Obituary for Socialist Labor Party stalwart and their 1900 Presidential candidate Joseph F. Malloney.

‘Joseph Francis Malloney’ from The People (S.L.P.). Vol. 15 No. 11. June 10, 1905.

S.L.P. Standard Bearer, Departs This Life. Comrade Joseph Francis Malloney, candidate of the Socialist Labor Party in 1900 for President of the United States, and member of the Socialist Trade & Labor Alliance, expired at 7:30 o’clock Sunday morning from a stroke of apoplexy at the home of Comrade Samuel J. French, 397 Willis avenue, Bronx. His remains were conveyed to the undertaking establishment of York & Swift, 602 E. 145th street, while his brother was notified. On Tuesday, the body of the deceased was conveyed to Providence, R.I., and buried there. While in New York Malloney’s remains were looked after with the sympathy and care befitting his position as a standard bearer of the party, by Section New York. Comrade Paul Augustine, organizer of D.A. 49, S.T. and L.A. acting as the representative of the Section, accompanied them to Providence, where the local Section performed the final honors. Malloney was born in Providence, R.I., October 16, 1865. He was the youngest of nine children. At the age of nine, the poverty into which his parents had fallen, made it necessary for him to go to work. His parents obtained a job for him in a cotton factory and he worked at various tasks, each succeeding one harder than the former for about six years. Malloney was then apprenticed to the machinists’ trade and bound in the sum of $150 to the Rhode Island Locomotive Works. This was a guarantee that he would stay there for three years. The demand for locomotives at the time made it possible, by working overtime, to end his apprenticeship in two years and five months. From that time until 1892 he toiled regularly at his trade in Providence and vicinity. In that year, Malloney emigrated to Massachusetts. Up to that time he was totally unacquainted with the principles or aims of Socialism. His first employer was George R. Peare of Lynn, who was then and still is one of the staunchest Socialists in the country. During the crisis about that time the police of New York City broke up and clubbed people at a meeting of the unemployed. This roused Malloney’s latent revolutionary spirit and he expressed himself forcibly against the capitalists and their hirelings. Comrade Peare overheard Malloney’s remarks and explained to him how the Working Class could prevent these outrages by voting the powers into its own hands and abolishing poverty. So well did Peare teach Malloney that that year he joined the Party and became a valuable member of it. Shortly afterwards he took the stump as a speaker and his services were always in constant demand. There was in Lynn at that time a small organization of machinists, and Malloney at once became a member and remained with it until its dissolution. Another organization was started and he entered into activity with its work and soon became its president. He was a delegate to the convention of the International Machinists Union held in 1897 at Kansas City, and after a hard fight there he became convinced that the policy of “boring from within” is not only folly but worse than folly. At all times Malloney was a tireless and wiling worker in the cause of the proletariat.

New York Labor News Company was the publishing house of the Socialist Labor Party and their paper The People. The People was the official paper of the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP), established in New York City in 1891 as a weekly. The New York SLP, and The People, were dominated Daniel De Leon and his supporters, the dominant ideological leader of the SLP from the 1890s until the time of his death. The People became a daily in 1900. It’s first editor was the French socialist Lucien Sanial who was quickly replaced by De Leon who held the position until his death in 1914. Morris Hillquit and Henry Slobodin, future leaders of the Socialist Party of America were writers before their split from the SLP in 1899. For a while there were two SLPs and two Peoples, requiring a legal case to determine ownership. Eventual the anti-De Leonist produced what would become the New York Call and became the Social Democratic, later Socialist, Party. The De Leonist The People continued publishing until 2008.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-people-slp/050610-weeklypeople-v15n11-malloneyobit.pdf