Remembering Norman Thomas

...He knew something else, too...

...In fact, Thomas met Roosevelt often, and the two of them corresponded actively...

...Incumbent Governor Alfred E. Smith overwhelmed the 99,854 votes Thomas received, but he quickly immersed himself in campaigns for civil liberties, peace and the rights of labor...

...Only the Socialists—then a significant force—continued to oppose the U.S...

...I am interested in political parties only to the extent they may be serviceable in advancing certain ideals and in winning liberty for men and women...

...During a bitter silk strike in Passaic, New Jersey, in 1926, he was locked up by a sheriff for holding a free speech rally in violation of a "riot law" that was subsequently declared illegal...

...During the 1944 Presidential campaign—three years before the Marshall Plan—candidate Thomas urged "material aid for immediate relief and reconstruction" to allies and enemies alike...

...The poverty, filth and vice he saw at first hand moved and enlightened him...

...It is a fitting occasion, especially in these pages where he often did battle, to recall the forces that shaped his life, his achievements, and what he could not accomplish...

...We are willing to fight Hitler," said Thomas, "partly because of his anti-Semitic cruelty, but we have not been willing to rescue Jewish refugees or even temporarily to modify our immigration laws in this historic land of asylum...

...I have a profound fear of the undue exaltation of the State and a profound faith that the new world we desire must depend upon freedom and fellowship, rather than upon any sort of coercion...

...By 1924 Thomas was sufficiently well-known within the movement to be offered its New York gubernatorial nomination—over the telephone, since he had not attended the convention...

...Xenophobia and misdirected patriotism had begun to enfeeble it from the outside, much as factionalism was sapping it from within...

...Thomas' 884,781 votes, though very close to the 897,011 that Eugene V. Debs had received as Socialist candidate in 1912, were hardly enough to threaten the maj or parties...

...Thomas, the Socialist candidate, focused on immediate efforts to ameliorate the sufferings of the Depression and to promote recovery...

...Norman Thomas' socialism was not, as he himself observed, "of the most orthodox variety...

...Helped by a generous relative, after a year at Bucknell Thomas matriculated at Princeton in 1902...

...Perspectives REMEMBERING NORMAN THOMAS BY HARRY FLEISCHMAN Shortly before his death in 1968, the Washington Post observed that although Norman Thomas was an "inveterate loser," he "has been among the most influential individuals in 20th-century politics...

...His ideas have received from his rivals the supreme compliment of plagiarism and from the American public the accolade of acceptance...

...It was an apt tribute to the man who ran six times for President as the Socialist Party's standard-bearer—and lost a host of other races for national, state and local office under its banner as well—yet succeeded in providing the kernel of what came to be approvingly called the Welfare State...

...His father, Welling Evan Thomas, inherited their rock-ribbed principles and passed them on faithfully to his son...

...Without success, he begged Roosevelt to let Jews persecuted by Nazism enter the United States...

...His 1932 platform proved a prophesy of things to come...

...Believing that "these are the days when radicals ought to stand up and be counted," he joined the Socialist Party in October 1918, at the age of 33...

...on the Democratic side, Franklin Roosevelt chided Hoover for failing to balance the budget...

...He thought deeply about the Socialist argument that the squalid quarrels of imperialism had generated the fighting in Europe...

...Sometimes, the light is very dim...

...As the 1932 Presidential contest approached, one third of the adult workers in the United States were unemployed...

...David Dubinsky, President of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union, noted that in those times of weak and poor unions Thomas could be found "in each and every strike, on the picket lines and in the hall meetings...

...Thomas was a consistent pacifist, and his principled opposition to U.S...

...formally entered the War and Thomas became involved with the party, first as an independent, by backing one of the authors of the declaration, Morris Hill-quit, who was waging a vigorous campaign for the mayoralty in New York City...

...Thomas bore his disappointments gracefully...

...He also worked actively, however, to assist the War's victims...

...While the Socialist leader often criticized the President, he also admitted that FDR had dispelled the country's Depression-born sense of panic and despair and had restored faith in the effectiveness of the country's political system...

...Then, in the family tradition, he became assistant pastor of a church in a New York tenement district...

...In April the U.S...

...President Hoover, in the meantime, passively awaited the storm's end...

...Norman Thomas knew that...

...It demanded a $10 billion Federal public works program, unemployment relief, compulsory unemployment insurance, the creation of government-run employment agencies, old-age pensions at 60, an end to child labor, publicly funded health and maternity insurance, a six-hour day and a five-day work week with no pay cuts, help to farmers and homeowners struggling to prevent mortgage fore closures, and adequate minimum-wage laws...

...In 1912 and 1916, he backed Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat who " kept us out of war" —so far, at any rate...

...elect' in the way of Isaiah and Micah, a prophet among us to chide us when we do wrong and to show us the light...

...To have produced that change," said Thomas, "wasaveryreal service to democracy...

...A few years later, armed vigilantes hounded him throughout Arkansas, threatening violence because he was helping black and white share croppers organize into the Southern Tenant Farmers Union...

...Only much later did Thomas become aware that his childhood had also been the age of the Robber Barons —or, as he described it, "of an aggressive and soulless capitalism, of the long day for workers, of an individualism which made miserable provision for the unfortunate...

...Stephen Mattoon and Thomas Thomas, his grandfathers, both were Presbyterian clergymen and abolitionist Republicans...

...He saw himself as a champion of "causes not yet won," rather than of lost causes...

...Louis...

...Following his ordination as a Presbyterian minister in 1911, he set out to preach the Social Gospel at the American Parish of East Harlem, in those days a mainly Italian neighborhood...

...involvement, issuing a formal declaration to that effect at their 1917 convention in St...

...Banks were failing all over the nation and the world...

...If it is hard to explain the world in terms of a tolerable philosophy of supreme good," he observed, "it is at least equally hard for the pessimist to explain good...

...and the American Union Against Militarism (from 1920 onward, the American Civil Liberties Union) soon thereafter...

...The class valedictorian in 1905, he promptly went off to the Spring Street Settlement, in Lower Manhattan, where he worked for an annual salary of $500...

...Born in Marion, Ohio, as a youngster he had a paper route delivering the Marion Star, published by Warren G. Harding...

...Yet many of his most cherished proposals—notably world disarmament under effective inspection and control, followed by an international war on poverty—seem as distant today as ever...

...Anti-Semitism is a barometer which measures pretty accurately the climate of democracy and peace...

...Thomas himself was now convinced that his Christian faith could not be reconciled with any form of armed conflict...

...And there is immense satisfaction in lining up on the side of good and trying to work for an increase of freedom and fellowship in the world...

...Thomas j oined the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation at the end of 1916 Harry Fleischman, who managed Norman Thomas'last two Presidential campaigns, in 1944 and 1948, wrote Norman Thomas—A Biography: 1884-1968...

...Oddly enough, he was a product of the purest Midwest Republicanism...

...How shall we make democracy apply to our social, industrial and political problems...

...The young man who wrote these high-minded words had supported the Republican, William Howard Taft, in the Presidential election of 1908...

...But years afterward, Hoover wrote that "students who wish to arrive at the sub-currents around Roosevelt would do well to examine the platform of the Socialist Party of 1932 and observe the uncanny fulfillment of its recommendations by Roosevelt's first Administration...

...With all my love for Princeton," he wrote ina 1915 class letter to fellow alumni, "I sometimes think, unjustly of course, that my education really began when I left there and that not the smallest part of it has been the life here in this district [East Harlem...

...Though never elected to office, he was, as Bryn Hovde of the New School for Social Research put it almost four decades ago, one of the Elect—a man destined "to serve purposes greater than administration...

...participation in World War II caused much controversy...

...Elsewhere democracy was on the run...

...Norman Thomas' kin attributed poverty and other social problems to personal fecklessness or to the evils of drink, not to the free-enterprise system...

...Are we preparing well for national safety in peace or war when so many of our workers cannot, even under favorable conditions, make the proper living wage...

...Since his parishioners disliked his antiwar and political activities, Thomas had to leave his church...

...His words were again heeded...

...This fall—November 20, to be precise—marks the centennial of Thomas' birth...

...Meanwhile, the Democrats and the Republicans reversed themselves on the War they had earlier denounced...