"Rand School of Social Science: Important Auxiliary for Socialist Movement: The Work of the School to Begin on Oct. 1 -- Systematic Instruction of Social Sciences and Training of Speakers and Writers the Objects in View." [May 19, 1906] This first press announcement from the New York Worker details the forthcoming establishment of the Rand School of Social Science and Library in New York City. The will of Elizabeth D. Rand, mother of Carrie Rand Herron, bequeathed an endowment for a school of social science, which was to be "an auxiliary to the Socialist Party," the article notes. The American Socialist Society, a New York group founded back in 1901, was chosen as the operating body under state law. The American Socialist Society had leased a large residence building located at 112 E 19th Street, and was to take possession on July 1, 1906. Ground floor rooms were to be made into a library, reading room, archive, office, and book shop, and the rooms of the second floor were to be made into class rooms. A sum of $1,000 had been made available for the purchase of socialist books and pamphlets, and SPA members were called upon to make additional loans and donations of rare and out of print materials to the library, for which a planned opening date of July 15 was scheduled. A list of planned courses was also announced and is listed here, with instruction slated to commence on Oct. 1, 1906. Officers of the American Socialist Society were Algernon Lee, President; Morris Hillquit, Treasurer; and W.J. Ghent, Secretary; with additional directors Leonard D. Abbott, John C. Chase, Benjamin C. Gruenberg, T. Levene, and Hermann Schlueter.

 

"The IWW and DeLeonism: Letter to the Editor of The Worker," by A.M. Simons [May 22, 1906] At the end of 1905 and during the first half of 1906 there was a strong movement on the part of the Left Wing of the Socialist Party to forge organic unity with the rival Socialist Labor Party. The formation of the radical Industrial Workers of the World, endorsed both by the SP Left and the Socialist Labor Party, had seemingly reduced the ideological differences between the two feuding organizations to a negotiable level. The move to unite with Daniel DeLeon's SLP was a red flag, so to speak, to those like Algie Simons, who had formerly been active members in the SLP and who had fought a bitter political and legal war in 1899-1900 for control of the organization against DeLeon and the SLP Regulars. In this lengthy article to The Worker Simons professes allegiance to the IWW and its tactics and slams Daniel DeLeon, calling DeLeonism "the worst enemy of the IWW." Distrust of DeLeon based upon his history of "tricky dishonesty in the labor and Socialist movement" was putting off many solid unionists from joining the fledgling IWW and stilting the organization's growth, Simons claims. DeLeon had craftily "fastened himself upon the IWW" in order to add "a few new dupes...to those select few who still cling to him," Simons asserts, and this clique was attempting to make loyalty to DeLeon a prime component of IWW doctrine. "Anyone who refused to do this was at once assaulted by all the mud batteries at the command of the Professor of Lying and Vilification," Simons declares. Simons provides an extensive and historically valuable account of the 1899-1900 split from the perspective of insurgent Section Chicago, in which he indicates that Daniel DeLeon in his role of editor of The People suppressed party communications for factional reasons. Simons is scornful of the movement among the SPA's Left for establishment of a "party-owned press" (a central tenet of DeLeon), declaring "It speaks poorly for the intelligence of some members of the SP that they have bit at such thinly disguised gudgeon bait."

 

"As to Unity with the SLP: Letter to the Editor of The Worker," by Ben Hanford [July 21, 1906] Former and future Socialist Party Vice Presidential nominee Ben Hanford adds his voice to those in opposition to the drive for unity between his party and the Socialist Labor Party guided by party editor Daniel DeLeon. Hanford bitterly notes that for the previous 7 years since the 1899 party split "the SLP has at all times, so far as it had power of expression by print or speech, denounced, anathematized, and vilified the trade union movement of the United States" and had heckled propaganda meetings and leafleted against the Socialist Party. "Year after year the members of the Socialist Party have had to devote almost as much of their effort and their slender means to meeting the attacks of the SLP as we did to the battle with the capitalist class," Hanford declares. Hanford believes that the two organizations are based upon fundamentally different sets of tactics: "Briefly stated, the Socialist Party allows its individual members and its constituent organizations to work for Socialism in their own way, only resorting to disciplinary measures when they pursue a way or resort to means that stultifies the end. On the other hand, the editor of the Party-Owned Press, by printing what he desires them to know and omitting those things of which he wants them to remain ignorant, decides what is the best way to work for Socialism in the Socialist Labor Party and then uses the party machinery to make others work HIS way." Hanford notes that he favors unity with all genuine Socialists, for whom the door to the Socialist Party of America remains open, but a forced unity on the basis of the New Jersey Unity Manifesto would mean "we would only unite to fight and divide" -- in short, a new split would inevitably result and that no lasting unity with DeLeon and the SLP was possible.

 

"The Socialist Party and the Trade Unions: Contribution to a Symposium in The Worker," by Eugene V. Debs [July 28, 1906] Eugene Debs responds to a set of questions issued by the New York Worker on the question of industrial unionism with this lengthy definition and analysis. For Debs, industrial unionism is more than simple "unification of all the industrial workers within one comprehensive organization, divided and subdivided into departments corresponding to their various industries;" it also implies a revolutionary ideological content. "Industrial unionism is class-conscious in character and revolutionary in aim, its mission being not only to mitigate the ills of the workers, but to abolish the wage-system and achieve complete emancipation. Without this character and ultimate end in view the mere solidarity of the trade amounts to nothing more than "pure and simpledom," and cannot properly be called industrial unionism," Debs declares. Debs reject the charge that the IWW are dual unionists starting new rival organizations, noting that the members of the IWW are, "as a rule, seasoned old unionists; they did not drop from the skies, nor come up out of the seas; they are not interlopers nor new beginners, but they are of the very heart and marrow of the labor movement, and I think their records as fighters and builders in point of time and character of service will compare favorably with those of their reactionary critics; and when credit is claimed for what has been done in the past let it be remembered that the members of the IWW figured in it all and are entitled to their full share of it." He adds that it is "better a thousand times that labor is divided fighting for freedom than united in the bonds of slavery." Debs additionally weighs in strongly in favor the SPA Left Wing's campaign for unity -- economically in the IWW and political through unification with the Socialist Labor Party. "Let us pursue the straight course and stick without wavering to the clear-cut revolutionary movement, and hew to the line of industrial and political unity for the overthrow of wage slavery," Debs declares.

 

"John Reed Named Consul General to NY by Bolsheviki." (NY Call) [Jan. 30, 1918] The first effort of the Soviet Russian republic to establish a diplomatic presence in the United States apparently revolved around noted radical journalist John Reed, who is reported in this article to have been appointed Soviet "consul general" in New York on Jan. 30, 1918 -- less than 3 months after the Bolshevik Revolution. Reed is characterized as "one of the most brilliant of the younger group of American journalists" and a champion of "the cause of those struggling for better conditions." Reed, formerly on the staff of The Metropolitan Magazine, had left for Russia late in the summer of 1917 on behalf of The Masses and the New York Call, the article states. Only 2 dispatches from Russia were successfully received by The Call, however, and Reed's Russia journalism was to appear exclusively in The Liberator -- Max Eastman's successor to The Masses, which had been sunk by the Wilson administration's censorship. Reed had been indicted with other former associates of The Masses, the article notes.

 

"John Reed, Bolshevik Envoy to the United States -- A Character Sketch," by Max Eastman [Feb. 3, 1918] This article by John Reed's friend and employer, Max Eastman of The Liberator, provides a brief character sketch of the charismatic young journalist, who was appointed consul general of Soviet Russia to the United States on Jan. 30, 1918. Eastman declares that "John Reed was born to fill a high place in revolutionary times. He is one of the few universal men - the men who combine that arrant imagination and headstrong will of adventure which are the attributes of poetic genius, with a diligent and real power to achieve and understand. There is nothing that needs to be done, either in the technical routine of a consul general's office, or in the extraordinary and delicate duties of a revolutionary emissary, that John Reed is not abundantly equipped to do." Eastman states that he has known Reed for 5 years and that he holds him in the highest regard, both as a skilled writer and astute ambassador from radical America to radical Russia. "I knew when we sent him to Russia we were sending a boon and counselor to the revolution," states Eastman, adding he also knows that Reed's historiography of "those great days at Petrograd will be a light in the world's literature."

 

"Bolsheviki Power Comes From Masses," by Louis C. Fraina [Feb. 9, 1918] Louis Fraina, characterizing himself as the "Director" of "the American Bolshevist Bureau of Information," writes this extensive letter to the editor of the New York Call to challenge assertions made to the press by the representative of the Russian Provisional Government in New York, A.J. Sack. Sack had characterized the Russian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (PSR) as "the recognized party of the Russian peasantry" who would wage a "defensive fight" against "Bolshevik usurpation" and "Bolshevik tyranny." Fraina argues the unfairness of such a characterization -- since the Soviets had ratified the Bolshevik action of dissolving the Constituent Assembly. Nor did the PSR truly represent the peasantry as a whole, Fraina asserts, declaring that the PSR historically was "the party of the middle class peasants, whose bourgeois ideology and interests dictate a 'distribution' of the land along the old lines of capitalistic private property and accumulation. The great mass of the peasantry consists of men with a small patch of land and agricultural laborers without any land at all. This peasantry accepts the Bolshevist program of nationalization of the land, and have been organized by the Bolsheviki in accord with the revolution of the workers against the bourgeois propertied classes, industrial and agrarian." Fraina concludes that "The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was neither unjust nor undemocratic. It was a necessary and a revolutionary act."

 

"Max Eastman -- A Portrait," by Irwin Granich ["Mike Gold"] [Feb. 9, 1918] With Max Eastman's new radical magazine, The Liberator, due to launch in the coming week, the future Mike Gold offers this character sketch of the grey-haired editorial savant to the readers of the weekend magazine section of the New York Call. Granich-Gold calls Eastman "many sided and subtle" -- a brilliant editor, an effective Socialist agitator, a perceptive literary critic, and a "humane and charming" man. Granich-Gold characterizes Eastman as "a synthesis of the two moods, of East and West, of meditation and action, of science and art." He astutely observes that Eastman "writes as a poet turned scientist, his own ideal; and he acts as a scientist turned poet, one urged by mystic necessity into the leadership of men." Granich-Gold indicates that "Max Eastman's natural bent" is to live on the "clear, high world of the mind, to be a teacher of beauty and science, to be the aristocrat untouched by the vulgarity of action." World events had moved him to action. As for his forthcoming magazine, Granich-Gold states that "The Liberator will be the old Masses, with the vital fire of Russia's revolution a new element in its composition. Russia has given a pulsing reality to all the abstractions we used so wearily to reiterate in the old days before the tsar fell. Men are dying for and living under the ideas we believed in; a whole nation has listened to our soapbox harangues, and has taken out its red card; and this has made all the difference in the world." A more realistic and practical new magazine would now emerge "because Socialists are being asked now to take over the management of the world's muddled affairs, and they must train themselves for the task," Granich-Gold states.

 

"Miners' Organizer Lynched by Illinois Mob of 'Best People.'" (NY Call) [Event of April 4, 1918] On the night of April 4/5, 1918, a crowd of about 350 "patriots" in Collinsville, Illinois, confronted German-American union organizer Robert Prager, active in an ongoing strike of mine workers in the neighboring town of Maryville. The Dresdener Prager was dragged from his home by the rabid mob, which accused him of "disloyalty," and forced to repeatedly kiss the flag. Police rescued him from the rampaging reactionaries and took him to City Hall for his own safety. The 100% Americans stormed City Hall and an armed police guard failed to use their weapons to defend their charge. Prager was thrown to the ground and forced to praise Woodrow Wilson repeatedly. Then the mob dragged him down the road, bound him hand and foot, and hanged him from a tree until dead. Collinsville Captain of Police Frost was quoted as saying he did not believe that Prager was guilty of disloyalty, but rather "there has been considerable labor trouble at Maryville, a mining town near here, and I believe Prager became involved with the union." The mayor of the town echoed the sentiment that there was no evidence of any disloyalty by Prager, who had taken out his first papers and applied for full citizenship.

 

"Abraham Cahan," by William M. Feigenbaum [April 6, 1918] This sympathetic short biography of one of the leading lights of the Jewish-American Socialist movement was written by the son of one of Cahan's close comrades. Feigenbaum characterizes Cahan as simultaneously "a successful editor, a Socialist agitator, a recognized novelist" -- a man who had produced significant works of literature in both the Yiddish and English languages. Cahan's primary mission is characterized as seeking to build bridges between the Jewish immigrant community and native born Americans -- both by helping the native born to understand the common humanity that they shared with the immigrants and by teaching immigrants about the institutions and customs of their adopted land. Feigenbaum notes that Cahan was born in Vilna, Lithuania (part of the Russian empire) in 1860 and had emigrated to America in June 1882. Cahan was initially a participant in the anarchist movement, before eventually converting to social democracy. Cahan had, along with economist Isaac Hourwich (father of Nicholas Hourwich), been part of the 1897 split of the Socialist Labor Party, joining the Social Democratic Party of Eugene Debs two years before the great "Kangaroo" split of 1899. Cahan had founded the Jewish Forward in 1897, but was shortly forced out of the editorship for factional reasons, honing his craft as a "straight" journalist for the Mail and Express for several years before his triumphant return to The Forward. Feigenbaum indicates that the 57 year old Cahan remained invigorated with a bubbling youthful enthusiasm and commitment to the Socialist cause and that he continued to actively speak and campaign on behalf of the Socialist ticket. Includes a photograph of Abraham Cahan.

 

"The Strike That Should Have Won," by Eugene V. Debs [April 13, 1918] This little-known article from the New York Call's magazine section about a failed strike in 1888 is very illuminating about the causes of Socialist leader Gene Debs' discontent with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen -- a deep dissatisfaction which caused him to leave his old organization and to establish a new industrial union, the American Railway Union. Debs is disdainful of the division of the various railroad workers by craft, with hegemony exerted by the arrogant Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, headed by P.M. Arthur. The self-assured Arthur had arbitrarily dismissed the aid of the unions of the brakemen and switchmen, characterizing the strike as a matter between the engineers and the Burlington line. A boycott of Burlington cars across other roads, in which the switchmen played a decisive part, had paralyzed the lines. The decisive moment came when an injunction was granted against the boycott, and Arthur had immediately caved in, rather than face jail time by defying and fighting the ruling of the court. "A finer, braver, more loyal and determined army of strikers I have never seen. They had the strike won from the start but were betrayed into defeat through the cowardly and stupid leadership," Debs asserts.

 

"Free Press Fight in America On As Masses Trial Opens: Eastman, Rogers, Young, Dell, and Miss Bell Appear as Defendants in Case Being Tried Before Judge Hand; Eight Jurors Chosen." [April 16, 1918] On April 16, 1918, jury selection began in one of the landmark censorship cases of the World War I period, pitting the Woodrow Wilson regime against the New York radical artistic and political magazine, The Masses. There were initially 5 defendants in the box, including most prominently editor Max Eastman, writer Floyd Dell, and illustrator Art Young. Heading the defense were prominent New York attorneys Morris Hillquit and Dudley Field Malone. This first article from the New York Call details the jury selection process and the steep road faced by the defense, forced to work with an aged, economically self-satisfied, and politically conservative jury pool. The article notes: "Some of them confessed that they did not even know what Socialism was; others had heard of it but had never studied it; but all were majestically sure they were prejudiced against it, and that it was unworkable, unreasonable, and probably somehow un-American. Their feelings about pacifism were as absolute and uninformed. They evidently thought it meant non-resistance. They thought all pacifists were traitors, and one belligerent juryman said he thought all pacifists ought to be interned as an answer to their insidious teachings." Despite the shortcomings of the jury pool, 8 jurors had been seated at the end of the first day of jury selection, the Call article indicates.

 

"Prager Lynch Murder Trial Ends in Miscarriage of Justice." (St. Louis Labor) [event of June 1, 1918] On June 1, 1918, a jury in Collinsville, Illinois, took 39 minutes to acquit 11 nationalist "patriots" of the murder of German-American mine union organizer Robert Paul Prager. Prager had been dragged from City Hall on the night of April 4/5, forced to kiss the flag and praise Woodrow Wilson, and then was dragged to the edge of town and hung by the neck from a tree. This news account from St. Louis Labor recounts: "When the verdict was read there was a wild demonstration in the courtroom which the authorities could not halt. Hats were thrown into the air and the spectators ran to the front of the courtroom cheering the defendants, shaking their hands, and patting them on the back." One of the victorious defense attorneys said after the verdict that "we wanted to show that the men who did the hanging were good, patriotic American citizens. But this man Prager was not loyal. He was a pro-German and the people not only of Madison County know it, but the people in other places where this man moved about unmolested." Even Assistant Attorney General Middlekauff of the prosecution seems to have been caught up in the frenzy of 100% Americanism, declaring "If Prager was a pro-German he is where he belongs -- in his grave," before adding "he ought to be dead, but the courts should have passed sentence."

 

"Bolshevism in America," by John Reed [Dec. 18, 1918] This article by Jack Reed in the leading weekly affiliated with the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party belies the claim that he was blinded by romantic revolutionary fantasies. Reed had no illusions whatsoever about the proximity of Socialist revolution in America. Reed classically remarks: "The American working class is politically and economically the most uneducated working class in the world. It believes what it reads in the capitalist press. It believes that the wage system is ordained by God. It believes that Charley Schwab is a great man, because he can make money. It believes that Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of Labor will protect it as much as it can be protected. It believes that under our system of government the Millennium is possible. When the Democrats are in power, it believes the promises of the Republicans, and vice versa. It believes that Labor laws mean what they say. It is prejudiced against Socialism." Little hope is held for the Socialist Party, as Reed asserts that "with the exception of the Jewish workers, other foreigners, and a devoted sprinkling of Americans, the Socialist Party is made up largely of petty bourgeois, for the most part occupied in electing Aldermen or Assemblymen to office, where they turn into time-serving politicians, and in explaining that Socialism does not mean Free Love. The composition of the English-speaking branches is: little shopkeepers, clerks, doctors, lawyers, farmers (in the Middle West), a few teachers, some skilled workers, and a handful of intellectuals." Reed states that "nothing teaches the American working class except hard times and repression. Hard times are coming, repression is organized on a grand scale." If current trends continue, Reed asserts that a revolutionary movement might emerge in the United States within about 5 years' time.

 

"International Socialist Delegates," by Louis C. Fraina [Jan. 11, 1919] This editorial by Louis Fraina in The Revolutionary Age sharply criticizes the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party for arbitrarily appointing Algernon Lee, James Oneal, and John M. Work as delegation to a forthcoming international convention called by Camille Huysmans, while it was Morris Hillquit, Victor Berger, and Lee who had been elected delegates to an altogether different international gathering by party referendum a year previously. "The constitution of the Socialist Party provides for the election of delegates to International Socialist Conventions, it provides several ways in which they may be elected, but it does not provide that the National Executive Committee shall appoint delegates. The appointment of the present men in contrary to the constitution, it is arbitrary and it is illegal," Fraina charges. He notes that the NEC had been previously approached by various units of the party to call an Emergency National Convention in order to give the membership an opportunity of "expressing their will on all the matters arising out of the present crisis through which the world is passing," including the question of international affiliation and the selection of international delegates.

 

"The Background of Bolshevism," by John Reed [Jan. 25, 1919] On Jan. 15, 1919, over 2 months after conclusion of the World War, Dr. Morris Zucker was convicted of 4 counts of violating the Espionage Act for comments made in a speech protesting soldier attacks on Socialist meetings. In this article in The Revolutionary Age, John Reed addresses the question of factuality and viability of each of Zucker's "criminal" assertions: (1) "America is becoming today what Russia used to be in the old, old days...." (2) "Here in America they may tear the red flag from our hands, but they only implant it more firmly in our hearts...." (3)"While I confess, my friends, I claimed exemption in America, if I were in Germany or Russia I would only be too proud to fight in the first trench lines..." (i.e., in a Revolutionary Army). (4) "Yes, it is might that we are after...." (5) "Next Thanksgiving Day we will celebrated the fact that the United States recognizes the red flag as the flag of democracy...." With regard to the controversial statement that "it is might we are after," Reed declares: "When the official organs of justice themselves disregard the law, what is there left but 'might'? When the political ballot is canceled by the money power which corrupts or nullifies the men we elect to represent and govern us, what is there left but to oppose it with some other kind of power? When, in this 'land of the free,' men are sent to prison of 10 and 20 years for political offenses --punishments unparalleled in the Empire of the Russian Tsar -- when conscientious objectors are tortured more fiendishly, and military offenders broken more brutally, than ever under the autocracy of the German Kaiser, what are we to do but resist?" Reed only disagrees with Zucker's assertion that a revolution was proximate.

 

"Secret US Department of State Memorandum on Louis Fraina, March 5, 1920." This unsigned secret memorandum of the State Department reviews the 1920 activities of Louis C. Fraina, International Secretary of the Communist Party of America, as he made his way to Europe. The memo indicates that British intelligence had known in advance of Fraina's ensuing departure from America to attend a Communist International meeting in the Netherlands and that he was expected to thereafter proceed to Moscow. The Americans had learned that Fraina had traveled with "Harry Nosovitsky," a Russian national who had previously done work for American authorities and who had apparently been recommended to British Intelligence by Raymond Finch, formerly of the Bureau of Investigation and the Lusk Committee. Fraina traveled under the stolen passport of Englishman Ralph Snyder. A "false immigration officer" had been used at the landing in England to expedite Fraina and the British agent in his company, and it is clear from the report that Nosovitsky had kept the British informed of the content of the Amsterdam meetings of the CI. The Dutch police, acting independently, had arrested Nosovitsky, however, and he had been obliged to reveal his identity to police officials. "In the mix-up, Fraina became separated from his chaperone. The latter returned to England and made his report under the impression that Fraina would arrive in a day or so. Unfortunately, Fraina changed his mind and decided to go on to Berlin," the report states. The British had then contacted German authorities, "the impression existing in England the Noske's idea of a good revolutionary is a dead revolutionary." British intelligence suggested to the Americans that Fraina's eventual return to America might prove "valuable" to authorities both as a factional diversion and because the British believed Fraina to be "venal," and thus corruptible.

 

"Memorandum on British Secret Service Activities in This Country," by W.W. Hicks [Nov. 2, 1920] This secret memo by Maj. W.W. HIcks of the Military Intelligence Division reviews British spy activity in America during the war and its aftermath. British activity was initially centered in New York in the Office of the Provost Marshal General, located at 44 Whitehall Street. Maj. Norman Thwaites was in charged of the New York office, where he worked in close concert with radicalism specialist Robert Nathan under Lieut. Col. William Wiseman in London. In March 1920, the Provost Marshal's office was closed and a "British library" established in New York under David Boyle as the new center of British Intelligence in America. The memorandum also mentions Louis Fraina at some length, noting the accusations of Santeri Nuorteva and the Russian Soviet Government Bureau against him as a purported agent of the Department of Justice. "Fraina had never been an agent of the Department of Justice and he was considered to be an out and out Communist," Hicks unambiguously declares. He recounts that shortly after a party trial over accusations that he was an agent of the Department of Justice in New York, Fraina proceeded to Canada and thereafter went to England on the same ship with Nathan and Thwaites. "It is understood that Dr. Nosovitsky managed this affair. Fraina was arrested in England on account of some irregularity in his passport but was immediately released and he and Nosovitsky proceeded to Amsterdam and attended the meeting of the Third International at that place. This meeting was broken up by the Dutch police and Nosovitsky returned to England while Fraina went into Germany," Hicks writes. The British Foreign Office subsequently intimated to the Americans that it was within their power to return Fraina to the Americans if they so desired; "at the time he left this country he was under indictment for Criminal Anarchy," Hicks notes. "The British are maintaining a considerable force of secret service operatives in this country and that they are concentrating their efforts on obtaining information on the radical, labor, and economic situations in the United States," Hicks concludes, adding that "No record is known of any attempts being made to obtain military information in an unauthorized way."

 

"British Espionage in the United States: A Secret Memorandum Prepared by the United States Dept. of Justice, Feb. 15, 1921." This secret US Department of Justice memorandum, forwarded under a cover letter by J. Edgar Hoover, reviews the activities of the British Intelligence Service in America. "There are several classes of investigation which the British were, and I assume still are, particularly interested in. These included Sinn Féin activities, Hindu activities, Negro activities (especially as they affect and became part of the activities of all darker peoples), International radical organizations and individuals, and radical affairs of all kinds in the United States," the memo states. The memo dates Britain's active pursuit of intelligence on radicalism in America to the spring of 1918, when Robert Nathan arrived from England. A lengthy list of known and suspected British agents is provided, including Marcus Garvey of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Rev. R.D. Jonas, Louis Fraina, Big Jim Larkin, Santeri Nuorteva, and former Bureau of Investigation and Lusk Committee investigator Raymond W. Finch. Some of these identifications are dubious. With respect to Fraina, the memo states that "sometime ago, approximately 6 months," an unnamed "prominent State Department official was advised by Sir Basil Thompson, head of the British Secret Service" that Fraina "had been in the employ of the British Secret Service, but at that time, he was not." The memo states that "when Fraina returned to England after the Amsterdam conference of the 3rd International [Feb. 10-11, 1920] he was placed in jail. I have been confidentially informed that Fraina at this time was subjected to a thorough examination by the British authorities and whether or not he was actually placed upon a salary basis with them is unknown but he shortly thereafter departed for Russia where today he is in the intimate confidence of the Soviet authorities." This specific account of Fraina's path to Moscow is at odds with the existing literature (Draper, Buhle) as well as the State Dept. memo of March 5, 1920 and the Hicks/MID memo of Nov. 2, 1920, it should be noted.

 

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