At a time when the Socialist movement in the U.S. was largely German-speaking, Rhode Island-born Civil War veteran Franklin E. Burton joined the Socialist Labor Party and helped to bring its message to native workers, often running as candidate in his home state.

‘Franklin E. Burton, An American Pioneer of the Socialist Republic’ by Thomas Curran from the Weekly People. Vol. 10 No. 15. July 7, 1900.

PROVIDENCE, R.I., June 29. On Saturday, June 16, at Providence, R.I., Franklin E. Burton, the veteran of the Socialist Labor Party in Rhode Island, died in his 58th year. He was born in Foster, R.I., December 2, 1842, and was a direct descendant in the seventh generation of Roger Williams. When 22 years old he married Julia Hopkins of Foster, and his widow and two children, a son and daughter, survive him. In his youth he worked in cotton factories in East Killingly and East Putnam, Conn., and became an overseer in that industry. During the Rebellion he served one year in the 51st Massachusetts. He came to Providence in 1884, and until his death worked as an engineer in an enamel factory there. Like all wage slaves under the drudgery Capitalism exacted of him, he became enfeebled with age and subject to disease at a time when, it our industrial system was planned on order and reason, he would still have been vigorous and strong in body and mind. He was confined to his bed for twenty-one weeks from a tumor on the brain, and after great suffering he finally yielded to its attacks.

Ordinarily, Socialists have little to write of their dead comrades. If we say that they did their duty we have told the best and enough. Sometimes, however, a few have performed their parts in such a manner, and officiated in exceptional ways in initiating or spreading the knowledge of our movement as to demand particular notice. Viewing Comrade Burton both as a member of the S.L.P. and as a feature in the manifestations, displayed by the leavening of the Socialist Movement, he holds a place specially unique and distinguished, and our chronicles would be incomplete without its mention.

Previous to his association with the S.L.P. Comrade Burton’s endeavors were mostly limited to free-thought organizations. His views on religious questions remained unchanged to the end, but their importance in the play of life, in his own opinion, dwindled into nothingness. He was always fair and considerate with his opponents in such affairs, and in the time of “The Workman’s Advocate” he wrote up a sermon by a minister on an economic subject, and thereby won the fierce indignation and a resolution of condemnation from a German section up in northern New York for his “Theistic proclivities.” At first, to his mind, people’s religious ideas determined the world’s running and progress. Ancestral history and tradition had much to do with bringing him to such thoughts, and he early took an outspoken and defiant attitude against the ignorant bigotry, and intolerance which then, as now, was palmed off as the spirit of the meek and lowly Nazarene. All the while he took his politics from the old parties just as he breathed the air; it seemed necessary and a matter of course. On coming to Providence he took part in the Knights of Labor movement, then in its zenith, and with its decline was caught by the hue and cry over Henry George’s Progress and Poverty. He thus ran counter to Socialist argument for the first time, and he soon realized through the criticisms of his Socialist antagonists the absurdity of the Single Tax. In the latter part of 1887, with a few others, he organized an American Section of the S.L.P. in Providence. Of the comrades then composing the section, but three remain, Comrades Jesse and Guldbransen, staunch supporters who were initiated into the movement in Germany and Denmark respectively, and the writer who entered it here with Comrade Burton.

Our departed comrade was always a zealous worker, both on the platform and in the ranks, and, though preferring retirement, was ever ready to meet the Party’s wishes and become its standard bearer. The grinding of the mills of capitalism had aged him prematurely, but until the last he followed the speakers’ circuit through the city and state with the younger generation. He was a number of times the candidate for governor, and was often given the nomination for other positions on the state, legislative, and municipal ticket. When public ridicule and private persecution were the certain reward of becoming a candidate of the S.L.P. the comrade could not be daunted, and in one of our campaigns his Democratic opponent was an officer of the corporation for which Burton worked.

When the Party disruptionists of 1899 made the coup in 1889 by which they forcibly seized the Party’s editorial and executive offices, the American Section in Providence was too little acquainted with the Party’s personnel and too divided in opinion to take decisive stand, and became neutral. Subsequently it developed into an adjunct of the “respectable” movement inspired by Bellamy, and called itself a Nationalist Club. In 1891 the secret ballot law was adopted in Rhode Island, and the S.L.P. members in the club insisted on putting up a ticket. In making nominations and adopting the plat- form the female and non-voting Nationalists had no voice. A complete state and legislative ticket was nominated with Comrade Burton for governor, and the platform of the S.L.P. was endorsed in every particular and without modification or addition. Later in 1893 a new section of the S.L.P. was formed in Providence, with Comrade Burton and others from the Nationalist Club, and especially through the untiring efforts of Comrade Kroll, who, though but a boy and outside the ranks, was above expending his energies in bolstering up the middle class philanthropy of Nationalism. Since then the Party organization in the state has been firm and steady, adding to the branches and Sections, and by its percentage easily keeping place in the van of the army of Socialist voters in the country.

As a member of the S.L.P. Comrade Burton was the first of the English tongue and of native birth. As an illustration of the workings of the Socialist movement our dead comrade has the honor of being, in this country, the first candidate for governor and the first person to head full and complete state ticket nominated on a strict Socialist platform. This was not a mere accident. The steadfast conviction of the proletarians in the Nationalist Club that the strife to bring success to the principles of Socialism was of necessity a political one on class lines was its inspiration.

Those of us who can go back in memory to the early days of the Party and the movement, appreciate thoroughly the uniqueness of Comrade Burton’s position as a Party member and as political standard bear. We can also recall the intense hatred then provoked against us–the police spying to which we were subjected, and the refusal of landlords to let us halls, the misrepresentations published by the capitalist press, prompted by its malice and ignorance, and the glib way in which the public at large declared us the scum of Europe, our principles set down as importations, and America and Americans pronounced Socialist-proof. We think of all this, and we find humor, but especially honor and distinction in the fact, that the pioneer veteran just passed away came to us in our infancy a full-blooded American, who saw in Socialism a natural product of the Capitalism in his country, and who did not hesitate to meet capitalist tyranny with the same spirit of resistance and defiance with which his forefather, Roger Williams, faced religious oppression.

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