In 1910 Frank Bohn was a leading Left Winger in and paid organizer for the Socialist Party. Here he visits Lockport, Tonawanda, and Buffalo surveying the socialist scene in Upstate New York.

‘Campaigning Upstate’ by Frank Bohn from the New York Call. Vol. 4 No. 251. September 8, 1910.

LOCKPORT.

Lockport has the best local of all the small towns of the state. We have there thirty-three active members. But hundreds of close sympathizers make up the real rank and file of the local. The Glass Workers’ Union is unanimously Socialist, and lately proclaimed itself as in favor of industrial unionism. The marvelous bottle blowing machine is our chief agitator among these craftsmen. Wherever it is installed two boys take the place of a hundred men. The boys pack the bottles in boxes and carry them away from the machine. The bottles come from the machine as easily as Uneeda biscuits, The Molders’ Union in Lockport was on strike when I was there. Invited to speak to them, the following question was asked by some of the strikers: “Why aren’t a workingman sell his labor for profit as other things are sold?”

“You’ve got an old fashioned selling agent–your craft union.” I replied. “You had better organize to abolish the market altogether.”

Our Lockport local has decided to publish one edition of the Lockport Socialist. This paper is published for twenty-five locals by Comrades at Findlay, Ohio. It is the best means of local propaganda yet developed. The front page is devoted to local news and campaign items. The other pages are filled with general matter, the same for all locals. Lockport is the first New York local to avail itself of this means of propaganda.

TONAWANDA.

Tonawanda is a lumber port on the Niagara river. All the sailors and longshoremen are talking about Milwaukee. Socialist work is therefore easy. Driven from the street by a storm we took refuge in a saloon and canvassed the inmates. Eight out of nine were found ready to join the party. The Longshoremen’s Union offered their hall to us for any meetings we may wish to hold during the. campaign. Both the sailors and longshoremen have been fighting the United States Steel Corporation for two years. Using present methods, they will not likely fight much longer. However, mental progress is evident among the men. The idea of political and industrial solidarity has permeated everywhere on the lakes, largely as a result of the long and losing strike.

BUFFALO

The lake cities, with the Pittsburg district added, include a metal working population of 750,000. This section of the country is the Socialist field of the immediate future. It is the industrial center of the nation. These states will be the first east of the Mississippi to be carried by the Socialist party. The present census discovers to us the gigantic growth of the lake cities. Detroit has 465,000 people: Milwaukee, 373,000; Buffalo, 435,000.

New York’s section of the old Northwest includes, besides Buffalo, Niagara Falls, which is now approached through dense clouds of gas and smoke. Including Tonawanda there is an industrial population of 500,000 on the river and lake.

Local Buffalo is making up this year for lack of growth in the past. Its fine new headquarters include an auditorium seating 1,000 people. The propaganda of Local Buffalo is exceptional in its clearness and revolutionary character. The Middle Western cities have all, with the exception of Milwaukee, had strong “reform” movements. But these have about run their course.

The marvelous economic evolution of this section must produce, in time, the foremost of revolutionary Socialist movements. The beginning of this natural growth of the working class mind may be observed in Buffalo. Machines are too big in Buffalo for a weak Socialist movement, as regards either numbers or spirit.

The Socialist party upstate is firmly grounded. It is growing rapidly. It is optimistic. Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo–these locals are large, and enthusiastic propaganda is what we might now expect to find there. But it is in the smaller cities visited–in Auburn, Lockport. Niagara Falls–and in the villages that one can better observe the process of growth. Here our Comrades are personally acquainted with the local capitalists and their politicians and fight face to face. In these battles there is more danger losing jobs than in the larger cities. In Palmyra, not long ago, seven Socialists were discharged from a factory at once for no apparent reason. They “took their medicine” cheerfully and went elsewhere to carry on the fight.

The Socialist movement in these smaller towns is thoroughly American. It has become acclimated. A month in these districts makes one know that the Socialist party is no longer a sect. It is a party natural to the life of modern America, which o temporary currents of opinion can overthrow.

The New York Call was the first English-language Socialist daily paper in New York City and the second in the US after the Chicago Daily Socialist. The paper was the center of the Socialist Party and under the influence of Morris Hillquit, Charles Ervin, Julius Gerber, and William Butscher. The paper was opposed to World War One, and, unsurprising given the era’s fluidity, ambivalent on the Russian Revolution even after the expulsion of the SP’s Left Wing. The paper is an invaluable resource for information on the city’s workers movement and history and one of the most important papers in the history of US socialism. The paper ran from 1908 until 1923.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-new-york-call/1910/100908-newyorkcall-v04n251.pdf