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1

“...18 REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. we assume that he believed what he professed to believe. Mr. Morgan did not cut a very heroic figure at Buffalo. He had a bad cause (or case) to defend and he knew it; moreover, he had De Leon to contend with, as a counter- weight to whom he was rather too light in the head. The con- spirators had a narrow margin of votes in their favor, yet were powerless to do much with it. A running fight ensued, but before the convention adjourned De Le*n was compelled, for some imperative reason, to return to New York. Before he left we held a council of war at which it was agreed that, whenever the majority tried to put through some crooked motion bearing upon the fight, which naturally meant at- tempted exoneration of the fakers, I was to move to refer such matter to a general vote of the membership. That was done. I made the necessary motions; Comrade Jacob Alex- ander, of Albany, N. Y., seconded them. The situation was such that the...”
2

“... national. Then they "elected" a new set of "officers, whereupon, after gathering numerous and promiscuous re-enforcements, and, after providing these with sundry weapons, they came down to the Party headquarters demanding surrender of what they claimed was theirs. They got "theirs. After the fight was over, it was De Leons coolness under stress, his commanding personality, his knowl- edge of our legal status, that saved the Partys property and foiled the raiders. It is true that, in expectation of the raid, we had removed all we could and thought essential, but enough was left to have made valuable booty for the foe. We, who had fought fiercely in that midnight battle against thrice our numbers, were either wounded or exhausted. He had been planted at his'desk, his room securely barricaded and when a squad of police, guns in hand, arrived and stopped the fight, it was he who took the situation in hand. He showed the officer in command that we were in lawful possession, that...”
3

“...22 REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. open, it could be dealt with and was promptly ejected. Hence- forth, these men had to carry on their fight against the Party outside of the breastworks and that fight then took shape in a variety of forms. To begin with, the Volkszeitung at first succeeded in obtaining a temporary injunction against the members of the N. E. C., the purpose of which was to prevent them from publishing The People. Next came attempts to lay hands on Party funds through various litigations. They sought to confuse the working class of the land by setting up a counterfeit S. L. P., with a counterfeit The People. In its application for an injunction, the legal exigencies of the case were such that the Volkszeitung was estopped from including in its petition the real editor of the real The People, De Leon, who was thus left free to hammer the foe to his hearts con- tent. And, oh, how he did hammer that foe I Reading The People of those days is an education...”
4

“... May 13, 1914. Here is the Volkszeitungs editorial. It is a "gem in more ways than one that should not be left out of this vol- ume but should be embalmed for future contemplation: "DANIEL DE LEON. He, who expired on Monday evening, fared as did so many before him, he died a few decades too late; he outlived himself. "True to his maxim to destroy what he could not rule, he concentrated, during the last fifteen years, his vitality and will-power upon tearing down what he, personally, had helped to create. And therein he was great, far greater than in construc- tion and erection. De Leon was, indeed, a destructive geni- us, i. e., he was great in demolishing, in tearing down. With an hatred that was insatiable and unstillable, he fought since his entrance into the American labor movementsince 1892 against every movement of the working class of this coun- try that showed success and that seemed to be in the as- cendancy. It was contrary to his nature to perform con...”
5

“...30 REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. flowed from the same fountain head,the heartbreaking at- tempt to accomplish the unaccomplishable. Many were the sad features embodied in this chapter of the Partys history and it may be said that an organization that can go through all that and survive, is in truth inde- structible. The elements the Party had sloughed off before, really were not and never had been S. L. P. They were an incubus, a foreign growth, not part of our being; to get rid of them left our anatomy intact and improved our well-being once the operation was over with. The defections we were now to experience were of a different character, for it was often blood of our blood and flesh of our flesh that had to be torn away. True, there were amongst the lot characters utterly unworthy, fair weather soldiers, with us while the tide was running high, but flotsam and jetsam cast ashore as soon as the tide ebbed. Such were the Hickeys, Daltons, Schul- bergs, Porkers...”
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“...REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. 31 us. He shaped matters so, while still in charge of the man- agement, that wage claims of his cronies, claims that he was supposed to have had cancelled and could have had if he acted in time, claims that the loyal Party members working on the paper did cancel, were left uncancelled and became in his hands so many clubs to assail the Party with. The sec- ond, Fiebiger, while he did not commit any positive act against the Party such as many of the others were guilty of, nevertheless condoned every act of rascality committed by the crew he was with, himself sued the Party for money he had advanced and did so at a time when he and Vogt had reason to believe, or thought they had, that now the psycho- logical moment had come to give the Party the last blow. The third. Sauter, did not do anything at that time, but later, after he had landed in the S. P., he published over his signa- ture, in an S. P. paper, the would-be witticism suggestin...”
7

“... oppose the holding of a convention. Remember, that many a man is merely roped into endorsing such a R. I. proposition, but if the N. E. C. acts in a way to make him think it wants no convention, then he goes wholly over. By taking the stand that I outline, such people will easily be held straight, an.i the R. I. crooks will find themselves left. "As to the document I need not say to you it is dastardly. It is a patchwork of Simpson, Curran, Pierce and Kroll. No wonder they were two whole months in getting it out. Let New York vote quickly and vote for convention and vote for Pittsburgh. What a Jesuit that Curran has turned out! Dear Kuhn:I got this closing documents. In a way actually put themselves out of of trying to be constitutional. Fraternally, "D. De Leon. P. S. Curran does not imagine the Party will stand by him. He calculates upon some mistake in New York to justify a rump convention. D. DL....”
8

“... left the S. P. a short time ago and the last heard of him was to the effect tliat, in conjunction with Simpson, Stokes, Spargo, A. M....”
9

“... breaking the Milwaukee, possibly also the St. Paul date, or give these dates a chance and let the ratification meeting go. My decision depended upon a third contingen- cywould Debs be present? He had left Chicago to hold a 4th of July oration somewhere in Dakota and he was to have...”
10

“... days, from June 21 to July 8, at $5.00 per diem) is $90.00, leaving me with $10.00 over and above the billunless the S. L. P. assumes the ex- penses for the pre-convention days, in which case the amount due the Alliance would be proportionately larger. But I give notice that my expenses were compulsorily larger than the tariff allows, and I had to incur them. I make a rough es- timate that the three weeks in Chicago, especially owing to the last two, left me about $10.00 beyond the reckoning. 7.Albert Ryan, an excellent fellow and one of the Western Federation of Miners delegates is to be in New York, probably before my return. If so, be good to him. He> will call at the Daily People office. It is with difficulty I refrain from taking up convention and other kindred matters. But I must. A score of things, occur to me simultaneously. But to dash them off here would be but to jumble them. The New York delegates will be back by the time this reaches the Daily People building...”
11

“... the S. L. P. upon a basis that left the S. L. P. a factor to be reckoned with. To have us disappear as an organiza- tion by attachment to the S. P. as individuals would, of...”
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“...1487 AVENUE A, NEW YORK WHERE DE LEON LIVED FROM 1887 TO 1T13 (Third Story Two Windows To The Left)...”
13

“...no DANIEL DE LEONOUR COMRADE. dominant; it is dominated. This takes us back to my scepti- cism regarding your expectations of such an Open Letter being published by the S. P. privately-owned pressespecially when the letter comes from a notorious S. L. P. national officer. I dont want to discourage you. Try your plan. But I fail to un- derstand the ground on which you base your expectation of reaching that desired proletarian element in the S. P. through a press that is owned by the very leaders whom you recognize the proletarians are fighting. You ask me whether I do not believe that if the letter is all right the plan is all right too? I smile. All the more 'all right the letter is, meseems the plan will prove the reverse of all rightthe S. P. press will not give it publication. The evi- dence, to me conclusive, is that the S. P. is developing from left to right. Its leadership is waxing more and more reac- tionaryand they own the press. Feb. 2, 1909.Last night I...”
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“...112 DANIEL DE LEONOUR COMRADE. A word on the S. P. situation. Its revolutionary mem- bership, as a bulk, are hypnotized with numbers. They got their first shock this election. They believe in boring from within. They are crazy optimists. If the S. P. develops to- wards the left of a bourgeois movement its existence will be extinguishedjust as was the existence of the Populist Party when it developed towards the Democracy. Then will their revolutionary elements droip over to us, just as the revolu- tionary elements of the Pops dropped over into the S. P. In the meantime, we must try all methods to reach the revolu- tionary elementwhether within or without the S. P. April 22, 1909.Your scheme of accompanying your O. L. with stamps for return, in case of non-acceptance, and a very nice letter was ingenious. That insured something. And I sec you are gathering the crop. The only paper you did not mention and which is publish- ing the O. L. is the Holland, Mich., Wage...”
15

“..., show that the zealous Kangaroos left no stone unturned in order to expose this vicious adventurer. To the Organized Workers of Greater New YorkI Friends and Comrades: The election is at our door and how shall class-conscious workingmen vote? This is the question which every worker, who has fully grasped his class position, must put to himself. Perhaps never before has the working class of New York been forced into a position like the present one. The faction, functioning in the elections of this year as...”
16

“...WITH DE LEON SINCE 89. 33 though we found later that he was not quite as sweet as his name. The system of proxy delegates had been abolished when the 1896 convention gathered. Twelve states were represented by about ninety delegates. 1896 Convention Takes Up Union Question The question of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance was the most important que'stion the convention had to deal with. On the third day of the convention a delegation of the S. T. & L. A. was given the floor. Hugo Vogt was its spokes- man. Vogt read a well-prepared speech, setting forth the rea- sons for the organization of the Alliance. Whatever Vogt be- came afterward, at that time he was De Leons co-worker and no one stood higher in De Leons esteem and confidence than Hugo Vogt, editor of the S. L. P. German organ. After Vogts speech De Leon introduced the following resolution: Whereas, Both the A. F. of L. and the K. of L., or what is left of them, have fallen hopelessly into the hands of...”
17

“... sil- ver demagogism. For those who sought a pretext to com- bat the revolutionary tactics of the Socialist Labor Party the pretext was furnished anyhow. In 1897 I left Troy, to live in New York. Here the op- position was at work outside and inside of the Socialist La-...”
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“...WITH DE LEON SINCE 89. 69 disgraceful, and for which the Volkszeitung alone was respon- sible. A dozen of comrades who fought for the S. L P. were more or less seriously wounded, but others took their places, and the fight for the possession of the partys property continued until the police, attracted by the noise and the crowd in the street, came into the place with drawn revolvers. Many of the raiders were hurled down the two flights of stairs, and for a while it looked as though some one would get killed. The mid- night robbers never got into the ante-room, in spite of their large numbers. The police were compelled to recognize those in posses- sion, and the coup miscarried completely. As we all left the building that night, the police alone remaining, we saw when down the street that all the Volkszeitung crowd had disap- peared; only Jabhnowsky, the reporter, stood at the entrance of the^ Volkszeitung business office. Being protected by a re- porters badge he had...”
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“...WITH DE LEON SINCE 89. Milwaukee, Christiansen in Cleveland, Luedecke in Rochester, and many other German comrades of prominence elsewhere repelled the attacks of the Volkszeitung which claimed now to be the mouthpiece of all German Socialists in America. Unfortunately, the Volkszeitung Publishing Association had been entrusted by the party with the publication of its German official organ, Vorwaerts. This paper, previously pub- lished by the party itself in magazine form, had been a few years before converted into one publication with the weekly edition of the Volkszeitung, and was now in the clutches of the Volkszeitung crowd. The party was left without an organ in the German language. Through the most strenuous efforts of Boris Reinstein the Buffalo Arbeiter Zeitung was taken over by the Buffalo Section and made a party organ, and later the Cleveland Volksfreund became the official party paper in German and has remained such to this day. Kangaroot and Tammany Hall...”
20

“...g2 WITH DE LEON SINCE 89. the organization that sought to emancipate the working class. The A. F. of L., which seeks to perpetuate the system of wage slavery, has benefited thereby as well as capitalism itself. The bolters from the Socialist Labor Party held a conven- tion at Rochester, N. Y., and decided to unite with the Social Democratic Partyin fact, that was the only thing left for them to do. Scceders Forced Themselves on S. D. P- At the Indianapolis convention of the Social Democratic Party some sort of union between that organization and the Kangaroo party was decided upon, but the rank and file of the S D P. rejected the union by a referendum vote. The Kan- garoos stuck to the S. D. P. just the same; hatred of the So- cialist Labor Party was with them the most important factor. They pocketed the kick administered to them by the cef^en- dum of the Social Democratic Party and supported the Debs ticket in the 1900 Presidential election with might and main. All...”