Toledo glass worker, trade unionist, and Socialist Jeremiah J. Cavanaugh is laid to rest by his comrades in 1906.

‘Good-Bye Comrade! A Socialist Funeral’ from The Socialist (Toledo). Vol. 6 No. 280. February 3, 1906.

The funeral of Comrade J. J. Cavanaugh on Thursday, January 24, was as he had wished it- a Socialist funeral. He had requested on his death bed that instead of the usual ceremonies his Socialist comrades sing the “Marseillaise” and that Comrade Thomas W. Rowe, President of the American Flint Glass Workers, speak a few farewell words. He selected as his pallbearers, Comrades Fred Shane, Thomas C. Devine, W.C. Guntrup, Joseph Quill, Henry Bowers, Sr., and William Mailly. He also asked that the arrangements for his funeral be left entirely in the hands of Comrade J.S. Cowley. His wishes were fulfilled to the letter.

The funeral took place from the home of Comrade Cowley, 2027 Ontario street. The house was filled with friends and Socialist comrades, besides Comrade Cavanaugh’s seven-year-old son, Earl, his sister, Mrs. Frank Rash, his brother, Timothy Cavanaugh of Corning, N.Y., his mother-in-law, Mrs. H.C. Adams, and other relatives. There were flowers from Local Union, No. 81, American Flint Glass Workers, the Socialists of Toledo, (party emblem), and relatives and friends.

After the Socialist comrades had sung the “Marseillaise,” Comrade Rowe, who had hurried from Elwood. Ind., to be present, spoke briefly, and the funeral party then left on a special electric car for Findlay. Before interment a short service took place in the vault in the cemetery. The comrades again sang the “Marseillaise” and Comrade Rowe again spoke more at length. The speech was full of feeling and eloquent of meaning to those present.

Comrade Rowe pointed out that within the past two years this was the third Socialist, all glass workers, who had been carried off in what should have been the prime of their lives, because they could not secure the necessary treatment in time to save them from premature death. Their deaths had been caused primarily by the conditions which existed in the factories where they worked and which made for the spread of tuberculosis and other diseases, and while they suffered and died for want of the necessaries of life their masters were able to bask in the beautiful climate of California and to go to foreign lands, far from where the wage slaves created wealth for them. Comrade Cavanaugh and the other comrades who had preceded him were not like the ordinary working- men who believe their only and proper function in life is to slave for the capitalist class. Our comrades had thought enough and studied enough to know why it was that the workers and their wives and children died like flies in summer and suffered unspeakable tortures through the diseases which came to them in the struggle to live, and like Socialist workingmen everywhere, they had tried to awaken their class to the injustice of such conditions.

Comrade Cavanaugh had worked hard to awaken workingmen to the cause of their sufferings. He had pointed out again and again that while the capitalist class owned the tools by which labor earned its livelihood that labor would be exploited, oppressed, condemned to misery and killed by inches. We know that Cavanaugh had made enemies among the workers of his own class, but it was only because his fearless tongue could not help denouncing capitalist conditions and upbraiding his fellow workers who accepted those conditions without protest. His mind was keen to the hypocrisy and ignorance which kept his brothers in slavery and his every heart beat was a protest against their willing servitude. Those who had misunderstood him the most were those whom he had given of his best to save from the living hell of industrial slavery. We who knew him and had felt his glorious impulses and shared in his ambition for his class were the ones who would feel his going the most and would hold his memory as an inspiration to work as he had worked for the greatest of causes.

The one lesson those who were now present should draw from this untimely death was that so long as the existing social system was permitted to continue by the consent of the workers, then the workers should be prepared to accept the conditions which the system produced and to sacrifice all that they held dear to the exactions of the system and the demands of the ruling class. These should not weep when their beloved ones are taken from them, murdered often by degrees, but they should accept their losses as that which was their due. But if instead the workers would not accept this system as the only right and proper one and they wished to see a better system established they would join the army of class-conscious workers of whom Comrade Cavanaugh was one and never rest until capitalism was overthrown and the Socialist Cooperative Commonwealth took its place. And that was the one thing which Comrade Cavanaugh desired above everything else in life.

After Comrade Rowe’s address the coffin was laid in the grave beside that of Comrade Cavanaugh’s wife, who died nearly a year ago.

Space will not permit us to give a complete list of those who were present at the funeral. Besides those already mentioned above, were the following: Mrs. J.S. Cowley, Mrs. J. Quill, Mrs. F. Shane, Mr. and Mrs. Milady, Wm. Cizek, Otto Schreiner, J. Sloan, R. McCorriston, J. McCarthy, M. Dillon, A. Humphrey, J., Grindle, Wm. R. Neal, Raymond Cowley, J. M. Fisher, V. Conmost, J.K. O’Connell, of Toledo; Mr. H.C. Adams, John Adams, Mr. and Mrs. Geo. Krouse and others of Findlay; Mr. and Mrs. Ed. Boyle, Mrs. L. Shane, Mr. and Mrs. J.J. Doyle, Charles Harris, S. Simpson and John Lyons of Fostoria.

Local Union, No. 81, American Flint Glass Workers, provided all arrangements for the funeral,

Comrade Thomas C. Devine’s farewell words to Comrade Cavanaugh are printed on the second page of this issue.

GOODBYE, COMRADE!

Good-bye, Comrade-Shopmate-Brother.

To say we shall meet again is shallow and would be mocking you, you who died so nobly, so heroically-true to yourself to all your utterances-no regrets save that of giving up the fight for freedom-no cowardice-what you had done you did for right-full grown and blossomed, sweet as a rose, sturdy as the oak. As you lived, thus have you died.

We do know that we have met and though we part, much still is left of you, your many sayings-your scathing words your sweet words your nature misunderstood by some, so well understood by us, your comrades. And though we will never see you again; yet, comrade, that coffin lid, nor the mass of earth, nor distance, can hide you from us.

I see you smile as lying calmly awaiting the fast ebbing life to leave you, you spoke until the last, spoke words of cheer, of love, of advice, even of jest. Can we forget?

Never can I forget when as with victorious smile and stoical effect you raised your tapering waxen fingers supported by a slender, fragile arm and a weak body, and waved me a joyous welcome, how feebly grasping my extended hand-my healthy, my red hand-you said, with breast rising and falling as oft I have seen the mighty ocean rise and fall: “Comrade, now learn the Marseillaise. You know why.”

Can I forget those eyes, as I saw them through my own tear dimmed eyes, those eyes which said, and those lips as they smiled the words: “I know you understand.”

Oh, my Comrade, could I have spoken the words to you that with which my heart was filled! But my tongue refused to speak. Though dying and conscious of your approaching death, yet you were braver than I-much braver, Comrade. No fear, no pain, no sorrow, as sentence after sentence, full of the revolutionary spirit, fell from your smiling lips- conscious of it all, ever conscious to the last.

Even when the sight had grown dim you smilingly told the comrades at your side: “You are constantly moving, comrades biograph-moving-moving-constantly moving. Sight gone still conscious-a last loving thought, the last thought as with hand again extended, and Comrade Cowley gave you his gentle pressure one more hand, one more thought of Earl. “Bring Earl.” Then Father and Son, with clasped hands and lips together a farewell kiss-and all is over.

Good bye, Comrade, Good bye, Brother, Good bye, Shopmate, fear not to be forgot- ten. When flowers have faded, withered, died-Aye, when thoughts of my own flowers are in the minds of others I’ll still remember you.

Comrade at work-Comrade at play-Comrade of the Revolution-I bid you Good day, Good day.

Thomas Devine.

There have been a number of journals in our history named ‘The Socialist’. This Socialist was a printed and edited in Seattle, Washington (with sojourns in Caldwell, Idaho and Toledo, Ohio) by the radical medical doctor, former Baptist minister and socialist, Hermon Titus. The weekly paper began to support Eugene Debs 1900 Presidential run and continued until 1910. The paper became a fairly widely read organ of the national Socialist Party and while it was active, was a leading voice of the Party’s Left Wing. The paper was the source of many fights between the right and left of the Seattle Socialist Party. in 1909, the paper’s associates split with the SP to briefly form the Wage Workers Party in which future Communist Party leader William Z Foster was a central actor. That organization soon perished with many of its activists joining the vibrant Northwest IWW of the time.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thesocialist-seattle/060203-seattlesocialist-v06n280.pdf