The May Day attacks on the left in 1919 ushered in the ‘Red Summer’ and a period of reaction that became institutionalized in the U.S. Written shortly after Charles E. Ruthenberg’s death, Thomas J. O’Flaherty looks at the bloody day in Cleveland in which Ruthenberg was a central actor.

‘The 1919 May Day Terror in Cleveland by T. J. O’Flaherty from The Daily Worker. Vol. 4 No. 93. May 2, 1927.

THE Victory Loan drive was sagging in Cleveland. The people who were sold a sordid war under the pretense that it was a fight for civilization and freedom for humanity were recovering from the spree and they hugged their dollars regretting that they had not hugged the sons they sent across the ocean to die or be maimed on the bloody fields of Flanders to protect the millions of the House of Morgan that were invested on the side of the allies. The patriotic bankers and business men and their political flunkeys were frantic. The Victory Loan must be put over. The voices of those who continued to tell the masses the truth must be stilled. It was in this atmosphere of contemplated violence that the Socialist Party of Cleveland, under the direction of Comrade C.E. Ruthenberg organized a monster parade on that historic May Day, 1919.

THE Socialists of the city of Cleveland and sympathetic organizations gathered in their respective halls early on May Day and formed in line for the march downtown to the Public Square where they were supposed to arrive by noontime. The procession was orderly. As the parade got under way hoodlums of the American Legion, under the direction of the local business men began to attack the individual marchers who carried red flags. Crippled victims of the war in wheel chairs were used by the reactionaries to arouse the people against the socialists. These unfortunate victims of capitalism did not realize that their crippled bodies was their only gain from a war that raised a crop of American millionaires who were never within hearing of gunshot, and that the men and women they were incited to attack were their best friends whose advice if followed would have kept in the United States the millions of young men who risked life and limb in the bloody holocaust that the imperialist powers turned loose upon the human race.

A DESCRIPTION of the attack on the parade as reported in The Cleveland Press tells us that “trouble started simultaneously on each route as the paraders entered the downtown section.” Everything pointed to a well-planned attack.

The Press, which is a member of the allegedly liberal United Press news syndicate, points exultingly to the patriotism shown by the office employes who showered confetti on the hoodlums, labelled “loyalists” as those “heroes” broke the heads of defenseless and peaceful workers. How this confetti appeared so suddenly is not explained by the capitalist press but furnishes more evidence in proof of the contention that the attack was planned and premeditated. The police were supposed to protect the parade but the kind of protection that afforded was the clubbing of the heads of paraders and the killing of two of them.

CRIPPLED war victim James Stevens who was sitting in his wheel chair in front of the Olmstead Hotel deposes:

“The first thing I saw was the red flags. I wheeled my chair into the street as the heads of the column passed and I yelled. ‘Get those red flags.’

“Some of the marchers laughed and jeered at me. But my comrades in uniform came running when I yelled, ‘Get ’em boys’.”

Oh loyal cripple! Oh most perfect soldier of capitalism! Crippled above and below!

Another hero of the day was Sergeant Raymond Williams, whose arm was shattered at St. Mihiel, who like Stevens, is here for the Victory Loan was one of the first to get a red flag.

JOSEPH IVANY and Sam Pearlman were shot and killed by policemen. Death alone saved the murdered from being indicted on charge of shooting with intent to kill. The police were exonerated and hailed as heroes. The necessary hysteria for a successful Victory Loan campaign was being worked up. What did it matter if the lives of a few working- men were sacrificed on the altar of patriotism and that hundreds should be smashed, jailed and separated from their families by deportation?

C.E. RUTHENBERG, then as always, was in the forefront of the fight. He led the parade to the Public Square and mounted the platform accompanied by a number of war veterans in uniform who carried red flags. Those soldiers learned what they had been fighting for and they wanted to show their hatred for the capitalists that sent them to the slaughter. No sooner had the speakers and the radical soldiers mounted the platform than hoodlums attacked them.

The Victory Loan quota for the city of Cleveland was $81,500,000. With only eight more days left the patriots had succeeded only in highjacking $31,000,000 out of the pockets of the public. The bankers did not like the idea of having to fork out the balance even tho they could dig their fists into the people’s savings in the banks and claim credit for extra-patriotism.

THE arrests made by Friday numbered 134. Most of those were foreign born. “Almost every other man arraigned” the Cleveland Press reports “appeared with a bandaged head or body bound up. This was the result of blows from police maces or of clubs in the hands of loyalist crowds.” Those were the days when habitual criminals accustomed to the rigorous treatment accorded them in United States jails became patriots for the moment by way of a change and got away with it until the war hysteria died down. Many of them are now back in their striped uniforms, numbered and tagged in prison cells.

NOT content with breaking up the parade the “gallant” hoodlums visited socialist party headquarters smashed the windows and destroyed pictures and books. More than 200 workers were injured in the struggle including 17 policemen. All the blows were not on one side. The workers defended themselves as best they could against the armed hoodlums.

In the middle of the second page of the Cleveland Press of May 2, and surrounded by stories and pictures of the riot was an appeal for contributions to the Victory Loan. Here is an example of the threatening language used by the chairman of the drive committee:

“It means a hair-trigger sprint from now on. A victory button is your only protection now. All instructions to wait for the canvassers to reach your homes are off.” This meant that a worker without a victory button prominently displayed would be received by his boss with a fishy eye.

And: “Nail everyone in your territory. Pin him down to a subscription. Reach him at home, where he works or on the street. Sell him a bond.”

THE wages of sin is death according to those who make a living at the sin business. The wages of patriotism is either death and poverty or affluence. It all depends on whether the patriot is being run or running. The bonds that were purchased in 1919 are now safely deposited in the banks who have performed the difficult financial feat of having the loaf they had eaten. The patriotic purchasers retain only a memory.

The concerted attacks on the workers on May Day 1919 ushered in a reign of oppression of the left wing socialist movement in the United States (afterwards transformed into the Communist movement) and has continued ever since with more or less intensity. The efforts of the capitalists to crush this movement and put it out of existence has failed however. Despite the general apathy prevailing among the workers and the treachery of the trade union bureaucrats and their socialist allies the revolutionary movement is virile and hopeful. While in 1919 the Soviet Union was being attacked on all sides and reeling under the blows of world capitalism, today it is impregnable, conscious of the loyalty of its millions of workers and peasants, the strength of its proletarian armed forces and the love of the class-conscious workers of the world.

The existence of the Soviet Union a perpetual challenge to the enemies of the working class and when they strike at the Communist movement in the various countries they have a vision of what is in store for the robber classes when the workers of all lands develop their strength to the point where they will be able to dot the globe with Soviet Republics.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

Access to PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1927/1927-ny/v04-n093-NY-may-02-1927-DW-LOC.pdf