Ida Crouch-Hazlett, state organizer for the Socialist Party and soon to be editor of the Montana News, tours the Helena mining region for the Party which had around 450 members in 21 locals that year.

‘Socialist Work Around Helena’ from the Montana News. Vol. 4 No. 10. November 22, 1905.

Helena is having a small revival in the Socialist ranks.

Mrs. Hazlett came over from Anaconda on Labor Day to give the address for the Trades and Labor assembly. The joy over having a Socialist selected as the orator was considerably dimmed by the manner in which the programme was carried out.

The posters announced that the speaking was to take place in the auditorium at the end of the parade. But the Socialist speech was side-tracked. The parade started from the Workingmen’s club, and ended there.

Mrs. Hazlett was taken back to the hotel and left till after dinner. At two o’clock the band played in front of the Auditorium but the crowd was at the scene of the games, and there was no towing them up the hill to hear a Socialist.

In fact they handed us a bunch on the speech, and no mistake. It is incomprehensible why certain parts of the American laboring class are so afraid that the workers will get to hear the Socialist solution of their troubles.

Wednesday night Mrs. Hazlett and Comrades Walsh went out to East Helena. We have a new local here with Louis Hanson as secretary. But this is the slave pen of the American Smelting and Refining company, with men cowed into cringing automatons for fear of the loss of that desperate need, the job. The local is not yet truly on its feet. The meeting was a good one, collection, $3.50; literature sales $3.45.

We have got to keep telling the tale of emancipation for we Socialists are the only ones that have it to tell. We are the only ones in this corporation-cursed and browbeaten state who are spreading the spirit of manhood and revolt.

Sept. 7th and 8th.

Thursday and Friday nights Mrs. Hazlett was in Marysville. Her audience amounted to about a hundred each night but collections and literature sales were poor. We have no beginning even in this Heinze stronghold. The work has to be done again and again. Saturday night we had a large street meeting in Helena. State Secretary Graham came over from Livingston, and with the help of the Helena comrades considerable literature was sold, and several applications taken.

On Sunday Comrades Walsh, Graham and Hazlett went out to Baxendale. They were met at the car by Comrade Kain with a double seated surrey, and driven to his hospitable home where a feast of spring chicken and other dainties. awaited the wanderers.

In the afternoon a meeting was held at the schoolhouse, which was comfortably filled with an attentive and intelligent audience who really wanted to learn about Socialism. Comrade Kain introduced the speakers. Mrs. Hazlett spoke on the program of the Socialist party, Comrade Walsh on working class conditions, and Comrade Graham on party organization. A local of nine members was organized and a collection of $4.10 taken up.

Sunday night another street meeting was held at Helena. There was a large crowd, good literature sales, and a collection of $5.30, with a number of applications for membership.

Monday night another street meeting was held. Comrade Graham puts life and system into a meeting wherever he is.

Tuesday night a meeting was held in the sixth ward. A large crowd listened to the address, and asked to have the speakers come again. We must make a specialty of this sixth ward. This is the truly proletarian section of Helena. It is the logical section for the cultivation of a revolutionary sentiment. If Helena ever elects a Socialist alderman it will be from this ward. The situation is similar to that of packing town ward in Chicago. Comrade Simons said the conditions there were so horrible that that was the logical place for the revolution to start, and the recent election of the Socialist representative from that district justified the prediction.

Wednesday night there was to have been another meeting at East Helena. Comrade Louis Hanson, secretary of the new local, a Danish Socialist of 20 years standing, was in in the afternoon, and spoke of the favorable impression the meetings had created. A misunderstanding in regard to the street car service prevented the speakers from getting out. As a result they attended the meeting of the Helena local in the office of the News.

Quite a number were present, twelve dollars was raised on the forty dollar debt, and arrangements made for Comrade Hazlett’s meeting at the Workingmen’s Club Thursday night. It has been decided to hold two meetings a month in the club rooms, the club having made hospitable overtures to the Socialists. It is possible that in this way a test can be made as to whether the American working man really has stability enough to be taught economics, or whether he simply wants to guzzle and be patted on the back by the capitalist, a mild form of benevolent feudalism. Seven applications for membership were read, the result of the recent meetings.

It has been decided to try and do work in the mining country surrounding Helena, and on Monday, Comrades Baur, Graham, and Hazlett drove up to the Pittsburg mine to see about speaking to the men at the noon hour. They were cordially received by Comrade Harris, the valiant president of the Aldridge union, which has been out on strike for a year. When the strike was settled Harris was blacklisted on account of his Socialistic propensities, and had to leave.

Arrangements were made and put up bills announcing a meeting Thursday evening at six o’clock. Thursday afternoon Comrades Hazlett and Walsh went up to the mine in an express wagon At six o’clock the men had their supper, and the next shift did not go to work until seven o’clock so there was an hour to talk. It seems the announcement of the meeting had given to considerable discussion. We were told that the men were solid republican and had said that Mrs. Hazlett was crazy and all those other comfortable and agreeable things that the Socialist is accustomed to hear. Some of the men were so afraid to be seen listening to a Socialist speech that in that God-forsaken loneliness, they struck across the bottoms to get out of earshot. The poor deluded, ignorant slaves! But a good crowd sat down on the lumber piles and listened to the speech, and after- wards we didn’t find any sentiment in opposition. Collection $2.36.

We had to make a rush trip down the hill in order that Comrade Hazlett might address the Workingman’s Club at nine o’clock. She entered the hall with a magnificent audience of about a dozen. The subject she had planned to discuss was a scientific exposition of “Social control by the capitalist class” from the historical basis of the class struggle. Its discussion was impossible before such a listless struggling crowd, so she simply gave a brief outline about what she had intended presenting, and gave it up. Collection 95c. So much for the Helena “Workingmen’s Club” when a few poor homeless miners on the hill could give $2.35.

The American workingman is the most ignorant workingman in the world in regard to his true interest and condition. The workingmen of every other country know their class and eagerly listen to the treatment of economic subjects. But as soon as some capitalist takes notice of him, the American workingman thinks he is trotting in that class, and is nervous about giving any ground for the suspicion that he would take any interest in any party that wasn’t bossed by the capitalists.

The Montana News first published in Lewistown, Montana, began as the Judith Basin News published by J. H. Walsh in 1904 as the paper of the Socialist Party of Montana. The Montana News moved from Lewistown to Helena, and from 1905 was edited by Ida Crouch-Hazlett. Splits within the State Party led to a number of conflicts over the paper, which ran as a weekly until 1912.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/montana-news/051122-montananews-v04n10.pdf