The Home Front:
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The Rise and Fall Of U.S. Communism At some time during the winter of 1918-19, Mr. William Z. Foster paid me a number of visits. He was then a man of a good deal...
...They will fail everywhere that people have schools and newspapers and radios...
...During periods when the Russians were starving, they have sent millions of dollars to this country to finance the imminent revolution...
...I listened in at the trials of a number of these men who later denied their membership...
...A good many college students, some university professors and Government officials, even quite a crowd of trade-union men thought that Communism offered a way out of their difficulties...
...They found out after a few months or years that the organization is not honest or decent, that the leaders, beginning with the men in Moscow, are liars and robbers...
...Communist party is a branch of the Communist International, no matter what its official title happens to be just now...
...What has really weakened the party has been the endless stream of defectors from it...
...The body of men and women who couldn't stand life in the party must run into the hundreds of thousands...
...During the years of the Great Depression, the Communist party had a flush of success...
...They have designated its leaders, called them to Moscow for instruction, frequently sent their own most astute underground connivers to supervise them...
...It cannot muster enough financial support to keep the Daily Worker on its feet...
...They are supposed to be super-propagandists...
...The Communist vote was growing and the influence which the party exercised in churches, schools and other organizations was obvious...
...During our first talk, he remained vaguely agreeable...
...Its defeat is a defeat for Moscow...
...It is such a dreary way of living that it takes a pretty stupid government to lose the propaganda battle against it...
...I was busy supporting Woodrow Wilson's labor and social legislation and throwing what little influence I had behind the League of Nations...
...The others, the ones who have remained and carried on, were the ordinary little guys, the ones who never had an idea and were willing to take orders...
...Some of the conspicuous comrades have been jailed or deported, but these slight legal defeats have not made a dent in Communist activities...
...I suppose Jack Reed, who lies inappropriately buried beside Lenin, was the first of them...
...And the whole enormous plot has now proved futile and foolish...
...If they have failed to put their theories across in America, they will have just as much difficulty in England, in Germany, in Scandinavia, in the long run even in Italy and France...
...Between Reed and Gates, there has been a long line of lively and talented men...
...It seems generally taken for granted that the leaders of international Communism are much more astute than ordinary Americans...
...That was thirty-five years ago...
...How has it happened that a group which began with such great verve and such high hopes has in so short a time sunk so low...
...Last spring, it was Howard Fast...
...Ben Gitlow, in his lively volume, The Whole of Their Lives, explains that the Bolshevik leaders expected rapid revolutions in Western Europe and the United States...
...Yes, and in the end they will fail even in Russia...
...In those days, the party itself or its false-front organizations called mass-meetings which filled great auditoriums in all our larger cities...
...What has happened during the last few months has worldwide significance...
...He was then a man of a good deal of cleverness and charm...
...In their first days—that is, in the early 1920s—their expectations seemed much less quixotic than they do now...
...Now we have a bitter denunciation of the party by John Gates, who should know what he is talking about if anyone does...
...Gitlow estimates that in 1920 the number of Bolshevik sympathizers here ran over half a million...
...I had left the Socialist party in 1917...
...For the sort of life represented by the Communists simply doesn't fit human nature...
...Had I given my visitor the least encouragement, I would have been offered a first-class ticket to the great revolution...
...At that time I was, I suppose, a fairly typical American liberal...
...By the time the second conference was approaching its end, I began to realize that my visitor was gradually leading up to the description of a great radical party which was soon to change the political map of this country...
...This has not happened because of the official opposition of prosecuting attorneys and police...
...What I was privileged to contemplate was a preview of the Communist party, U.S.A...
...The fact that the little Daily Worker can't get enough readers proves that the Communists don't understand the people of the United States and don't know how to talk to them...
...Now it is estimated that the party numbers about 7,000...
...The third conversation finally brought us around to details...
...The U.S...
...The fact that the preliminary organizers of the Communist party went after fellows like me has a good deal of significance...
...The significant thing is that nearly all of them defected after a year or two...
...Well, for forty years the men sitting in the Kremlin have directed the American Communist party...
Vol. 41 • January 1958 • No. 4
