FEBRUARY 1899
"Bellamy Beamings," by O.A. Tveitmoe [Feb. 4, 1899] Much enthusiasm but few concrete details are provided here by a member of the little-known "Bellamy Colony" of rural Toledo, Oregon, established in the spring of 1898. Tveitmore intimates that the going in the colony's first 10 months had been difficult, hampered by the "furious and ignoble attacks of the enemy and still more so the infernal machinations of cowardly traitors." Provisions for the colony had be bought at wholesale rates in the neighboring coastal town of Newport. The need for a planned production and trade between the various socialistic colonies of the Pacific Northwest via a line of steamers to be owned by the cooperative brotherhood. The economic mechanism to allow the establishment of such a line is not specified. It seems that bitter dissension was part of the Bellamy Colony's daily life, as Tveitmoe declares that "malcontents and crackers are omnipresent and 'driftwood' is found in the finest stream." Nevertheless, he insists the colonists will fight onward since "Nothing but hard, rational, practical work with brains and muscles will ever solve this question!"
MAY 1899
"The Situation in New York City." [May 1, 1899] First published on May Day of 1899, this is the first statement of the Socialist Labor Party's National Executive Committee to the membership of the SLP on the factional fight brewing in New York between party regulars surrounding the English weekly The People and German weekly Vorwaerts (on the one hand) and an insurgent SLP Right connected with the New Yorker Volkszeitung and its publisher, the Socialistic Cooperative Publishing Association (on the other). This conflict had its root in the SLP's turn to dual unionism in 1896 -- with related themes of party discipline and centralized control of the party press. This fight would rage throughout 1899, ending in a permanent split of the SLP. (The SLP Right would later become one of the main components of a faction of the Social Democratic Party in 1900 and subsequently of the new Socialist Party of America in 1901).
"Labor News Company: Growth of the Party's Literary Agency, and Significance Thereof," by Advisory Board, Labor News Co. [May 1, 1899] This review of the growth of the New York Labor News Co., the division of the Socialist Labor Party through which it published and sold its literature, provides an interesting view of the SLP's ideology at its organizational high water mark in 1899. Cash sales of literature had quadrupled between 1893 and 1898, statistics here indicate, with sales growth particularly strong from Aug. 1, 1898, when the Labor News Co. moved to new facilities. "But alongside of this quantitative increase there is also a qualitative improvement," the report indicates, with Blatchford's Merrie England, "with its invertebrate sentimentalism," dethroned as the SLP sales leader by DeLeon's What Means this Strike, a pamphlet with a "central idea of the class struggle" and an "uncompromising tone." Sales figures are provided for a number of other titles, including those by Marx, LaFargue, Lassalle, and Kautsky. States using the most literature from the NY Labor News Co. were said to be Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
"Correspondence Between the SLP and SCPA, May 1899." [May 15 and 24, 1899] These three letters exchanged between the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Labor Party and the Board of Directors of the Socialistic Cooperative Publishing Association detail the issues of press centralization and party discipline that were part and parcel of the 1899 SLP split. This exchange outlines the situation from the perspective of the SCPA, who answers specific complaints of the National Executive Committee with a historical overview of the relationship between the Association and its publications with the party.
"Colony Life in Washington," by Walter O. Griggs [May 20, 1899] Sympathetic outsider's appraisal of "Equality Colony," the first and most significant socialist enclave started by the Brotherhood of the Cooperative Commonwealth. Griggs, apparently a visitor from California, notes that on the untamed land of rural Skagit Co., Washington, "a little band of 220 souls are trying to solve the industrial problem in a small way by substituting cooperation for competition." Griggs notes that on 605 acres of land the cooperators had established a "saw mill, printery, cooperative kitchen and dining rooms." Cabbage was farmed and sauerkraut made for the market, Griggs states. Turnover of members was high due in part to difficult conditions, which Griggs in a moment of understatement "lacks a whole lot of being a paradise, or a Bellamy ideal." Those making a successful go of life were not those who rode in "on the high tide of their own emotions," since "they can’t stand the wreck of their air castles." Rather it was the "cool, calculating, level-headed sort" who tended to succeed. The colonists worked 9 hour days, being credited 45 cents a day -- less a $2 per week deduction for room and broad. The colony only made two expulsions in its first 16 months, according to Griggs -- one of a foul-tempered woman, another of a large family headed by two "invalid" parents. The family's fate is not specified.
"Proceedings of the General Committee of Section New York of the Socialist Labor Party of America, May 27, 1899." Rather terse account of the governing body of the Socialist Labor Party in New York City, which met May 27, 1899 and voted after long and heated debate 47-20 to accept a report of the NEC of the SLP harshly critical of New Yorker Volkszeitung Editor-in-Chief Schlueter for failing to lend sufficient support in the pages of that paper for the Socialist Trade & Labor Alliance and its strike actions in Allegheny, PA and New Bedford, MA. Schlueter is also criticized for failing to condemn the new phenomenon of "Haverhillism" -- the recent victory of the rival Social Democratic Party of America in Haverhill, MA, including the election of a mayor of that town. The main content of this document is the full text of the report of the NEC -- said to have been "suppressed" from the pages of the Volkszeitung. The perspective of 6 witnesses is expounded in some detail, including the lead speaker for the anti-Schlueter forces, Daniel DeLeon. The document hints that the primary issue for the SLP dissidents was the freedom to distance themselves from the unpopular "dual union," the ST&LA; for the SLP Regulars, the main issue being the ability of the party to control the content of its ostensible German-language official organ. "The press is the most important agency of the Party and the party must control its press or the press will control the Party. An association that has control of the Party press thereby has control of the Party itself, unless the association recognizes itself as subject to the control of the Party," the NEC report to the New York General Committee states.
"Equality’s Struggles for An Existence," by G.E. Pelton [May 27, 1899] Rare self-critical participant's history of the Equality Colony in rural Skagit County of Northwestern Washington state. "The mainspring of all out troubles has been, as usual, the childish weakness of human nature, intensified by our poverty," Pelton declares, noting that over concern with the job-shirking of others and difficult living conditions in contrast to the unrealistic expectations generated by Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and other idealistic writings about socialism were principle difficulties. He adds: "Not possessing the necessary stamina to endure and assist in building up the ideal, gloom, homesickness, tears, reproaches, etc., naturally follow, and then comes departure, and perhaps a statement that Equality is a 'fraud,' and they have been 'deceived.'" Pelton characterizes the colony as an "experimental proposition" as well as a "grand school for the study of human nature." He intimates the colony experienced a high number of departures and that this had weakened the enterprise, threatening not just it but the entire socialist project since, Pelton notes, "the plea can very plausibly be raised that if we make a fizzle of colony socialism, we would do the same in an attempt to establish state socialism, and we cannot controvert that statement."
"Ruskin Colony's Collapse: The Rise and Downfall of the Latest Utopian Scheme: Colonists Appealing for Fifteen Thousand Dollars," by Julian Pierce [May 28, 1899] Antipathy between the Socialist Party and the Socialist Labor Party had deep roots. This is a SLP perspective of the spectacular collapse of the Ruskin Cooperative Association, the utopian socialist publishing venture started in rural Tennessee by The Coming Nation publisher J.A. Wayland. Pierce outlines the development of the concept of "utopia" in the creative imagination of Thomas More in the 16th Century and notes that "the colony scheme, in its various forms, has been the heaven of the utopian." Pierce accuses Wayland of having acted in bad faith by promising to turn over his printing plant to the colony but ultimately only selling it to the group when he himself departed. The colonists published a series of false financial statements, Pierce indicates, failing to declare outstanding mortgage debts as liabilities. A number of colonists -- including editor of The Social Democrat A.S. Edwards -- are upbraided for hypocrisy by declaring the colony's finances sound in the pages of The Coming Nation while simultaneously swearing in court that the project was insolvent. "The People averred that the colony had not been started to make any experiments in Socialism, but rather that it had been started, and was being run, by a lot of clever rascals whose only object was to prey on the unwary and rope in the credulous," Pierce claims. The project was never socialist, he asserts, as the colonists were forced by outside economic circumstances to buy cheaply and sell dear like ever other profit-making concern. "Socialism is broader than a colony. It is broader than a municipality. It is broader than a state. The nation itself is the smallest unit for the proper development of the Cooperative Commonwealth; for the nation is supreme," Pierce declares.
JUNE 1899
"To the Membership of the SLP from its NEC." [June 6, 1899] This is the National Executive Committee's reply to the late May letter of the Socialistic Cooperative Publishing Association. The NEC argued that the SCPA was misrepresenting its true relationship to the party in its assertion of ownership and control over the content of The People and Vorwaerts. The May 1899 Correspondence between the SLP and the SCPA (document above) and this reply were sent to the sections and members of the party as background information along with a call for the membership to decide the issue with a vote.
"The Party Press," by A.M. Simons [June 17, 1899] Editor of the Chicago Socialist Labor Party weekly The Workers' Call Algie Simons announces the controversy which was sweeping the SLP over control of the party's official organs, The People and Vorwaerts. The apparent seizure of control by the Socialist Cooperative Publishing Society announced in the pages of The People "practically amounts to defying the party in its control of its most vital organ -- the party press," Simons states. The NEC had put forward a referendum on the matter, and all sections of the SLP were instructed to vote on the matter and pass along the result of the vote to the National Secretary by Aug. 1, 1899. Simons comes out strongly against the Insurgent Right, arguing that "Under these conditions there is but one thing to do. It is not a question of taxation or of trades unionism, but simply one of shall the party control its press or shall the national organs be at the disposal of some irresponsible and perhaps directly hostile body of persons. If the mailing lists of the party press are to be used to disseminate the opinions of individuals, then it is time they were taken from the individuals' control. This is the point under discussion and all other questions that may have previously arises are now beside the point."
JULY 1899
"The Party Crisis: Resolution of Section Chicago Relative to the Present Party Situation -- July 18, 1899." "So far as the party organization is concerned a state of anarchy is practically in existence," declared Section Chicago SLP. Rather than make a choice between the Insurgent Right faction of the SLP which had seized the two central organs of the party press or the New York-based NEC headed by Executive Secretary Henry Kuhn, which fought the takeover tooth and nail, Section Chicago threw a pipe wrench into the faction fight by refusing to vote on the resolution of the NEC. Instead, it demanded that both factions immediately communicate to the membership three new referenda for membership vote: (1) removing the NEC from New York City; (2) selecting a new location for the NEC of the party; and (3) calling an emergency convention of the party, to be held not later than March 15, 1900. Voting was to be completed by Sept. 1, 1899, and the result transmitted to both parties in New York, the SLP Board of Appeals in Cleveland, and to The Workers' Call for publication. This action of Section Chicago ultimately did nothing to clarify the waters or to peacefully resolve the split between the Insurgent Right and the NYC Regular factions of the SLP.
AUGUST 1899
"Chronological Recapitulation of the Volkszeitung Conflict." First published August 20, 1899 in the SLP official organ, The People, this is a highly tendentious blow-by-blow account of the battle between the SLP regulars loyal to Daniel DeLeon (including Henry Kuhn and Lucien Sanial, among others) and the SLP Right faction around the New Yorker Volkszeitung and its publisher, the Socialistic Cooperative Publishing Association. Interesting for its tone and useful for its provision of the critical dates in the conflict.
MEMOIRS OF THE EVENTS OF 1899 "The Disintegration of the SLP and the Establishment of the Socialist Party of America," by Morris Hillquit [published 1903] Section from Hillquit's History of Socialism in the United States (1903) in which he relates the story of the 1899 split in the Socialist Labor Party and the subsequent negotiations of the SLP's "Rochester faction" (so-called "Kangaroos") for unity with the Social Democratic Party of America -- two events in which Hillquit was himself a primary participant. Hillquit lists two primary factors behind the split of the SLP: the Socialist Trade and Labor Association, the umbrella association of dual unions "sprung as a surprise on the convention of 1896," which was billed as being a tool for "organization of the unorganized" but which instead "within a few years succeeded in placing the party in a position of antagonism to organized labor, as well as to all socialistic and semi-socialistic elements outside of the party organization;" secondly, an intolerant internal party regime in which the "strict disciplinarians" developed into "intolerant fanatics." " Every criticism of their policy was resented by them as an act of treachery, every dissension from their views was decried as an act of heresy, and the offenders were dealt with unmercifully. Insubordinate members were expelled by scores, and recalcitrant 'sections' were suspended with little ceremony," according to Hillquit. Hillquit also provides the best extant memoir of the negotiations between the insurgent SLP Right with which he was associated and the Social Democratic Party -- a process which resulted in a split of the SDP before eventual reunification at the founding convention of the Socialist Party of America in 1901.
"Daniel DeLeon and the 1899 Split of the SLP," by Morris Hillquit [published 1934] This is a section from Morris Hillquit's 1934 memoir, Loose Leaves from a Busy Life. Hillquit, a member of the SLP from 1888, was a leader of the so-called "Kangaroos" associated with the New Yorker Volkszeitung, a group which broke with the SLP over the issues of dual unionism and the perception of a dictatorial internal regime within the SLP. This insurgent SLP Right fought a pitched battle for the name and property of the party before losing in court to party regulars loyal to Daniel DeLeon.
