With 2,500 members in 1912, the Brooklyn Socialist Party was a significant constituent of the national Party. Here, they prepare for the November elections that year.

‘Socialist Campaign in Brooklyn in Full Swing’ from The New York Daily Call. Vol. 5 No. 243. August 30, 1912.

Brooklyn is certainly on the map when it comes to Socialist propaganda. Like a powerful undercurrent in a quiet stream the agitation that is being carried on under the direction of Local Kings County of the Socialist party is quietly undermining the very foundation of capitalism and sweeping it in its course. The effects of this great amount of activity are already appearing on the surface and will show up in full force at the November Elections in the shape of a doubled vote.

That the Socialist party in Brooklyn will receive in the coming elections not less than 25,000 votes, as against 12,500 last year, is the substance of a statement made by Edward Lindgren, organizer of Kings County, to a Call reporter last night.

“An average of 75,000 leaflets per month, since the beginning of the year and over 300,000 since the month of May, have been distributed in the homes of the workers and at the factory gates in Brooklyn,” said Lindgren, in explaining the methods of propaganda used. “Since June we are holding an average of fifty street meetings per week, fifteen of these being noon hour meetings held in front of large factories. The noon hour meetings at the Navy Yard entrances are directly responsible for the fact that more than one-third of the men employed there are Socialists.

“The ‘Bull Moose’ is receiving little or no attention in Brooklyn, and I do not believe that it will affect the Soclalist vote here at all,” was Lindgren’s answer to the question: “Do you think the Socialist party vote will in any way be affected by the by the Roosevelt movement?” “Even if it does,” he added, “it will only clarify the vote and we will know that the vote we do receive is from true Socialists.”

Old “Genosse” Henry Weiss, who has been in the movement, here and abroad, for over forty years, grinned broadly and seemed like a youth of twenty last night when he discussed the prospects of the campaign this year.

His enthusiasm might well be held out as an example to those who are young yet in the movement.

From reports received at the Party headquarters, it is evident that the open air meetings held at Coney Island on Sunday afternoons and evenings, under the auspices of the 16th A.D., are of the best attended. The meeting begins at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and in rare cases is adjourned before nine at night. The attendance at all times is not less than 500, and it would be a good deal larger were it not for the noise of the traffic which makes it hard for the speakers to be heard more than a score feet from the platform.

Among those who are, addressing these meetings and helping make them popular are: August Claessens. J.J. Coronel, Hubert H. Harrison, Alexander Scott, Harry Waton and Michael Rosenberg.

Among the indoor meetings to be held in the near future are not less than two Debs meetings and five Charles Edward Russell and Gustave Strebel meetings, not counting the many ratification meetings which are to be held independently by the various Assembly district organizations. A course of twenty-six lectures and debates for the coming winter are already scheduled, to be held under the direct auspices of the county organization at the Masonic Temple, George R. Kirkpatrick, Jashua Wanhope, Mayor George R. Lunn, of Schenectady: Assistant Corporation Counsel A. O’Neil and Francis X. Carmody are only a few of the men who will lecture there.

The two Debs meetings will be held on October 23 at the Brooklyn Labor Lyceum at 8 o’clock and at Prospect Hall at 9 o’clock. The tickets were printed a little over a week ago and 1,000 have already been sold.

The meetings at the corner of Washington and Johnson streets, where the postoffice workers are being addressed; the corner of Smith and State streets, where the policemen coming out from headquarters are being reached, and at the corner of 49th street and Fifth avenue, are among the most successful in Brooklyn. Large quantities of literature are sold and given away at these meetings.

The Night Workers’ Branch, which was recently organized, now has forty members. All the language groups report an increased membership and that good educational work is being done among the foreign speaking workers.

Large quantities of Berger’s speeches in Congress and copies of the Appeal are being mailed to the enrolled voters by every branch organization. The 22d Assembly District is especially concentrating upon this method of propaganda.

The 16th Assembly District organization has a canvasser who is being paid to devote all his time to distributing literature from house to house and visiting the enrolled voters. In less than two months he has succeeded in procuring twenty new members for the party. The 9th Assembly District organization has decided to adopt the same plan, and a man is already in the field doing similar work in his territory.

As a result of all this work, Local Kings County has over 2,500 members on its books. Since January of this year an average of 100 new members were admitted to the party every month. All these results were achieved despite a woeful lack of funds to carry on the work. It is only a matter of conjecture as to how much more could be accomplished if the local’s treasury was properly equipped with funds to extend and increase the scope of its work.

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/1912/120830-newyorkcall-v05n243.pdf