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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...”
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“... killing The Peo-
ple: but it expressly assails and marks out for decapitation
you and metwo officers under the N. E. C. At such times...”
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“...DANIEL DE LEONOUR COMRADE. 113
decline in the industrial centersa fact they hate to swallow,
but swallow they must. My policy in emphasizing this_______St.
Louis and Chicago and Milwaukee city elections have furnished
fresh materialis working both ways. In New York it is hav-
ing the effect of causing the intellectuals to be acting still
more intellectually against the proletariat; elsewhere it is
causing what I said is happening in Ind. and Chic. In both
cases the boil is being ripened. [In the latter part of May the
International Socialist Review returned the Open Letter with
the excuse that as the letter had already appeared in The' Peo-
ple the Review could not publish it as it was its practice never
to reprint from American publications. It should be noted,
however, that the Letter had been in the hands of all S. P. pub-
lications ample time before it was used in the Daily People.
De Leons comment was: "Well, Kerr took backwater! And
what a backwater! He knew you...”
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“... Still exist in the editorial office of the Weekly Peo-
ple, I have no doubt that I would find a great deal of really
amusing evidence of this campaign of vicious slander, the only
weapons that the enemy really possessed against himargu-
ment and logic they never dared to try, for then their weapons
flew to pieces like wooden swords against steel.
Since I took charge of the office, I have found in a crev-
ice an old tablet on which De Leon had taken copious notes at
several Volkszeitung Association meetings in the Spring of
99. There we have them all photographed in the very first
onrush against De Leon and The PeopleJonas, Hillkowitz,
Koeln, Schneppe, Leib, and all the others. It is one long at-
tack on The People the tactics of the Party, its stand on the
question of taxation, and on the Socialist Trades and Labor
Alliance. How clearly the split was a split on the tactics of
the movement is shown by these notes.
In the pocket of another notebook from the days of 99, I...”
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“...DANIEL DE LEONOUR COMRADE.
133
was a good joke on the A. E.that it was also one on him-
self, he would not condescend to admit!
The contributor was scarcely less of a problem at times.
The fact of a Party-owned press translates itself to some literal
minds into the conception that they ought to do as
they please with it, and that anything they send in
should be published without comment, question or abridge-
ment. If this inalienable right is infringed upon it
can only be because the editor, who should be a ser-
vant of the membership, is a "boss and a "tyrant. At
every N. E. C. meeting we had a batch of appeals from De
Leons "arbitrariness to settle, and De Leon always came out
on tophe never ruled out anything unless he had a very good
reason. The most insistent complainants were, naturally, peo-
ple with literary talent and ambition, the class that is always
"misunderstood and suppressed. The workingmen in the
Party caused him little or no trouble of this kind...”
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“...WITH DE LEON SINCE 89. .11
of the industrial centers. The leaders of the pure and sim-
ple trade unions had indeed good cause to fear the S. T. &
L. A.
The founding of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance
was the first recognition and application of the principle of
strategy in the Socialist and labor movement in the world. It
was declared that without the organization of the workers into
a class conscious revolutionary body on the industrial field^
Socialism would remain but an aspiration. It was chargeii''
that the idea of organizing the Socialist Trade and Labor Al-
liance originated in De Leons head. It did. That charge,"
at least, was true. So much the better for De Leon. Recent
developments across the Atlantic have demonstrated beyond
doubt the impotence of the pure and simple political move-
ment.
Credit Due Daniel De Leons Work
To Marx belongs the discovery of the economic interpre-
tation of history and the scientific application of the theory off
value...”
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“... the labor movement exceeds
that of Gompers and some of his lieutenants besides. Louis
Miller, formerly of the Jewish paper, Wahrheit, who recently
started another daily paper on the East Side, is another exam-
ple. Millers real estate speculations were very successful_
no wonder De Leons attitude was not cherished by him I Last,
but not least, there is Morris Hillquit, a lawyer and now also
a Boersianer, or speculator in Wall Street. Hillquits "origi-
nal accumulation was derived from fees in writing the agree-
ments mentioned above. Original accumulations and the rev-
olutionary Socialist movement do not go hand in hand, hence
the starting of the opposition on the East Side at the time when
De Leon as a candidate of the Socialist Labor Party for Con-
gress polled such a large vote.
Bryan Populist Storm Let Loose
While De Leon was battling in the ninth Congressional
district, into which campaign he had thrown his great energy
and personality, there was a political...”
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“...94 WITH DE LEON SINCE 89.
influential members of the party in Little Rhody, also turned
against the Socialist Labor Party, and thus a sort of triple
alliance was formed to smash the party.
This combination was joined by an additional or fourth
eleient in New York, which trained with Julian Pierce, then
manager of the Labor News Company. Pierce had nothing m
common with Hickcj' or Voct; he was a sober man, in fact
the very one, as already stated, who preferred charges against
Hickey at the outset of the whole affair. The fellows who
stood with Pierce were the two Ephraims; Ephraim Siff and
Ephraim Harris, and a few others with saintly names but
Luciferic motives. They wanted to discontinue the Daily Peo-
ple and turn the Daily People plant into a money-making en-
terprise. The Pierce-Siff aggregation became known, accord-
ingly, as the Daily People Killers League.
United by Jealousy of De Leon
The triple alliance became a quadruple concern, but none
of its component...”
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“... chuckled with glee at the wonderful ghost-stones
which were being told, wherein he was the ghost and in which
things were implied, to have been guilty of committing which
De Leon must needs have been among the living from the
time his ancestor, Ponc.De Leon, sought to discover in Flor-
ida the Fountain of Youth.
It was then that Reilly volunteered to tell what Algernon
Lee, another shining light in the firmament of the Socialist
Party, was in the habit of telling confidentially to all who
would believe himthat De Leon, while a resident in Germany,
was a Bismarck spy! We all thought this as good a ghost-
story as we had heard. De Leon himself had his chuckle out
of it, but he requested Reilly to write a letter to the Daily Peo-
ple in the form of an inquiry regarding Algernon Lees allega-
tion. Reilly, after having made the statement, could not re-
fuse to comply with De Leons request or himself stand brand-
ed as a base slanderer. He did write such a letter, which was...”
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“...126 WITH DE LEON SINCE 89.
who would have no axes of their own to grind, no ambition but
to serve the cause, men such as De Leon himself was.
At this time the party found itself with Frank Bohn as its
national secretary, James Connolly as a member of the Nation-
al Executive Committee, and Justus Ebert in the editorial room
of the Daily People. Each one of the trio had his own ambi-
tion, each one wanted to become the editor-in-chief of the
Daily People, though each one had a different purpose in that
desire.
The Self-Seekers in the Party
Bohn, whom I have described as resembling in manners a
funeral director, wanted to become the editor of the Daily Peo-
ple so as to be able to turn over the Socialist Labor Party in
bulk to the Socialist Party, and thus become the undertaker in-
deed. Did he not write, after his schemes had failed, in the New
York Call: I have bearded the lion in his den, etc." Yes, he
had bearded the lion in his den; he bore the scars to prove
it...”
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“... original motion as written by the recording secretary of
the Sub-Committee, and found that it had been falsely tran-
scribed by Bohn so as to read, by leaving out the word Sub,
to empower the N. E. C., etc.
The motion as originally written was photographed and
electrotyped and reproduced in the columns of the Daily Peo-
ple. Bohn was charged with having thus falsified the N. E. C.
minutes; he was challenged to refute the charge; he could not.
Before facts in this case were fully known by the party mem-
bership, Connolly, as a delegate to the New Jersey state con-
vention of the Socialist Labor Party, made, together with Pat-
rick Quinlan, the false allegation as stated above. The part of
De Leons letter quoted related to this Connolly matter.
Before dropping the three former members of the Social-
ist Labor Party, Bohn, Connolly and Ebert, let it be told what
became of them, which better than anything else will show
whos who and why.
Bohns chief argument against De Leon was...”
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“... the letter to you signed with Traut-
manns stamp, but obviously written by O. J. Your answer,
copy of which you sent me, is to the point. O. J. is hedging.
Trautmanns report reads, Markley is using The Daily Peo-
ple against the I. W. W. That is a concrete charge, to be
proved or disproved by the articles in question. If the charge
is true I am guilty. I should not be caught napping by peo-
ple who wish to use The People against the I. W. W. O. J.s
is still vaguer. He speaks of articles which dont conform
with facts. This is an attempt to impeach the veracity of the
alleg;ations in articles that do not concern the I. W. W. In-
sist upon an answer, and upon retraction when the time comes
that O. J. can dodge no more.
Since writing to you, two requests have come to me to
answer in The Bulletin the misleading article of Connollys
and set things to right. I dont fancy the idea of taking the
initiative in the matter, Edwards having exhibited his woeful...”
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“... the industrial fields.
Fifty speakers of the Detroit I. W. W. were on the strike
scene; Herman Richter, the general secretary was among
them. Arthur E. Reimer, Caleb Harrison, Frank Young, Au-
gust Gillhaus, Robert McLure, Olive M. Johnson, Margaret
Hilliard, Edmund Seidel, M. Angelevski, Boris Reinstein, and
many others used their best endeavors and worked overtime to
enlighten, encourage, and organize. A number of young peo-
ple, the sons and daughters of New York comrades, came to
Paterson to help in doing clerical work; thousands of mem-
bership books had to be issued for which men, women, and
boys and girls who had joined the organization clamored, and
which could not be made out as fast as applicants for mem-
bership demanded them, for in those days nothing was so
cherished as a membership card of the Detroit I. W. W.
S. P. and Bummery Treason
But the hand of treason once more destroyed the newly
built organization, which at its very birth was thus not only
under...”
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“...X INDEX.
New Yorker Volkszeitung, part taken by, in formation of So-
cialist Trade and Labor Alliance, I. 11; attack made by, on
Socialist Labor Party, 17; controversy between The Peo-
ple and, 18-19; monthly edition in English of, 19-20; unsuc-
cessful raid engineered by, on offices of Socialist Labor
Party in New York, 21, II. 67-69; true attitude of, toward
revolutionary Socialist movement, as revealed by utter-
ance in 1909, I. 22-23; editorial in, upon death of De Leon,
24-25, 117-118; dirty work by, in early days, II. 5-6; early
hidden enmity of, toward S. L. P., 60; open issue taken
with The People by, 63-66.
Obrist, J., opponent of De Leon, II. 65.
Optimism, De Leons definition of, I. 117.
OToole, Barney, sponsor for James Connolly, II. 100.
Overall Brigade at fourth convention of I. W. W., II. ISO-lSl.
Paris, International Socialist Congress at, in 1900, II. 86-89.
Parsons, Albert, II. 3-4.
Party Press, The, booklet on, I. 88.
Paterson, silk workers strike...”
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