Update 14-18: Sunday, May 4, 2014.


"Official Minutes of the General Committee of the Socialist Party of St. Louis, August 18, 1919."  With the Socialist Party of St. Louis approximately split between Regulars and Left Wingers in the weeks preceding the 1919 Emergency National Convention, factional machinations were undertaken by both sides in an attempt to end a stalemate. On Aug. 13 the Regular-dominated Executive Committee of the city party unanimously voted to name itself a committee to draft a national platform and program, to be put forward at the forthcoming Emergency National Convention, and to hold a general membership meeting to deal with its discussion, amendment, and approval. The emerging Left Wing countered by seeking to hold this general meeting in association with a scheduled mass meeting featuring radical attorney Isaac Edward Ferguson, a leader of the national Left Wing movement. The nearly evenly divided St. Louis General Committee (i.e. City Central Committee) defeated the regulars and approved the Left Wing plan by a vote of 16 to 15. A formal split of the St. Louis organization would shortly follow, created by the unilateral action of the Executive Committee.


"Official Minutes of the General Committee of the Socialist Party of St. Louis, August 25, 1919."  Unable to win the day democratically in the General Committee of the Socialist Party of St. Louis, Secretary William Brandt went rogue via the regular-dominated Executive Committee, unilaterally instituting a new party loyalty pledge and establishing a "temporary General Committee" of loyal center-right faithful. This new entity met for the first time on August 25 and formally endorsed Brandt's plan for reorganization of 7 Left Wing branches, passing a resolution denying membership in Local St. Louis to any party member who refused to sign the Executive Committee's new pledge cards. Included among these running afoul of this new loyalty oath were two of the four delegates elected to the Emergency National Convention by the Socialist Party of Missouri -- Proske and Braun -- who had failed to sign the Executive Committee's cards. Proske attended this meeting, protesting the Executive Committee's reorganization actions and refused once again to sign the new party loyalty pledge.


"Camp Tamiment Exceeds Promise of Press Agent: That's What the Vacationists Say When They Arrive -- Informality is the Spirit of the Place, Good Fellowship and Happiness the Result," by William F. Feigenbaum [July 21, 1921]  Lengthy promotional puff piece from the New York Call detailing the launch of Camp Tamiment, a socialist summer camp located in the Adirondacks, about 100 miles outside of New York City. The camp -- which would later become a source of financial sustenance for the Socialist Party and the successor Social Democratic Federation, was operated by the People's Educational Camp Society under the direction of Bertha H. Mailly (chairman of the committee of management), Max Schonberg (business manager), and Alexander Hayman (manager of grounds and construction). Fiegenbaum calls the camp -- loosely identifiable as a socialist educational facility -- "a monument to the dynamic power of the ideal of cooperation." "The story of Tamiment is the story of working men and women who saw a vision, and banded themselves together to achieve what they wanted. Their vision was their own vacation place, their own loafing and playing and frolicking place, their own home. They cannot win everything at a single blow, but they could win their camp. And they set out to win it."






CLICK THE LOGO AT THE TOP OF THIS PAGE TO JUMP DIRECTLY TO THE EARLY AMERICAN MARXISM WEBSITE.




The URL of this page is http://www.marxisthistory.org/subject/usa/eam/14-18.html