H.M. Wicks remembers Arthur Morrow Lewis, now largely forgotten, but who commanded great respect from the Left in his life. The Socialist Party competed with church by having, every Sunday morning, a gathering at the Garrick Theater, 106 E. Randolph, opened with singing, music, and recitations followed by a lecture on a wide array of subjects by self-taught iron molder Arthur Morrow Lewis in the Spring and Fall season. Lewis became one of the foremost popularizers of evolution, socialism, and science during his too short life. One of his most popular works, ‘Evolution Social and Organic’ went through ten editions in six years. Morrow led the Workers University in Chicago and regularly taught classes, mostly on natural science and its relationship to materialism, at the Garrick Theater. He also edited the pioneering magazine ‘The Evolutionist’, perhaps the first Marxist journal of the natural sciences in English. Morrow is emblematic of the ‘positivist’ scientific and socialist thinking of the time. His partner was the first woman elected to the Socialist Party’s National Executive, Lena Morrow Lewis.

‘Arthur Morrow Lewis’ by H.M. Wicks from Workers Challenge (United Toilers of America). Vol. 1 No. 24. September 2, 1922.

Arthur Morrow Lewis, for fifteen years lecturer at the Garrick Theatre Chicago, Illinois, died suddenly on Tuesday morning. August 22.

His death removes a powerful factor from the sphere of working class education. The organization of which he was the head and under whose auspice he lectured was known as the Workers University and it is not likely that the organization will continue to exist, now that Lewis is gone.

Beginning his work in 1907, while a lecturer on Socialism, Lewis discovered that he could not deliver scientific lectures under the auspices of that reactionary mass of muddleheads, controlled by a gang of sloppy sentimentalists and ex-pulpit pounders, hence the organization of the Workers University. For many years his platform was the one place in the entire Middle West from which was expounded the best of Socialism and Science. Without exaggeration it can be said that Arthur Morrow Lewis did more for the popularization of science than any man who has lived since Thomas Henry Huxley. He lifted the veil of darkness and ignorance from the brains of thousands of workers and showed them new vistas of life in the realms of all the sciences known to man.

Needless to say he was persecuted, vilified and boycotted by the apostles of ignorance who controlled the destiny of the Socialist Party. But they found in Lewis a foeman they could not conquer and be established his life’s work in spite of them and eventually against them.

That he did not devote his splendid talents to the cause of Socialism in the last few years of his all too short life was entirely the fault of the Socialist leaders and the apathy of the rank and file in tolerating such leadership.

A tireless worker and student, he was constantly repeating the new facts of science to his audiences and writing books for the enlightenment of those who did not come under his personal influence. His best known books are “Evolution, Social and Organic,” “Vital Problems in Social Evolution.” Ten Blind Leaders of the Blind.” “The Struggle Between Science and Superstition.” “An Introduction to Sociology” and “The Art of Lecturing.”

Starting life as an iron moulder, Arthur Morrow Lewis became a self-educated man; he never attended any university, he had no degrees, but he became a teacher of professors of universities. His was essentially a proletarian education in the best sense of the term. Armed with the invincible weapon of Marxism, he met in public debate and successfully defeated the foremost platform orators of the century.

Being a man with scientific mind, he was of course a monist materialist. He believed in no God or Gods, he had no spooks. In fact at a time when the burden of the Socialist propaganda was the insipid drivel to the effect that Jesus Christ was Socialism and Socialism was Jesus Christ, he proved that Christianity was a slave religion and scourged with the ready knowledge and keen satire the half-wits who befouled Socialism and insulted the memory of Marx with their blatant ignorance.

He was the good friend of everyone who wanted to learn, especially the young people of the working class. And everywhere throughout the world can be found people who received their intellectual emancipation through attending the Garrick Theatre lectures.

Pal of Jack London, he died, like London, a comparatively young man. London was just past forty when he died in 1916 and Lewis was just forty-nine Both of them received their early training in the proletarian school of hard knocks and each of them in his own way struggled to throw off the age-long servitude of the under-dog by banishing fear and ignorance from the minds of mankind.

Although Arthur Morrow Lewis, according to the science that he so effectively taught, does not know today that he ever lived; although his dust will mingle with the ever-changing elements of the constant universe, a finite part of the infinite whole, we who knew him and worked with him and admired him, can endeavor to carry on the work that he so ably contributed to in the best days of his life. His books that he so diligently created that men might know more about the world in which he lived will perpetuate his memory and his memorial.

No marble monument need commemorate the fact that he once lived, for his memory, will live in the hearts of generations yet unborn. That is all the mortality that any man can desire and vastly more than most of us will ever achieve.

Workers Challenge was published weekly in New York City beginning in early 1922 by The United Toilers of America (UTA), the legal wing of the underground Communist Party which split from the Communist Party of America in late 1921. The main issues were around when and how to create a legal organization in the context of still-raging US government repression. Sometimes referred to as the Central Caucus CPA, the UTA’s constituents were mostly, though not exclusively, the Language Federations and included the Workers’ Defense Conference of New England, the Alliance of Polish Workers of America, the Ukrainian Association, the Lettish Publishing Association, the Polish Publishing Association, the Lithuanian Workers’ Association, the Woman’s Progressive Alliance. The Communist International ordered the group dissolved and to rejoin Workers Party of America, which the group rejected until its position could be heard at the full Comintern Congress. However, by the time of the Second Bridgman Convention later of August, 1922 most had. A rump organization resisted merger and continued as a tiny sect into the 1940s as the United Toilers of America. Leading figures included John J. Ballam, Harry Wicks, Charles Dirba, and George Ashkenudzie.

PDF of the full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/workerschallenge/v1n24-sep-02-1922-workers-chal.pdf