Party: Genuine Americanism Wins Decisive Victory.” [Dec. 20, 1919] Election results of the Dec. 19, 1919 general election for the Wisconsin 5th Congressional District—a seat vacated when Democrats and Republicans in Congress colluded to deny Socialist Victor Berger the seat to which he had been elected in 1918. Voters resoundingly re-elected Berger to the same position, as Berger defeated Republican-Democratic “fusion” candidate Henry H. Bodenstab by over 4800 votes out of 43,928 cast. The total vote in this special election exceeded that of the 1918 General Election—a remarkable fact illustrating the great interest generated by the race. Previously elected by a plurality against divided capitalist opponents, Berger won the rematch handily in a head-to-head match up against one challenger. “The landslide majority accorded Berger indicates the voters disapproved the action of Congress in barring him from the seat to which he was elected in the regular election in November 1918, and admire the courageous fight he waged in the interest of representative government and fair play,” the Leader report indicates.

“Landis, Who Denied Prejudice, Would Have V.L. Berger Shot.” [Dec. 30, 1919] On Dec. 29, 1919, the slightly unhinged Federal Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis spoke before the Advertising Men’s Post of the proto-fascist American Legion in Chicago. During the course of his remarks, he was quoted as complaining: “It was my great displeasure to give [Socialist Congressman Victor] Berger 20 years in Ft. Leavenworth. I regretted it exceedingly because I believe the laws of this country should have enabled me to have Berger lined up against a wall and shot. The district that voted to re-elect Berger ought to get out of this democracy and back in their monarchy. Berger’s platform was that he was 100% German and on that basis he was re-elected. Watch the vote in Congress for his reinstatement and let those fellows who uphold him know how we feel about it.” In related news, Joe Jackson hit .351 for the Chicago White Sox in 1919, going 181 for 516 over 139 games—5th in the Junior Circuit. His 7 home runs tied him for 8th in the AL, led by Boston Red Sox star Babe Ruth, with 29. Jackson also drew 60 walks, which computes to an On Base Percentage of .418.

“Mob Law and Civil Rights. Statement of the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America.” [Published Dec. 30, 1919] There were two new social systems to emerge from the carnage of World War I—Bolshevism and Fascism. There were two primary American manifestations of proto-fascism in the immediate post-war years—(1) the resurgent Ku Klux Klan, which grew dramatically throughout the first half of the 1920s and fueled a culture of lynch law and race war; and (2) the American Legion, which conducted episodes of organized violence against perceived enemies of the state, primarily political radicals and trade unionists. This resolution of the Socialist Party’s governing NEC condemns the latter of these two threats to American democracy. “Mayors and police officials have accepted orders from the American Legion; they have revoked their own orders at its command; they have made the constitution a ’scrap of paper,’ and allowed the American Legion to serve as an upper chamber with veto power over city and state executives,” the resolution states, noting 7 specific instances.

Misc. and unsorted 1919 SPA files

Hermann Schlüter: The Man and His Work by Algernon Lee

A Message From Debs: Letter to the NEC of the Socialist Party of America, October 9, 1919. by William Henry

The Situation in Local New York by David P. Berenberg

Right, Center, and Left. by Dennis E. Batt

1919 May Day Speech. by Eugene V. Debs

1919 May Day Speech. by Kate Richards O’Hare

Who is Splitting the Party? An Editorial in the New York Communist, May 1, 1919.by John Reed

May Day 1919: A Challenge and a Greeting. by Rose Pastor Stokes

Berenberg Resolution is Socialist Espionage Act: Letter to the Editor of the New York Call, May 2, 1919. by Charles W. Gasser

The Emergency Convention: An Editorial in the New York Communist, May 8, 1919 by John Reed

Berenberg Resolution is Socialist Espionage Act: Letter to the Editor of the New York Call, May 2, 1919. by Charles W. Gasser

Minutes of the Borough Committee of Local Kings Co., New York, SPA, Meeting of May 11, 1919.

Chicago Turns to the Left! by I.E. Ferguson

Letter to the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America preferring charges against Alfred Wagenknecht from Victor L. Berger, Member of the NEC, May 22, 1919.

Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Workmen’s Cooperative Publishing Association: New York City — May 22, 1919.

Discussing Hillquit’s Article: Letter to the Editor of the New York Call, May 26, 1919. by John J. Kallen

Michigan Charter Voided by NEC: Socialist Committee Charges Members Have Violate National Constitution. [event of May 26, 1919]

NEC Suspends Defiant Groups of Foreign Born: Seven Language Federations Cut Off from Party Affiliation for Violation.

Rand School, IWW Headquarters, and Communist Victims of Raids: Lusk Raiders Seize Letters and Documents of Local IWW: Search Warrant is Served on Rebel Worker — Union’s Central Body Named: Trooper Draws Gun on Man Who Tries to Escape from Meeting Hall.

Cartoon on the CP/SP split

The New NEC Meets: Report of the Meeting of the National Executive Committee, Socialist Party — Chicago, July 26-27, 1919. by Louis C. Fraina

NEC Declaration to the Party: Issued by the [new] National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party — An American Communist Party Urged. [adopted July 27, 1919]

No Real Socialist Will Hold Back Published in the “Official Socialist News” section of The New York Call, vol. 12, no. 253 (Sept. 10, 1919), pg. 7.