Comrade George E. Boomer, a veteran of the Knights of Labor, stalwart of early New England socialism, and former editor of Appeal to Reason dies at 52.

‘George E. Boomer’ by Bruce Rogers from The International Socialist Review. Vol. 15 No. 11. May, 1915.

George Ellsworth Boomer, known for many years under the pen name of “Uncle Sam,” was a consistent rebel all his life long. Born at Lewiston, Maine, November 28, 1862, he became a cotton mill slave at the age of 12 years. Demanding his own wages from his family he ran away from home and returned only when his father agreed that he should have them at the age of fourteen. The following year he entered the printing business in the office of the Greenback-Labor Chronicle, at Auburn, Maine. Went to Providence, Rhode Island, in 1882, where he joined Typographical Union Number 33 at its reorganization in 1883. Held various offices in the union, and for seven or eight years represented that body in the Rhode Island Central Labor Union, which he also served in official capacities. He was continuously connected, many times prominently, with the Socialist movement in America from its very earliest beginnings, having joined the Socialist Labor Party in 1884, and he was a representative member of the Knights of Labor throughout practically the whole existence of that organization.

On Labor Day, 1893, he launched the Providence, R.I., Justice, which, when it was turned over to him by the Rhode Island Central Labor Union in the spring of 1894, became the first Socialist paper in New England. He was the Socialist candidate for governor of Rhode Island in 1895 and received an excellent vote. He went to Maryland in 1896 to edit a syndicate of radical papers for the Vrooman brothers. Total destruction of the office by fire, and later Bryan’s nomination by the Populists drove him out of that field, but not, however, until he had killed the very paper he was running by printing Bryan’s name with the letters inverted. Immediately afterward he started the publication of Uncle Sam at Cumberland, Maryland. This paper, most unique in typographical appearance and fearless in utterance, attracted attention all over the country, the subscription list running into thousands the second month. The plant was under mortgage and the paper was in time strangled when Boomer flatly refused to quit propagating Socialism. He subsequently became editor of the Appeal to Reason, helped to build that remarkable paper, and later moved to the state of Washington, where he edited and published papers in turn at Prosser, Edmonds, Bremerton and the Port Angeles Free Press at the time of his death, April 5, 1915.

Although a deep student of politics and frequently the candidate of his party, Comrade Boomer was far from being a politician. He despised the sickly fake cordiality and handshaking hypocrisy so essential to popular approval. He did not value a Socialist vote unless it was backed by intelligence, sincerity and courage. The watchword of his life was “unremitting war upon the enemy at every point of contact.” He had witnessed the dissolution of the great Knights of Labor organization through capitalist agencies at work from within it, and due to that lesson and disregarding all personal advantage he bitterly opposed bourgeois tendencies within the Socialist Party and with which he would not compromise.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v15n11-may-1915-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf