The house on Henry Street

by Lillian D. Wald

It was our first intimation of the socialist movement in America, and students of its history will be able to identify this leader and recall the pioneer part he played in its early phases, his alliance with the once-powerful Knights of Labor, and the progress and decline of his society now overshadowed by the present Socialist Party.[16]

Meeting a neighbor on the Bowery one day about two years later, he stopped to explain that he was on his way to an interesting performance, and invited me to accompany him. Together we walked along until we reached the Thalia Theater, famous under its old name of the Bowery in the annals of the American stage. In this theater Charlotte Cushman made her first appearance in New York, and here the elder Booth, Lester Wallack, and other great players delighted the theatergoers of their day.

Venders of suspenders, hot sausages, and plaster statuettes surrounded the building, and placards on the Greek columns advertised the event as “The Spoken Newspaper.” A huge audience was listening to editorials and special articles read by the authors themselves, and the atmosphere was charged with intense purpose. Acquaintances gathered quickly, and eagerly explained to me that members of labor organizations and “intellectuals” of the neighborhood had united for the purpose of publishing a newspaper for socialist propaganda and to help the cause of the working classes. They had little money; in fact, were in debt. The men had contributed from their scanty wages; those who possessed watches had pawned them, and they were using this medium (“The Spoken Newspaper”) to raise money to pay the printer and other clamorous creditors, a charge of ten cents being made for admission to the theater. A charter had been obtained under the name of “The Forward Association,” but I was made to understand that this was not a stock corporation and was not organized for profit.

The genuinely social purpose of the organization held the men together during the lean years that were to follow. Finally, in 1908, the Association became self-supporting, and in 1911 the charter was amended to meet the enormously extended field. The Forward Association now publishes a daily paper in Yiddish, with a regular circulation of 177,000, and a monthly periodical, and holds property estimated to be worth half a million dollars. From its funds it has aided struggling propagandist newspapers and has given help to labor organizations.

The hope of a more equal distribution of wealth bites early into the consciousness of the proletariat. Even the children, who cannot be excluded from any discussion in a tenement home, have opinions on the subject. Happening one day upon a club of youngsters, I interrupted a fiery debate on socialism. Its twelve-year-old defender presented his argument in this fashion: “You see, gentlemen, it’s this way: The millionaires sit round the table eating sponge-cake and the bakers are down in the cellars baking it. But the day will come,”—and here the young orator pointed an accusing finger at the universe—“when the bakers will come up from their cellars and say, ‘Gentlemen, bake your own sponge-cake.’”

Mixed with my admiration for the impressive oratory was the guilty sense that the settlement was probably responsible for the picture of licentious living manifested by the consumption of sponge-cake,—our most popular refreshment, with ice cream added on great occasions.

However one may question the party socialists’ claim that an economic and social millennium is exclusively dependent upon their dominance, few acquainted with those active in the movement will deny the sincerity of purpose, the almost religious exaltation that animate great numbers of the party. The first socialist member from the East, and the second in the United States, has been elected to Congress from our district; a man universally esteemed for his probity, with a record of many years’ unselfish devotion to the workingmen’s cause.

A copious literature and widespread propaganda proclaim the willingness of the American people now to give socialism a hearing. It seems a far cry from that first unimpressive little parade that drew the settlement family to the windows twenty years ago.

Years ago the lads in one of the settlement clubs debating the subject of woman suffrage declared it to be “a well-known fact that when women had the vote they cut off their hair, they donned men’s attire; their voices became harsh.”

I cannot say that even to-day the ardent advocates of woman suffrage come in great numbers from among the male members of the settlement clubs, but, on the whole, the tendency is to accept women in politics as a necessary phase of this transitional period and the readjustment of the old relations. The conviction that the extension of democracy should include women has found free expression in our part of the city, and Miss L. L. Dock, a resident of many years, has mobilized Russians, Italians, Irish, and native-born, all the nationalities of our cosmopolitan community, for the campaign. When the suffrage parade marched down Fifth Avenue in 1913, back of the settlement banner, with its symbol of universal brotherhood, there walked a goodly company carrying flags with the suffrage demand in ten languages. The cosmopolitanism of our district was marked by the Sephardic Jewish girl who bore aloft the Turkish appeal. The Chinese banner was made by a Chinese physician and a Chinese missionary. There are four American-born Chinese voters in our part of the city.