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“... in itself.
In this protracted legal battle, the Party finally won out
all along the line. We won out in the injunction case and
did not go to jail though we came very near it at one time,
so near that the Volkszeitung, in a premature but
very triumphant news item, announced that we would
have to go to the lock-up; we won out on the bal-
lot contest and preserved our name and emblem in
New York State; we beat them when they tried to
lay their claws on funds that had been gathered by the Party
for a Daily People. No doubt there were powerful influences
at work behind the scenes that favored a different outcome,
but the conspiracys methods had been too raw, its procedure
too illegal, to make possible its being upheld in court with-
out establishing precedents that would, at one time or other,
recoil upon the established political parties of capitalism
whenever they might have a family row.
In the light of subsequent events, it is not without inter-
est to quote an...”
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“...X
X
A
REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. 81
Austria and Germany. Finally, a few months ago, John
well-known journalist, who had been in Russia dur-
ing the revolution and had there been in personal contact
With to America and, at a meeting of the
experience and brought
greetings from Comrade Reinstein,
not onl WS that
not only was highly gratifying to the men and women who
J>r so many years, have battled in the foe-beset ranks of the
L. P, but what IS of much greater importance, news that
showed on the part of the men now guiding the destinies oj
Russia a clear and keen perception of the value of the work
De Leon had been doing m America, plus a clear recognition
oLrioT-^V"- safeguard the rev-
olution m Russia they must shape their course along the lines
mapped, for the guidance of the International Proletariat by
Daniel De Leon. * ^
So important is this news that, for the sake of rescuing
It from the fate of an ephemeral item in a paper and give it
the greater...”
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“.... These
would send in news from the field of action in plain, direct, and
often crude language, and were pleased if they saw it edited
and printed or made use of in a news item; if they heard noth-
ing of it they took for granted that it was not worth the print-
ers ink. Not so the literateur, If his effusion was ruled
out, his child was smothered. If it was "edited, his offspring
was mutilated. In either case he would yell blue murder, and
there was the devil to pay!
The trials and tribulations this sort of thing would cause
De Leon is also demonstrated in a passage from one of his let-
ters. A most stupid criticism of Henrik Ibsen by Plechanoff
had appeared in The People, translated by some ambitious as-
pirant for literary honors, and showing nothing except the au-
thors absolute lack of appreciation and understanding of the
great Norwegian. When I read this in The People, I was rip-
ping, and I let it rip. De Leon wrote back:
Ibsen I Plechanoff! That Plechanoff is a...”
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