Tragic Drama of a Socaialist at the Broadburst Theatre
By Norman Thomas TIMELY TOPICS every week the presidential candidate pttuses in his campaign to hammer out pithy comment on the anvil of Socialist philosophy and ripe experience. Myelin ft $...
...Certain it is that there is little reason why the exploited masses of New York City could be aroused by a mere cry of reform, rotten as New York City's conditions have become...
...Y. Municipal Situation SINCE I shall be away almost continuously in fact I was campaigning in Connecticut at the time of the city convention -it may be appropriate to say now a few things about our New York City situation...
...Municipal Ownerihip And the Fear of Graft "|RUT h°w about graft...
...Hillquit debated Rev...
...There is no political machinery which gluttons, fools and cowards can drive with perfect safety...
...Worker youth, firm in the right...
...Thore is no adequate challenge to the workers which leaves untouched the essential racket which is not Tammany Hall's graft but the whole profit system with its landlordism, Its exploitation by public utilities, and the like...
...Young men and maidens marching Hand and hand into the morning— Sword-blades of song...
...If there were no Immense profits to be made out of an advance tip on land which the city was about to condemn because the city had become tbe virtual landowner by collecting in a tax the rental value of land, there would not be the immense gifts connected with condemnation proceedings...
...Now that the night is gone Youth...
...Even so, graft in connection with the Dock Department arises not primarily from building the docks but from renting them...
...I rejoice in the able leadership we have in both the city and state campaign, The cause is one...
...It was that campaign that attracted Norman Thomas by its high idealism and caused him to work for the ticket, and shortly thereafter to Join the party, an act of high and idealistic unselfishness...
...We are in a peculiarly fortunate position for a municipal program...
...We are seeking to establish Socialism all along the line...
...Hang it, this depression la retttiur the best of us...
...Take New York City as it stands...
...It must be remembered that the great audiences In Dayton, Akron, Cleveland and Riie were in halls where admission was charged for most of the seats...
...Morris Hillquit has had at least three great careers, each one of which would have set him out as a Socialist of sterling worth...
...and as he did at incalculable personal cost, when he came from the mountains, where he was recupercating from a serious illness, to defend the five Socialist assemblymen in the notorious Sweet ouster proceedings of 1920...
...But above all else, above his achievements and his concrete contributions Hillquit has given the Socialist movement of America a spiritual gift, the gift of his example...
...Party's Spokesman He has been the party's outstanding spokesman on countless occasions, and the party has never had occasion to regret the fact that he had spoken for It, or had expounded Its position with his pen, ¦e has been one of the leading party organisation workers, one of tbe founders of the present party and a member of its national executive nearly the whole of the life of the party...
...New York's marvelous water system has been far freer from scandal than has been the relation of the city to privately owned gas and electric supply...
...For close to 30 years he has been American Socialism's delegate to international Socialist congresses and an intimate associate and often advisor of Socialist comrades win* in the stirring decade and a half have been the leading statesmen of the European nations...
...A man of great eloquence and personal charm, he might easily have become one of the leading jurists of the country if he did not elect to remain true to his deeply-held convictions...
...That is why the state program which Louis Waidman has been expounding with such clarity Is important...
...But It merely capped a career that had begun nearly 30 years before, when young Morris Hillquit, still a student, was already one of the most active and the most promising of the younger members of the movement...
...THE SOCIALISTS ARE PROUD AND HAPPY TO FIGlH FOR SOCIALISM BEHIND these leaders...
...M. Davenport and Rev...
...This is not to argue that municipal or any other kind of Socialism will automatically end all graft...
...There Is a lesson for the world in what is happening In South America...
...mi,i t<> »hi>w that he had the sublime courage of his convictions, Hillquit defiantly accepted tbe nomination for Mayor in 1917 that the party enthusiastically tendered him...
...Our hope Is to make Socialism the alternative to catastrophe...
...No matter who the opponent was, Morris Hillquit could always be counted upon to face him and to uphold the position of Socialism...
...Debated Anti-Socialists Again and again he has debated Socialism and the party's position with men of all points of view...
...for peace and for civil liberties...
...That does not mean that we expect Socialism to come automatically by some sudden act of conversion...
...make immense unearned private profits, strikes a mortal blow at the racketeering spirit which finds expression in government in the thing we call graft...
...I., -these are some of the meetings that stir one's blood...
...In tbe case of Cleveland there was a 25-cent charge...
...It did, Indeed, teach a whole great city how the principles of Socialism might be applied to a single city without watering down and without compromising...
...Beside the mass meeting, I was taken to all sorts of smaller meetings, sessions of unemployed councils and lunches of various groups...
...Darrow...
...Timely Worth on /V...
...Youth, clear-eyed and confident, Stubborn and toil full...
...Iliiiqull Led right Against War Fifteen years ago America was plunged Into war, and millions looked for leadership In their opposition to the war...
...against the high cost of living, and for municipal Socialism...
...he faced Augustus G. Gardner, the militarist ,on militarism, and he debated Clarence...
...For ewer thirty years Morris Hillquit has been the spokesman of Socialism before the public, in debates with distinguished op...
...In 1905 and again in 1915 he debated Professor Seligman of Columbia, clearly defeating the distinguished economist in two debates on economics...
...But tbe 1917 campaign was only the high spot of a notable Socialist career up to that time...
...The thing that has made graft so terrible a feature of life and government In America generally and In New York CHy In particular Is a combination of the low acqulstlve standards of our capitalist oiviilzatlon and the fact that under capitalism private Interests possess or hope to possess natural resources and public services out of which to make millions, which resources and services by •II ethical right ought to belong to the community and be managed for the use of Its members...
...It was no mere political campaign or quest for office, although It resulted in the election of 18 Socialists to public office It was a crusade such as the city had never before seen, so far transcending the "reform" campaigns of Seth Low and William Travers Jerome of a decade and a half previous that the latter were forgotten by a generation that had at last come to realize what high idealism with its fighting clothes on could accomplish...
...He never hesitated but plunged ahead Into the fight, Inspiring all by his example...
...So-called Socialism established by a military cabal is likely to turn out fascism...
...The application varies with opportunities for Socialist service...
...This question is almost always asked, and usually sincerely, when one advocates municipal Socialism...
...It arises, however, out of the failure to understand the present nature of graft...
...Ohio, 2,700 in Akron, 3,000 in Cleveland, 2,000 or more to Erie, Pa , 5,000 at the state picnic in Metuchen, N. J., over 2,000 at Hempstead, L...
...He debated Samuel Gompers on the need of a labor party, and debated Samuel Untermyer twice...
...By William Morris Candidate for Mayor of N. Y. Is Notable Party Spokesman Morris Hillquit Distinguished for Services to Movement and to Workers BY NAMING Morris Hillquit, national chairman of the Socialist Partf, for Mayor of New York Ckj, the Socialist Party for the second time selects as its standard bearer in a municipal campaign the man who is by all odds one of the two of three most outstanding Socialists in the United Stares, and one of the leading Socialists of the world...
...So the cause marches on "Socialism" by Military Cabal ISol the Real Thing WE don't want to be too absorbed in our own affaire...
...niore than a quarter of a century ago he debated Jacob Gould Schurman, then president of Cornell, at a forum in New Rochelle, and by his quiet incisiveneas, caused the noted educator to shout and stamp his feet in childish rage...
...I 'nbending to custom, unowed by poiver...
...Hillquit on many occasions risked his liberty when he knew that to follow the safer course would have left his comrades in the lurch...
...John A. Ryan in the pages of a magazine, and the result is the notable book, "Socialism, Promise or Menace...
...Louis convention took its stand against war...
...W. W.) Hoover's garage in the pot—we mean pot in the chicken that is pot In the garage...
...In that same year he faced Professor—now Congressman—F...
...We need plan in nation, in state, and In city, Our ideal for New York cannot be put on ice or otherwise conserved for one great revolutionary moment...
...ponents and in important legislative hearings...
...Rebel Youth Fresh young voices singing in unison Songs of awakening, songs of revolt, Songs of regeneration, songs of emancipation, Songs of love...
...Under inn quit's leadership the Socialist party, at its celebrated St...
...and the massed red banners of labor High in the dawn I Soho, in the Industrial Worker (I...
...More than once, and especially in Erie, Pa., local labor leaders were prominent on the welcoming committees...
...Davila'a overthrow in Chile by the military junta again calls attention to the danger of making Socialist principles and plana a mere football for military power and ambitious ofiice seekers...
...Standing unbowed, unanswered, unanswerable Before the gibbering tribunals of wise old .men Who have nothing to offer save what has been...
...Rebel youth...
...Of course Its public services are affected by the racketeering standards of the capitalist civilization...
...Week after week the battle raged, and Sunday after Sunday Hillquit and other comrades addressed vast audiences that packed Madison Square Garden and turned away countless tens of thousands unable to get in...
...and for a workers' city and a workers' world...
...He waged a fourpoint campaign...
...Those who fought in that campaign will never forget the joy of tbe battle...
...NORMAN THOMAS AND MORRIS l II I.M Hi IT' IT IS A GREAT TEAM 10K 19J2...
...And he has been one of the great labor and Socialist lawyers, throwing his great mind and legal ability iiiio Cue Scales iu defend workers on trial for their lives — as he did in the cloakmakers' "murder" frameup in 1915—and to battle for them in the struggle for living conditions...
...Myelin ft $ That Route: Th,e I ««»«' Marches On TEN thousand people In Indianapolis, over 3,000 In Dayton...
...Unafraid of odds, awaiting the hour, Awaiting, impatient and eager The first wild bugles of morning— The day's first flushing of crimson— After the night...
...John L. Belford In a joint debate...
...If the olty government O la dishonest now, why entrust it directly or» Indirectly with more power...
...But Socialism, by the new point of view which it inculcates and its steady destruction of opportunities to...
...If there were no Equitable bus franchise to give out, It would pay nobody to offer to pay a very generous letter of credit for any official...
...on the'public platform snd in the public press...
...A community utterly incapable of moral intlignation against the things that the Seabury inejuiry has exposed—and which Socialists attacked long before the Seabury Inquiry — is not going suddenly to discover a capacity for effective action in some great amount of crisis...
...Neither in New York nor in the world do we believe that salvation will come infallibly out of the catastrophe to which capitalism and its political tools relentlessly lead us...
...The Hillquit mayoralty campaign was the Socialist acceptance of the challenge flung at the American people by those who sought to make war and chauvinism a political asset...
...Standing unbowed before the sky-piercing bulwarks Of unreprimanded wrong...
...For Peace, Bread and Socialism The tone of the campaign was set by Hillquit...
...They are proof not only of the steadily mounting interest in Socialism but of the splendid work done by local comrades...
...It appears almost certain that we shall have this year the unique experience ln*» - New York of a threefold campaign for Socialism In city, state and nation...
...We have been In advance of the reformers even on their own field In the practical measures we have proposed, and we nave gone far deeper than they have ever dared to go- Under Morris Hillquit's leadership a great campaign for municipal Socialism can be waged...
...A man of gifted literary ability, he has been content to devote his pen to the advancement of the cause of Socialism...
Vol. 14 • January 1932 • No. 12
