When we finally get there, it will be because of comrades like Otto Schmidt.

‘Sketch of Otto Schmidt’ from the International Socialist Review. Vol. 12 No. 3. September, 1911.

He is familiarly and popularly known among the Socialists of Allegheny county as “Schmidtie.” His undoubted devotion to Socialism and to industrialism is known to every Socialist and even to many policemen and detectives. He is a molder and an ardent member of the I.W.W. His first appearance among the party members was the signal for some of the fiercest polemic discussions ever waged on the vital question of the functions of the political and the industrial organizations. These discussions might have produced unpleasant and at least harmful friction in the organization, but “Schmidtie,” with all his firmness, possesses a happy, infectious laugh all his own which he is an artist at employing at critical junctures. This smoothed over many a hot argument and the educational effect of his campaign is not to be discounted. The theory of industrialism has made tremendous headway in this county during the past year, and too much credit can not be paid to Schmidt for his part in this result when it required courage to defend his position. Undoubtedly the fact that Schmidt recognizes the necessity of political as well as industrial action and gave equal support to both the party and his union was a factor in convincing the skeptics.

Last November, “Schmidtie” got it into his head that there was a field for a Socialist newsboy, and while he was a little older than the average newsboy he went at the task with true German, Socialist persistence. There was need for all of our hero’s courage for there were many nasty, cold days in Pittsburgh when the ten-mile tramp to deliver a hundred papers was extremely disheartening and not sufficiently remunerative to even place “Schmidtie” in the rank of employed wage slaves. He did not give up but kept up and is now the proud manager of the city office of Justice and the Socialist News Company. Under his gentle guidance this militant shepherd directs about a hundred obstreperous human lambs each week who gambol about the streets, in spite of the police, and loudly call the latest sensation in Justice, using the names of some of Pittsburg’s proudest capitalists with the most careless abandon.

When the Industrial Democracy is a happy consummation and we have the roll call of the Jimmy Higginses, one of the first names responded to will be our industrial fellow worker and political comrade, Otto Schmidt.

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/v12n03-sep-1911-ISR-gog-Corn.pdf