It is safe to say that almost no one today, not even the most learned leftist, has heard of comrade Frans Bostrom. A shame confirming the tragic breaking of our revolutionary traditions. Long before the Russian Revolution, the U.S. had a vibrant and intelligent, if catholic, revolutionary Marxist tradition. Swedish-born Frans Bostrom had joined the worker’s movement in his native land before emigrating to Washington State in the early 1900s. There he worked as a book-keeper, proprietor of a Marxist book and cigar stand, an editor of Socialist papers, and a shipyard worker with his last years in boarding-house poverty. Becoming a leading forces of the large, powerful left-wing in Washington State, he was elected State Secretary and later to the National Committee. Unafraid of political combat and a social rebel, Bostrom wrote–to the dismay of the many pastors and lawyers in the S.P.—with proper proletarian disdain for the ruling laws and morals of the time. Also, he intervened in all the Party’s consequential debates, pushing always to the left. Though later withdrawing from most activity, he remained a rebel, joining the Communist movement and supporting it with his meager resources before taking his life at age 62. Below is his letter of goodbye to his comrades.

‘Frans Bostrom, Labor Pioneer, Ends His Life’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 4 No. 119. June 2, 1927.

Appeals for Revolution in Last Letter

Frans Bostrom, one of the Pacific Northwest’s ablest labor fighters, is dead.

Bostrom, former secretary of the Socialist Party of Washington, scribbled “A fitting end to workingman’s life” on a scrap of paper, turned on the gas and lay down to die in the bare room of a cheap Seattle lodging house.

Shortly before he wrote a long letter to The DAILY WORKER explaining carefully why he was not renewing his subscription and why he had selected death rather than continued existence on the meagre wage he earned as an aged bookkeeper.

Bostrom was state secretary of the Socialist Party in the days when it was a tower of left-wing strength in Washington. Later he ran a small cigar store in Tacoma where left wing members of the Socialist local gathered in a rear room to discuss the war and the new crisis before the party.

Persecuted During War.

Then the government began its persecution of Bostrom for selling anti-war literature. Department of Justice agents forced him to give up his little bookshop. Although in the 50’s, and not vigorous physically, Bostrom went to work in the shipyards and become a leader in the famous Shipyard Laborers Union of Tacoma.

After the war, the radical movement in Tacoma declined in strength with the closing of the shipyards, but Bostrom, an active fighter in the Communist movement, supported himself by odd jobs.

Existence was an acute problem for him, as he was in the 60’s. Bosses wanted younger men and he found bookkeeping distasteful to his active spirit.

Plans Suicide Carefully.

Then he made his decision to end his life, quite as calmly and methodically as he made his decision 27 years ago to enter the socialist movement in Sweden. With the clear intelligence which made him one of the best-grounded Marxists in the Pacific Northwest, he wrote out his last statement, ending with the sentence: “Yours for the supremacy of the working class in a speedy revolution.”

Bostrom’s letter to The DAILY WORKER reads:

Editor, The DAILY WORKER,

New York City

Dear Comrade:

The time of my paper expired April 22nd. Owing to the fact that I had decided to withdraw from the class-struggle when my little savings were exhausted, and go where I would be fairly certain to find the liberty I have spent my life in trying to bring to this earth, I did not find it convenient to send you the money before now.

Having taken a somewhat active part in “The Cause” for the last 27 years, it is natural that I should have a good many friends among the comrades I have met all over this country. I feel that I may owe them an explanation for deserting them.

I am by persuasion a bookkeeper. But it is difficult for a revolutionist to get into and still harder to hang onto a job in this line. So I have mostly worked at common labor. I am now nearly 62 years old and would find it hard to hold down a muckstick in competition with youngsters. In fact every move is painful. And more painful to the mind than to the back. Frankly, it hurts my self-respect that a man with my intelligence and knowledge should not be able to live even in the simple way in which I have lived for these many years, without groveling like a worm before some damned moron whose lack of self-respect has elevated him to bossing.

World a Stage.

I decided more than a year ago to use up my savings and then die. I am afraid that as a consequence I have been of very little use to the Party, since in reality I died when I made that decision. Since then the world has appeared to me like a stage and I have been merely a more or less amused onlooker.

Now when the moment has arrived, I am not at all anxious to leave. I am not tired of life. I am not excited in any way. I have always been exceptionally well balanced mentally and have never been saner than now. I know that I, and every other person who has to toil to live, would have been better off had we never been born. I have known for thirty years past that death is the only emancipator for the slave as long as ignorance keeps him and his kind disunited. But something, perhaps curiosity, has kept me from individual salvation in the (for the present) only available way. But realizing from the beginning that it would be difficult when the time came to make up my mind to depart, I have planned so that there is now no escape. I haven’t a cent left in the world. I owe nothing to anybody and I what others owe me is uncollectible. I have no god, but have always worshipped Liberty. I have not loved my neighbor, but have tried to treat him as fair as I wished to be treated. My morality consists in only one maxim: Self Respect (Those who do not like me probably call it: Conceit.) I have no duties and admit of no virtue unless it be: Moderation, Forbearance.

I regret that my finances do not permit me to stand with my comrades until nature took its toll in regular order.

Being confronted with an inevitable slavery or death, I choose least of two evils. I am not taking my own life. Charge my murder to capitalism, the hydra-headed hag.

Yours for the supremacy of working class in a speedy REVOLUTION.

Frans Bostrom.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1927/1927-ny/v04-n119-NY-jun-02-1927-DW-LOC.pdf