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1

“...IN MEMORIAM BY RUDOLPH SCHWAB. Let not the muffled drum, nor slow and solemn knell. Mourn for our comrade who has passed away; Nor rain hot tears upon his mortal clay. Furl not the flag, nor let your sorrow swell, Let not your dull and dismal dolour dwell; The International I Come comrades, play! Salute! The scarlet standard raise today! He served, he led; he served and led us well. Catch up his flaming torch and hold it high! Forward! The dizzy heights are yet unsealed; Roll drums! Close ranks! March on! Resume the road! We cry not out for help, we need no goad; Ere ebon night to silver dawn has paled Our scarlet standard from the peak shall fly....”
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“...2 REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. therefrom only when considerations of historic accuracy made it necessary to refer to matters on which we were fated to dif- fer in spite of otherwise undisturbed and harmonious rela- tions, both official and personal. It has not been an easy task to do justice either to the man or to the subject. For one thing, De Leon has not gone hence long enough to give all of us the proper perspective of his life and of his work; and, for another, the men and women of his own generation can not, in the nature of things, per- ceive always the full effect his life and his work have had and yet will have upon conditions, political, industrial and social. As the imposing figure of De Leon recedes into the past, and as the further evolution of our social system will add to man- kinds experience and produce new viewpoints, in that meas- ure will the effect of De Leons work come out clearer and ever clearer. Today, we may be prone often to fail in...”
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“... then selected him as an instrument to hold aloft Ac banner of the Social Revolution at a time and during a pe- nod when, seemingly, no one else could have so held it. And, oupled with these rugged characteristics of the leader, the forerunner, the pioneer of a new Social Order, were the more kozaan characteristics of the man, the friend, the companion, lite husband and father. Sunny of disposition, kindly, vivaci- wts, always ready with an anecdote or a jest, which latter he lad to get out of his system or bust as he often used to say, Daniel De Leon, the man, certainly was a being far dif- ferent from the horned and hoofed fiend his enemies used to depict him when, in their incessant assaults, they could find ao vulnerable spot in his armor and were compelled to resort to that style of warfare. The maxim, If you cant beat your foe, call him names, is as old as the human race rand is always new; perhaps it always will be. Still Boring From Within* But, even to an...”
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“... influences, scenting the rising dan- ger, had provided the antidote by the formation of the Amer- ican Federation of Labor, in 1881, and the incessant fight it had carried on against the Order had told. But that alone would not have mattered so much had not these same capital- ist influences carried the corroding poison of corruption into the Order. Its management had slipped out of the hands of the element that had founded it and a set of crooked politi- cians, headed by one Terence V. Powderly, as General Mas- ter Workman, was at the helm. Thus, when De Leon entered the order, via D. A. 49, the organization had long ago passed its zenith and was on the downward part of the curve. But it still had respectable numbers and, with all the vim of his energetic personality, De Leon set to work to clean out that nest of fakers. He beat Powderly and made him quit, only to see him rewarded with a political job by the capitalist clas.s he had served so well. He beat Powderlys successor...”
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“...10 REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. imposes upon men who have to stand in the breach, so to speak. These two of the tri-partite team succumbed; the third, De Leon, like a rock jutting out into a raging sea, breasted the dash of the angry waves until the grim reaper, death, laid low the mortal part of him; his other part, that which in the language of Sam French can not, will trot and did not die, is immortal and will be with us as a living force as long as the struggle for human emancipation will go on, is influencing our thought and action today and will continue to influence countless other human beings yet unborn. Factors Three Returning from this digression to the subject in hand, and taking up again the thread of the narrative when the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance was about to be formed, several fac- tors must now be borne in mind. One is that the backbone of the new organization was D. A. 49, K. of L. This District Assembly pulled away from the rapidly...”
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“...12 REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. York C. I. U., the United Hebrew Trades, located in old New York, and a small central body in Newark, N. J., but these did not materially affect the general situation here depicted, neither of them being factors in the sense described. The Brooklyn and the Newark bodies were composed of the same elements as was the New York C. L. F. and ran in the same rut in a different locality. The U. H. T., on the other hand, was not strong enough in those days greatly to affect the complexion of the Alliance as a whole. Immediately upon the formation of the S. T. & L. A., opposi- tion began to raise its head, at first rather unde- fined and impalpable, but taking shape and coming out into the open after the national convention of the S. L. P., held in 1896, had endorsed the S. T. & L. A. What is here rapidly sketched embodied, of course, an enormous amount of work of which De Leon had an ample share. He was in- defatigable, speaking, lecturing...”
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“...REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. lion. The People had become a paper admired, respected and feared by such as had reasons to fear it. De Leon knew the American labor faker to be one of the most serious ob- stacles in the path of the revolutionary Socialist movement and he dealt with him accordingly, camping on his trail, ex- posing his crooked capitalist connections and thus conveying to the duped rank and file the needed warning. The capital- ist atmosphere in the United States, productive of rich pick- ings in politics and in industry, breeds the labor faker as a swamp will breed mosquitoes. During an election campaign, the capitalist politician will shell out in exchange for labor organization endorsements even if he knows them to be worthless as vote producers, while on the industrial field strikes may be threatened, may be called and may be settled; labels and union stamps may be granted and may be with- held, all of which furnishes endless opportunities for the...”
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“...14 REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. lectures delivered by him in New York, one that no serious student of the American Labor movement should be with- out and, indeed, should know by heart. S. L. P. Endorses S. T. & L. A. Under such conditions did the S. L. P. enter upon its ninth national convention of 1896. That convention marked another milestone in the Partys development towards an ever clearer perception of its true mission in the Labor move- ment of this country. Having grown to a state of maturity, it took a step which, in 1893, would have been impossible. The newly-founded Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance was en- dorsed with the clear understanding of what this step im- plied; that it meant a declaration of war against the "pure and simple trades unions of the land, typified by the Amer- ican Federation of Labor, the erstwhile powerful Knights of Labor having in the meantime almost vanished from the field. At the convention, the subject was introduced by Vogt...”
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“...REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. 15 delegate not voting. It is interesting to note that even such a dyed-in-the-wool labor skate as one G. A. Hoehn, of St. Louis, caved in and voted in favor of taking that revolution- ary step forward, though, no doubt, never for a moment in- tending to live up to his vote. But for all that it had been a battle royal, the speeches made setting forth clearly the new road the Party was to journey on. Sanial and Vogt took a very prominent part in that debate and De Leons effort, closing the same, was particularly brilliant. Gold and Silver in 1896 The political situation of that day was interesting and was also decidedly hot. The capitalist forces had, at the out- set of the Presidential campaign, divided along the line of the creditor and debtor divisions of capitalist interests, the for- mer waving the full dinner-pail, while the latter allegedly- objected to the crucifixion of mankind "on a cross of gold. The Republicans, headed by...”
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“... who had engineered that soit of thing, the fight was carried into the national convention of the S. T. & L. A. held, in 1898, at Buffalo, N. Y. Both De Leon and I were delegates. To have some sort of counter- weight against De Leon who, as the fakers well knew, was after their scalps, they had secured Thomas J. Morgan, of Chicago, a man who had evoluted from a machinist into a lawyer, a rather queer personality, as vain as a peacock and known all over the country as Tommy I. I. I. Morgan, which modification of his name he had earned by the constant re- iteration in his speeches of the personal pronoun, first per- son, singular. He had some reputation as a speaker and writer and had acquired further fame as the introducer of the famous "Plank 10," embodied in the program of the A. F. of L. at the Detroit convention, utterly disregarded by the of- ficialdom of the organization and then knocked out at the next convention, at Denver, Col. Morgan was a Socialist "too." His...”
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“... interesting polemic ensued. The Volkszeitung, anxious to raise dust to obscure the real issue, had injacted into the controversy a side issue, namely, the question of "taxation, claiming that the working class is made to pay taxes out of...”
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“...20 REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. finally caused the National Executive Committee of the Party to submit to the membership, for a general vote, the questionr Shall the Party sever all connections between it and the So- cialistic Co-operative Publishing Association; continue, through its National Executive Committee, the publication of its or- gans, The People and Vorwaerts, and demand from the said Association the unconditional surrender of all property be- longing to the said organs, including their respective mailing lists and the amount of subscriptions paid in advance? The Volkszeitung was now at the parting of the ways Repudiation by the Party was staring it in the face and the situation, from its point of view, was growing desperate. At the very outset there was no doubt how that vote would g and, as returns began to come in, speculation as to the out- come became certainty. The aforesaid call for the genera! vote, accompanied by a statement that set forth the...”
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“... we had been assailed and he demanded that the invaders be thrown out. They were thrown out. Cleansed Party Wins Legal Battle The abortive coup de main at once cleansed the Party in New York of the disloyal element. Having come out in the...”
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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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“...24 REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. person who penned it, but is also typical of the set of mon- tal misfits conducting that paper. It is safe to assume that even at this very hour, when event after event the world over proves the unerring foresight of De Leon, as well as the immense value of his teachings; when it is clearly seen by millions of men and women, who never heard of De Leon, that the foundation that he sought to place the revolution- ary Socialist movement on is the only safe and feasible one, the only way out, viz., the integral, revolutionary, industrial organization of the workers of the world, enabling the work- ing class, everywhere, to take and hold and operate the means of production and distribution, so that, in time of a world crisis, when an old social system is seen in the throes of dissolution and a new order is being born, aye, even in such an hour would the insect minds of the Volkszeitung staff in all likelihood again pen the lines penned on...”
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“...REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. 27 Another momentous step, taken by the 1900 convention, was to insert into the Partys constitution a provision that No officer of a pure and simple trade or labor organization shall be a member of a Section. This, too, was an action that grew directly out of the bitter struggle the Party had gone through, which struggle dominated the minds of the membership and created a psychology favorable to the adop- tion of such a measure. When going over the speeches made at the convention in support of this measure, one is struck by the ever recurring note in most of them that it would pro- tect our membership against pure and simple contamination; that failure to adopt the measure would make possible their becoming corrupted by the allurements held out to them when officers of such organizations, and that this corruption would then be carried into the Party organization. Viewing this contention in the light of all that has happened since and in...”
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“...32 REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. arnend the constitution as to abolish the Board of Trustees form of organization and place the management of the paper directly into the hands of the N. E. C. The Partys vote so decided but, even prior to the taking of that vote, as early as 1901, trouble had been stalking abroad. There was on the Daily People staff a man named T. A. Hickey, a rather worth- less individual, irresponsible, blatant, shallow, an ardent dis- ciple of John Barleycorn and a crony and protege of Vogt. The latter had helped him out once before, when he had got himself in trouble with the N. E. C. in 1900, because he had got drunk and allowed meetings that he had been sent to cover to go to smash. The phyrric victory Hickey had gained at that time with the aid of Vogt and his followers, made him more impudent than ever and also less cautious. He had, in the spring of 1900, agitated in Pennsylvania, under the aus- pices of the State Executive Committee of that...”
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“...34 REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. had been done; that Kihn and I had demanded that Vogt act but that, with Vogt and Murphy on the other side, the com- mittee was tied and Vogt in possession of the returns on that vote. At this juncture Vogt walked in. De Leon turned to him, asking: Vogt, how much longer are you going to dis- obey the orders of your State Committee? Vogt turned and walked out of the room and De Leon, in a voice quivering with indignation, again asked: Is that all the answer you have? There was no answer and the two men never spoke again. In this way, and over so worthless a character as this Hickey, ended a friendship that dated back to 1886, sixteen long and eventful years, during which these two men had fought side by side, always in perfect concord as to the prin- ciples and tactics of the Party. It was in fact Vogt who had attracted De Leon to the S. L. P., who had made him ac- quainted with the economics of Socialism and had been in- strumental...”
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“...REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON. 35 sober a man for thatbut he had become infected with some scheme to build up a big printing plant, and the Daily People, demanding so many sacrifices, did not fit into that scheme at all. He had looked over the books, at least he said he had and by painting in the blackest tints all that looked unfavor- able, while at the same time withholding all information that tended the other way, he tried to sweep the N. E. C. off its feet. He failed. At that time, and with the conditions then prevailing, to propose to stop the paper by simple executive action was either hare-brained lunacy or it was an attempt to discredit the N. E. C. with the Partys membership. Short work was made of Pierce and .his scheme. Having made the statement that the heart had been taken out of him," he was asked to resign which he did. Lampooning Little Kangs We then entered what might rightly be called the period of lampoons. It rained lampoons from all sides...”
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“... members. It will be a good test of their clearness of vision. The state- ment carries its own refutation. It is a lovely feeling to be out here, where I am not bound to take notice of this and kindred matters mentioned by you. I remain cool and judicial. Dont, when you get to read the thing, miss the place where he fabricates having told me to be damned. The ass does not realize that by pub- lishing his letter to me and my answer to him, he makes that part of his story look very fishy. At any rate, let me know all that goes on. We here philosophize on the Hexenkessel [witches cauldronH. K.]. I wish you would let me have the date of the Daily Peo- ple in which I had the translation about the Moscow police. Fraternally, D. De Leon. The disturbance of 1899 had been designated by the Party as the Kangaroo exodus, and from that designation the latter-day disrupters, of 1902, inherited the appellation of Kanglets, indicative of their more diminutive size and im- portance...”