A Personal View of the Early Left in Pittsburgh, 1907-1923 Frieda Truhar Brewster parents, turn-of-the-century immigrants from Croatia, were already socialists when Iwas born August 4, 1911, in MYrented rooms on the second floor of a house at 337 East Ohio Street on the North Side of Pittsburgh. AsIgrew up among those who had participated in the events recounted here, Ilistened to their stories, their discussions, and their arguments; Iasked questions and received answers. Their beliefs have had a lasting impact on my life, and Ihave tried here to give my personal impressions of those times. Croatian Socialism and Radnicka Straza As devout Catholics, ithad not been easy for my parents to change their views and accept the novel ideas of the very different people in- troduced into their lives by my mother's brother, who lived with them when they settled in Allegheny City in 1906. Following the path the Germans had taken with their Turnervereins, 1 the Croatians began to As she recounts, Frieda Brewster was born in 1911 to socialist Croatian immi- grants in Pittsburgh. The reminiscences printed here followher and her family through the turbulent early twentieth century: the organization of foreign-born socialist organizations, the founding of the Radnicka Straza, World War I, the factional strife within the socialist movement, and the Red Scare. It ends with Mrs. Brewster's adolescence in the mid-1920s. She went on to high school and college inPittsburgh, attending the University of Pittsburgh untilthe Depression's effects forced her to leave. She remained active in the causes and organizations of the Left, and married a Scots communist labor organizer. He was deported in 1931, and Mrs. Brewster has lived in England (with the exception of briefperiods in the Soviet Union and China before World War II) ever since. Mrs. Brewster attended college in Britain during the 1950s and became a teacher. Now retired, she describes herself as a "Euro-communist," with a firmbelief in a democratic path to socialism. Mrs. Brewster has written these reminiscences over great removes of time and distance, using sources primarily from her experiences on the Left. While her recollections sometimes vary from the "facts" as described by professional his- torians, this document must be viewed as a most valuable and remarkably de- tailed account of a period very littlestudied inPittsburgh. We are grateful forthe opportunity to print it.—Editor 1 [Turnervereins were secular, rationalist athletic clubs in Germany. In the United States after about 1880, they were divided among leftists and people who wanted the organizations to be non-ideological. Verein translates as club or association.] The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, Vol. 69, No. 4 (October 1986) Copyright © Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania 343 344 Frieda Truhar Brewster form their own social societies. Many were attached to the church, some to the National Croatian Union (later the Croatian Fraternal Society, or Zajednica). My father had joined Sloga (Harmony) Choral Society. But Bratsvo (Brotherhood), which my uncle Peter first attended, was very different. This social and cultural club was the creation of a group of Croatian radicals, some of whom had been socialists in the old country. Anintegral part of its activity was a discussion evening when debate and argument ranged widely over many subjects, es- pecially the need for a more just society and ways to achieve it.Much of what my uncle heard touched closely on hardships he had experi- enced. He could no longer accept the old explanation of poverty as part of one's fate. Uncle Peter agreed with the views of these new friends that "the world must be changed," and he joined them. My father was persuaded and transferred to the Bratsvo choir, but Catholicism remained my mother's stumbling block. Though she joined Bratsvo in1907, it was not until 1909 that she declared, "Ihave freed myself of religion." In later years, she used that phrase often telling me about the old times. The belief that socialism and religion were incompatible was held by many before World War I.The social- ists enthusiastically welcomed the new ideas proposed in this era of ferment. Darwinism, with its implied attack on fundamentalist re- ligion, was attractive to those young Croatians who saw it as an exciting alternative to a faith in "God's will"which they believed so hampered struggles for change and improvement. They were also aware of the power of the church when priests, primarily Catholic, entered the industrial battlefields on the side of the employers. For example, during the 1902 miners' strike, in the Church of the Annunciation of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, Father Filey told the miners: You should have the manhood to go back to work and defy the United Mineworkers of America. It is a bloodstained organization and willbe bloodstained until it ceases to exist. It was formed to promote crime and protect criminals. Everybody was happy and contented here untilMitchell and Fahy came. 2 Among Croatian socialists, Prosveta stood for spreading culture and education. There was a liberal spirit abroad as public arguments took place between priests and professors. My father attended one such 2 Mitchell and Fahy were union organizers. Ella Reeve Bloor, We Are Many (New York, 1940), 63. [Other historians might argue that the church was always anti-socialist but not always anti-union.] A View of the Early Left 345 debate in the old Lyceum Theatre in Pittsburgh. Clarence Darrow spoke to thousands. Bratsvo members went to hear Robert Ingersoll, the "great Agnostic," when he toured the country. They read the works of "muckrakers" such as Lincoln Steffens, who concluded in Pittsburgh, A City Ashamed that in Pittsburgh, privilege controlled politics. * To the delight of the Croatian socialists, the ideas and theories of socialism were publicly proclaimed in this heady atmosphere, but there was also a feeling of frustration that their numbers were so few. Years later, my uncle Peter explained to me that in all of Pitts- burgh, there were only some twenty young Croatian men and women who thought of themselves as socialists at that time. Most were from the cities of the old country and tailors by trade. Uncle Peter was a barber, however, and my father was a bricklayer. The group lacked contact with the thousands of their countrymen from the villages who worked as unskilled laborers in the mills. Many worked twelve-hour shifts with a fulltwenty-four hours every sixth day. Hundreds were killed or injured: in the United States in, 1905 alone, ninety-five members of the National Croatian Union were killed inaccidents, and eighty-five were permanently disabled. 4 The reports of the National Croatian Union (which had a member- ship of 22,384 in1904) gave only a small percentage of all accidents and injuries involving Croatians. Many more young immigrants did not belong to any organization. We do know that over 80 percent of the Croatian immigrants were peasants, and that many of them lived inPittsburgh. Eventually, the group inand around the area became the largest in the United States. 5 But few of these young steel workers came to the radical club Bratsvo, despite its Tamburitza (mandolin) Orchestra, choir, and dramatic society or its events such as dances and picnics. My family said that these men spent what leisure time they had in saloons and their boarding houses, rarely venturing outside their immediate neighborhood. The problem which faced the Croatian socialists was how to ap- proach these young people and to expose to them the sharp practices of the proprietors of the saloons and boarding houses. Most impor- tantly, they wanted to talk to them about the high incidence of deaths 3 Lincoln Steffens, Pittsburgh, A City Ashamed (New York, 1909). 4 George G. Prpic, The Croatian Immigrants in America (New York, 1971), 340; Emily Balch, Our Slavic Fellow Citizens (New York,1969), 301. 5 Prpic, Croatian Immigrants, 124, 179, 340; Balch, Slavic Fellow Citizens, 442. 346 Frieda Truhar Brewster and accidents in the mills and the necessity for the enforcement of safety standards. The blame for injuries, they argued, lay with an utterly callous disregard for life and limb on the part of their em- ployers. —After much debate and discussion,— they did find an answer, echoing perhaps unknowingly the opinion of Eugene V.Debs, the best-known socialist in America. He believed that a workers' socialist newspaper was a vital part of the working-class movement, a means of "waking the workers from their sleep, teaching them the power of thought, creating solidarity among them, showing them where their economic interests lay." 6 George J. Prpic attributed the founding of the socialist paper Radnicka Straza (Workingmen's Guard) to Chicago socialists, but my family and other "pioneers" Iknew well never doubted that this hap- pened inPittsburgh. 7 On the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the paper, its last successor, Narodni Glasnik, reported that The groundwork and main thrust for the publication of a workers' paper for the Croatian and Serbian immigrants in America came from Pittsburgh, or as itwas then called, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, now known as the North Side. In that place the idea of the workers' paper was not only born but ripened and bore fruit. Allnecessary decisions were taken by a group of socialist, class-conscious workers. One of the main problems was an editor. To this end they wrote to the leadership of the Social Democratic organiza- tion in Croatia seeking a man with not only the ability to edit but also the willingness to share the hardships to whichimmigrant socialists are subject. 8 Tomo Besenic from Pittsburgh was the leading spirit in this venture.