University of Kentucky UKnowledge Political History History 1969 An American Dissenter: The Life of Algie Martin Simons 1870–1950 Kent Kreuter Hamline University Gretchen Kreuter College of St. Catherine Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Kreuter, Kent and Kreuter, Gretchen, "An American Dissenter: The Life of Algie Martin Simons 1870–1950" (1969). Political History. 17. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_political_history/17 AN AMERICAN DISSENTER This page intentionally left blank KENT & GRETCHEN KRE UTER Dissenter The Lfe of A@ Martin Simons 1870-1950 UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY PRESS LEXINGTON 1969 Copyright @ 1969, University of Kentucky Press Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 68-55042 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We are indebted above all to the Colgate Research Council of Col- gate University for its generous support and encouragement. A grant from the Littauer Foundation to the Colgate Research Council made possible a summer of research in the Simons Papers, and subsequent aid enabled us to examine other relevant collections. A number of librarians contributed in a variety of ways to our work. Most helpful, interested, and tireless was Eric von Brockdorff, formerly reference librarian at Colgate University. Others who an- swered our queries and hunted up material were Warren Albert, American Medical Association; Emilie Al-Khazraji, Josephine L. Harper, Biagino M. Marone, and Judith Topaz, State Historical Society of Wisconsin; J. Frank Cook, University of Wisconsin Li- brary; Michael Gieryic, Colgate University; Virginia R. Gray, Duke University Library; Helen S. Mangold, Huntington Library; Theo- dore Mueller, Milwaukee County Historical Society; and James W. Snell, Kansas State Historical Society. Among those who offered ideas and information about Simons and the American socialist movement or who read parts of the manuscript were Merle Curti, James C. Davies, Marcus Franda, Gerald Fried- berg, Jackson Giddens, Terry M. Hopkins, Dorothy Sickels, George H. Spargo, David Stern, and Karl von Loewe. Special thanks are due Robert Huston of Ball State University, who began to collect material on Simons in the early 195os, when a number of Simons' relatives and friends were still available for inter- view. Professor Huston was most helpful to us, both in his encourage- ment and in his warnings of the problems to be encountered in tracking down the writings of a man who was, for much of his life, a fugitive journalist. We are grateful to the McKnight Foundation for awarding a McKnight Prize in American history and biography to the manuscript of this book. This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Acknowledgments v Illustrations ix Introduction xi CHAPTER ONE On Native Ground I CHAPTER TWO Poverty and Philosophy I 8 CHAPTER THREE Many Mansions 35 CHAPTER FOUR Spreading the Word 55 CHAPTER FIVE Politics 82 CHAPTER SIX Kansas Exile I I 6 CHAPTER SEVEN Milwaukee Journalist 144 CHAPTER EIGHT War and Revolution I 63 CHAPTER NINE The New World 192 CHAPTER TEN Reminiscence 2 I 7 Bibliographical Essay 225 Index 231 This page intentionally left blank ILLUSTRATIONS between pages I oo and I o I Staff of the Chicago Daily Socialist, ca. 1906 A. M. Simons on the "Red Special," September 1908 Socialist Luncheon Meeting for the Mission by the Pro-War Party, August 2, I 9 I 8 Members of the American Socialist Labor Mission to Europe, Paris, I 9 I 8 between pages I 08 and I 09 A typical example of the crude but luring cartooning that filled the pages of most Socialist periodicals and newspapers A Ryan Walker cartoon An art nouveau reflection of Socialist expectations in I 902 A typical Marxist cartoon depicting the stages of history and forecasting the imminent demise of capitalism (All photographs courtesy of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin) This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION Americans are a sentimental people, full of nostalgia for lost causes and vanishing frontiers. Few, however, have ever become nostalgic about the vanished hopes of the Socialist party of America. Often ridiculed in its heyday for its seemingly endless quarrels and contro- versies, and despised for its attacks on much that Americans held dear, the socialist movement in this country has since been dishonored by its supposed kinship with communism. Many of the old Socialists themselves repudiated their radicalism and gratefully joined what they once had called "the interests." Algie Martin Simons was one of the leaders in that great lost cause. He began a twenty-year career as a radical on the very left edge of the movement. When he quit the party in 1917 he became a moving force in the ultrapatriotic Wisconsin Loyalty Legion and for the duration of World War I assailed some of his onetime colleagues. After a foray into international diplomacy he returned to America to pursue a new vision of social justice, a vision based not upon the teachings of Karl Marx but upon the theories of Frederick Winslow Taylor and the disciples of scientific management. The Great Depres- sion destroyed that career, and he spent the last active years of his life writing books and articles on health insurance for the American Medical Association. To characterize Simons as merely an apostate Socialist is to ignore both his historical importance and the intrinsic interest of what he had to say about America. The very range of his ideological experience brought him into touch with many of the movements and personali- ties of his time. As a propagandist and historian he wrote the first Marxist survey of American history, and he disseminated his ideas about the role of economic forces in American development to a wide audience. As a journalist, he furnished Upton Sinclair with much of the material used in The Ju~gle,and as a party politician Simons was a leading force in unifying the party, in establishing the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and in trying to make socialism an xii INTRODUCTION acceptable alternative for the American voter. As a theoretician he maintained important links with the leaders of European socialism. From his days as a settlement worker on Chicago's South Side through his years as a teacher and writer on industrial relations, he sought to come to grips with the major problems that face industrial society in the twentieth century. The renewal of radicalism that has taken place in America in the 1960s does not have its roots in the socialism that A. M. Simons espoused. The black revolution, the New Left, and the student upris- ings of recent years are all responses to problems that were, for the most part, unknown to the Socialists of the early twentieth century. Yet in the careers of Simons and his contemporaries, one may see exemplified the problems faced by many men who try to resolve the tension between their sense of social injustice and their desire for the good life for themselves and their families. For many black Americans and for some draft-resisting youth, the two go hand in hand-there can be no good life without the righting of social wrongs. But for large numbers of today's radicals, essentially middle class in background and expectations, there is an abundance of such tension. In a larger sense, then, Simons' life may suggest some- thing of the meaning and importance of a certain kind of radicalism in the American past, and illuminate the burdens that radicalism has customarily imposed upon many of its followers. CHAPTER ONE A slim, dark-haired youth, with a mustache that made him look older than his years and more distinguished than his origins, gathered up his luggage and hurried off the train as soon as it ground to a stop.' Algie Martin Simons joined the crowd of young people who made their way up the ~latformand into the station on that autumn day in September I 891. The train had taken him to Madison, Wisconsin, but his journey had been brief. He had come from Baraboo, in Sauk County, and it had been little more than an hour since he had said goodby to his family and friends. In a different sense, the journey was far longer than any member of Simons' family had taken in the course of several generations. None of them had had either time or money for the luxury of higher education. His people were farmers, descendants of English and Scottish stock who had settled in America in colonial times and had moved westward through succeeding generations. Algie's grandfather had gone west from Ohio to Illinois and thence to Minnesota, where the accustomed hardships of homesteaders were augmented by a severe climate and hostile Indians. To Simons' forebears, prosperity never came. After the farm in Minnesota had failed, Grandfather Simons moved his family to the fertile Sauk Prairie of south-central Wisconsin. There his son, Horace, was to spend the rest of his life trying to earn a living. The land near the village of North Freedom was both unusual and fruitful. At the north end of the small prairie rose the Baraboo bluffs, part of the spectacular scenery of the nearby Wisconsin Dells. The Wisconsin River carved the rocky dells and then meandered through the grassy prairie southwestward toward the Mississippi, and along its banks were hundreds of Indian mounds, effigies of animals and birds made 2 AN AMERICAN DISSENTER by an unknown people of an unknown culture that left its mark along - - the river systems of the American interior.