Well done, comrade Allgor. Well done.

‘An Eyesore to the Rich’ by W.R. Killingbeck from the International Socialist Review. Vol. 13 No. 6. December, 1912.

SITUATED in the heart of fashionable Jersey, surrounded by the estates of multi-millionaires, Comrade J. M. Allgor, a Socialist, lives in his cottage home. But unfortunately he is not content with being permitted to exist upon the same earth as the capitalist class and uses every means at his command to enlighten the world on the great message of Socialism.

Speeding down the broad drive that passes his house in a luxurious automobile such magnates as Havemayer, of unsavory Sugar Trust fame, and others equally notorious for robbing the workers, find their aesthetic senses offended by the high fence that Comrade Allgor has erected for purposes of propaganda and such signs as:

“Idle parasites grow rich on the labor of those who work,” or “Workingmen agitate, educate, organize and abolish industrial slavery!”

Boldly in Comrade Allgor’s front yard, on top of his own flag pole waves his own red flag, and all this on the famous Rumson Road, Seabright, over which automobiles have to pass to the most fashionable summer resorts of Jersey.

The capitalists in the vicinity have done everything possible short of murder to oust him. Comrade Allgor’s fences have been torn down, his windows smashed, his house broken into and furniture destroyed. His clothes line has been cut and clothes stolen. But in spite of beatings, robberies and incessant attacks, Comrade Allgor rebuilt the signboards and inserted new epigrams.

It is reported that as a last resort a tool of some of the wealthy residents named Packer hatched up a scheme to get rid of the invincible Socialist. Packer claimed that Allgor was dangerously insane, thus securing fraudulent signatures for his arrest. A medical student pronounced him unbalanced and he was rushed off to the State Hospital for the Insane.

But Allgor is out and on the job stronger than ever and a startling scandal is spreading about some of “our most prominent and respected” big business thieves.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v13n06-dec-1912-ISR-gog-ocr.pdf