Public organizing requires public speech, without it we are underground. And that’s not a good place to be. Three S.P. local candidates are arrested on the corner of Atlantic and 4th Avenues in Brooklyn, sparking a free speech fight in the city.

‘Police Break Up Brooklyn Socialist Meeting’ from The New York Call. Vol. 2 No. 219. September 13, 1909.

Candidate Passage, M. Fruchter and M. S. Kerrigan Arrested at Atlantic and 4th Aves., Brooklyn.

The Brooklyn police swooped down on a Socialist meeting being held Saturday night at the corner of Atlantic and Fourth avenues, Brooklyn, and arrested W.W. Passage, candidate of the Socialist party for Controller; Max Fruchter and M.S. Kerrigan. The arrests were made, it is understood, upon the complaint of a druggist whose place of business is on the corner.

The case was continued yesterday morning to September 23, when it will be contested by counsel.

Max Fruchter, who was the first speaker, had hardly opened his mouth to speak when he was ordered to stop speaking and leave the platform. He refused to stop until he was placed under arrest. M.S. Kerrigan then mounted the platform and started to speak, but he, too, was ordered to stop and when he refused was placed under arrest. There was only two policemen in attendance at the meeting and when they left for the station with their prisoners there was no policeman present.

W.W. Passage, Socialist candidate for Controller, took the platform and had spoken about five minutes, quoting the constitution on free speech, when a squad of a dozen policemen and a number of plain clothes men arrived and he was arrested and taken to the station. The three Socialists were bailed out by Charles Apuhn, a merchant in the vicinity who had seen the outrage perpetrated. He denounced the Police Department unsparingly.

After the three speakers had been arrested the police captain of the precinct sent word suggesting that the meeting be moved to the opposite corner which was done, pending a test in court to settle the right of the Socialist party to select the corners upon which it will hold its open air meetings.

Meeting Continued.

Henry A. Goulden continued the meeting with a strong denunciation of the Police Department, stating that he had no prejudice against the individual policeman, but he was glad that he was not one of them. The crowd grew to enormous proportions, and a profound impression was made. The Socialist party has held meetings on the corner of Atlantic and Fourth avenues for several years. The street and sidewalk are wide and there has never been the slightest interference with traffic, or any noisy disturbance. But the druggist on the corner suddenly became opposed to the holding of Socialist meetings and complained to the deputy police commissioner of Brooklyn, and orders were issued to stop all Socialist meetings on that corner. Organizer Lindgren, of the Socialist party, was notified that no meetings could be held at the corner of Atlantic and Fourth avenues. The case was taken before the executive committee of the Socialist party, and the speakers were notified to go ahead and hold a meeting.

A determined fight will be made to maintain the right of free speech.

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/1909/090913-newyorkcall-v02n219.pdf