The Red Conspiracy Part 32

"All candidates or appointees to public office selected by the dues-paying membership of the Socialist Party of the State of New York, or any of its subdivisions, shall sign the final resignation blank before nomination is made official or appointment is made final."

The form of resignation, also put in evidence, is here reproduced from the same issue of the "Evening Sun":

"To the end that my official acts may at all times be under the direction and control of the party membership, I hereby sign and place in the hands of Local (........) my resignation to any office to which I may be elected (or appointed), such resignation to become effective whenever a majority of the local shall so vote. I sign this resignation voluntarily as a condition of receiving said nomination, and pledge my honor as a man and Socialist to abide by it."

One of the by-laws of the New York County organization put in evidence also reads:

"On accepting a nomination of the party for public office, the candidate shall at once give to the executive committee a signed resignation of the office for which he is nominated, and shall a.s.sent in writing to its being filed with the proper authority, if, in case of election, he proves disloyal to the party."

A protest had been made to the New York a.s.sembly claiming that "the fundamental principles of representative government" would be violated in refusing to seat the five suspended Socialist a.s.semblymen. But it is plain that men controlled in office by such a secret device would not really represent their districts, nor those who voted for them, but only the members of the dues-paying locals or the executive committee holding their resignations; and in cases of some of the suspended Socialists it was said that of the votes they received not one in ten nor even one in twenty had been cast by a dues-paying Socialist. At the trial Morris Hillquit, of counsel for the defense, tried to break the force of this damaging evidence by getting in testimony "that this provision of the State Const.i.tution has been a dead letter since its inception." (New York "Evening Sun," January 22, 1920.) But this hypocrisy was thoroughly exposed by the testimony given on January 28, 1920, by George R. Lunn, Democratic Mayor of Schenectady, who had been a candidate for that office three times as a Socialist. The following summary of his testimony is from the "New York Sun" of January 29, 1920:

"The outstanding features of Mayor's Lunn's testimony were his statements that on the night before election in 1911, when he was running for Mayor on the Socialist ticket, two members of the party went to his home and presented a blank resignation for his signature. This, he said, he signed in order to 'avoid a squabble,'

although he considered it 'child's play and illegal.' He refused, he said, in 1913 to sign the required resignation before the election. This time he was defeated. In 1915, he testified, he was again nominated and elected, after repudiating that part of the Socialist Const.i.tution which bound him to follow the dictates of his party leaders. The result, he said, was that the State organization revoked the charter of the entire Schenectady local in order to discipline him."

In a ninety-page brief, submitted to members of the New York a.s.sembly on February 12, 1920, by counsel of the Judiciary Committee, after five weeks of investigating the qualifications of the suspended Socialist a.s.semblymen, Attorney-General Charles D. Newton and the other signers said that the five Socialists by "their promise ... to place their resignations in the hands of the dues-paying members ... abdicated their functions as a.s.semblymen and disqualified themselves from taking the oath of office and rendered their oath false." ("New York Times,"

February 13, 1920.)

The same brief, according to the "Times" of above date, says:

"A decent regard for the a.s.sembly as the popular representative house of the State requires that these five a.s.semblymen be excluded from their seats. They have taken a false oath to secure seats which they cannot occupy as gentlemen, patriots, loyal citizens or a.s.semblymen. They come here under the false pretense of being loyal to their Government, when in fact they are really citizens of the Internationale, and desire above all things the destruction of this Government."

The Socialist Party of America is also denounced by the same brief on three other counts, which the "New York Times" of February 13, 1920, thus summarizes:

"The Socialist Party is a revolutionary party, having the single purpose of destroying our inst.i.tutions and Government, which they abhor, and subst.i.tuting the Russian Soviet Government or the proletariat Government instead to be controlled by themselves. This appears from their platforms and propaganda.

"The Socialist Party is not a national party, like the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, whose aim is to conserve and preserve the nation. The Socialist Party is an anti-national party whose allegiance is given to the Internationale and not to the United States, whose Government and inst.i.tutions it would destroy.

"'Ma.s.s action' and the 'general strike' are advocated and urged by the Socialist Party as a part of the plan to bring about conditions favorable to revolution, and as instruments of revolution, and not to remedy industrial evils. The revolutionary purpose and non-political character of such acts make them treasonable, and, whether criminal or not in the absence of such purpose, treasonable with it."

This last point, the att.i.tude of the Socialist Party of America toward "ma.s.s action" and the "general strike," is of the utmost importance as evidence that the Socialist Party stands for seizure of the Government of the United States by revolutionary violence; for the reader will recall abundant proof in this book that it is precisely by means of "ma.s.s action" and the "general strike" that both of the Communist parties in this country expect to destroy our existing Government, these "instruments of revolution" being also the very ones recommended by the Communist manifesto of the Third (Moscow) International, and the ones employed by the I. W. W. in its industrial battles.

The Moscow Manifesto, as cited from the copy of it in the "New York Call" of July 24, 1919, gives the Third International's plan of action for world revolution in a nutsh.e.l.l:

"The revolutionary epoch demands that the proletariat should employ such fighting methods as will concentrate its entire energy, viz., the method of ma.s.s action, and lead to its logical consequence--the direct collision with the capitalist state machine in an open combat. All other methods, e.g., revolutionary use of bourgeois parliamentarism will in the revolution have only a subordinate value."

It is very significant, therefore, that the Socialist Party of America definitely committed itself to these tactics in the manifesto it adopted at the Chicago Emergency Convention on September 4, 1919. As given in the "Call" of September 5, 1919, the manifesto of the Socialist Party of the United States says on this point:

"The great purpose of the Socialist Party is to wrest the industries and the control of the Government of the United States from the capitalists and their retainers. It is our purpose to place industry and government in the control of the workers with hand and brain, to be administered for the benefit of the whole community.

"To insure the triumph of Socialism in the United States the bulk of the American workers must be strongly organized politically as Socialists, in constant, clear-cut and aggressive opposition to all parties of the possessing cla.s.s. They must be strongly organized in the economic field on broad industrial lines, as one powerful and harmonious cla.s.s organization, co-operating with the Socialist Party, and ready in cases of emergency to reinforce the political demands of the working cla.s.s by industrial action.

"To win the American workers from their ineffective and demoralizing leadership, to educate them to an enlightened understanding of their own cla.s.s interests, and to train and a.s.sist them to organize politically and industrially on cla.s.s lines, in order to effect their emanc.i.p.ation, that is the supreme task confronting the Socialist Party in America.

"To this great task, without deviation or compromise, we pledge all our energies and resources. For its accomplishment we call for the support and co-operation of the workers of America and of all other persons desirous of ending the insane rule of capitalism before it has had the opportunity to precipitate humanity into another cataclysm of blood and ruin.

"Long live the International Socialist Revolution, the only hope of the suffering world!"

So culminates and ends this 1919 national convention manifesto of the Socialist Party of America. This dedication of that party to the "supreme task" of "strongly organizing" the "bulk of the American workers" into "one powerful and harmonious cla.s.s organization" in order that "industrial action" may "reinforce the political demands of the working cla.s.s," adds greatly to the significance of some testimony by leading Socialists in the inquiry of the New York a.s.sembly's Judiciary Committee at Albany. On January 30, 1920, Algernon Lee, educational director of the Rand School and secretary of the New York County Committee of the Socialist Party, was sworn and testified as follows, according to the "New York Herald" of January 31, 1920:

"Mr. Lee ... described at length what Socialists mean by direct ma.s.s action and the general strike. He said the general strike had been used with some degree of success in Russia and Belgium....

'The general strike is often used to back up political action,' the witness said. He justified combining economic strikes as a political weapon....

"'Let us a.s.sume for the moment,' said Mr. Conboy, 'that these five gentlemen whose seats are in question ... should present a political program here in the shape of proposed legislation, and they were reinforced by the combination in industrial action, including within its weapons the general strike. It would be possible for them, would it not, in the event that the Legislature of this State refused to adopt the movement which they presented for adoption by the Legislature, to cripple the industries of the State and to starve the people thereof?'

"'I think you are a.s.suming, I may almost say, an impossible condition,' replied Mr. Lee, 'that the people should elect an overwhelming majority upon one side and then be so overwhelmingly organized as to be able to use industrial action on the other side.'"

But here Mr. Lee simply concealed the truth behind hypocritical camouflage by using the term, "the people," ambiguously. For our people might go on as now, conducting const.i.tutional government by representatives in all their legislatures elected by "an overwhelming majority upon one side," while at the same time the underground work might go on of "strongly organizing" "the bulk of the American workers"

into "one powerful and harmonious cla.s.s organization" ready for "industrial action." In that case, a "general strike" would absolutely paralyze the whole country, and "the people" and all their legislatures alike would have to surrender absolutely to any demands made upon them, or would have to engage instantly in such a civil war as the world has not yet seen, carried on under conditions of indescribable chaos.

Moreover the underground work of revolutionary "industrial organization"

need be only partial, need, in fact, be carried on only a little beyond conditions already actually existing, in order to establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat," or else terrible civil war, in many of our American cities by the simple process of calling general strikes.

The reader who questions this should learn the facts about the Winnipeg general strike of May 1-June 15, 1919, "the culmination of the development of the One Big Union movement in Canada" (page 333 of "The American Labor Year Book, 1919-1920, edited by Alexander Trachtenberg, Director, Department of Labor Research, Rand School of Social Science"), which held a city of 200,000 terrorized for six weeks under the absolute dictatorship of a Strike Committee elected by the strikers, while "many cities, including Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto, meanwhile joined the general strike in sympathy with Winnipeg." (Ibid., page 334.)

The strikers included the employees of the fire, water supply, health, street cleaning, light and power, transportation, telegraph, telephone and postal departments of the city, together with the janitors of buildings, elevator men, wholesale and retail clerks and the carters and deliverers of the stores, railways and express companies, thus cutting off the city from the rest of the world and even from the supplies and facilities within its own bounds except only as the Strike Committee made concessions. "I could have a gla.s.s of milk or lunch if I had a ticket from the Strike Committee. Otherwise I couldn't." This was the testimony of Mr. Robert McKay, of Winnipeg, February 10, 1920, and printed in the Albany "Knickerbocker Press" of February 11, 1920, from which we take the facts. Even the Winnipeg newspapers failed to appear after the first three days of the strike, while the city police also voted to strike, but continued on duty under command of the Strike Committee.

At length a Citizens' Committee was organized, 100 men at first, which grew to 1,000, and even 10,000, Mr. McKay says. "The regular police was replaced by 1,500 special police, a.s.sisted by mounted police and militia," and "during the last two weeks there were two riots, in which two persons were shot by the mounted police." (Account in Trachtenberg's "Year Book," above quoted, page 334.) In other words, Winnipeg was only delivered by means of rescue from outside and by incipient civil war, the ringleaders of the dictatorship being arrested and indicted for trial.

Yet are there some Americans still so blinded by foolish optimism as to think we are in no danger--even at a time when all the "Reds" of America, inflamed by the Third International, are uniting in feverish haste to carry "industrial organization" to a sufficient state to make it an instrument for holding up the whole American people? If the false prophets of optimism pooh-pooh the peril and label intelligent warnings as "hysteria," will it be the first time in history that this was done by men of weight and influence in the very shadow of a great, impending rebellion and down to the very hour of its outbreak?

Mr. Lee's testimony on January 30, 1920, as quoted above, was voluntarily supplemented by a statement by Seymour Stedman, of counsel for the five Socialist a.s.semblymen and a prominent Socialist himself, one of the National Executive Committeemen who fought the Left Wing to keep the control of the party in 1919. We quote from the report of the trial in the "New York Times" of January 31, 1920:

"Mr. Lee was next asked to explain what was meant by the pledge of the Socialist anti-war faction to support 'ma.s.s action' against conscription. He answered that the general strike was included in the term 'ma.s.s action,' but that the word contemplated other methods as well.

"'Is it part of the Socialist Party plans to use the general strike to back up political action?'

"'If the circ.u.mstances should exist which made that necessary, I take it that it would be construed so,' said the witness.

"Mr. Conboy was unable to pin the witness down to a definition of what circ.u.mstances would make the Socialists resort to direct action. Mr. Stedman interrupted:

"'There was a bill to nationalize the railroads,' he said. 'The men went on strike to reinforce their demands. I can see the miners and the whole working cla.s.s going on a strike protesting against the Government paralyzing them rather than taking the mine owners by the collar. That will be general. If the working cla.s.s made such a demand to reinforce a general political demand for the relaxation of such an injunction, the Socialists would stand side by side with them everywhere. Personally, I think the mining situation was an instance where there should have been a general strike.'"

It is important to emphasize the proofs that the Socialist Party of America has openly committed itself to the sanction and advocacy of "industrial" violence in furtherance of its avowed intention "to wrest industry and the control of the government of the United States" from the whole American people and place them in the hands of a special cla.s.s. For since the wholesale arrests of "Reds" by the Department of Justice were made, followed by the inst.i.tution of the inquiry into the qualifications of the five Socialist a.s.semblymen at Albany, a new, general movement became discernible among the radicals, a movement to disguise their real principles, camouflage their plan of action and carry their propaganda "under ground."

Hillquit, Victor L. Berger and the other shrewd leaders of the Socialist Party realized early in 1919 that the programs of violence against this country, flaunted openly by the Left Wing leaders, would bring down the hand of the Government upon the conspirators. As early as April 19, 1919, Julius Gerber, Executive Secretary of the New York Local of the Socialist Party, in a private letter which we quote from the Left Wing "New York Communist." May 1, 1919, stated that "the control of the party by these irresponsible people will make the party an outlaw organization, and break up the organization."

Yet the call for the Third (Moscow) International had cunningly cla.s.sified the Socialists of the world into three groups, a Right, a Center and "the Revolutionary Left Wing." This last group included the friends of Moscow, the elements of the Third International; and those credited to it in America, who received invitations to the Moscow Conference of March 2-6, were the Socialist Labor Party, the I. W. W., the Workers' International Industrial Union and "the elements of the Left Wings of American Socialist Propaganda (tendency represented by E.

V. Debs and the Socialist Propaganda League)." The group of the Right, the other extreme, was completely condemned by the Moscow call as "avowed social-patriots who, during the entire duration of the imperialistic war between the years 1914 and 1918 have supported their own bourgeoisie."

But the "Center" was described as "represented by leaders of the type of Karl Kautsky, and who const.i.tute a group composed of ever-hesitating elements, unable to settle on any determined direction and who up to date have always acted as traitors." "In regard to the 'Center,'" the call continues, "the tactics consist in separating from it the revolutionary elements, in criticizing pitilessly its leaders and in dividing systematically among them the number of their followers." The Left Wing leaders in America, however, ignoring the recognition of a "Center" in this country, lumped together and designated as the "Right"

all their Socialist opponents, the special followers of Hillquit, Victor L. Berger and the other "bosses" of the Socialist Party; but they certainly followed the tactics of "criticizing pitilessly its leaders."

(See the Moscow call in Chapter III and the details of the Left Wing fight in Chapters III, IV and V.)

These facts explain the course pursued by Hillquit and his fellow-leaders. In the first place they had to get rid of the Left Wing leaders whose "control of the party" would make it "an outlaw organization and break up the organization." This they accomplished by wholesale expulsions and suspensions, as we have seen in earlier chapters. But in the second place they had to prepare a sufficiently strong public declaration of the real revolutionary principles of their party and a sufficiently explicit identification of the party with the Moscow International to satisfy both the rank and file of their followers and Lenine and Trotzky in Russia, while yet not going far enough to incriminate themselves with the awakening suspicions of our National and State Governments. As a result we have the utterances of the Emergency Convention of August-September, 1919, where every compromising word was still only a hint of the principles and plan of action carefully concealed behind it.

Even so, the leaders soon realized that they had revealed too much of the truth for their safety; while the wholesale arrests, indictments and deportations of radicals evidently convinced these cunning plotters that the old-time disguises and hypocrisies of Hillquit, Victor Berger and the other foxes of the party were the only safe tactics for revolutionists in America. Thus Ludwig C. A. K. Martens, the Bolshevist "amba.s.sador," himself led the retreat in his smooth lies to the United States Senate Foreign Sub-Committee, to the effect that the dictatorship in Russia no longer regarded it as necessary to urge those affiliated with it in other countries to overthrow the existing governments.

Undoubtedly he had made the American situation perfectly clear to Lenine and Trotzky.

The reappearance of Morris Hillquit in the a.s.sembly case at Albany, on February 17, 1920, and his appearance on the witness-stand as "an expert on Socialism," was a similar attempt to repair the breaches with camouflage. It was his part with an amused smile to show that "industrial organization," "industrial action," "ma.s.s action" and "general strikes" really mean nothing in the Socialist Party's manifestoes, platforms and programs, and that his party's affiliation with the Third (Moscow) International was a mere meaningless, friendly gesture. But these party utterances and acts meant all and even more than they said to the party's rank and file and confederates.