The growth of interest in socialism, however, was by no means confined to the membership of the Socialist Labor party. External events were stirring a consciousness that grave labor problems had arisen within the American Commonwealth. The bloody strikes at Homestead, Cœur d'Alene, Buffalo, and Pullman in the eighties and early nineties moved the country as no preachments of abstract socialist philosophy could ever have done. That such social conflicts were full of serious portent was recognized even by such a remote and conservative thinker as President Cleveland in his message of 1886 to Congress. In that very year, the Society of Christian Socialists was formed, with Professor R. T. Ely and Professor G. D. Herron among its members, and about the same time "Nationalist" clubs were springing up all over the country as a result of the propaganda created by Bellamy's Looking Backward, published in 1887. The decline of the Populist party, which had indorsed most of the socialistic proposals that appealed to Americans tinged with radicalism, the formation of local labor and socialist societies of one kind or another, and the creation of dissatisfaction with the methods and program of the Socialist Labor party finally led to the establishment of a new national political organization.
This was effected in 1900 when a general fusion was attempted under the name of the Social Democratic party, which nominated Mr. Eugene V. Debs for President at a convention held in Indianapolis. The Socialist Labor party, however, declined to join the organization and went on its own way. The vote of the new party, ninety-six thousand, induced the leaders in the movement to believe that they were on the right track, for this was considerably larger than the rival group had ever secured. Steps were immediately taken to put the party on a permanent basis; the name Socialist party was assumed in 1901; local branches were established in all sections of the country with astonishing rapidity; and a vigorous propaganda was undertaken. In the national election of 1904 over four hundred thousand votes were polled; in 1908, when Mr. Bryan and Mr. Roosevelt gave a radical tinge to the older parties, a gain of only about twenty-five thousand was made; but in 1912, despite Mr. Wilson's flirtation with western democracy and the candidacy of Mr. Roosevelt on a socialistic platform, the Socialist party more than doubled its vote.
During these years of growth the party began to pass from the stage of propaganda to that of action. In 1910, the Socialists of Milwaukee carried the city, secured twelve members of the lower house of the state legislature, elected two state Senators, and returned Mr. Victor Berger to Congress. This victory, which was hailed as a turning point in the march of socialism, was largely due, however, to the divided condition of the opposition, and thus the Socialists really went in as a plurality, not a majority party. The closing of the Republican and Democratic ranks in 1912 resulted in the ousting of the Socialist city administration, although the party polled a vote considerably larger than that cast two years previously. In other parts of the country numerous municipal and local officers were elected by the Socialists, and in 1912 they could boast of several hundred public offices.[74]
While there was no little difference of opinion among the Socialists as to the precise character of their principles and tactics,—a condition not peculiar to that party,—there were certain general ideas running through their propaganda and platforms. Modern industry, they all held, creates necessarily a division of society into a relatively few capitalists, on the one hand, who own, control, and manipulate the machinery of production and the natural resources of the country, and on the other hand, a great mass of landless, toolless, and homeless working people dependent upon the sale of their labor for a livelihood. There is an inherent antagonism between these two classes, for each seeks to secure all that it can from the annual output of wealth; this antagonism is manifest in labor organizations, strikes, and industrial disputes of every kind. Out of this contest, the former class gains wealth, luxury, safety, and the latter, poverty, slums, and misery. Finally, if the annual toll levied upon industry by the exploiters and the frightful wastes due to competition and maladjustment were eliminated, all who labor with hand or brain could enjoy reasonable comfort and security, and also leisure for the cultivation of the nobler arts of civilization.
At the present time, runs the Socialist platform of 1912, "the capitalist class, though few in numbers, absolutely controls the government—legislative, executive, and judicial. This class owns the machinery of gathering and disseminating news through its organized press. It subsidizes seats of learning,—the colleges and the schools,—even religious and moral agencies. It has also the added prestige which established customs give to any order of society, right or wrong." But the working class is becoming more and more discontented with its lot; it is becoming consolidated by coöperation, political and economic, and in the future it will become the ruling class of the country, taking possession, through the machinery of the government, of the great instrumentalities of production and distribution. This final achievement of socialism is being prepared by the swift and inevitable consolidation of the great industries into corporations, managed by paid agents for the owners of the stocks and bonds. The transition from the present order will take the form of municipal, state, and national assumption of the various instrumentalities of production and distribution—with or without compensation to the present owners, as circumstances may dictate.[75] Such are the general presuppositions of socialism.
The Socialist party had scarcely got under way before it was attacked from an unexpected quarter by revolutionary trade-unionists, known as the Industrial Workers of the World, who revived in part the old principle of class solidarity (as opposed to trade solidarity) which lay at the basis of the Knights of Labor. The leaders of this new unionism, among whom Mr. W. D. Haywood was prominent, did not repudiate altogether the Socialist labors to secure control of the organs of government by the ballot, but they minimized their importance and pressed to the front the doctrine that by vigorous and uncompromising mass strikes a revolutionary spirit might be roused in the working class and the actual control of business wrested from the capitalists, perhaps without the intervention of the government at all.
This new unionism was launched at a conference of radical labor leaders in 1904, at which the following program was adopted: "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 earth and machinery of production and abolish the wage system. We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry.... Moreover the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers. These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or a lockout is on in any department thereof.... We must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, 'Abolish the wage system.'"
This new society made a disturbance in labor circles entirely out of proportion to its numerical strength. Its leaders managed strikes at McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, at Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912, and at other points, laying emphasis on the united action of all the working people of all the trades involved in the particular industry. The "new unionism" appealed particularly to the great mass of foreign laborers who had no vote and therefore perhaps turned with more zeal to "direct" action. It appeared, however, that the membership of the Industrial Workers was not over 70,000 in 1912, and that it had little of the stability of the membership of the old unions.
What the effect of this new unionism will be on the Socialist party remains to be seen. That party at its convention in 1912 went on record against the violent tactics of revolutionary unionism, and by a party vote "recalled" Mr. Haywood from his membership on the executive committee. The appearance of this more menacing type of working-class action and the refusal of the Socialist party to accept it with open arms gave a new turn to the attitude of the conservative press toward regular political socialism of the strict Marxian school.
The Counter-Reformation