What is idyllic for one class, is hell for another. Carrie Allen looks at the condition of the working class and Socialist movement in the area of Watertown, New York.

‘Watertown, A Good Place to Leave’ by Carrie W. Allen from the New York Call. Vol. 4 No. 303. October 3, 1911.

Little Work, Low Wages and No Prospects Face Workers There.

Watertown, N.Y., has the proud distinction of being the home of the “5 and 10 cent store.” This distinction, however, seems not to have conferred prosperity upon the town, for, in common with many other places, Watertown is industrially at a standstill.

Previous to the panic of 1907, the New York Airbrake Company employed 3,500 men, and the average Wage was $2 a day. This company now employs 1,500 men, and the average wage is $1.50 a day.

The slump that struck the country in 1907 and 1908 affected the demand for airbrakes. Improved machinery and high pressure make it possible to produce airbrakes faster than they wear out. A plant in Russia, operated by the same company, supplies the Eastern trade, effectually closing the door to our surplus production.

As the result of these conditions. the plant at Watertown has become little more than a repair shop, with less than half the number of men formerly employed.

They Quit Watertown.

“The best thing about Watertown is that when a man loses a job he gets out of town,” a workman said.

“If he has a family, what about them?” he was asked.

“If he can he takes his family and gets out of town, because he knows he can’t get anything to do around here,” was the reply.

In this way, Watertown may escape an unemployed problem, but on every hand there are evidences that poverty and wretchedness are ever in the midst of the town.

The Watertown Local is in a thriving condition, and is constantly adding to its membership. A speaker is always sure of a well attended meeting.

There is a small but enthusiastic group of Comrades in Gouverneur. Their days are spent in the shops, but they work overtime to distribute literature and advertise the meetings.

At the appointed hour we went to the park to hold an open air meeting. Curiously enough, the lights had gone on strike that night, and the entire square was enveloped in darkness. We repaired to an obscure hall and held a meeting, and were rather surprised that so many strangers came.

The business men of Gouverneur light the park. The Comrades at Gouverneur are quite sure that the fact of a Socialist meeting being advertised for that night had nothing to do with the unusual darkness of the park.

The night was clear and cold at Ogdensburg, but we had a large open air meeting, the largest, the Comrades declared, that had ever been held in the town.

The Deadly Parallel.

Beautiful drives, comfortable homes and stately churches occupy one part of the town. Squalid houses and poorly kept streets mark the other.

Bright-faced, well-dressed children romp happily home from school, while pale-faced, scantily-clad little ones bend drearily under baskets of washing, too heavy for their puny strength. There is much wealth in Ogdensburg, the town of political corruption and George R. Malby. And there is much poverty in Ogdensburg, degrading, soul-destroying poverty.

The largest and most modern insane asylum in New York State is located just outside the limits of the town. Built on the cottage plan, the comfortable buildings are surrounded by spacious, well-kept grounds. The officers’ building and the beautiful home of the superintendent command a wonderful sweep of many miles up the St. Lawrence, the beautiful St. Lawrence.

A drive through a strip of wood brought us to a sanitarium for the tubercular insane. Insanity and tuberculosis! Twin triumphs of civilization! As we watched the wretched specters sunning themselves on the wide verandas, someone said: “Most of those poor creatures have never been so well fed nor well housed as they are now.” Most of those poor creatures belong to the working class, this was doubtless true.

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/1911/111030-newyorkcall-v04n303.pdf