Z
Zapata, Emiliano, [98], [101]-[2].
Zeuch, letter to by Socialist professor, [356]-[7].
Zimmerwald resolutions, [6].
APPENDIX
THE NATIONAL CONVENTION OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES, MAY 8-14, 1920
After "The Red Conspiracy" went to press, this Convention was held at Finnish Hall, New York City. Of its 156 delegates, sixty were of foreign birth. By some newspapers the Convention was incorrectly styled "mild" and "conservative," so well were the avowed revolutionary designs of the Socialists camouflaged behind seemingly harmless innocuous phrases for the deception of the uninformed. "Vote-catching" was the key-note of the proceedings. As this book shows, the Socialist Party in 1919 lost the vast majority of its members to the Communists and the Communist Laborites and had, therefore, to seek new members. These, however, could be won only by concealing for the time being the true revolutionary objects of the Socialist Party. This covering-up of its conspiracy against the United States, and the resultant gathering into the conspirators' net of the timid halfway Socialists as yet members of other political Parties, could be accomplished only by the lure of a Convention Platform so worded as to convince the unwary that the Socialists as a Party had discarded their ultra radicalism and blatant un-Americanism.
The Convention of May, 1920, therefore, was guided, under the adroit management of Morris Hillquit and Victor L. Berger, toward a Platform worded more mildly and conservatively than might have been expected. No thinking person, however, Socialist or decent American, will be deceived into believing that the beast of prey has changed its ugly spots because a gauzy veil of lies has been thrown over them.
"The Red Conspiracy" has proven that the Socialists in the United States have been, almost to a man, in thorough accord with the principles and workings of the blackest Bolshevism. They have consistently and completely supported the I. W. W. They are avowed foes of the American Federation of Labor, though willing enough to use this organization by sending traitors to join it and to bore their rat-holes of corruption from within its respectable membership. One of the delegates to the Socialist Convention of May, 1920, George Bauer, of New Jersey, said: "We must remember that there are four or five million men in the A. F. of L., and I don't believe we can establish a co-operative commonwealth without them." The Convention, following this argument of expediency, adopted a resolution stating that the Socialist Party did not intend to interfere with the internal affairs of labor unions; but added a statement that the Party favored the organization of workers along the line of industrial unionism, acting as one organized working-class body. The I. W. W. is, of course, the leading industrial union in America, and the Convention's resolution set another seal to the sympathetic bond between Socialism and I. W. W.'ism, with the added encouragement of the Socialist Party's support of the less powerful industrial unions now within the American Federation of Labor.