APRIL 1910
"Chicago Labor Breaks with Old Parties as J. Fitzpatrick Balks: President of Body Refuses to Carry Out Decision in Resolution." [event of April 17, 1910] The fiasco of 1923-24 involving the Workers Party of America, Chicago Federation of Labor chief John Fitzpatrick, and the Farmer-Labor Party is well known through the telling of historian Theodore Draper in his seminal Roots of American Communism. What is less well known is the backstory. This 1910 article from The Chicago Daily Socialist marks the first time the powerful CFL went on the record as endorsing "independent political action" (i.e. a Labor Party) in opposition to the accepted idea of the Samuel Gompers-led American Federation of Labor, supporting individual allies and punishing individual foes within the two party system. Instructed to support this new CFL agenda at a forthcoming Farmers Convention to be held in St. Louis, CFL President and convention delegate elect flatly refused the instruction (and by extension the Labor Party idea) rather than potentially cross swords with the Gompers-led AFL officialdom. An attempt to reconsider the endorsement of a Labor Party in the wake of Fitzpatrick's refusal was narrowly turned aside, leaving the CFL on the record for a Labor Party and opposed to the Gompers old parties political strategy, with Fitzpatrick remaining in Gompers' camp.
"New Awakening for Socialism in Cleveland: Future is Bright for Workers’ Party in Big Ohio City," by C.E. Ruthenberg [April 18, 1910] One of the earliest published writings of future Cleveland Socialist Party and national Communist Party leader C.E. Ruthenberg. The 28-year old Ruthenberg, at the time of this writing a member of the SPA for about 16 months, spins the recent defeat of reform Mayor of Cleveland Tom Johnson as the removal of a severe "handicap" which had confronted the Socialist Party in the city. Ruthenberg paints a rosy picture of the development of the Cleveland party, including its employment of a paid field organizer, its launching of a professional literature agent (to be paid from book sales), its regular monitoring of the meetings of the Cleveland City Council, and its organization of a lecture bureau. Credit is given to Max S. Hayes' labor weekly The Cleveland Citizen for its support of SP organizing efforts in the city. The recent electoral triumph of the Socialist Party in the city of Milwaukee is cited as an inspiration and a model by Ruthenberg, who indicates that the party's victory had "filled our hearts with the knowledge that if we persevere, if we march on, fighting at every step to build up a better, stronger, more virile and aggressive organization of the working class, in the end we will reach our goal."
MAY 1910
"Hoboed Over 8,000 Miles," by Thomas J. Mooney [May 1910] An article weird and wonderful from the pages of The International Socialist Review. In 1910-11, the P.T. Barnum of American Socialism, Gaylord Wilshire, conducted an 11 month long subscription-selling contest with the lucky winner to receive a trip around the world. The battle of the socialist salesmen shook down to a head to head competition between SP National Organizer George Goebel and an unknown young man from San Francisco named Thomas J. Mooney -- this well prior to his de facto martyrdom as America's most famous class-war prisoner in 1916. Mooney describes his more than six month investment, riding the rails throughout the west from town to town selling newspaper subscriptions, "over the deserts of Utah, California, and Nevada in scorching suns of July and August; through October and November rains in Oregon and Washington; and worst of all the ice and snow and sometimes zero weather of December and January in Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada." He contrasts this life of privation to that of his competitor, Goebel, who traveled the country on the Socialist Party's dime as part of his paid employment, bending the contest rules. As a desperation measure, Mooney wrote this letter to ISR in an effort to garner Wilshire's subscriptions on his behalf. An interesting sidebar to the political biography of Tom Mooney... Includes a photograph of the young Mr. Mooney and a "To Whom It May Concern" testimonial letter written by Gene Debs on his behalf.
"Red Flag Waves at Portland," by J.B. Shea and Ed Gilbert [events of May 1, 1910] Short participant's account of the 1910 May Day festivities at Portland, Oregon written for the western regional newspaper of the Industrial Workers of the World. Some 3,000 members and friends of the radical movement are said to have marched in a procession through the streets of Portland lasting almost an hour, with the march and rally which followed held under the joint auspices of the IWW, the Socialist Party of Oregon, the Finnish Socialist Federation, and the Portland Latvian Club. Approximately 5,000 had assembled in a downtown park for speeches and singing, which included the unfurling of a red flag. Following the assembly a free dance had been held at the Finnish Socialist Hall, complete with refreshments, capping a successful day of festivities. The writers declare such activities to be "not only affairs of passing notice, but are absolutely necessary to the life of the workers."
"'Opportunist' Possibilities vs. 'Impossibilist' Inevitabilities," by G.H. Lockwood [May 2, 1910] With a national convention looming, Socialist Party of Michigan State Secretary G.H. Lockwood is asked for a short report on party activities in his state for publication by the Chicago Daily Socialist. Instead, Lockwood responds with an intriguing analysis of the latest permutation of the perennial left-right split of the American radical movement. Identifying the two positions by the mildly pejorative terms "Opportunist" and "Impossibilist," Lockwood acknowledges the recent victory of the Milwaukee Socialists in the April 1910 elections as the "opportunity of the opportunists," and advises the left to withhold judgment until the experiment is fully tried, although he indicates the inevitable outcome is a "clean capitalistic administration" amidst the ongoing wage system and the class struggle. Lockwood, a self-described revolutionary Socialist, details the ideology of the "impossibilists" in some detail, declaring that "very little can be gained by Socialists trying to administer the capitalists’ political machinery" and professing a fundamental belief that the capitalist state was unceasingly "evolving the methods of its own destruction." Lockwood expresses a fear that the Socialist victory in Milwaukee will launch a feeding frenzy among self-appointed party "leaders" to win ultimately ineffectual municipal elections. "A more hopeful sign to me than the questionable victory in Milwaukee is the growth of the spirit of solidarity among the working class as manifest by the frequent sympathetic strikes and the tendency towards industrial unionism," Lockwood declares.
"Stories of an Agitator: Albert Parsons," by Ralph Korngold [May 11, 1910] Possibly apocryphal and certainly inadequately documented memoir of social revolutionist and Haymarket martyr Albert Parsons from his period in hiding following the 1886 bombing. The individual who gave verbal testimony to Socialist Party organizer Ralph Korngold claimed that Parsons had been a friend of his father "Charlie" and that Parsons had spent his time holed up in an upper floor room of the family's home on a Wisconsin farm. Parsons had decided to turn himself in over his disquiet over life in hiding and a desire to be with his comrades in distress at trial in Chicago -- despite having been warned by his benefactor Charlie that surrender would mean death. According to this account, Parsons had sought for Charlie to turn him in for the $5,000 reward offered so that he might pay off his mortgage and give financial aid to his children, but Charlie had flatly refused to participate in gaining such "blood money" and Parsons had turned himself in alone.
"Finns Have a Plan for Socialist Work: Difficulties of the Foreign-Speaking People Pointed Out and Remedy Suggested," by J. Louis Engdahl [May 11, 1910] Socialist journalist J. Louis Engdahl reviews the history of the Finnish-American socialist movement in anticipation of a Finnish proposal for structural reform of the Socialist Party of America at the party's forthcoming National Congress. Objection is made by the Finns to having to submit to organization along electoral district lines -- a form of organization which greatly impeded the organization of language groups, forcing many to participate in English-speaking locals rather than Finnish-speaking branches. Engdahl recounts the origins of the united Finnish-American socialist movement in 1904 and its launch in 1906 as the United States Finnish Socialist Organization (Yhdysvaltain Suomalainen Sosialistjärjestö). Following its establishment of a Translator's office at SPA national headquarters on Jan. 1, 1907, impressive growth had followed until in the summer of 1909 the Finnish organization claimed nearly 5,200 members.
"The Rise of Factory Agriculture and Other Current Trends: Draft Report of the Committee on Farms of the Socialist Party of America," by A.M. Simons [May 16, 1910] A.M. Simons was the leading agricultural expert in firmament of the Socialist Party during its first decade -- a figure roughly comparable to Harold Ware and later Lem Harris in the Communist Party in later decades. This is the working draft of a report to be made to the forthcoming 1910 "National Congress" of the Socialist Party. Simons emphatically sees no trend towards concentration in agricultural production, stating that average farm size appears smaller than ever. He does note at length, however, the growth of factory methods of production, based largely upon the expanded outlay of capital necessary for the purchase of agricultural machinery and artificial fertilizer -- components which he argues make the physical soil itself less important as a primary component. Similarly, Simons argues, perfection of livestock breeding and the science of meat production was lending itself to the increase of factory methods in animal husbandry. Simons notes that free lands had vanished and land prices begun to skyrocket, reducing the possibility of impoverished workers beginning a new life as farmers. He envisions a growth in both the quantity and potential for organization of agricultural laborers. Simons indicates that modern farm organizations such as the American Society of Equity and the Farmers' Union were taking a page from the playbook of organized labor and seeking to maintain higher prices for their products through a control of supply, dismissing the strategies employed in a previous generation by the Grange and Farmers' Alliance. He notes an objective connection between the interests of organized farmers and organized workers and the potential for close political cooperation. Included is the full Farmers' Program of the Socialist Party of Oklahoma, which Simons advocates as a model for national consideration and possible emulation, forged as it was through actual political practice rather than abstract theoretical contemplation.
"Workers and Racial Hate," by David Burgess [May 19, 1910] Pioneer Washington Socialist and IWW supporter David Burgess expounds upon racial prejudice in general, and Asian exclusion in particular, in this letter to the Editor of the western regional newspaper of the Industrial Workers of the World. Burgess notes the similarity between the "alluring but deceptive" claim of the inferiority of Chinese and Japanese workers and the calculated use of racial prejudice by Southern capitalists to subdue black workers "insulting" enough to demand "more of their product." In extreme circumstances, so-called "race war" -- actually "a war of extermination, directed against the more rebellious negroes" -- is employed to crush this resistance, Burgess indicates, followed by the calculated use of the Christian message of social peace to subjugate again the disrupted black working class. Working alongside people of other nationalities and races builds "understanding of our mutual interests," Burgess notes. "I assume that it is the duty of the working class to teach the solidarity of the interests of the working class, regardless of the race that some section of the class happens to belong to," he declares.
"A Letter on Immigration to George Brewer in Girard, KS from Eugene V. Debs in Terre Haute, IN." [circa May 19, 1910] This bitter attack on the racist majority report of the Socialist Party's Committee on Immigration, defeated at the 1910 "National Congress" of the Socialist Party was intended by its recipient to have been read to the assembled delegates, but permission from Debs was received too late. Alternatively, the article was published in the pages of the left wing Chicago Socialist monthly, the International Socialist Review. Debs charges the majority report with being "utterly unsocialistic, reactionary, and in truth outrageous" and urges Brewer to use all his power in opposing its endorsement of exclusionary immigration law which would continue to bar new arrivals from China, Japan, and other Asian countries. "These poor slaves have just as good a right to enter here as even the authors of this report who now seek to exclude them. The only difference is that the latter had the advantage of a little education and had not been so cruelly ground and oppressed, but in point of principle there is no difference, the motive of all being precisely the same, and if the convention which meets in the name of Socialism should discriminate at all it should be in favor of the miserable races who have borne the heaviest burdens and are most nearly crushed to the earth," Debs declares. A written reply would be made to this letter of Debs by Chairman of the Committee on Immigration, Ernest Untermann, in August 1910.
"Woman and the National Socialist Congress," by Theresa Malkiel [May 31, 1910] While the relationship between the Communist Party in the 1930s and '40s with the black liberation movement has been detailed at length in the literature, less attention has been paid to the connection between the Socialist Party of the first two decades of the 20th Century and the women's movement of the day. Former clothing worker turned Socialist journalist Theresa Malkiel offers this enthusiastic estimate of the Socialist Party's commitment to equal rights for female citizens, as witnessed at the recently concluded national congress of the party in Chicago. Malkiel praises the willingness of male socialists to place their female comrades in positions of authority — not as a "gift of mercy," but through honest trust. Both the female delegates to the convention and the males working with them behaved effectively and professionally, with the women demonstrating ability and judgment and the men receiving their comments with interest and attention. "Every man present recognized the disadvantages the working woman was doomed to find herself in as long as she remained a political nonentity, and all like one displayed a spirit of revolt against this unjust deprivation. Their determination to work for woman’s enfranchisement was at once self-evident," Malkiel observes.
JULY 1910
"Our Bourbon Socialism," by Bruce Rogers [July 30, 1910] Although sometimes dismissed in the popular imagination as anti-political trade unionists, in fact the Industrial Workers of the World was the organizational home of a significant number of revolutionary socialists, such as the author of this piece, Bruce Rogers. Rogers is harshly critical of Milwaukee Socialist Party leader Victor Berger and his associates, for undercutting the righteous radicalism of party Presidential candidate Gene Debs with promises of compensation for nationalized industry and their "placid" commitment to "reforms only." Reforms, in Rogers' view, "invariably result from economic pressures on the bourgeoisie and so far as the proletariat is considered, their sole effect is to render tolerable if not beautiful the capitalist or wages system." Instead, Rogers states, "revolution comes about because of the economic experience of the working class, and has for its accomplishment the abolition of the wages system and the entire overthrow of capitalism." "The essential difference between a reformer and a revolutionist is that one of them means it," Rogers declares.
"Accident Insurance and Political Action," by Charles Ruthenberg [Aug. 1910] A very early example (from his second year of SPA membership) of the writing of Cleveland Socialist C.E. Ruthenberg, later the head of the Workers (Communist) Party. "The industries of the United States kill, injure, and maim twice as many workers in proportion to the number at work as any other civilized country.... The capitalist class knows no other law than the law of profits... The workers have the power to place on the statute books a compulsory insurance law, but they cannot secure such a law by voting for the candidates nominated by parties owned and controlled by their employers."
"A Reply to Debs," by Ernest Untermann [Aug. 20, 1910] A spirited defense of the Socialist Party's racist resolution immigration policy by Chairman of the Committee on Immigration Ernest Untermann. In response to a letter to the editor of the radical International Socialist Review by Gene Debs castigating the Socialist Party's majority report on immigration as "unsocialistic, reactionary, and in truth outrageous," Untermann responds by charging Debs with failure to examine and refute the propositions behind the policy. "Mere invective and sentimental oratory will not refute facts," Untermann declares. While proclaiming that the reason for Asian exclusion is not "ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR RACE," Untermann makes his case for exclusion of Asian immigrants based on race, declaring Asians inassimilable (unlike European immigrants), inflammatory to already difficult black-white race relations that make Socialist and trade union organizing difficult in the South, a factor which contributes to replacing the primacy of the class struggle with diversionary racial issues, and a benefit only to the capitalists who consciously make use of cheap Asian immigrant labor against (white) American workers. Untermann demands an explicit reply of Debs on these matters.
SEPTEMBER 1910
"Landmarks of the Labor Movement in Milwaukee," by Frederic Heath [Sept. 3, 1910] With a Social Democratic administration newly elected for the first time in the city's history, Labor Day 1910 was an occasion for remembrance and reflection by the Socialists of Milwaukee. This article by pioneer Wisconsin Socialist Frederic Heath reviews some of the political and physical landmarks of the city's labor and radical history. Heath gives significant coverage to the early shoemakers' union the Knights of St. Crispin, early efforts at forming a central labor body, the myriad of pioneer Socialist newspapers, as well as the ongoing factional fight between Greenback Labor Party supporter Robert Schilling and the fledgling Marxist movement. Heath's article provides an paralleled source of information about the physical meeting places of early Milwaukee Socialist and labor organizations. Also of note is historical detail on the re-prosecution of Marxist leader Paul Grottkau by a new Schilling-Union Labor Party administration, during which Grottkau was sentenced to an extensive jail term for contempt of court on the basis of a piece of doggerel demeaning the trial judge published by Grottkau's newspaper.
"Working Class Politics: Extracts of a Campaign Speech for Local Cook Co. SPA at Riverview Park, Chicago, Sept. 18, 1910," by Eugene V. Debs Debs launches the 1910 fall campaign for Local Cook County, Socialist Party with a rousing speech to the faithful. Debs declares that the millions of wage workers have common economic interests, regardless of nationality, race, or sex, and that it is only the "ignorance" of the working class majority which enables the ruling capitalist minority to keep them in subjugation. "The primary need of the workers is industrial unity and by this I mean their organization in the industries in which they are employed as a whole instead of being separated into more or less impotent unions according to their crafts," Debs argues. This move from the hundreds of competing craft unions to large industrial unions is seen by Debs as essential: "So long as the workers are content with conditions as they are, so long as they are satisfied to belong to a craft union under the leadership of those who are far more interested in drawing their own salaries and feathering their own nests with graft than in the welfare of their followers, so long, in a word, as the workers are meek and submissive followers, mere sheep, they will be fleeced..." Emancipation is in the hands of the working class, Debs believes: "The workers themselves must take the initiative in uniting their forces for effective economic and political action; the leaders will never do it for them." While the Socialist Party is declared to be the political arm of labor, "the new order can never be established by mere votes alone," says Debs. Instead, "this must be the result of industrial development and intelligent economic and political organization, necessitating both the industrial union and the political party of the workers to achieve their emancipation."
OCTOBER 1910
"Conference of the Polish Socialist Organizations: National Headquarters, Socialist Party of America: Chicago -- Oct. 29, 1910: Minutes by Mabel H. Hudson, Secretary." The year 1910 saw a move for admittance to the Socialist Party by the Polish Socialist Alliance [Zwiazek Socjalisów Polskich -- ZSP], which sought to join the Polish Socialist Section [Zwiazek Polskiej Partii Socjalistyczne -- ZPPS] in the ranks of the Socialist Party of America. A conference of the two organizations and NEC member George Goebel was held in Chicago on Oct. 29, 1910 to discuss possible obstacles to the ZSP's joining the Socialist Party. Chief among ZSP concerns was the prospect of an excessive rate of dues (it needing to support its own official organ and propaganda efforts) as well as to an overly complex set of requirements for payment of dues to state and county organizations. There seems to have been little if any turf-related controversy between the ZSP and the ZPPS and ZSP delegate L. Banka seems to have been satisfied by the SPA's dues policy towards federations (of which he had not been previously aware, apparently adopted in 1909). The ZSP and ZPPS agreed to exchange fraternal delegates to each others' organizational conventions, scheduled to be held in the 4th quarter of 1910.
NOVEMBER 1910
"Operating a Socialist Sunday School," by Kenneth Thompson [November 1910] Rare participant's account of the structure and operations of a Socialist Sunday School written by a Bay Area Young People's Socialist League activist. The SSS in Oakland was established by the YPSL Study Class in February of 1909, Thompson says, with an elected instructor coordinating the lesson and leading singing in conjunction with a YPSL standing committee of 3, of which Thompson was a part. The SSS elected its own officers and conducted its own formal meetings, a form of practical training "not taught in any other school for children," Thompson indicates. Suggestions about lesson content were made by the children themselves. "The lessons are carefully worked out so that the class struggle is always before the children as the basis of the Socialist philosophy, and without the class struggle we would have no Socialist movement; always careful not to blind their young minds with any false conceptions of 'justice, right,' etc., other than class justice," Thompson states. Picnics were held, group singing and "red flag drill" conducted in association with entertainments of the regular SP, and newspaper advertising sales contests held in conjunction with The Oakland World. "The Socialist work among children is one of the most important branches of the party work, and should be encouraged in all cities and towns where there is a party organization," Thompson states.
DECEMBER 1910
"Special News from France," by William Z. Foster [Dec. 8, 1910] Late in 1909 Left wing Washington Socialist William Z. Foster was dispatched to Spokane to report on an Industrial Workers of the World free speech fight there as a socialist newspaper correspondent. While there he was arrested on the street and served jail time, emerging as a committed member of the IWW. In the fall of 1910 Foster made his way for France to attempt to learn lessons from the ultra-radical, direct action-oriented labor movement there, sending back weekly reports from the scene for the Spokane IWW weekly, the Industrial Worker. This is a representative report by Foster from the pages of that paper. Foster notes that a recent conventional strike of the building trades had failed, but that returning workers had their employers in a tizzy over an organized sabotage campaign involving labor and materials. "The French workers are coming to realize (and to act accordingly) that the way to fight the boss is to put a crimp in his pocketbook, regardless of the means employed," Foster declares, adding "They are learning the valuable lesson that capitalist property is not sacred, but that it is simply stolen goods." Foster asserts that "the capitalist has no more right to retain his capital than the burglar now has to retain his swag, and also the capitalists right to life itself is just as sacred as that of the burglar caught in the act." Once this lesson is absorbed by the working class, "the capitalist system will melt like wax," Foster says.
"The Immigration Question," by Ernest Untermann [Dec. 10, 1910] With its defeated majority report calling for continued "Asiatic exclusion" in America coming under fire in Karl Kautsky's influential theoretical magazine Die Neue Zeit [The New Times], chairman of the Socialist Party of America's Committee on Immigration Ernest Untermann here again issues a defense of the policy in the pages of Victor Berger's Social-Democratic Herald. Untermann contends that the prohibition of Asian immigration to the United States is economic rather than chauvinist in intention and he provides an extensive tale of his own personal experiences at sea for a year working side-by-side with grossly exploited Philippine sailors. "I lived for 12 months on rice and dry fish, prepared after the Tagalog recipe and eaten by all hands out of one common dish by the help of our ten fingers. I reveled in all the luxuries of the Tagalog larder and tried all its delights... And since that time I feel like Berger. I would rather 'fight like a tiger' than be reduced to a scale of living which condemns me to rice and fish and to a wage of 6 reales per day." He emphasizes that the majority report of the Immigration Committee was originally composed by himself and New York Socialist Joshua Wanhope and that Victor Berger merely signed the document to indicate his approval.
"A Socialist Mayor and an Almost Mayor," by Mila Tupper Maynard [Dec. 31, 1910] Touring Socialist organizer Mila Tupper Maynard heads for the Pacific and provides an account for readers of Victor Bergers Social-Democratic Herald of the growth of Socialism in the Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest. She tells of a booming Socialist community in Minneapolis, who in November 1910 had come within a mere 800 votes from electing Thomas Van Lear mayor of the city of 300,000. Work was being done to further spread the Socialist message, Maynard notes. In North Dakota Arthur LeSueur had been elected mayor of Minot, third largest city in the state, with Fargo and Grand Forks also boasting solid Socialist locals. Maynard predicts the election of a Socialist Congressman from North Dakota in 1912. In Washington, woman suffrage had been passed -- raising the number of states with full female voting rights to 5 -- and the vote for the Socialist candidate for Supreme Court Judge, head of the ticket in 1910, had increased 5-fold. Maynards overall assessment is upbeat.
