"Last Conversation with My Father," by Jon G. Wayland [event of Nov. 5, 1912] On the evening of Nov. 10/11, 1912, publisher of America's largest Socialist newspaper, J.A. Wayland, took his life by his own hand. He was due to appear in federal district court in nearby Fort Scott the next day to face trial for a trumped-up mail-obscenity charge brought by zealous federal prosecutors with a rumored additional indictment to follow for perjury committed at a previous proceeding. This brief account published in the Appeal to Reason by Wayland's 2nd son, Jon, recounts his last meeting with his father and sheds light upon the older Wayland's motivation for his suicide. " "My boy, I am going to end it all; I cannot longer stand this persecution, mental oppression, and misunderstanding. I have done my work living and worn myself out, and perhaps my death will further the interests of the cause," the younger Wayland quotes his father as telling him at their parting. "Not once during this talk did he exhibit any feeling of malice or hatred toward even those government officials who are directly responsible for his death. He felt it was all a part of the order of life and unavoidable," Jon Wayland adds.

 

"Story of the Tragedy," by Fred D. Warren [Nov. 11, 1912] News account of the suicide of the 58 year old publisher of the Appeal to Reason, J.A. Wayland, by that paper's editor, Fred D. Warren. "Wayland, at the last term of court testified he had no connection with the management of the paper. Government officials claim they were prepared at this term to prove Wayland's responsibility as publisher and that an indictment may have been asked on a charge of perjury," Warren noted, adding that Wayland had been periodically depressed over the death of his wife in an automobile accident the previous year. Warren adds that a suicide note was found offering Wayland's bleak last words to the movement: "The struggle under the competitive system is not worth the effort; let it pass."

 

"Telegram Read at the Funeral of Julius Augustus Wayland: Girard, Kansas -- Nov. 13, 1912," by Eugene V. Debs Scheduled to speak at the funeral of his close friend and former employer, J.A. Wayland of the Appeal to Reason, Eugene Debs was distraught and found himself unable to make the trip. Instead this short telegram was dispatched and read at the grave site: "Today you will give back to mother earth the mortal remains of our fellow warrior. The hearts of a million loving and loyal comrades will beat his funeral march. He fought the good fight without flinching to the end. He gave to the cause of the oppressed all the strength of his body and soul and future generations will reap the harvest he has sown and pay his memory the homage of their love and gratitude." Includes photo of J.A. Wayland.

 

"The Results of the 1912 Election: A Statement," by Eugene V. Debs [Nov. 16, 1912] In this statement published in the Appeal to Reason in the aftermath of the 1912 election, Socialist Party Presidential candidate Gene Debs attempts to depict the SP's rather disappointing vote total (about 1 million votes, when about twice that number was predicted and expected) in the best possible light. Emphasizing quality over quantity, Debs declares that "the million votes cast this year, be it understood, are Socialist votes. The possible vote that could have been taken from us was taken by the so-called Progressive Party, and the vote which remains is a solid Socialist vote upon which we can count in the future without fear of disappointment." Debs believes that intra-party warfare is about to split the Democratic Party in the same way that it divided and weakened the Republican Party, opening up the way for future Socialist victory. "Soon after the Democrats go in power they will demonstrate their utter impotency and helplessness and thousands who voted their ticket will turn from them in disgust," Debs wishfully predicts, adding that Socialists should be prepared for an economic panic "to be precipitated" during the Democratic administration.

 

"The Red Trade Union International: The First World Congress of Revolutionary Unions," by Earl R. Browder [events of July 3-??, 1921] Pioneer American Communist Earl R. Browder, a delegate to the 1st World Congress of the Profintern held in Moscow in the summer of 1921, provides an account of the gathering for the members of the Workers Party of America. Browder characterizes the gathering as the "culmination of a long historical development in the principles and tactics of the international labor movement" in which the wartime use of European trade unions as recruiting grounds for the army and post-war period of the trade unions being instruments of the immediate political situation, in which the bureaucratic leadership of the unions had blocked the revolutionary impulses of the rank and file, had given way to a new phase. "By the spring of 1920 a great movement of revolt against the reactionary control of the trade unions by the international organization at Amsterdam was in full swing throughout Europe," Browder asserts, adding that "this revolt was spontaneous, chaotic and unorganized, and without center or directing head. "The first steps taken to unite all these forces into one disciplined body were taken in Moscow in July 1920, when the leaders of the Russian trade unions took advantage of the presence of many union representatives from England, Italy, France, and other countries, some of whom were attending the Congress of the Communist International, and invited them to confer," Browder states. Anti-political revolutionary syndicalists chose to participate in the 1st World Congress of the Profintern in an attempt to capture it, but this tendency was decidedly in the minority, Browder notes. Browder promises further commentary on the specific issues of division in a future article, which does not appear to have made print in the pages of The Worker.

 

"The Negro Convention," by Cyril Briggs [events of Aug. 1-28?, 1921] Writing under the pseudonym "C.B. Valentine," founder of the African Blood Brotherhood Cyril Briggs gives his account of the "2nd International Convention of Negroes" called by the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, headed by Marcus Garvey. Briggs draws contrast between the Garveyites' obsession with matters of rank and privilege, such as various "knighthoods" and a "ladyship" awarded, and the designation of President-General Garvey as the "Provisional President of Africa," etc., with the practical and single-minded desire of the ABB for "real constructive action." Briggs states that "The ABB delegation...demanded among other things a constructive program for 'the guidance of the negro race in the struggle for liberation,' and suggested and agitated before the congress the creation of a federation of existing negro organizations 'in order to present a united and formidable front to the enemy,' and the adoption of a program calling for means 'to raise and protect the standard of living of the negro people,' to "stop the mob-murder of our people and to protect them against sinister secret societies of cracker whites, and to fight the ever expanding peonage system.' They further demanded that Soviet Russia be endorsed by the congress and the real foes of the negro race denounced." The ABB's publication of a weekly journal and other literature hostile to the brazen pocket-stuffing of the Garveyite leadership brought about a crisis late in the month, culminating with Garvey's denunciation of the ABB as "traitors and Bolshevist agents" and the expulsion of the ABB delegates from the convention, Briggs notes.

 

"American Agricultural Problems," by Harold M. Ware [Nov. 12, 1921] During 1921, Harold Ware, the radical son of Ella Reeve Bloor, himself a small-scale farmer in Pennsylvania, abandoned his farm and went on the road incognito in order to experience the life of a migrant farmworker first-hand. "In the jungles and box cars I learned from one stiff after another of the battle of the migratory workers for a chance to organize, to find work, and to live," Ware writes, noting that. This is a summary of his assorted adventures on the road, a survey of American agriculture in the crash year of 1921 ranging from the tenant cotton farms of the South to cattle ranching of the Southwest to the the industrialized farming of California to the grain fields of the Northern Plains and Midwest to the rich agriculture of the East. The situation in the South was most critical, in Ware's estimation, based upon tenant farming in which the impoverished farmers, often negro, were extended credit to finance operations and living expenses in the coming year, at usurious rates of interest. In the spring of 1921, cotton prices had dropped precipitously, causing a contraction of credit and absolute destitution among the tenant farmers. The industrialized agriculture of California was the most favorable to organization, in Ware's view, for it was here that the IWW had made its greatest inroads in organizing agricultural workers for higher pay and shorter hours. Small farmers of the Northern Plains had been virtually wiped out by drought and plummeting agricultural prices, Ware says. North Dakota was something of a special case, Ware notes, in which farmers had been successfully organized for parliamentary action in their common interests in reaction to protracted exploitation by "the grain gamblers of Minnesota." Throughout, Ware sees average American farmers as an intermediate "semi-proletarian" class, producing the greater part of their output on the basis of their own labor and making use of hired labor only to assist during the peak period of harvest. The decline of agricultural prices was creating a tendency towards cooperation in the face of negative market pressures. "They have not learned that a loose marketing organization can never function effectively against the highly organized capitalist machinery. They will learn eventually that they must organize as a class, as working farmers, literally as producers. There are a large number of farmers in the South-Central states north of the Black Belt, both tenant and mortgaged owners, who are aware that the entire economic system of agriculture is at fault," Ware declares.

 

"The Communists Answer," by Jay Lovestone [Nov. 26, 1921] Member of the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party of America Jay Lovestone (writing as "R.B. Nelson") vigorously replies to charges levied by the Workers' Council group that the CPA went underground of its own volition, due to the "revolutionary romanticism" of many of its leading members -- a decision which lead to a separation from the masses of American labor and to the fostering of a false sense of security. Lovestone replies that the decision to go underground was in no way a choice: "While the 'above-boarders' of the Workers' Council were striving to win over the traitorous Socialist Party to a 'real, revolutionary international' (whatever that could have meant after 40,000 to 60,000 suspected of being Communists were expelled), the American Communists were openly fighting as Communists and were being jailed for scores of years of penal servitude." It was through the arrest and jailing of thousands in Dec. 1919 and Jan. 1920 that finally the communists "were driven to cover for protection and worked underground in order to save their organization," Lovestone declares, adding that "Since then the communists have tried their best to work in the open." The underground form of organization was not an end in and of itself, Lovestone states, noting that the Comintern itself declared for the need of parallel legal and illegal organizations in each country. The Comintern had never supported sectarian and "splendid-isolationist" policies, Lovestone declares and he states his belief that the inconsistent positions of the Workers' Council group "shows clearly that our Left Wing Socialist comrades were not in the past and are not even today ready to accept fully the principles and tactics of the Third International."

 

"The Negro Liberation Movement," by "C. Lorenzo" [Dec. 10, 1921] This survey of the black liberation movement from December 1921 appears to have been written by a white American Communist under a pseudonym and was published in the pages of the official organ of the Workers Party of America. "Lorenzo" sees two main tendencies in the negro liberation movement of the day -- the Universal Negro Improvement Association, headed by Marcus Garvey, and the African Blood Brotherhood, headed by Cyril Briggs. In addition, the existence of a number of "minor phases" of the movement are noted, including the Equal Rights League from Boston, and the Pan-African Congress; plus two African-based tendencies, the Mohammedan movement and the Ethiopian movement. "Lorenzo" states that the African Blood Brotherhood is "the only Negro organization that the capitalists view with any degree of alarm," owing to its reputation as having lead the armed self-defense of the black community in the Tulsa race riot and to its willingness to seek "the cooperation of all other forces genuinely opposed to the capitalist-imperialist system" (i.e. the communists and other radical white movements). "While placing a free Africa as the chief of its ultimate aims, the ABB has no intention of surrendering any rights that the Negro has won in any parts of the world, or of letting up on the fight for liberty -- 'political, economic, social' -- in the United States. It is at present carrying on a most uncompromising fight for the rights of the Negro workers in this country to organize for the betterment of their condition, the raising of their standard of living, and for shorter hours and higher wages. At the same time it seeks to imbue the Negro workers with a sense of the necessity of working class solidarity to the success of the struggle against the capitalist-imperialist system, which it asks Negroes to wage both as Negroes and as workers," "Lorenzo" declares.

 

"The Friends of Soviet Russia," by Alfred Wagenknecht [Dec. 17, 1921] Weekly report of Secretary of the Friends of Soviet Russia, Alfred Wagenknecht, writing for the official organ of the Workers Party of America under the pseudonym "A.B. Martin." Wagenknecht notes that to date $265,000 had been collected for the relief of the Russian famine, including the collection of 7,000 pairs of used shoes in Chicago and 26 bales of clothing in Cleveland. New York cobblers had volunteered to do shoe repair on donated footwear, two clothing manufacturers had made available their machinery, a benefit symphony concert had been arranged in Detroit, and Chicago was organizing druggists. Wagenknecht urges the collection of surplus grain from from Midwestern farmers. He notes that Floyd Ramp, Norman H. Tallentire, and Dennis E. Batt had been added to the FSR's staff of touring speakers. Includes a c. 1918 portrait of Alfred Wagenknecht.

 

"Letter to C.E. Ruthenberg and the WPA Organization Committee in Chicago from John J. Ballam, DO4 [Buffalo], April 14, 1924." Citing family difficulties over which he has no control, newly appointed WPA Buffalo District Organizer John Ballam resigns his post with this April 14, 1924 letter to the WPA's Organization Committee. At the same time, Ballam insists upon his consideration for the post as DO for the powerful Boston District. "You have not a better comrade for the job and you KNOW it," Ballam insists. The arch-factionalist Ballam, a former leader of the Central Caucus faction, may well have elicited mirth and chortling when he asserts "I have been accused of 'factionalism' but you cannot point out a single instance wherein I have acted against the discipline and interests of our party when I accepted its general policy." He graciously adds that "When I disagree with the party's tactics the CEC will be the FIRST to know of it."

 

"Memo on Branch Membership Status in WPA Dist. 9 to Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg in Chicago from DO9 Clarence Hathaway in Minneapolis, Nov. 19, 1924." During the first 3 years of the Workers Party of America, the organization's primary component was the Finnish Socialist Federation, comprising nearly half of the organization's total membership. Nowhere was the Finnish Federation stronger, as a percentage of total membership, than in the WPA's Minneapolis District. This esoteric document from Minneapolis DO Clarence Hathaway analyzing the Minneapolis district branch by branch reveals a great deal about exactly what sort of partner the Finnish Federation was to the central WPA organization during the year prior to the structural reformation of the party under the moniker of "bolshevization." In branch after branch, dues collections as reported by Hathaway to have run several or many months late; dues paid frequently did not correspond to to the (irregularly-filed) reports of members on the books. Dual stamps seem to have been heavily utilized, possibly bordering on abuse, by some branches. Many branches had failed to complete their required industrial registration paperwork (matching up members with the unions and shops they were part of) or were otherwise unresponsive to the communications of the District Organizer. Hathaway's document is not a picture of a disciplined and organized party -- rather the opposite. In short, scholars may well need to examine this document and completely rethink the previous depiction of the "bolshevization" reorganization of 1925 in the literature. So-called "bolshevization" may well have been less an externally-determined and blindly-enforced diktat from abroad than a policy which spoke to rectifying festering conditions of disorganization, with lack of effective transmission belts between center and the branches and a tendency towards rampant "social" Federation membership rather than truly committed participation in the WPA organization.

 

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