Boudin contrasts the city election campaigns in Milwaukee and New York City, sharply criticizing the methods of Morris Hilquitt and Meyer London.

‘Milwaukee and New York’ by Louis B. Boudin from The New York Call. Vol. 3 No. 328. November 24, 1910.

The question of Socialist tactics has been raised by The Call. As to our tactics in the broader sense of the term, I expect to have something to say later on. Now I desire to say a few words about our “campaign tactics.”

Aside from the broader question of agitation, namely, what policies should be brought forward and what points of our program accentuated, there are two important questions of method to be considered. The first is that of the elements of the population to whom we ought to address ourselves, and the second is that of the place to be assigned to the persons of our candidates in our appeal for votes. I believe I can best illustrate what I want to say in this respect by contrasting Milwaukee and New York as to methods) and results.

A comparison of the results obtained in these two cities shows some striking difference aside from the general difference of a great success in the one and next to nothing in the way of advance in the other, I am not a worshiper of mere success. But I cannot help admiring the success of our Milwaukee Comrades, for the way in which they obtained it. And I must say that, correspondingly. I must deprecate the results obtained in New York, even where we are supposed to have obtained some degree of success.

An analysis of the Milwaukee vote, as published in the Social Democratic Herald, will show that the local candidates, those for county and city offices, have received the highest vote; next came the congressional candidates, Comrades Berger and Gaylord, and then the gubernatorial candidate, Comrade Jacobs. There was, however, on the whole, very little difference in the vote cast for the different candidates. There was not more than 10 per cent difference between the very highest vote, that of Comrade Arnold for sheriff, and the very lowest, that of Comrade Jacobs for governor. There was not quite 5 per cent difference between the vote received by the candidate for governor and that of the candidates for Congress, who were next above him in the scale. Nor more than 2 per cent between any local candidate and the one next to him, or between the lowest vote on the local ticket, that of Comrade Plehn, for county clerk, and the vote of Berger and Gaylord for Congress, And this, notwithstanding the great efforts which our Comrades of Milwaukee naturally made to elect theft congressional candidates.

Contrast with this the vote in the only district in New York, where we made a campaign for our congressional candidate, he 9th Congressional district. Comrade Cassidy, the organizer of Local New York stated that in that district our ticket as a whole received about 1,200 votes as against 3,200 or 3,300 received by Comrade London for Congress. I am told that Comrade Cassidy’s estimate of the vote received by the ticket as a whole is too low. But it is admitted on all sides that Comrade London received at least about 100 per cent more votes than the rest of the ticket.

It hardly needs argument to prove that the vote cast in Milwaukee shows a healthy condition of our party organization and propaganda, whereas the vote of the New York 9th Congressional district shows an extremely diseased, indeed, a dangerous condition of affairs. The differences in the vote of the different candidates in Milwaukee are almost negligible in size. But shall as the differences are, they are accountable, for by the conditions of the election, quite aside from the methods used by the Comrades in obtaining the vote. Leaving out the differences between the local candidates themselves, which must be accounted for by purely local conditions and perhaps the personalities of the candidates put up oy the capitalist parties (for with these parties personalities always count for much), we have this situation: The candidates for the local county and city offices received the highest vote, because it is chiefly in the conduct of the city administration that the Milwaukee organization has made its record. There must have been a number of people who were willing to vote for Socialist city and county officers simply because of the record which our Comrades have made there as honest and efficient city administrators, These people would not vote, however, for our candidates on national or state issues, for such a vote implies, ordinarily, not only a belief in our honesty and efficiency, but also an agreement with our principles, or at least sufficient sympathy with them to be willing to give us “a chance.” There was a further number of people who had sufficient sympathy with our principles to be willing to give us “a chance,” and they did give us this “chance” by voting for our local and congressional candidates. They did not vote for our gubernatorial candidate principally because “he had no chance” of being elected anyway, and they did not want to “waste their vote.” Some may have also thought that it was taking too big “a chance” to elect a Socialist governor of the state.

Both of these elements, however, were quite insignificant. The great bulk of the big vote was cast by people who had been sufficiently won by the propaganda for our ideas to vote our ticket from top to bottom, on national, state and local issues, and irrespective of the personalities of the candidates. In the New York 9th Congressional district, on the other hand, at least every other man who was touched by our appeals for his vote was willing to cast his vote for our congressional candidate, but would not vote either for our state or legislative candidates. The few votes which may have been cast for Comrade London, because he was thought to have “a chance” of being elected are quite lost in the big mass of votes, which he received from people who did not vote the Socialist ticket as a whole, but would not vote either for our state or legislative candidates. The few votes which may have been cast for Comrade London, because he was thought to have “a chance” of being elected, are quite lost in the big mass of votes, which he received from people who did not vote the Socialist ticket as a whole.

Why this difference between Milwaukee and New York, and what does it signify?

The reason for the difference, in my opinion, is this: The Milwaukee Comrades address themselves in their propaganda to the workingmen of Milwaukee, and address them in workingmen’s fashion: on behalf of their principles and their party. Whereas we, in New York, particularly in Manhattan, address ourselves to the “good people” at large, in a fashion suited to these “good people.” When we talk to workingmen it follows almost as a matter of course that we will talk to them on behalf of the party which represents the working class and its principles. It follows almost equally as a matter of course that when we talk to “good people” generally we should talk on behalf of those “good men,” the Socialists, and the good things they would accomplish if given a chance. Workingmen we almost instinctively ask to vote the Socialist party ticket. But you cannot ask that of Professor Giddings, Mr. Hamilton Holt, Mr. Alfred Henry Lewis, or other such gentlemen. These gentlemen are first of all “good men.” As such they are great believers in “good men” and opposed to “blind partisanship.” All we can do, therefore, is ask them to vote for this or that “good man.”

It is just this that we did to a great extent in New York city. Our Comrades in Milwaukee made their fight for the entire Socialist ticket, their speakers and their press agitated for everybody on the ticket alike, “one for all, and all for one,” as testified to by our capitalistic opponents, according to the correspondence of Comrade E.H. Thomas in The Call. In such a fight the principles for which the party and its ticket stand had to be made most prominent. And so they were, according to all accounts. The same is true of the New York state campaign. Up the state, where Comrade Russell and our other speakers spoke to workingmen, not only in halls but at factory doors, we carried on a campaign for our principles and our party. The result is known.

But in New York city, particularly in Manhattan, we made a strong bid for the “better element.” In this effort our campaign methods degenerated. We tried to catch them by professional talk which verged on nonsense. We paraded the misery of the workers in order to arouse the pity of these “good men” for the “poor and miserable” workingmen and their children. And, naturally, wound up by appealing to them to vote for the “good men” who would do all sorts of “good” things if elected.

Its greatest orgies this method of “agitation” celebrated in the 9th Congressional district. “The 9th” has always been a sore spot of our local movement. After the first Hillquit campaign, four years ago, charges were officially preferred against the candidate, Comrade Hillquit, because of un-Socialistic practices by his campaign workers. These charges kept the local movement in a turmoil for quite some time, and the sour taste left by them has not yet disappeared. But whatever of the charges, the unsocialistic practices have not disappeared. I am reliably informed that they were just as much in evidence in the London campaign as in the Hillquit campaign.

Indeed, it would have been vain to expect them to disappear. For they were not due to this or that Comrade. They were the legitimate result and outcome of the methods of propaganda and agitation in vogue in New York city, notwithstanding the well known opposition to these methods by the rank and file of the Socialist party. It would be idle to enter upon a detailed discussion of these practices: We all know them, and we all know the results—stagnation, or actual retrogression, at a time when the country at large, including our nearest neighbors, have fine results to show. But there was one variation in these practices in this campaign to which I must call attention. on account of the grave danger to our movement lurking in this new departure. In the Hillquit campaigns the “sense of respectability” of the voters was appealed to. The voters were asked to vote for Comrade Hillquit because he was more “respectable” than the other candidates. In the London campaign the racial, or rather, sub-racial, prejudices of the voters were particularly appealed to. The voters of his district, mostly Russian Jews, were appealed to for Comrade London, on the great thought he was “also a Russian Jew.” Now whatever we may think of “respectability” as an argument for a Socialist candidate, there is not the slightest doubt that the appeal to racial prejudice is a positive menace to our movement. Aside from the fact that it is the end of all principle, Socialist or otherwise, and a direct blow in the face to all our former teaching, it has a direct tendency to disrupt our organization. Suppose we should, at the next election. nominate Comrade Charles Edward Russell and the Republicans or Democrats should nominate a Russian Jew to oppose him? What would happen to our organization?

Is it surprising that Socialism has gone backwards in this pestilential atmosphere?

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.

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