Jewish Socialists worked well together during the first three years of the Arbeter tsaytung, from 1890 to 1893. They worked feverishly to establish Jewish unions in various trades. Much time was given to discussions between Socialists and anarchists. Those debates were held at mass meetings of both sides and within the Jewish unions and were continued in their respective newspapers, the Arbeter tsaytung and the Fraye arbeter shtime. Each side would hold a “Party Day”, a convention, once a year.
Delegates of the Jewish sections of the SLP from various cities would come to the Socialists’ convention, and delegates from various anarchist groups would come to theirs. After the infamous “nonpartisan Party Day” convention of 1899, the two groups never attended a convention together again.
At the Socialist Party Days we discussed how best to spread Socialism by word of mouth and through the written word, and practical questions about our relationship to the trade unions. At the Party Day in July 1891, held at the Jewish Socialist Labor Lyceum, 91 Delancey Street, it was decided to publish a monthly journal, Di Tsukunft, and the first edition came out in January 1892, with Philip Krantz as editor.
At the end of 1893 the Arbeter tsaytung Publishing Association decided to put out a daily paper, Dos Abend-Blat. But in December of that year, at the Party Day of the Jewish sections of the SLP held in Newark, New Jersey, Louis Miller, one of the most active members, made the accusation that there was a small “clique” in the Publishing Association who were running every aspect of the Jewish labor movement — and furthermore that the “clique” was ruining and poisoning the Jewish labor movement. Other delegates, mostly from outside the city, also complained that New York was controlling and wrecking the entire movement. There were many protests and resolutions against the New York leadership. The conflict was finally put to rest with the passage of a resolution that all Jewish Socialists would become members of
the Arbeter tsaytung Publishing Association, to insure that everything was being done as it should be. The Abend-Blat soon appeared, in 1894. A number of comrades from both New York and elsewhere were dissatisfied with the articles. But that wasn’t so bad.
The real trouble began when Daniel DeLeon, whose opponents called him “the Dictator”, founded his Alliance117 that organized opposition unions. The tailors and the cloak makers suffered through bitter arguments, because each craft now had two unions. There were terrible fights within the Publishing Association, within the Jewish sections of the SLP, and within the United Hebrew Trades, over whether that “clique” was controlling those organizations. That small group of people would pass resolutions that the majority of Socialists opposed, and it was alleged that the “clique” was taking orders from Daniel DeLeon. Morris Winchevsky signaled this schism within the SLP with his article “Rotten or Rotting?” in the newspaper Der emes118 on August 9, 1895. Der emes was a weekly that the Boston section of the SLP had founded that year, when Winchevsky came over from London.
Winchevsky was already known to all of us in the labor movement as “the grandfather” of the Socialist movement, for he had been one of the first Jewish Socialists and had written articles in the Hebrew-language Socialist journal Ha-emet119 in 1876. In 1883 he was editor of the privately-owned radical Yiddish newspaper Dos poylishe yidl in London.
In 1886 he contributed to the Arbeter fraynt, the Yiddish labor newspaper published by anarchists and Social-Democrats. He became famous as the first to write pro-labor and Socialist poems in Yiddish and as the author of Gedanken fun a meshugenem filozof.120 He came over in 1894 and began to contribute to our newspapers right away.
In his article “Rotten or Rotting?” he harshly criticized the articles in the Abend-Blat as not being Socialist. He also maintained that there was no freedom of the press in the Abend-Blat because the Socialist minority there was not permitted to express its opinions on tactical questions facing the Socialist and trade union movements. Winchevsky demanded
“more light” and “more air” in the Abend-Blat. Philip Krantz, the editor,
117 The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance.
118 Yiddish: The Truth.
119 Hebrew: The Truth.
120 Yiddish: The Thoughts of a Crazy Philosopher.
answered those accusations with explanations on both ideological and practical grounds, which the majority of the members of the SLP found convincing. Winchevsky, Louis Miller, and Abraham Cahan led the campaign against DeLeon. They were against the splitting of the unions and favored good relations between the unions and the SLP so that Socialist ideas could spread. Their tactic was “building from within”.
The Arbeter tsaytung Publishing Association was also divided for and against DeLeon. Der emes continued its attacks until the end of 1895.
The Yiddish section of the SLP in Boston called for a Party Day to discuss the entire controversy. It took place in Webster Hall in New York on the last three days of the year.
At that Party Day, all the accusations against the Publishing Association were aired. It was alleged that the Publishing Association behaved like an “aristocracy”; that it didn’t accept new members; that it expelled educated people; that its leaders were tools in the hands of DeLeon; that it was attempting to spread DeLeon’s influence and power over everything — over unions and other labor organizations. They also criticized the editors of the Abend-Blat as sheer incompetents. Delegates from outside the city complained that the newspaper treated them like stepchildren.
These stormy debates ended with a proposal to refer the whole matter to the National Executive Committee of the SLP for them to decide who was in the right. The proposal was passed. The Executive Committee appointed a court of arbitration with these members: Alexander Jonas, Daniel DeLeon, Lucien Sanial, Hugo Vogt, and Henry Cohen. Their first meeting was on January 9, 1896. Both opposing sides were represented.
The Party Day faction had Abraham Cahan, Benjamin Feigenbaum, Mikhail Zametkin, Morris Winchevsky, and Israel Peskin. The brothers Israel and Samuel Peskin were Socialists from Vilna who had first studied in Russia, then in Switzerland. They had come to New York in the early 1890s and were active in the Jewish Socialist movement. Israel, the older brother, returned to Europe a few years later. Samuel became a medical doctor in New York, and was for many years a prominent Socialist writer and speaker. He was very involved in the trade unions, and he urged Jewish workers to organize. For a while he was editor of Tsayt-gayst,121 a weekly published by the Forverts. He contributes to
121 Yiddish: The Spirit of the Times.
the Forverts to this day. The Arbeter tsaytung Publishing Association had Philip Krantz, S. D. Cooper, J. Abelson, Bernard Weinstein, and H.
Kharkov.
The arbitration court met eighteen times and listened to both sides.
The court finally issued its decision: that Abraham Cahan should remain as editor of the weekly Arbeter tsaytung and Philip Krantz as editor of the Abend-Blat, and that all Socialist writers would contribute to both papers. Furthermore, both newspapers would now be under the control of both the Arbeter tsaytung Publishing Association and the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Labor Party.
But that decision did not please the opposition, which insisted that it did not cure the underlying evil: that the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance was still continuing to organize opposition unions.
Mutual attacks continued throughout the summer of 1896. At the end of the summer, when preparations were being made for the Socialist presidential campaign, both sides tried to find a way to work on it together. Louis Miller, who had been in Europe for a few months, came back about that time, and since he had not been present when the two sides had been battling, he tried to bring them together again. The word
“peace” worked like magic. Although some of DeLeon’s opponents were against it, a “peace conference” was held at the office of the Abend-Blat at 9 Rutgers Street.
We debated all night, and sitting at the same table we felt that the terrible personal hatreds were abating. The mood grew lighter.
The representatives of the Association promised to open their doors and make it easier for new members to come in, to usher in a more democratic spirit. They even invited Meyer Gillis and A. Lilienblum of the opposition to become members of the Board. They accepted the invitation to signal the new “peace”, and more members of the opposition were later accepted by the Association. But that peace didn’t last long, and the two factions still remained.
The yearly general meeting of the Arbeter tsaytung Publishing Association was held on January 7, 1897, and both sides — for DeLeon and against him — tried their best to win the majority of votes for electing the editor and the other officials of the organizations. The two sides were almost evenly matched, but the DeLeon side was in power, and they declared that they had the most votes. This led to a schism — one of the opposition called out, “Comrades, let’s go!”
Fifty-two members of the Association opposed to DeLeon walked out, among them Abraham Cahan, Mikhail Zametkin, Louis Miller, Max Pine, and Morris Winchevsky.
Those fifty-two held their own meeting, at which they founded the Press ferayn122 to publish their own Socialist newspaper. The most popular orators, Cahan, Zametkin, Miller, and Winchevsky, traveled across the country visiting Socialist groups and unions to explain the causes of the schism. The majority of those groups sided with the opposition. The
“oppositionists”, as they were called, soon summoned a convention of all the press clubs in the nation and all the unions that sided with them. The basement of Valhalla Hall, 48 Orchard Street, was where it was held on January 30 to 31, 1897. In attendance were representatives from eleven press clubs in New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and New Haven, and a number of unions. They decided to publish a daily newspaper called the Forverts,123 and an organization, the Press farband, was established.124 The “Forvertsists” began to collect money from unions, from Socialist groups, and at all kinds of assemblies.
The enthusiasm and generosity were remarkable. Workers, both men and women, gave more than they could afford. Some took off their rings and watches and put them in the hat that the committee was passing around for donations.
Abraham Cahan was the Forverts’ first editor, and the first copy came out on April 22, 1897. Comrade Abraham Liessin, whose real last name was Walt and who is now editor of Tsukunft, came to America a few weeks later. While still in Russia he had written for our Yiddish Socialist newspapers and journals, Arbeter tsaytung and the Abend-Blat.
The songs and poems that he had contributed from Russia were well known, and he had been considered the best Yiddish poet. But Cahan, who printed his subversive poems in the Arbeter tsaytung, had given him the pseudonym Liessin to protect him from the police. (“Liess”
means woods in Russian, as does “Wald” in Yiddish.) He joined the Forverts right away. They gained not only a fine poet but also a first-class essayist. His pieces in the Forverts and in Tsukunft, which were always both informative and superbly written with passion, won him
122 Yiddish: Press Association.
123 Named after the German Social-Democratic newspaper, Der Vorwärts.
124 Yiddish: Press Association.
great admiration among readers of the Forverts. He was also editor for a time.
Among the “Loyalists” who published the Abend-Blat were these comrades: S. D. Cooper, the Weyman brothers, Philip Krantz, S. Pollack, L. Levitsky, Benjamin Feigenbaum, M. Smilansky, Jacob Milch, M. Finn, L. Boudin, S. Spiez, Morris Winchevsky, Joseph Schlossberg, Bernard Weinstein, Jacob Magidow, H. Slobodin, Leon Malkiel, and Dr Jacob Halperin. Many of those who stayed agreed with the opposition on some issues, but they did not quit with them at first, for they did not wish to damage the SLP. They had hoped that things would change, that DeLeon would fail and the Socialist Labor Party would remain intact. The German Volkszeitung, which also published The People, the official English-language organ of the SLP, opposed DeLeon’s Alliance, and it often decried the damage that the Alliance was doing. Gradually opposition grew within the Party against the methods of its leaders, DeLeon, Hugo Vogt, and Lucien Sanial.
In 1899, as the elections approached for the General Committee of the New York section of the Party, there was a feeling in the air that the new delegates would reject DeLeon and his tactics. The new General Committee met on July 8, a Saturday night, and a second schism rent the Socialist Labor Party, with DeLeon’s group on one side and Morris Hillquit’s opposition on the other. The machinations of DeLeon and Vogt broke up the meeting, and the new opposition left for William Street, where the offices of the Volkszeitung were. And it was now clear that almost all the Jewish Socialists had abandoned DeLeon for the opposition. They decided to place an announcement in the Volkszeitung calling for a special meeting of the General Committee two days later, on Monday, July 10, at 385 Bowery Street. Most of the delegates of the New York districts of the SLP attended that meeting and only a small group of DeLeon supporters did not. The election of officials was held, and then the schism erupted. With very few exceptions, all the districts from the Atlantic to the Pacific — not just from New York — rejected DeLeon and claimed to be “the real Socialist Labor Party”.
After that, only a small group of Party members remained in the Arbeter tsaytung Publishing Association. But the new opposition — which was now the majority — did not succeed in taking control of the Abend-Blat, which stayed under the control of a small group of Jewish SLP
members, along with its printing shop at 9 Orchard Street. The principal activists there were S. D. Cooper and Joseph Schlossberg.
Joseph Schlossberg, who is now General Secretary of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers’ Union of America, had become a Socialist at age thirteen. I can remember that, in 1890, perhaps half a year after our Arbeter tsaytung first appeared, we editors received a letter from a young cloak maker named Joseph Schlossberg, who let us know that he was a sympathizer of Socialism and “possibly” an actual Socialist. His father, also a cloak maker, had taken him to work in the same shop.
Young Schlossberg was writing to ask how he could become a full Socialist and a union man. Philip Krantz, the editor, sent him a letter suggesting that he attend Socialist lectures and join the Cloak Makers’
Union if he hadn’t done so already. A few years later he did join the SLP and he was active in the union. While working in the shop, he tried to study whenever he had the chance. He continued to be active in the Party and the union for many years. After the great tailors’ strike in 1913 he joined the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and became Financial Secretary of the Joint Board of the Men’s Tailors’ Union.
The day after the schism, those remaining at the Abend-Blat fired Philip Krantz. Then Benjamin Feigenbaum left, and the comrades appointed as editor M. Beer, who had recently come to America. A bit later Herman Simpson and David Pinsky became editors. The Volkszeitung took over the English-language weekly, The People, because it was their print shop, and they named N. I. Stone editor. Then about four weeks later there came yet another split in the city SLP. DeLeon published his own edition of The People, in which he called those opposed to him “kangaroos”, kangaroos being animals that jump. So now there were three factions:
the old SLP, the new “kangaroo” SLP, and the Forverts faction.
By the first Saturday in September, the “kangaroos” had their own daily newspaper, Di Niu-yorker yidishe folkstsaytung, edited by Philip Krantz and Benjamin Feigenbaum. They were able to collect as much money for their paper as the “Forvertsists” had done for theirs. The
“kangaroos” claimed that they were the real SLP, and it was left to the capitalistic courts to decide, for DeLeon sued them for stealing the name
“Socialist Labor Party” from him.
The Forverts faction, then, was left without a party. By sheer good fortune, Eugene V. Debs had just organized an American socialist party, which he called the Social Democratic Party of America, and at its start it was linked to cooperative farming colonies. The Party’s declaration of principles did not agree completely with the International Social-Democrats. Yitzhak Isaac Hourwitch,125 Meyer London — a Forverts man — and the Socialists of the Forverts moved over to the Social Democratic Party.
Debs was already a well-known radical union leader, especially of the railroad workers. He had been a worker and an engineer on the trains.
A skillful and devoted organizer, he became leader of the American Railway Union and editor of its newspaper. It was not then part of the American Federation of Labor but was organized on an industry basis, so among its members there were workers on the Pullman sleeping cars.
A strike broke out in Mr Pullman’s factory in the very city that bore his name, Pullman, Illinois, not far from Chicago. When Debs came to offer to go to arbitration, Pullman — the millionaire exploiter of his workers — answered that he had nothing to arbitrate.
Because of the strike of the Pullman workers, the American Railway Union called a general strike of its workers in the West and some other places. The strike was infamous because, although Governor Altgeld of Illinois declared that order was being maintained, President Grover Cleveland sent in soldiers wherever there were strikers. The judges of the highest courts ruled against the American Railway Union and its leaders, especially Eugene V. Debs. It wasn’t long before Debs and others were sent to prison, and the strike fell apart. While in prison, Debs and his comrades decided to found an American Social Democratic Party, which the Forverts faction soon joined. In 1901 the Forverts group united with the “kangaroo” faction of the SLP after many discussions. That was after the Niu-yorker yidishe folkstsaytung failed, and the court ruled that the name “Socialist Labor Party” belonged to DeLeon’s faction.
125 Professor Yitzhak Isaac Hourwich was born in Vilna. He had been involved in Russian revolutionary movements, was tried and was sent to Siberia. He became an attorney in Illinois and a professor of economics and statistics at the University of
125 Professor Yitzhak Isaac Hourwich was born in Vilna. He had been involved in Russian revolutionary movements, was tried and was sent to Siberia. He became an attorney in Illinois and a professor of economics and statistics at the University of