Louis Moon was a leading Socialist in Dayton, Ohio; a graduate of the Brookwood Labor College he devoted his energies to the Workers Alliance, a Depression-era, multi-tendencied unemployed union until his death at 29 on March 20, 1937.

‘Louis Moon, Martyr to Socialism’ by David W. Sallume from Socialist Call. Vol. 3 No. 107. April 3, 1937.

To the Editor:

We buried Louis Moon.

One of the least known, perhaps, of Socialism’s long list of martyrs, he died Saturday, March 20, at the age of 29 in the Dayton State Hospital in the midst of a nervous collapse resulting directly from physical and mental over-strain incurred through his front line work in the fight for Socialism.

Born and raised on his father’s Miami County farm, he joined the Socialist Party at the age of 21, and by his tireless work for the Party soon brought himself to the forefront of the struggle in southwestern Ohio.

In 1933, feeling the inadequacy of his theoretical background, he attended the first summer school for Party organizers conducted by the national office, at Grant, Michigan. He returned to Miami County, where, between the responsibilities of running a farm, he helped to organize and forward the Miami Valley Socialist League.

In 1935, leading the Piqua, Ohio, Socialist Party in an anti-war demonstration held in conjunction with a military parade, Louis was beaten by an officer of the Ohio National Guard and found, by a notorious anti-labor judge, guilty of the incredible crime of inciting said officers to commit a breach of the peace.

After this episode, Louis determined to fit himself to serve the labor movement effectively and spent a year in study at Brookwood Labor College. Then he returned to Ohio and placed himself at the disposal of the Party State Committee, which commissioned him a state organizer and sent him to Dayton where first the defection of Joseph Sharts and later organization by a group of Old Guardsmen of Ohio’s only chapter of the Social Democratic Federation had created a critical situation.

His efforts having revitalized the Dayton Socialist movement, he turned his attention to the Workers Alliance, which the Old Guard bad abandoned locally to Dayton’s feeble Communist Party and which was ridden with intrigue and dishonesty. As the work of pushing the Socialist policy for clean, militant democratic unionism, consumed increasing amounts of his time, he asked to be relieved of Party responsibilities that he might devote full time to the Alliance. Under this arrangement, the Alliance grew in numbers, militancy and prestige.

So that he might have more time for Alliance work, he set up a cot in the headquarters, ate and slept by chance and worked for the Alliance 16 to 20 hours a day. The Workers Alliance in Montgomery County had the WPA and the relief authorities on the run.

Two weeks ago today he emerged as leader of a victorious sit-in strike and as Alliance County Chairman. But the strain had been too much for Louis, and he broke.

We buried Louis Moon. But the bright flame that was the spirit of Louis Moon we shall not bury; that flame of devotion and of sacrifice will burn in the hearts of each of us.

And now that we are unable longer to hope for our comrade, we hope for the future of the human race; we do as we know he would have us–we enter again in the fight for Socialism–world wide, and in our time!

DAVID W. SALLUME, Secretary, Socialist Party, of Greene County, Ohio.

Socialist Call began as a weekly newspaper in New York in early 1935 by supporters of the Socialist Party’s Militant Faction Samuel DeWitt, Herbert Zam, Max Delson, Amicus Most, and Haim Kantorovitch, with others to rival the Old Guard’s ‘New Leader’. The Call Education Institute was also inaugurated as a rival to the right’s Rand School. In 1937, the Call as the Militant voice would fall victim to Party turmoil, becoming a paper of the Socialist Party leading bodies as it moved to Chicago in 1938, to Milwaukee in 1939, where it was renamed “The Call” and back to New York in 1940 where it eventually resumed the “Socialist Call” name and was published until 1954.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/socialist-call/call%203-107.pdf