EUGENE V. DEBS: SOCIALIST FOR PRESIDENT
Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, labor organizer Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) left home when he was fourteen to work for the railroad. In 1875 he helped organize a local lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. He rose rapidly in the organization, becoming its national secretary and treasurer in 1880. In 1893 he became president of the newly established American Railway Union, which successfully united railway workers from different crafts into the first industrial union in the United States.
Debs was dubbed “King Debs” in the national press after his union successfully struck for higher wages from the Great Northern Railway in April 1894.
The Pullman Strike
During the economic depression known as the Panic of 1893, the Pullman Palace Car Company cut its wages by 25 percent. It did not cut rents for workers’ housing in Pullman, Illinois, its company town near Chicago. Local members of the American Railway Union sent a delegation to talk to Pullman’s president, George M. Pullman. He refused to meet with them. In response, the union’s national council called for a nationwide boycott of trains carrying Pullman cars. Within four days union locals in twenty-seven states had gone out on sympathy strikes, affecting twenty-nine railroads.
Illinois governor John P. Altgeld sympathized with the strikers and refused to call out the militia, so the railroads’ management called on the federal government for help. On July 2 US Attorney General Richard Olney got an injunction against the strike from local judges on the grounds that the union was impeding mail service and interstate commerce. Union leaders ignored the injunction. On July 4 President Grover Cleveland ordered 2,500 federal troops to Chicago. The strike ended within a week, and troops were recalled on July 20. Debs was sentenced to six months in jail for contempt of court and conspiring against interstate commerce.
Debs Converts to Socialism
During his prison term in Woodstock, Illinois, Debs read broadly. Introduced for the first time to the work of Karl Marx, he came to see the labor movement as a struggle between classes.
After announcing his conversion to socialism in 1897, Debs joined forces with journalist Victor Berger to found the Social Democratic Party, renamed the Socialist Party in 1901. Debs ran as the Socialist Party candidate for president five times between 1900 and 1920. His highest popular vote came in 1920, when he received about 915,000 votes. Debs was in prison at the time, serving a sentence for criticizing the federal government’s use of the 1917 Espionage Act and 1918 Sabotage Act.
FROM THE IWW TO THE PALMER RAIDS
Socialism Grows in America
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), popularly known as “the Wobblies,” was founded in 1905 by representatives of forty-three different labor groups who were opposed to the “pure and simple” unionism of Samuel Gompers’s American Federation of Labor. The most extreme of America’s pre–World War I labor groups, the IWW rejected political action, arbitration, and binding contracts. Instead, they put their faith in the strike and nothing but the strike. Inspired by European syndicalism, the IWW wanted to organize all workers into “One Big Union,” with the ultimate goal of a revolutionary general strike that would overthrow capitalism and create a workers’ society.
The principal founders of the IWW were Daniel De Leon of the Socialist Labor Party, Eugene V. Debs of the Socialist Party, and William D. (“Big Bill”) Haywood of the Western Federation of Miners. De Leon and Debs came out of the social democratic tradition of the socialist left. Haywood’s ideological base was the militant unionism of the Western Federation of Miners, which spent a decade fighting mine owners and the government in its efforts to unionize hard-rock miners and smelter workers.
In 1908 the Wobblies split into two factions. One faction, led by De Leon and Debs, argued for creating change through political action by socialist parties and labor unions. The other faction, led by Haywood, came down in favor of syndicalist-style direct action: general strikes, boycotts, and sabotage. The syndicalists won and expelled the socialists from the organization.
Under Haywood’s leadership, the Wobblies adopted an American version of syndicalism: class warfare based on direct industrial action. The IWW’s actions often led to arrests and sensational publicity. Haywood himself was arrested and acquitted on a labor-related murder charge in 1906–1907. The group led a number of important strikes in the East between 1907 and 1913, but its main area of operation was among western workers in mining, lumber, transportation, and agriculture.
“Organize As a Class”
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“The working class and the employing class have nothing in common….Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.” (Preamble, IWW Constitution)
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The Effect of World War I on Socialism in America
The United States’ entry into World War I in 1917 created a permanent break between socialists and the labor movement. When the war began, labor leaders and socialists alike called for neutrality. As soon as the United States entered the war, labor unions gave the government their wholehearted support. Socialists continued to oppose the war. Many were arrested under the 1917 Espionage Act and 1918 Sabotage Act, which made it illegal to undermine the war effort.
Opposition to the War
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The IWW was the only labor organization to oppose US involvement in the war. They protested by attempting to limit copper production in the western states. The government responded by prosecuting IWW leaders under the newly enacted Espionage and Sabotage Acts.
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The Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917 split the socialist party. Reform-minded moderates abhorred the Bolshevik takeover. More radical members applauded it. The moderates, who controlled the party, expelled those who supported the revolution. The radicals subsequently founded the American Communist Party.
THE FIRST RED SCARE
After the war Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer became convinced that communists and socialists were planning to overthrow the government, in part because an Italian anarchist blew himself up outside Palmer’s home in Washington. On the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution more than ten thousand suspected socialists, communists, and anarchists were arrested in what became known as the “Palmer Raids.” Charged with advocating force, violence, and unlawful means to overthrow the government, the suspected revolutionaries were held without trial for an extended period. The courts ultimately found no evidence of a proposed revolution, and most were released. A small number, including Emma Goldman, were declared to be subversive aliens and deported to the Soviet Union.
FROM DEPRESSION TO NEW DEAL
Socialism Amid Capitalism
In 1932 America was in the depths of the Great Depression. The newly elected president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, promised a “New Deal” for everyone. In his first one hundred days in office Roosevelt pushed through fifteen major pieces of legislation, including programs designed to get Americans working again. These programs took three basic forms:
1. Short-term relief programs designed to alleviate suffering.
2. Long-term programs designed to help the economy recover.
3. Permanent reform programs designed to prevent, or reduce the impact of, future depressions.
Many of the programs instituted between 1933 and 1935 aimed at restoring the economy from the top down. The Agricultural Adjustment Act sought to stimulate farm prices by paying farmers to produce less. The National Industrial Recovery Act stabilized both prices and wages. Both programs failed to address the basic problem of weak consumer demand as a result of falling wages and rising unemployment.
Beginning in 1935 Roosevelt’s reforms moved further left, driven in part by pressure from the socialist and populist left. Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas won three times as many votes in the 1932 election as he h
ad in 1929. More than five million elderly Americans joined Townsend Clubs, supporting Dr. Francis Townsend’s proposal of a federally funded old-age pension as a way to solve the problem of weak consumer demand. Louisiana senator Huey P. Long rose to national prominence with his “Share the Wealth” plan, which proposed a guaranteed household income for every American family, to be paid for by taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Father Charles E. Coughlin appealed to the urban poor with his call for nationalized industries and currency inflation.
Father Coughlin
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Father Charles E. Coughlin (1891–1979) reached tens of millions of listeners with his weekly radio broadcasts. He supported Roosevelt against Herbert Hoover in the 1932 election. Over time he turned against the New Deal. His attacks against Communists, Jews, and Wall Street became increasingly shrill. In 1942 the Roman Catholic Church ordered Coughlin off the air.
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New Deal programs introduced after 1935 were based on John Maynard Keynes’s theory that depressions should be attacked by increasing the spending ability of the people at the bottom of the income pyramid.
The WPA Projects
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The WPA hired 8.5 million men to build roads, public buildings, bridges, airports, and parks across America. The WPA also hired artists, writers, and actors for cultural programs that included creating art for public buildings, writing state guidebooks, collecting folklore in rural America, and organizing community theaters.
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The Works Progress Administration (WPA) employed over eight million Americans between 1935 and 1943. The Social Security Act of 1935 set up a worker-funded, government-guaranteed pension system, similar to that called for by the Townsend Clubs. The National Labor Relations Act, often called the Wagner Act after Senator Robert Wagner, guaranteed the right of collective bargaining for workers.
Assessments of Roosevelt’s New Deal
Roosevelt’s contemporaries at either end of the political spectrum condemned Roosevelt’s policies. Right-wing groups denounced the New Deal as the first step toward a communist dictatorship. American communists branded the New Deal as a step toward fascism.
Scholarly assessments of the impact of the New Deal also break down along ideological lines:
• Conservative historians describe the Depression as an extreme market correction and the New Deal as the beginnings of a socialist welfare state, which they believe is an inherently bad thing, resulting in regulation and loss of freedom.
• Liberal historians describe the Depression as the failure of laissez faire economics and the New Deal as the beginnings of a democratic welfare state, which they believe is an inherently good thing, as government responds to the needs of the people.
• Leftist historians describe the Depression as the failure of capitalism and the New Deal as reformed capitalism.
The Impact of the New Deal on American Socialism
The Socialist Party lost much of its support when the New Deal came into effect. Roosevelt implemented many programs that were a part of the socialist program. More important, New Deal programs benefited the sections of society that had traditionally supported socialism. The “Roosevelt Coalition” of farmers, union members, working-class people, northern blacks, and liberals turned instead to the Democratic Party.
SENATOR JOSEPH MCCARTHY
The Second Red Scare
During the early 1950s communist advances into Eastern Europe and China frightened many Americans. Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908–1957) took those fears and turned them into an official witch hunt.
Born to a farm family near Appleton, Wisconsin, McCarthy left school at fourteen. He worked as a chicken farmer and managed a grocery store before he went back to high school at the age of twenty. He went on to earn a law degree from Marquette University.
The “Domino Theory”
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During the Cold War, United States foreign policy was dominated by the “domino theory”: the idea that if a noncommunist state “fell” to communism, it would lead to the fall of the noncommunist states around that country. The domino theory was first used by President Harry Truman to justify sending military aid to Greece and Turkey in the 1940s.
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In 1948 Joseph McCarthy was elected to the United States Senate in an upset victory over incumbent Senator Robert La Follette Jr. McCarthy ran a dirty campaign. He lied about his war record, claiming to have flown thirty-two missions during World War II when he actually worked a desk job and flew only in training exercises. La Follette was too old for service when Pearl Harbor was bombed, but McCarthy attacked him for not enlisting and accused him of war profiteering.
On his first day as a senator McCarthy called a little-noticed press conference that was a tune-up for his later performance as a demagogue. He had a modest proposal for ending a coal strike that was in progress: Draft union leader John L. Lewis and the striking miners into the army. If they still continued to strike, they should be court-martialed for insubordination and then shot.
By 1950 McCarthy’s senate career was in trouble. The story of how he lied about his war record during the election campaign became public. He was under investigation for tax offenses and for accepting bribes from the Pepsi-Cola Company to support removing wartime controls on sugar.
ATTACKS ON THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY
McCarthy deliberately directed attention away from his own failings. On February 9, 1950, speaking to a group of Republican women in Wheeling, West Virginia, McCarthy announced that he had a list of 205 State Department employees who were “card-carrying” members of the American Communist Party, some of whom were passing classified information to the Soviet Union. Suddenly McCarthy was in the headlines. When the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations asked McCarthy to testify, he was unable to provide the name of a single “card-carrying communist” in any government department.
Undeterred by the absence of facts, McCarthy began an anti-communist crusade in the national media. Playing on real popular fears, McCarthy used scare tactics to discredit his opponents. He began by claiming that communist subversives had infiltrated President Truman’s administration. When the Democrats accused McCarthy of smear tactics, he responded that their accusations were part of the communist conspiracy. As a result of his tactics, the Republicans swept the 1950 elections. The remaining Democrats in Congress were reluctant to criticize him. McCarthy, once voted “the worst U.S. senator” by the Senate press corps, was now one of the most influential men in the Senate.
McCarthyism
Following the 1952 election McCarthy became the chairman of the Committee on Government Operations of the Senate and of its permanent investigation subcommittee. In an ironic mirror image of Stalin’s trials of alleged counterrevolutionaries, McCarthy held hearings against individuals he accused of being communists, and government agencies suspected of harboring them. He attacked journalists who criticized his hearings. He campaigned to have “anti-American” books removed from libraries. When Republican Dwight Eisenhower was elected in 1952, McCarthy attacked him for not being tough enough on communism.
McCarthy ran into trouble when he attempted to discredit the secretary of the Army. The Army leaked information to journalists who were known to oppose him. As a result, America saw McCarthy’s bullying tactics firsthand in a televised thirty-six-day hearing in which the Army accused McCarthy of attempting to subvert military officers and civilian officials.
The Republicans lost control of the Senate in the midterm elections of 1954, in part because of the public’s loss of confidence in McCarthy. With a vote of sixty-seven to twenty-two, the Senate subsequently censured McCarthy for conduct “contrary to senatorial traditions.”
THE CUBAN REVOLUTION
Socialism on America’s Doorstep
In 1895 Cuba rebelled against Spanish rule. Revolts and rebellions had been a way of life in Cuba for almost four hundred years, but this time things were different. Spanish efforts to r
epress the rebellion aroused popular sympathy in Cuba’s big neighbor to the north. When the US battleship Maine mysteriously blew up in Havana’s harbor on February 15, 1898, America declared war on Spain. Cuban hopes that American involvement meant independence were soon dashed. When the Spanish-American War ended, the United States continued to occupy Cuba. It began to look like Cuba had exchanged one colonial ruler for another.
When the Cuban Constitutional Convention met in July 1900, its members discovered that the United States intended to attach an amendment to their constitution. Written by American Secretary of State Elihu Root, the Platt Amendment allowed the United States to intervene in Cuban affairs whenever order was threatened, forbade the Cuban government to borrow money without American permission, and forced Cuba to lease land to the United States for naval bases. Cuba reluctantly accepted the Platt Amendment and became “independent” in May 1902.
For the next fifty years Cuban politics were shaped by economic dependence on sugar, frequent military coups, and regular interference in its internal affairs by the United States.
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