"War's Heretics: A Plea for the Conscientious Objector," by Norman M. Thomas [Aug. 1917] In this pamphlet of the Civil Liberties Bureau of the American Union Against Militarism (forerunner of the ACLU) Rev. Norman Thomas of New York makes a case for the conscientious objectors of America. Thomas cites a broad array of motivations for opposition to participation in the world war, ranging from Tolstoyan non-resistance to evil to Christians, like Thomas, motivated by the biblical injunction against killing, to German-Americans for whom the slaughter of former countrymen and relatives is anathema, to "orthodox Socialists" who are opposed to participation in the current war for ideological reasons. Thomas rejects the common notion that conscientious objectors are anti-social violators of democratic rule, noting that the same individuals who make such a claim are the same who are most opposed to the "conscription of wealth" -- in the realm of which they are arch selfish individualists and therefore hypocrites. Thomas asserts that "We are lovers of America because we believe she still strives for democracy. It is the essence of democracy to believe that the state exists for the well-being of individuals; it is the essence of Prussianism to believe that individuals exist for the service of some unreal metaphysical entity called the state. True, the individual exists and finds his complete self-realization only in society -- an immeasurably greater concept than the state."

 

"Circular Letter to Michigan Locals and Branches of the Socialist Party of America from Adolph Germer, Executive Secretary. [June 3, 1919] With this letter, Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party Adolph Germer notified the primary party organizations of state of Michigan of their having been expelled from the SPA by the governing National Executive Committee on May 24 for actions measures adopted at the state party convention. "The National Office will proceed at once with the reorganization, so that you will have representation at the National Convention of the Socialist Party to be held in Chicago on August 30th," Germer coyly notes. "At once call a special meeting of your Local or Branch...and inform us, without delay, whether you repudiate the section of the Michigan constitution above referred to and accept the present National Platform and Constitution as your guide until it is changed in the regular way," Germer demands. "Keep in mind that whenever a movement like ours grows and is on the verge of triumph, discordant elements creep into it and play into the hands of the enemy. This has happened time and time again. We have weathered it all. There is nothing surprising or disheartening about it," Germer notes.

 

"Letter to Adolph Germer in Chicago, from Ludwig Katterfeld in Dighton, Kansas." [June 10, 1919] In this brief communication, Socialist Party NEC member L.E. Katterfeld requests Executive Secretary Adolph Germer -- a factional foe -- to poll the newly elected members of the NEC with a view to their holding an organizational meeting on July 1, 1919, the first day of their term of office under the party constitution. "I urge a meeting of the new NEC at this earliest possible date so that without loss of time we may call a halt to the party wrecking activities of the expiring committee," Katterfeld notes in the comment section attached to his motion. Knowing full well that Germer would be unlikely to circulate this motion to a group of individuals whose election had been recently abrogated by the seated NEC, Katterfeld asks for Germer's immediate notification if he did not poll the members of the newly elected committee.

 

"Letter to Ludwig Katterfeld in Dighton, KS from Adolph Germer in Chicago." [June 17, 1919] Socialist Party Executive Secretary Adolph Germer responds in no uncertain terms to Ludwig Katterfeld's attempt to convene a meeting of the disputed "new" National Executive Committee of the SPA: "With reference to your motion to call a meeting of the new National Executive Committee on July 1st [1919], let me say that I cannot submit this constitutionally or otherwise. Even if the election had not been attended by the worst kind of corruption and fraud, the new National Executive Committee would have no authority to make any motions until July 1st. Of course, I am not at all surprised that you would submit such a motion and when you did so, you knew that it was entirely out of order and that I had no right to send it out by wire or by mail. It is further evidence that you have no respect for the party laws - at the same time charging others with violating the constitution. Your motion is indeed suggestive but it will be well for you to know that your game with miscarry. There will be no meeting of what you may consider the 'new' National Executive Committee at party headquarters on July 1st."

 

"Circular Letter to the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America from Adolph Germer, Executive Secretary." [June 21, 1919] This short letter from the Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party of America to the sitting members of the National Executive Committee (whose terms were constitutionally set to expire on June 30, 1919) passes along the content of a telegram from Left Wing NEC members Ludwig Katterfeld and Alfred Wagenknecht to the Socialist Party of Massachusetts charging the NEC with "flagrant procedure and violation of the party constitution" in excluding "40,000 members of our party." The aid of the Massachusetts party is solicited. Secretary Germer adds the remark that "in all the propaganda sent out by Katterfeld, Wagenknecht, and Fraina" the claim is made that "nearly 40,000 members were expelled." Germer states that "according to our records" the action recently taken by the NEC "involves around 27,000."

 

"Letter to Marion Sproule, State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Massachusetts from Adolph Germer, Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party of America." [June 25, 1919] In this letter to the State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Massachusetts, SP Executive Secretary Adolph Germer passes along news of the expulsion of the Massachusetts Party by the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party in a vote of 8 to 1. "I am sure the revocation of the charter was not unexpected in view of the action taken by your recent State Convention, which constitutes a repudiation of the Socialist Party platform and a violation of the sections above cited," Germer tells the Left Wing State Secretary, Ms. Sproule. "The revocation of the charter cancels the election of delegates to the Special National Convention to be held in Chicago, August 30th, 1919," Germer notes as a casual aside. The voiding of a large Left Wing delegate slate was, of course, the entire reason for the NEC's rush to draconian action, Germer's crocodile tears about regretting the necessity of the action notwithstanding.

 

"Letter to C.E. Ruthenberg in New York from Marion E. Sproule in Boston." [Feb. 4, 1920] Although exceedingly short, this note from Massachusetts CPA State Secretary Marion Sproule to Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg adds a bit of esoteric detail to our understanding of the structure of the underground CPA -- that it was Ruthenberg who not only conceived of the replacement of state-based organization with organization in districts around "industrial centers" (previously known), but that Ruthenberg also was the originator of the 10 member "group" as the primary party organization of the new structure. Sproule also asks Ruthenberg about the infamous $100 "assessment" for Nicholas Hourwich's trip to Moscow as International Delegate, relayed by John Ballam -- an unauthorized end-run around a decision of the CEC that would ultimately prove to be one of the festering issues behind the split of the Ruthenberg group (including Sproule) in April 1920.

 

"Letter to C.E. Ruthenberg in New York from I.E. Ferguson in Chicago." [April 11, 1920] This letter to Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg from his friend and factional ally, I.E. "Ed" Ferguson, demonstrates that Ruthenberg's decision to split from the organization was not a hasty action taken in response to a refusal of Federationist elements to unite with the anglophonic Communist Labor Party (as Draper and his followers would have it ), but rather was the result of a whole complex of factors. Ferguson is frustrated at Ruthenberg for continuing to temporize with the "4 ridiculous people" who constituted the majority of the CEC of the CPA, whom he characterizes as individuals "who could never possibly be anything but barriers to Communist organization in this country." "Have we not, you and I, yielded already far too much to an empty standard of party regularity -- when there is neither party nor regularity to take into account?" Ferguson asks. The Chicago organization should defy the CEC and refuse to accept an instruction that 3 of its top leaders should proceed to New York for a scolding. Ferguson declares that "the CP was mostly a fake organization, that is the rock-bottom truth. Very few of its members knew what it was about at all. It was not the outcome of agitation about Socialism, not the outcome of education, not the outcome of class fighting in the US. These things it was only in slight degree. Essentially the CP was a hip-hip-hurrah society for celebration of good news from Russia." This group is headed by "Russian-Jewish politicians" trumpeting a phoney "4-flush of Bolshevism" in order to maintain their employment, in Ferguson's view. "I am firmly convinced that you are doing yourself a great injustice without really furthering a Communist movement by sticking to the CEC -- the dead 'leading body' of a dead organization," Ferguson insists. "The Federation members have never paid much attention to the CEC of the party, except to shell out money in a vague sort of way. The CEC means nothing to them now. Outside the Federations there is hardly anything left of the CP. Now what is there in this situation for you to save?" Ferguson asks Ruthenberg to "get down to modest realities. There are a few thousand members ready in the US for a Communist Party, perhaps 10,000 in the whole country, though this is likely too big a figure.... I would only count the Federations in so far as they contain individuals who want to belong to a party, not to a social club of their own language -- say about 10% of the Federation membership." The CLP is no better, in Ferguson's estimation, but in the IWW he sees as a more significant organization. Ferguson calls on Ruthenberg to dispense with the old organization, to call a convention and build a new, Federation-free party around the 2,000 member Chicago organization. "You have become the pivot of this whole situation. You must act, which means a kicking overboard of all this old rubbishy nonsense and irritation; or you do not act, which means simply a postponement of the day of reckoning." A real party "cannot be achieved through the combination of two dead organizations, both infested with the poison of self-seeking 'leadership.'" An altogether new organization is needed, Ferguson believes.

 

"Financial Report, Soviet Russia Medical Relief Committee, Western District," by Charles L. Drake [Jan. 15, 1921] This report by Director Charles Drake closes the book on the 4-1/2 month tenure of the Chicago office of the Soviet Russia Medical Relief Committee. The accounts presented here show the receipt of over $24,500, which was offset by about $14,000 in office, travel, salary, and other fundraising expenses. $9600 had been sent to New York to support the Society's work, while over $800 remained on account at the time of the Chicago office's Jan. 15, 1921 termination. The discontinuance of the Western Office comes at a time when the heaviest financial drain was being made for organization, and before opportunity has been given to reap the benefits that would more than justify the expenditures. Thousands and thousands of dollars would come in from the preparatory work already done were this office open to receive it. Those who know even the slightest about the collection of funds on a large scale will heartily appreciate the great financial results accomplished, especially those cognizant of the immense obstacles to be overcome. Systematized sabotage and organized antagonism maliciously opposed the work from the start -- elements that would stop at nothing to destroy the work and prevent even the slightest relief reaching the dying women and children of Soviet Russia," Drake asserts.

 

"Minutes of the First Session of the Founding Convention of the Workers Party of America: New York -- Dec. 23, 1921." This terse record of the first day of the founding convention of the WPA is useful for its reckoning of the delegate strength of the various constituent organizations. Leading the list is the Workers Council and Arbeiter Bildings Verein groups, with 13 delegates each; the Finnish Socialist Federation and Jewish Socialist Federation, with 12 each; and the Jewish Section of the American Labor Alliance (i.e. the CPA), with 10. Three fraternal delegates were on hand from the Proletarian Party, while the African Blood Brotherhood was represented by 2 fraternal delegates. A total of 94 voting delegates were passed by the Credentials Committee. Caleb Harrison was elected permanent chair of the convention and Margaret Prevey of Ohio permanent vice chair. A proposed order of business was adopted, committees were elected, and the convention adjourned itself in favor of committee work.

 

"Letter to Clarissa "Cris" Ware from Jay Lovestone." [date undetermined, 1923] This letter was extensively quoted in Ted Morgan's biography of Jay Lovestone, a glimpse at a little soap opera inside Workers Party Headquarters. A love triangle emerged between Research Department staffers Lovestone and Cris Ware (divorced wife of party agricultural expert Harold Ware) and Executive Secretary C.E. Ruthenberg. This letter was handwritten by Lovestone to Ware and features her marginal retorts to Lovestone's thoroughly pathetic love-smitten wailing. While not significant from a political perspective, the letter adds color and texture to our understanding of life at the party summit between two of the party's top figures, Ruthenberg and Lovestone -- elite social history, if you will. "By your work and by your work alone -- through your work and through your work alone -- can you and I know each other. You have absolutely severed whatever bond may have existed between us and I only ask that as a white man you will never refer to it -- the past or present -- to me or to any other living being," Ware demands. A second, more catty, note from Lovestone to his estranged object of desire, passing along office gossip purporting Ruthenberg (father of a grown son from a first wife) to be a score-keeping Lothario did not fare as well as this initial dollop of insecure bleating, the latter boorish note being torn in half by Ware and returned. Ware tragically died on Sept. 27, 1923, of an infection sustained during the course of an abortion, capping the melodramatic saga. Ware was later spewed upon in the tall tales of Ben Gitlow, who seems fairly clearly to have had sexual insecurity issues of his own...

 

"Letter to Ella Wolfe in Mexico from Jay Lovestone in Chicago." [Jan. 8, 1923] One of many surviving letters from Jay Lovestone to and from the beautiful wife of his factional ally, Bert Wolfe, a man who had boldly fled the anti-Communist repression of 1919-20 in New York for an assumed identity in San Francisco and thence to Mexico, all without party permission. Lovestone thanks Ella for a letter which "made me feel momentarily at least that I was free from boring Party routine and tiresome Party company." He proceeds to pass along a brief account of the Dec. 1923 Workers Party convention held in New York: "For the second time in 2 years I have finished a Convention in the minority though coming to it as a member of the majority ruling administration. This time as at Bridgman [Aug. 1922] I was trimmed, I got trounced and trounced rather handily. I made a more vigorous [effort] than I did at Bridgman, but this was due only to the fact that the majority against my position here was much more decisive than in Michigan." He adds: "By this time you must think that there is nothing I enjoy more than fighting losing battles or fighting for the sake of fighting. That is not so at all. In my opinion there was [a] very important point of view at stake." Lovestone continues: "On the surface they adopted our proposals and formally voted for it in the convention. But throughout the year and even in the debates in the convention it was definitely established that some comrades were afflicted with a narrow point of view towards the class conflict. The broad political point of view of communists was narrowed in their cases by a too strong emphasis on the importance of the Party being in the good graces of certain progressive labor leaders... Practically everything our side stood for was adopted. Yet we were voted down. There was considerable enmity to Pepper. Most of the opposition to him was petty, personal, and conceived in jealousy and reared in infamy. "

 

"Speech to the American Commission of the Communist International," by William Z. Foster [May 6, 1924] In this speech to the American Commission of ECCI, Bill Foster replies to charges levied by his arch-nemesis, the Hungarian Communist leader John Pepper. Foster states that the majority faction which he lead was not overdoing work with the trade union movement, and that he himself was not a syndicalist, nor was his faction either syndicalist or opportunist. To the contrary, Foster calls the agriculturally-oriented policy of the minority "he worst sort of opportunism that the entire foundation of our party could support." Foster distances himself from the idea of transforming the Federated Farmer-Labor Party into a so-called "Communist mass party," which he characterizes as an ideal not only opportunist, but dangerous because it was an attempt to create a dual movement to the already existing WPA. The United Front for a labor party existed in Chicago for a year and "the contact which the Workers Party gained from this concerted action was of enormous value," according to Foster. Foster states that the errors of his faction in placating Fitzpatrick & Co. in Chicago were not his alone, as the policy was enthusiastically supported by the entire CEC, which was at the time controlled by the Pepper group. Foster says that he was against the split with the Fitzpatrick labor party forces in Chicago in favor of the Minnesota-based FLP because "when we broke with the Chicago group, we lost contact with the trade unionists and when we allied ourselves with the Minnesota group we established contact with the farmers. Our United Front in Minnesota is a untied front with the farmers; our United Front in Chicago was a unite front with the industrial workers." Foster interestingly notes a desire to play a long-shot and attempt to recruit Gene Debs tot the FFLP as its 1924 Presidential standard-bearer: "We hope that it would be possible to find in Debs the candidate of the proposed FFLP. Should we be successful in getting Debs as a candidate, then we could make a split in the June 17 convention which would place us in a position to get together a large enough group from this convention to build a Farmer-Labor Party." This was, admittedly, unlikely. Foster notes: "We were the champions of the Labor Party idea. We split the Farmer-Labor congress in Chicago, and this split, in my eyes, hurt the Party. If we now carry through this second split, it will hurt our Party still more. For this is a much more important congress than the congress in Chicago and its influence is far greater." A split was therefore to be avoided, and if such a policy was adopted for the American party by the CI, "then the Communist Party of America will be hurled backwards upon its path, it will be isolated from the masses and its work will be very much hampered -- and not only for a few months, as Olgin said, but for a long time."

 

"Defend the Civil Rights of Communists," by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn [Dec. 1939] CPUSA leader Elizabeth Gurley Flynn makes an appeal for the defense of the Communist Party against a new offensive by the government during the first days of the second great European war. "Hungry for huge war profits, the barons of Wall Street are speeding to involve the American people in the imperialist war raging in Europe. The blackout of civil liberties is part of Wall Street's war drive. Capitalist reaction is intent upon depriving the Communists of their civil rights as the preparation for an attack on the economic standards and civil rights of the trade unions, of the working class, of all who oppose American involvement in the imperialist war. Immediate and powerful defense of the civil rights of the Communists is, therefore, of the utmost urgency for the entire labor movement and all who stand for progress and peace." Blithely ignoring the recently-abandoned anti-fascist line of the Popular Front period, Flynn declares: "It is neither new, strange, nor accidental that the Communist Party, the only party of socialism in the United States, should be the object of the most vicious attacks by the reactionary bourgeoisie and its apologists. Born in the anti-war struggles of the American people against the first imperialist World War, the Communist Party today is the main organizer of mass resistance against America's involvement in the second imperialist war." Flynn calls upon "all members of the Communist Party, all workers, friends, sympathizers and others who believe in democratic rights and civil liberties" to contribute $100 to a "People's Bail Fund" to win the freedom of victims of state persecution.

 

"Letter to Theodore Draper in New York from Cyril Briggs in Los Angeles." (extract) [March 17, 1958] This is a fascinating first-hand account of the origins and development of the African Blood Brotherhood by its founder and leading force, Cyril Briggs. Briggs states that he was never a member of the Socialist Party, not believing that the SPA had anything of import to offer American blacks, but that he was won to the CPA by Rose Pastor Stokes, who competed with Robert Minor of the UCP in attempting to win Briggs to the movement. Briggs states that he thus became the 3rd black in the CPA, joining Otto Huiswoud and a certain Hendricks. (The rival UCP actually had a black District Organizer in this period, it should be noted, William Costley.) Briggs says that he quit The Amsterdam News in 1918 over editorial censorship at the behest of Federal authorities, and launched The Crusader soon there after. This publication preceded the formation of the African Blood Brotherhood, Briggs states. "The Brotherhood never attained the proportions of a real mass organization. Its initial membership was less than a score, and all in Harlem. At its peak it had less than 3,000 members," Briggs says, noting that most of the group's members were recruited through the pages of the magazine, which had a peak circulation of 36,000. Briggs dismisses the assertion made in the press that the ABB was behind the Tulsa race riots of 1919 as a "canard," probably related to the military-sounding name of the group's primary organizational units, "posts." The ABB morphed into the Crusader News Service, Briggs indicates, a free service which exerted a great influence in the pages of the American black press. "If organizing the Brotherhood was not inspired by any particular event or development, the creation of the Crusader News Service was inspired by our fight against certain policies and tactics of Garvey and his lieutenants. We wished to set the widest possible audience for our polemics against those tactics and policies," Briggs states. Briggs tells Draper that he is "quite correct in assuming that the Communist Party had no part in initiating the organization of the Brotherhood. Nor did the Brotherhood owe its inspiration to the Communist movement." While he is unsure of the date of founding of the ABB, Briggs believes that it was launched shortly after the founding of The Crusader in Nov. 1918 -- that is, in early 1919.

 

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List of 1921 meetings of the Central Executive Committee of the old CPA. Includes specific archival citations for meeting minutes of each session in the Comintern Archive (f. 515, op. 1).

 

List of 1921 meetings of the Central Executive Committee of the unified CPA. Includes specific archival citations for meeting minutes of each session in the Comintern Archive (f. 515, op. 1).

 

List of 1922 meetings of the Central Executive Committee, Polcom, and Orcom of the CPA. Includes specific archival citations for meeting minutes of each session in the Comintern Archive and as well as in the Draper Papers at the Hoover Institution Archive, Stanford University.

 

 

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