English-born, son of Chartists Thomas Morgan was a leading figure in the U.S. workers’ movement for decades. Based in Chicago and President of International Association of Machinists, Morgan was also instrumental in the establishment of Council of Trades and Labor Unions and the Chicago Central Labor Union which led the eight-hour movement during the Haymarket era. A founder of the Socialist Labor Party in 1876, he was also a founding member of the Socialist Party in 1901.

‘Thomas J. Morgan’ by Robert H. Howe from The International Socialist Review. Vol. 13 No. 8. February, 1913.

On the morning of Tuesday, December 10, Thomas J. Morgan, a veteran in the Socialist movement, was killed in a railroad wreck at Williams, Ariz, while on his way to California to make his home and spend the declining years of an active life in company with his wife, daughter and granddaughter and grandchildren, on a ranch in San Diego county, which he and his son-in-law had recently purchased.

By this untimely accident the Socialist and labor movement lost one of its most untiring and unselfish workers. Born, as he was, amid the slums of an English factory town, denied the advantages of education or elevating environments, he epitomizes in his career the lives of millions of wage workers. As a child his first schooling was received in what was then called “Robert Raike’s Ragged School” Even at this early age he resented the unjust discrimination which placed him, the unfortunate child of poverty, in a “ragged school” The finger of scorn was pointed at him by better dressed and more fortunate children and was resented by him and probably led to his first fight.

When he was approaching his fiftieth year and was already a grandfather, he took up the study of law. After working ten hours a day for the Illinois Central Railroad as a machinist, he attended night school at the Northwestern College of Law and graduated with honors and established an extensive practice especially among the wage workers and people of small means who sought his services which were generously rendered at a moderate charge.

In addition to this his talents were always at the call of the party. In one year he defended thirty-five Socialist street speakers and secured a verdict of not guilty in every case, and made no charge for his services.

The foreign-speaking Socialist and labor organizations always sought his services whenever legal advice was necessary and he gained their love and highest respect for his devotion to their interest.

His death ends a long life of service for his fellowmen. Himself a product of the capitalist system and for the major part of his life a wage worker, he felt the limitations of his class strongly and deeply, and his entire public service was centered in the establishment of a new and better system in which those who worked would secure the full product of their toil. The central thought of his whole activity, if it could be expressed in one sentence would be that the right to live and the right to work are synonymous terms.

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/v13n08-feb-1913-ISR-gog-ocr.pdf