LIFETIME OF SERVICE TO HUMANITY
LIFETIME OF SERVICE TO HUMANITY Respected and Honored by World Socialism By Algernon Lee WHEN Morris Hillquit died a year ago, it was not American Socialism alone, it was international...
...So much for his character as a public man...
...America was . dragged into the war and Russia drove out the Czar, Hillquit was again in the front rank of those who fought for peace, and of those who rejoiced at the Russian r e volution...
...Unlike most Americans, he had a wide knowledge of the labor and Socialist movements of the Old World...
...Year after year Hillquit visited Europe and became intimately acquainted with virtually all the great leaders of world Socialism...
...How few df the men Who first became his friends ih l9f>4 were left to greet him hi 1981...
...In 1912, for example, he felt that a certain tendency repreNOted by the syndicalism of the I.W.W...
...In that year Professor Franklin H. Giddings, head of the department of Sociology at Columbia, advised members of his graduate classes to go downtown and Work for the election of Hillquit if they wanted to do something for American democracy...
...Then followed years of night school teaching, Jaw study, graduation from New York University, admission to the bar, and the beginning of his law practice, a practice never far from the labor no vs meat...
...LIFETIME OF SERVICE TO HUMANITY Respected and Honored by World Socialism By Algernon Lee WHEN Morris Hillquit died a year ago, it was not American Socialism alone, it was international Socialism as well, that suffered a loss which today is still tragically real awl which time cannot easily repair...
...Then more years passed...
...No matter whether it was in our own party convention or in a court of justice or before a hostile mob, his answer was the same...
...In short, I should say, he was one of my few acquaintances in New York whom I could truly call "civilized" —civilized in tho wide range of his interest ahd knowledge and sympathies...
...By thin I do not mean that they looked upon him as a European Socialist who happened to live In the United States...
...He knew America and loved Aawrica...
...Flanked, by such men as William Mailly, Robert Hunter, James Oneal, who came in from the West about that time, and others, besides the men of his own generation in the New York movement, Hillquit waged a fight that stirred the city...
...The great of the world— those in high places and those honored by persecution — held him in the highest esteem...
...The fact that the capiInta have stolen it does not make t the less, ours by right and ours if will to take it back and make tell that it can and ought to be, ' Httjquit first revisited Europe as i delegate to the Amsterdam Conf. He was then about thirty yehfs of age and had been i little more than half his He was already well known in th« United States, but at that time the United States was by nd means well known in Europe...
...in W Rochester convention, and he **s one of the committee that "••tflated with the Social Demo**e Party for unity in the elec**• that year under the leader*» of Eugene V. Debs...
...It was probably my experience in Oxford that led Mr...
...Tho Last Years And so'the last few years hurried by...
...In the congresses and executive meetings of the International, from his first appearance at Amsterdam in 1904 to his last at Vienna in 1931, Germans and Frenchmen, Russians and Danes, Italians and Britons and Poles, all listened to him with the same respect when specifically European problems were under consideration as when he spoke to them of American conditions, and with the same respect as they paid to men of their own continent...
...He had grown, but he had not changed...
...larly elected Socialist Assemblymen of New York...
...Although his general frame of reference was Marxian, he had a sense of humor and a knowledge of concrete events which prevented him from thinking that "he was God," to use a phrase of Justice Holmes...
...His comrades counted upon him, and he did not fail them...
...For Congress In the fall of 1916 he ran foi Congress in Harlem, and again waged a fight tht attracted the attention of the entire country...
...with the, sort of knowb Ito indTove that bents a Socialist...
...He took his full part, with clear assurance of his position, in the treat debates of that congress, winch turned mainly on the practical questions of individual Socialist participation in non-Socialist ministries and of coalition either m elections or in Parliament, but involved also the theoretical ideas men agitating the movement under Je name of Revisionism...
...was dangerous to the Socialist movement...
...After the magnificent mayoralty battle of 1932 he began to fail rapidly, and so came the end, October 7th, 1933...
...Two years later a city-wide Tammany-Republican fusion defeated him in Harlem as well as Meyer London on the East Side...
...They knew him a» the one man who, far and away better than all others, could interpret America to them and equally well interpret Europe to us...
...with the noble cry "Mankind flrstj Liberty first...
...He was for gaeriCa as a part of the world...
...Hillquit, whose father and mother were cultured iuid educated people, had a good education in Russia, but When he was brought to the United States at the age of 11 he had to continue his education at night while working in a shirt factory by day...
...Oh, yes, I know there have been and are some who wish to deny this...
...There was a weekly Socialist paper published in Yiddish and edited by Abraham Cahan, known as Arbeiter-Zeitung...
...I never saw him in action inJSny of his political campaign*, bfit in all meetings and conferences which I held with him certain characteristics stood out clearly...
...Later the party's peace plans, much garbled, re-appeared as President Wilson's Fourteen Points...
...be was wrong...
...Charles A. Beard JUST when and how my^ acquaintance with Morris Hillquit began I cannot recall, but it was about 1904 or 1905, at the time he was planning the Rand School of Social Science...
...But we carry on...
...It Vas my good fortune to be also a delegate to that congress...
...The optfctftion was sharp and the forces •**» closely balanced...
...Then came another breakdown, this time more serious than the previous one...
...Then came 1917...
...The story of those early years are told with ineffable charm in hit delightful memoirs, "Loose Leaves From a Busy Life," From the very beginning of his life in this country he took an active part in the then weak Socialist movement...
...By so doing we may the better know how to make up, so far as we can make up, for what we have lost...
...What a battle that was...
...That is a rare faculty...
...They knew him as an American Socialist who wa» in the fullest sense an internationalist, In knowledge and sympathetic understanding, as well as in idealistic feeling- and intent...
...A beneficiary of that fusion was a young Republican Congressman named LaGuardia, who accepted Tammany support in the bi-partisan deal to "save" the city from Socialism and for Tammany and the Republican reactionaries...
...In 1924 he led the party in the LaFollette adventure...
...His work in the labor movement, especialy in the needle trades, is a shining chapter in American labor history...
...it was my privilege again to see what a place he had won by deserving it, what a contribution he made to the work of the International and, incidentally, how much that contribution raised our American party In the esteem of the European comrades—at Stuttgart In 1907 and then not again till the Vienna Congress three years ago...
...Morris Hillquit led us in that campaign, and we who fought under his leadership Will ever cherish the memory of the battle, and of hia inspired leadershipNight after night he went from place to place, speaking like the man he was, saying what was in our hearts to say, and we were proud to be his comrades...
...Meat of the needle-trades unions were organized by Socialists in that way...
...On every issue he brought wide and accurate knowledge to bear...
...In taHe early days Hillquit was associated with Clean and Meyer London and other pioneer SociaUsta, with whom Socialist activity was indistinguishable from activity in the labor movement...
...He knew the possibilities of error in all human judgments and was generous to those who differed from him...
...Yet now fhat...
...At Stuttgart in 190...
...Again he went away in quest of health...
...The election returns showed that the Tammany man had won, and he took his seat, but no onejbelieved that the figures came^ithin five thousand votes of the* actual results...
...His courage in facing unpopularity with his own comrades for what he believed right was as great as his courage in fighting the foes of his cause...
...And because his internationalism was so deeply rooted in both heart and brain, he never swerved toward the blustering anti-patriotism of a Gustave Herv£ or of some Americans who, like Herv6, in due time turned into blustering jingoes...
...Hilltoit had led the fight against the DeLeen party despotism in the ¦¦L.P., and from that time he *¦* i» the front rank as one of the national leaders of American Socialism...
...as Morris would have wished us to...
...For close to half a century he devoted all of his great ability and tfe.whole energies to the cause of Socialism and (jf Labor, which to him were one...
...Amid the chauvinistic fromy of 1017-18 it seemed to him the most natural thing in the world to answer the slogan "America first...
...By 1898, when he was still under thirty, he was already an important figure in the party...
...Although it was supported by the then popular William D. Haywood, Hillquit did not hesitate to wage war upon it, and he led the fight in the 1912 convention at Indianapolis that led to a clarification of the party's position...
...Jules Buesde, tod, and Edouard Valllant, and Victor Adler, and Karl Kautsky —then Vandervelde, Anseele, Wibaut, Turati, Bracke, Hyndman, Plekhanoff, Vera Zassulitsch, "Babushka" Breshkdvskaya, Soukup, Hardie—I name them at random, and might name many more, of the older and the younger generations, whose admiration for Morris Hillquit was equalled only by their deep and lasting affection...
...he was a delegate to Marseilles in 1925, to Brussels in 1928 and to Vienna in 1981...
...At the funeral ceremonies at Cooper Union it waa related by David Onblaaky, president of the International Ladies...
...again he followed with keen interest the affairs of the party and el the unions...
...In 1901 |*J*M one of the leaders in the Wlsnapolis convention that for*»»T organized the present So*»Hst Party...
...The party, the whole country and the world began to realize his greatness in its true perspective...
...It waa in the winter of 1920 that he again threw himself into the struggle...
...For nine years thereafter Hillquit served the party as counselor and friend, as committeeman and guide...
...It is to be remembered that, although Hillquit was of European birth, he came to this country at the age of seventeen, and it was here that he Jbegan that career ae an active Socialist, a member of the organized Socialist movement, which fills to large a place in our party history...
...his very last work was to fly to Washington by plane to argue a code for the Cloakmakers...
...In strike after strike he counseled with the workers...
...At Amsterdam began warm friendships, which gfeW as the years went by, between Morris Hillquit and most if not all of the foremost Socialists of Europe— first of all, perhaps, with August Bebel, the grand old man of the German Social Democracy, whose Insight into men and whose austere standards of Socialist conduct made his friendship a cachet of approval not too lightly granted...
...But this time it was Republican arithmetic that defeated him by a slender jnargin...
...Unlike some of his comrades, he readily adjusted himself to the American scene and had a "fed" for American politics and for the sentiments of the American workers far superior to most of his colleagues...
...There was the same firm adherence to fundamental principles, the same willingness to make every concession on non-essentials for the sake of unity ih the movement, and the same unquenchable faith in its ultimate triumph, which endeared him to veterans and new recruits alike...
...Increasingly as the years passed his influence grew in the Socialist Party, in the unions, and in the country at large...
...In 1918 he again ran for Congress, best in absentia, and he did not return te Maw leak until the fall of 1918, and tkea far only a short time...
...No doubt the quality of Hillquit'a internationalism was in some part due to the broad and rich culture he acquired in boyhood and youth in his native city of Riga—a culture in which French, Russian, and German elements were integrally blended, and the Jewish element was neither suppressed nor overemphasized...
...His vision took in the Continent of Europe, so generally neglected by American stwdents at that time, and, what was more, the activities of labor leaders so generally neglected' by historians and newspapers...
...In 1906 Hillquit wefed the first of the campaigns for which he became famous, the first battle to redeem the East Side from Tammany Hall and to win it for the workers...
...But, alas...
...and his settlements were of incalculable value to them...
...Hatred, prejudice, threats of mob violence, concealed and open antiSemitism...
...If I say that Hillquit was an outstanding American Socialist, I mean more than that he was an outstanding Socialist in America, I mean that he knew America and the, American people far better than many who Were born here...
...He found time for brilliant legal defense of victims of war-time fury and hysteria...
...Tears fall from our eyes as we write this...
...In that year he suffered hig first breakdown from tuberculosis...
...But very many other friendships had since been formed —it would take too long to call the roll—and now as then he Was one of the greatest figures ih the congress...
...Illness struck him again...
...will never be forgotten by those who heard it...
...His lunge were troubling him again, but he kept the information to himself...
...Hillquit faced opposition that year that no one who was not in the struggle can ever imagine...
...And although he made that start in the Jewish East Side, which he always continued to love and which always continued to love him, yet he very soon graduated into the party life of the city as a whole and then of the nation as a whole...
...many other unions took the hint and did accordingly...
...In all private relations Morris Hillquit, as I knew him, was generous beyond measure...
...And Hillquit left a sickbed at the risk of bis health and his life to defend the five Socialists...
...I had come back from England in 1902, where I had taken part in organizing Ruskin Hall, a labor college founded at Oxford while I was attending the university...
...His battle was in the LaFollette movement to accept the Socialist Party, and in the Socialist Party to accept the LaFollette movement...
...He was in their confidence, and in many world conferences hia wise counsel was welcomed...
...That he wax not, and they felt it...
...his carrer is closed, his worst enemies, I doubt not, will recognize in him a personality worthy of the noblest traditions of mankind...
...t ink they are competent judges...
...the 1920 convention, and the struggle against the neo-Communism that sought to split and destroy the Socialist movement, and again Hillquit risked unpopularity to defend the position of Social Democracy...
...His great speech at Ma d i s o n Square Garden in March, with the refrain, "RUSSIA IS FREE...
...His services to the needle unions continued to the very end...
...he found, time, as always, for debates with opponents of Socialism...
...But it is not vain to bear in mind what he was and what his life gave to the movement...
...There is room here only, to mention the splendid.literary work of Morris Hillquit...
...Hillquit later confessed that he was "business manager, associate editor and official poet, under contract to furnish one inspirational poem per week...
...Regrets are vain...
...some day it will be written and the world will know the matchless services of this great man...
...But the welcome he received upon his return showed that despite differences of opinion hig comrades loved him...
...In that year he was elected National Chairman of the party...
...Life for many of us has been emptier since that day a year ago...
...I think that I have never known a man who could hold so Armly to his fundamental convictions and yet confront the convictions of others with so little bitterness and intolerance...
...In 1914 he was on his way to Europe to attend the International Congrese in Paris when war broke out and he returned, to take- the lead in the party's anti-war campaign...
...His defense was masterly, it was courageous, it was brilliant...
...And then again party work...
...In that year Hillquit outdid himself...
...The Dobs Campaign In 1900 he was a delegate of the JMjority faction of the S.L.P...
...It will forever stand as a monument in the battle for free institutions...
...But Hillquit's interest in world affairs did not blind him to the important work at home...
...John Barlce will bear me Out, and EdSward F. Cassidy, and James H. surer, and Jasper McLevy...
...A Story of Fifty Years of Devotion to Socialism By William M. Feiaenbaum MORRIS HILLQUIT, the matchless leader of American Socialism: for so many years, was Cst over 64 years old when he died, having been rn in Riga, August 1, 1869...
...In 1016 be drew up She pasty's position on terms of peaee, and together with Congressman Meyer London and James H. Maurer he went to Washington to argue them with President Wilson...
...Wen he spoke of "our country," It meant just that—ours, the ittple's...
...His writings were read with eagerness, his lectures, debates and speeches listened to with joy...
...The Noblest Traditions of Mankind By Prof...
...Hillquit to invite me to aid in planning and organizing the Rand School of Social Science somewhat along the lines of Ruskin Hall...
...1 was impressed then, and have since teen yet more deeply impressed In jseltlhg back, to see how perfectly |e at once fitted into the scene...
...There, in August, 1913, he spoke at the funeral of August Bebel, and his address was considered the greatest among those delivered by the greatest men and women of world Socialism...
...But he had played his part meanwhile In the congresses at Copenhagen In 1910, and since the war at Hamburg, Marseilles and Brussels, as well as in numerous meetings of the Executive...
...He had a clear, sparkling style and hig bookg and articles ranked high for literary value as well as content...
...as he deserved to be loved...
...j-^**1"1 tnat °"*y to the day of his *jjh the story of Hillquit is in a j*N sense the story of the Socialist *j*tty and of important sections of tt*l*bor movement...
...At all events, I bad the pleasure of meeting him in that connection and of seeing him frequently...
...but that did not matter...
...He gave himself without stint, without hope of personal gain or reward...
...He never did...
...He knew the classics of those languages...
...At our first meeting I was immediately drawn to the man...
...Worn 1904 on he was a delegate I.j***ry International Socialist f™«ing, serving with brilliant r*0ctk)1'i at Amsterdam in that Tm »t Stuttgart in 1907, at jj^Ma-en in 1910, at Basle in , jj*h) the Vienna Working Union I1"** the organization of the Labor and, Socialist International in Hamburg in 1928...
...He spent the fall and winter in Bermuda, returning to attend committee meetings8, and the winter and spring in Switzerland...
...In 1908 Hillquit ran again, and again he beat the Republican by thousands, and was defeated only by Tammany arithmetic...
...Perhaps those who came in contact with him during political campaigns may have another view, for I did not know him in that relation...
...Hillquit was implicitly internationalis|ic in thought and feeling...
...Hillquit revealed unexpected qualities as a popular campaigner...
...Returning in the fall, he was greeted with wild enthusiasm by his comrades, and he plunged into party work again, and into the* struggles of the unions...
...Ruskin Hall, now callled Ruskin College, had been started by a group of students who were certain that Labor was destined to play, a large role in the public affairs of England, and that the leaders of Labor should have access to the accumulated knowledge and theories of the social sciences and an opportunity for intensive training...
...Garment Workers' Union, that Hillquit was the first to propose that a union draft its own code, and fight for it, rather than to fight against unfavorable provisions in codes offered them...
...jU was not for America against OS rest of the world...
...As the Japanese say, "he knew the sadness of things," the tragedies of life, the sufferings of the unhonored and unsung, and the frailties of human nature...
...He basked in the love of comrades, a love that came to a climax in 1929, when the whole world celebrated his 60th birthday, and he gaily promised us "at least twenty or twenty-five years more...
...but he never gave one inch...
...In the fall he was named for Mayor...
...Hut it was recognized long ago by such American Socialists as Debs and Carey and Hanford and Mnilly, and by the rank and file of the party whenever and wherever the rank and file once Hw him and heard his voice...
...Yes, sorely as we in America heed and miss Morris Hillquit in this time of confusion, of danger, ana of unexampled opportunity for Socialism and for organised labor, they have reason to miss him over there...
...For twenty-nine years our comrades on the other side of the Atlantic had known him well and counted him as one ot themselves...
...It was Jpemally recognized that the •khsacji and the temper of Hillquit's argument counted for* much, not only toward deciding the vote but toward doing ft in such a way that bitterness gave way to mutual understanding, unification of the Socialist groups in France was made possible, and the International became a much more closely knit and useful instrument...
...He was in danger of indictment or of lynching...
...The salary was three dollars per week, when he got it...
...He belonged to Western civilization rather than to any national segment...
...In that year came' {the notorious Sweet ouster of the regu...
...In all the International Congresses Hillquit was known for his matchless oratary ag well as his good humor, his good sense and his warm heart...
...He left what was virtually his deathbed to Argue the Cloakmakers' Code that he drew up, and he won...
...it is possible that he never had shown more brilliance, more persistence, more courage than then...
...He read and spoke many languages and seemed at home in all of them...
...Brotherhood first...
...In much larger part, 1 believe, it wai due to a sense of proportion and balance which was perhaps innate —a capacity for seeing things In detail and as a whole at the same time, for seeing them both separately and in their mutual relations...
...Hillquit also began to count as a force in party affairs...
...That year the internal dissen-' tk>ne began that resulted three yean later in the formation of the preen* Socialist party out of the majot .faction of the DeLeoneontnUed Socialist Labor Party, the Social Democratic Party organised by Eugene V. Debs, the Social Dosegratic Party of Massachusetts that had won important election *k»»rh», and other groups...
Vol. 17 • October 1934 • No. 80
