By Rudolph Katz
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With De Leon Since ’89 By Rudolph Katz Published Online by Socialist Labor Party of America http://slp.org August 2007 WITH DE LEON SINCE ’89 By Rudolph Katz PRINTING HISTORY With De Leon Since ’89 was serialized in the New York WEEKLY PEOPLE from March 20, 1915, to January 29, 1916, and subsequently included in the volume, Daniel De Leon: The Man and His Work, published by the New York Labor News, as follows: FIRST PRINTING ......................................................................... June 1919 SECOND PRINTING ............................................................... August 1919 THIRD PRINTING ................................................................ October 1926 FOURTH PRINTING ................................................................. April 1934 FIFTH PRINTING ................................................................... January 1969 ONLINE EDITION ................................................................... August 2007 PRIOR TO 1889. Collapse of the Henry George Movement—Dissension in the Early Labor Movement—Ill-Starred Rosenberg-Busche Struggle for Sounder S.L.P. Political Policy N 1887 THE HENRY GEORGE MOVEMENT went to pieces. Only a year Ibefore, in 1886, Henry George, candidate for mayor of New York on the ticket of the United Labor Party, had loomed up a big figure in the political arena. Sixty-eight thousand (68,000) votes were cast for Henry George, not in modern Greater New York, but in old New York limited to a much smaller number of voters than are now eligible to vote in the Borough of Manhattan alone. The fact is also to be borne in mind that this happened in the days when ballot-box stuffing was quite freely indulged in, repeating being practiced by both Tammany Hall and the Republican Party. So general was this foul practice that men boasted openly of having voted early and often; and many, in fact, considered themselves good American citizens because they not only voted once on election day, but a number of times, each time in a different district. The oftener they voted, the better American citizens they considered themselves to be. Of course, all the ballot-box stuffing and repeating was the work of the old parties, and when, in spite of all of it, Henry George polled sixty-eight thousand votes, there was good reason for the old party chiefs to fear the new movement. Accordingly, the press denounced Henry George as an Anarchist and Socialist. This might not have had the desired effect so far as the voters were concerned; they cared little for these denunciations of Henry George, as the vote indicated, for George had been denounced by the so-called public press as an Anarchist during the ’86 campaign; but it did have the desired effect with Henry George himself. Reasoning like all men who become afflicted with inflammation of the head, which results in its swelling to a size out of all proportion to the size of the individual, Henry George thought that he was the movement, and that since he received sixty-eight thousand votes with the odium of being a Socialist upon him, how many more votes might he not receive with the odium of being a Socialist removed! So, at the convention of the United Labor Party, held in the city of Syracuse in 1887, Henry George declared that “the tail must not wag the dog”; the Socialists were read out of the party, the “tail” was cut off. Socialist Labor Party 3 www.slp.org With De Leon Since ’89 The Socialists, and here begins my story, formed the Progressive Labor Party, and put up a state ticket in opposition to the Henry George party. Henry George, who in ’86 received sixty-eight thousand votes in New York city alone, received in ’87 for the office of Secretary of State in the whole Empire State thirty-three thousand, the candidate of the Progressive Labor Party for the same office receiving seven thousand votes. The Henry George party was dead. Daniel De Leon, who had been active in the United Labor Party up to the time when the “tail that wagged the dog” was amputated, declared that “the operation had been too successful, Henry George having cut off the tail right back of the ears.” Dissension Not Introduced Into the Labor Movement by De Leon De Leon joined the Nationalist movement, organized by Edward Bellamy, who became famous at that time through his book, Looking Backward. Many times we have heard from the lips of professional slanderers the accusation that where De Leon was there was sure to be dissension. Well, the labor movement, both political and economic, was a witches’ cauldron, seething with dissensions before De Leon joined it. There were three central bodies of unions in New York—the Central Labor Union, the Central Labor Federation, and District 49, Knights of Labor. There was no love lost between these central bodies of “organized labor.” Billingsgate was indulged in on all sides and each accused the other of scabbing. Corruption, too, was rampant. One instance may be cited here. After the strike or lockout of brewery workers by the “pool brewers,” as the organization of the boss brewers was called, and a boycott against these brewers was launched that became really effective, because it was actually carried out by the Germans in their trade unions which were indeed an important factor in beer consumption, it was discovered that a bribe had been paid to certain “labor leaders” in the Central Labor Union to annul the boycott or work to that end. One delegate of the Brewery Workers’ Union pretended to be willing to take the bribe. He received $500, which was deposited; and later, in a sworn statement before a notary, the whole affair was exposed. On the political field, as during the George campaign, the Socialists had thrown their activity and organization into the United Labor Party, and were unceremoniously thrown out again. The Progressive Labor Party was at best only a makeshift to deal the United Labor Party a solar plexus blow, which it did. There was much more, however, of this kind of “peace” before Daniel De Leon Socialist Labor Party 4 www.slp.org With De Leon Since ’89 entered the movement. For even among those who were in the old Socialist Labor Party,—which at that time was only a “party of propaganda,” so styled by some who wanted it to remain forevermore a “party of propaganda” and endorse whatever radical movement might spring up—there was a good deal of hobnobbing with Anarchists and also with freak reform movements. In the proceedings of a convention of the old Socialistic Labor Party (as the party was called at first, this being a literal translation from the German) held as early as 1883 in the city of Allegheny, Pa., the national secretary of the party, Van Patten, was censured for having opposed the formation of military clubs. Albert Parsons, who later figured in the Haymarket affair in Chicago, was a delegate to that convention. J.P. McGuire, the notorious labor “leader,” was at that convention elected as the party’s delegate to the International Congress. From ’79 to ’89 the organization remained very much the same. When light began to break and the few American Sections wanted a real Socialist political organization without fusion and without taking a vote at every meeting whether political action should be endorsed or rejected, they met with the opposition of the New Yorker Volkszeitung and the elements influenced by that paper. For the most part agitation was conducted in the German language, but now and then a native agitator would make his appearance in New York and be immediately sent on an agitation trip through the eighteen towns where the party had organized Sections. There being no established party policy, everyone was free to agitate his particular kind of Socialism and express his own ideas as to party policy and tactics. Most all the native agitators had some scheme wherewith they were to transform conservative American workingmen into Socialists. Early Fight Over Independent Action Many there were who came with the fixed idea that Socialist propaganda should be based upon the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, at any rate brought into harmony with these documents, so as to remove prejudice against Socialism. It is in the make-up of the nativistic know-nothing individual to engender such notions. Artemus Ward, the humorist so much admired by our late Comrade De Leon, tells us something that fits these fellows who have a hankering for making everything subject to the Constitution. Artemus Ward in his talk to the members of the community of Shakers, in bidding them “adoo,” says: “Meanwhile the world resolves around its own axel-tree every twenty-four hours, subjeck to the Constitution of the United States.” The Constitutional cranks have not Socialist Labor Party 5 www.slp.org With De Leon Since ’89 altogether disappeared even in these latter days. After the experience made by the Socialists of New York with the Henry George movement it began to dawn upon the younger element, or perhaps rather upon those who were in earnest, that the time for experimenting with all sorts of schemes had about passed, and that the Socialist Labor Party should become a real political party, not only a party of propaganda. Several Sections, under the leadership of W. Rosenberg and F. Busche, editor of the Workmen’s Advocate, the official party organ—the American Section of New York among them—took the stand that the time had arrived for the Socialists to enter the political arena not here and there and at indefinite periods, but to unfurl the banner of International Socialism on American soil without compromise or fusion with any other political party. It was here that the New Yorker Volkszeitung did its nefarious work by using its influence to drive both Rosenberg and Busche out of the party, and all those who stood with them as well.