A report on the 1912 electoral campaign of the Socialist Party in West Virginia. That November Debs received 15,248 votes, or 5.67% in the state.

‘Socialists Strong in West Virginia’ by J. Louis Engdahl from the New York Call. Vol. 5 No. 268. September 24, 1912.

Vice Presidential Candidate Seidel Finds Miners Waking Up Politically.

WHEELING. W. Va. Sept. 20. Through the backbone of West Virginia, from Wheeling up here in the Panhandle to the warring coal fields of the Kanawha district in the South. the Socialists of this State are looking upon the Presidential campaign of this year as the big chance.

The Republican administration of the State, the spineless administration that has permitted the coal barons to establish a private guard system of their own for the enslavement of the coal miners, has gone over boots, body and breeches to Roosevelt’s band of political pirates, so there is really something to fight about.

The West Virginia Socialists believe that Roosevelt’s entrance into the political arena with his platform of “stolen planks” is proving a boon to the propaganda of Socialism. They say it gives the Socialists the best possible opportunity to demonstrate to the workers the difference between the great Roosevelt fraud and the true principles of Socialism.

“There is some Roosevelt sentiment here,” declared Harry Wright, who made a big run for Commissioner on the Socialist ticket in Huntington, the first city in which Socialist Vice Presidential Candidate Emil Seidel spoke in this State, “but I don’t think that that sentiment will be coined into votes to any great extent. The Socialist party won’t permit it. We are throwing all the power of our propaganda against the Roosevelt fraud and we expect to convince the workers of the true nature of the Progressive party before election day rolls around.”

The same views were held by Leroy Cohen, editor of the Clarksburg Socialist, at Clarksburg.

Walter B: Hilton. Socialist candidate for Governor, here in Wheeling was a little bit doubtful until it came to counting the votes. Then he put the Socialist party as entitled to 30,000 ballets in the November poll, and with the Socialists getting that number anything in the shape of a non-Socialist political party, although it may even be declared the winner, will be exceedingly sick indeed.

The three Seidel meetings in West Virginia were one continuous ovation. Vice Presidential Candidate Seidel did not get into the heart of the troublous district, this being left for Presidential Candidate Debs, who will speak at Charleston. Seidel paid his compliment to “the barons” as the coal kings are known down here, from a distance, however, and when he did at last arrive at Wheeling there was a real invasion of coal miners from the Ohio side of the Ohio River and the complete organization of the West Virginia coal miners was among the things predicted for the not far distant future.

Perhaps the biggest campaign meeting planned for this section will be that held on October 5 here, when James Keir Hardie, miner-Socialist of Great Britain, who is touring this country on behalf of the Socialist party, will be the principal speaker. The meeting will be a joint Socialist-trade union affair, which is easily explained when it is understood that the working class is thoroughly permeated with Socialism in this particular part of the country.

Other speakers will be Frank J. Hayes, the Socialist international president of the miners: Duncan McDonald, Socialist secretary-treasurer of the Illinois mine workers, and possibly Max S. Hayes, well known Socialist and member of the Typographical Union, of Cleveland, Ohio. Ella Reeve Bloor came over from Ohio to make the talk for the collection at the Seidel meeting and reported that the fight for Socialism is waging hot in the home State of President Taft.

“If the ballot had been granted the women of Ohio in the recent constitutional election, the Socialists would have secured a surprisingly large vote among the women of the State,” declared Mrs. Bloor. She declares that there will be a large Socialist vote among the women of the two new suffrage States of Washington and California on the Pacific Coast,

Mrs. Bloor has done considerable agitation work for Socialism in West Virginia. Just recently she invaded the stogie factories of Wheeling, some of the largest in the world, and was permitted to talk Socialism to the men as they worked.

The Socialist and trade unionists here have been kept busy taking care of their weekly newspaper, the Wheeling Majority, which is a credit to the growing Socialist and labor press of the country. The Majority is increasing in size and influence and with the job printing paint that is run in connection with the newspaper printing plant, the working class here will soon develop a strong weapon with which to carry on their struggle.

The New York Call was the first English-language Socialist daily paper in New York City and the second in the US after the Chicago Daily Socialist. The paper was the center of the Socialist Party and under the influence of Morris Hillquit, Charles Ervin, Julius Gerber, and William Butscher. The paper was opposed to World War One, and, unsurprising given the era’s fluidity, ambivalent on the Russian Revolution even after the expulsion of the SP’s Left Wing. The paper is an invaluable resource for information on the city’s workers movement and history and one of the most important papers in the history of US socialism. The paper ran from 1908 until 1923.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-new-york-call/1912/120924-newyorkcall-v05n268.pdf