‘Socialist Politics in Toledo (Ohio)’ from The International Socialist Review. Vol. 12 No. 5. November, 1911.

The growth of the Socialist movement in Toledo has been normal and steady. There has been nothing spectacular about the campaign conducted by the party in Toledo. We are not the kind that march to the blare of the trumpet and the beat of the drum, but little by little the working class is being educated to the meaning of the class struggle, its class interests and class solidarity.

Less than ten short years ago the Socialist Party here consisted of a group of ten or twelve men who met in a doctor’s office. At the, last state election we cast more than 13 per cent of the total vote cast for governor and this fall we entered the primaries.

Our problem is peculiar to ourselves. We live in Golden Rule Toledo, whose mayor is a philosophical anarchist and mistaken for a Socialist. It is strange, but true, that the workers have to be shown that their condition if not a whit better under the independent ad- ministration than it has been under former Republican and Democratic administrations. We are constantly asked, “Isn’t Brand Whitlock a Socialist?” Then we are obliged to show the difference between a man who holds good private views but must be conservative in order to keep in office and an administration by, of and for the working class.

Three years ago the Toledo Labor Congress, a delegated body of trade unionists, endorsed the Socialist legislative candidates. The clearest heads in the party said that Socialists had no right to work for the election of certain candidates, that our mission is to educate the workers to want Socialism rather than to catch their votes for four candidates. The clear heads advised letting the trade unions alone in their endorsement, but some of our members thought that they could be vote-enticers and educators at the same time. Shortly before election the union leaders began to inquire, “Who is going to get the credit if these men are elected?” These same leaders were telling the people on the street corners that they wanted to elect these men for the benefit of the working class. The clear heads kept preaching away that the Socialist party is not a mere vote-catching machine; that the labor congress should be allowed to endorse if it saw fit, but that Socialists in the unions could not consistently aid in a campaign that stood for four Socialists on one hand, endorsed the record of a Democratic congressman on the other and failed to mention any candidates for the other offices. Such teaching as that offended the politicians in the labor congress, but by another two years it had taken root, and when the labor congress endorsed James P. Egan, president of the C.L.U., for the state legislature on the Independent and Democratic tickets and Fred Shane for state senator, the rank and file of our party was ready to declare the labor congress a capitalist political party and to request Socialists who were delegates from their unions to withdraw. The labor congress then challenged the party to debate with Shane and Egan on the question, “Resolved, That the Toledo Socialist Party is not a political party, but is a mere school room for the study of economics and as such can never effect any remedial legislation for the working class.” The day set for the debate came and the hall was packed by trade unionists. Socialists, old party politicians, doctors, lawyers, in short, men and women from every rank and profession and political party. Mr. Shane dealt in personalities and told the audience how he had been abused by certain members of the party. Mr. Egan tried to read his speech and failed; the unfeeling audience hooted. The debate helped to defeat these men and increased the Socialist vote.

Local Toledo conducts a local paper, the Arm and Torch, published by the Socialist Cooperative Publishing Company of Findlay, Ohio. Several years ago, when The Socialist was published here, we found that the capitalist papers were very careful about criticising the party, or its methods, because we had a medium through which to answer back, but as soon as the paper left the attacks began. We find it highly essential to the local situation to maintain a paper.

Toledo Socialists lay great stress on the importance of literature distribution. Ohio will have a constitutional convention in January and Local Toledo initiated a referendum pro- posing that the Socialist constitutional program for New Mexico be made the program for Ohio. -It carried. Toledo will distribute more than 10,000 copies of this program. Our municipal platform will be distributed by the thousands.

We expect to elect councilmen from several wards that are distinctly working class in their population.—J.B.

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/v12n05-nov-1911-ISR-gog-Corn.pdf