The change in policy came too late to make any major difference to the New York Socialists’ activities that year. By early July 1921 the NYSP had made its main nominations for the municipal election. No allowances had been made for the FLP. For most of the campaign neither isolation, nor the call for unity, was referred to. Indeed, during the election the Call remained partisan as ever, proclaiming that the "opportunity is great". It believed the party could advance to the position they had occupied in 1917.
During July the Call carried much news of Socialist electioneering, but none of the FLP’s. Occasionally it briefly
mentioned the "federated labor" plan, and it reported that the National Executive Committee had discussed the idea at its September meeting. With workers’ organizations under attack, and the depression severe, there was a need for all labor organizations to cooperate. It might have been this executive meeting that prompted the New York Socialists to repeat their unity proposal to the local FLP. For in the midst of an important election campaign, the New York Socialists started to take the issue of federation, and of their own decline, seriously.
In the run-up to the election, the Socialists increasingly subjected themselves to criticism. During October the previously unthinkable question, "Is the Socialist Party Dead?", was answered by John F. Martin, editor of the Auto Worker. The Communists had
repeatedly raised the question, and Martin agreed it was an issue that had to be taken seriously. He also admitted that some workers and
13Call, 27, 28 June 1921. ^^Call. 11, 12 July 1921. ^^Call, 1, 22 September 1921.
bosses hoped the answer was yes. However, he concluded, after a rather inconclusive and vague article, with a negative answer. There was still news to cheer the faithful - 8,000 had attended Socialist rallies in Brownsville. However, the Call's mind was no longer solely on the Socialists’ activity. It sensed that the election results would not be
that different from previous ones, and that new strategies would be required. It began to look forward to the development of a labour party. Thus in the middle of an election campaign it noted that the painters’ union had endorsed the FLP. William Kohn thought that Johnston, of the International Association of Machinists (lAM), was moving in a similar direction. Those opposed to Gompers might unite
into one similar organization on the same lines as the British Labour Party. Kohn believed it was highly likely that Johnston would follow this strategy. However the Call continued to ask its readers to vote the straight Socialist ticket and ignored the FLP candidates.^
When the election results came they were bad news for Socialists and Republicans alike. The Socialists lost their aldermanic seats in a Tammany landslide. Mayor Hylan got a record majority, but the
Republicans did keep a grip of the state legislature. The massive swing to the Republicans in 1920 had been reversed, but the Socialists also suffered from the resurgence of Tammany. The Call complained that there was an added reason for Socialist defeat. In the races they had won in
the past, they usually had fought a three-cornered fight. This time, opposed by fusion candidates, with either Democrat or Republican standing down, they had lost in straight fights. Though the Socialist vote was respectable, it was slightly down on the year before. The Call claimed that this was because it was not a general election year. This was true, but the loss of the aldermanic seats added to the sense of decline, and the Socialists were forced to answer claims that their vote had collapsed. They admitted they had suffered a reverse, but blamed the added problem of fusion (the standing down of a main party candidate and recommending a vote for the opponent). Nonetheless they came second in 12 assembly districts. They polled about 50,000 votes city-wide, a larger vote, the Call claimed, than before the war. Whatever the truth of this claim, it was not enough to stop the floodgates of doubt from opening.
^^Call, 10 October 1921, 4 November 1921. ^^Call, 9, 11 November 1921.
Criticisms poured in. W. M. Feignbaum took on the task of refuting them. He noted that the FLP, and the smaller left-wing
organizations, had received 7,000 votes at the maximum. The Socialists had got a total of 100,000. He looked beyond the labour vote to the high vote for Hylan, which, he argued, proved that workers had not yet
learnt to vote for themselves. Therefore, there were no easy solutions or gains to be made by uniting with others. Members should carry on with the hard task of making the Party worthy of working-class
I D
support.
Unfortunately for Feignbaum, hard work was not enough to arrest the decline. The party organization in the fifth Assembly District changed from weekly to fortnightly meetings to save expenditure on rent. Simultaneously the party organization of the 7th Assembly District, in the Bronx, met to discuss the election and to practise self-criticism. The poor election results gave impetus to the shift towards unity and independent political action. Increasingly the tide of Party opinion was turning towards the need for co-operation and a change in strategy.
Ida Crouch Hazlett, a leading New York member, believed that the new Socialist Party programme meant they should no longer be bigoted, but be prepared to work with labour. Additional prominence was given to the need for unity when Victor S. Gauthier, a member of the General Executive Board of the 1AM, put the case on the editorial page of the Call. He raised the problem of the open shop offensive, and labour's need for a political alternative to resist it. He believed it was a tragedy that the labor vote was split between so many parties. However, only four organizations mattered: the Socialists, the FLP, the
Committee of 48 and the Non-Partisan League. Gauthier believed it to be
the duty of the AFL to unite these groups; after all, they had totalled
three million votes in the 1920 presidential election.
The 1AM tried to persuade the AFL to carry out this task under a limited six-point programme. The programme called upon state and federal official to abide by the constitution and allow freedom of speech, and demanded the public ownership of utilities and resources, a
^^Call. 23 November 1921. ^^Call. 24, 28 November 1921. ^*^Call. 7, 11 December 1921.
general amnesty for political prisoners convicted under wartime acts, the regulation of credit, an end to the use of injunctions against labour and the elimination of private detective agencies. This proposal was a prototype of what would become the Conference for Progressive Action (CPPA), sponsored by the Railroad Brotherhoods and the IAM. In one sense it was identical to the federated plan of the Socialists. Potentially, it was a precursor to a labour party. Of course the Socialist plan still maintained that organizations would keep their institutional and political independence. For those who supported such
21
a plan, the next step was to overcome the disunity with the FLP.
As stated earlier, the FLP had rejected the Socialists' previous advances, but this was before the disastrous election results. Now its supporters had nowhere else to go, and increasingly the Call carried news of individuals who had been prominent in the FLP cooperating with the Socialists. The CTLC delegated Thomas J. Curtis, the first Labor Party electoral candidate in 1919 and a Vice President of the State Federation, to the Call Labor Conference Circulation Committee. This body was* set up to extend the influence of the Call in the official labour movement. The Call grandly interpreted the CTLC’s endorsement as meaning that unions representing 750,000 workers in New York City were behind the paper. But the support was worth more than rhetoric as the CTLC agreed to a fund drive among union affiliates.
The Socialists’ shift to the right was paying dividends. Old friends and even old enemies were responding to their unity call. Of course the CTLC would not agree to independent political action (at least not in a party sense). However, it had dropped its hostility to the Call and given it the opportunity to gain much needed finance. The Call gained extra union sponsors. In addition to the usual progressive or needle trade unions, it received support from some craft unions. It gave the ailing Socialists a sense of substance that having elected officials (aldermen) had provided in the past. The fact that some of the sponsors were unionists like William Kehoe and John P. Coughlin, who had defeated the progressives, did not bother the Socialists at all. Sponsors also included defeated union progressives such as
^hbid.
Lefkowitz and Curtis. The sponsorships also aided the Socialists in their drive for "federation"
It is worth asking why these Tammany enemies of the Socialists were supporting the Call again. Some of them, in the past, briefly supported the Labor Party, probably because there was a powerful current in its direction. When the tide ebbed they had turned against it. Now, for different reasons they wanted to show their independence from Tammany. The past year had seen an onslaught by the bosses against the unions during which they received little support from city
government. There was even talk of bringing in statewide anti-strike legislation. They needed to influence the legislature against such attempts. To do this they needed to appear militant, calling
demonstrations and threatening workers' action to prevent such laws. The Call was an ideal vehicle for carrying news of the campaign. They were making left-sounding noises, albeit temporarily, as the Socialists moved right. These opportunists were only too pleased to work with old enemies and to use the Call. They were not sincere; ironically the Socialists were. It appeared as if the turn to the labour movement was paying dividends.
However, unity with AFL officials was only one strand of the Socialists’ strategy. There was still the matter of unity with the FLP to be pursued. FLP reticence on the issue disappeared. Perhaps the Socialists’ shift to the right impressed the remnants of the New York Labor Party. Whatever the reason, those remaining could no longer ignore the perilous nature of their position. All opposition to cooperation with the Socialists melted away by the spring of 1922. A national decision of the SPA’s 10th annual convention further smoothed the path to unity. It went beyond its previous policy of just
canvassing opinion, deciding state groups could "federate". This meant they could affiliate with farmer labour organizations, but must keep their independence and integrity. This meant not participating in Democratic or Republican primaries. Nor should the programme of any group with which they federated conflict with the ideals and aims of the SP.^l
The New York Socialists wasted no time. On 24 May 1922 they held a joint conference with the New York FLP that called for a joint
% a l l , 13 March 1922. ^^Call. 2 May 1922.
campaign of Socialists, FLP and unions In the Fall election. Though proud of their unity action, little was done to accelerate the process. Events would have to wait for the New York State Socialist Party
convention to endorse the action. There was no mistaking who was the junior party In the new venture. The Socialists’ convention went ahead and nominated Its main candidates for governor and other statewide positions. A few nominations were left open for joint agreement with the FLP. The way was cleared to unify the electoral Intervention of the
9C two organizations.
However, the new-found unity did not get the blessing of the Call’s recent friends, the leadership of the CTLC. William F. Kehoe, secretary of the CTLC, wrote to Gompers complaining that a number of New York Labour Leaders had signed the call for "an official labor non partisan " political convention. Kehoe objected to this plan which meant strong backing for Independent political action. He sent a letter Informing every signer that they were not empowered to take such
action. Gompers took no action, apart from asking the signers their reaction to Kehoe’s protest. Kehoe’s protest had not affected the callers of the convention, but It did alert the New York labour movement to the fact that the CLTC was not supporting the Initiative.
The unity convention took place on 15 July 1922. Over 300 delegates representing 250,000 union members and 200,000 FLP and Socialist voters attended. The two organizations formed a joint
committee to head the new Initiative. At first It decided to call the party the Independent Labor Party, but later decided to name It the American Labor Party (ALP). Delegates decided to bar the Communists
from participating by a vote of 204 to 15.^^
Because of election laws the name of the new party could not appear on ballot papers. The old titles of Socialist and FLP had to be used. The new party would also work Inside the Conference for
Progressive Political Action for an Independent party. A distinct platform was formulated for the new party. It commenced by stating that
^^Call. 25 May, 2, 3 July 1922. ^^Call, 7, 12 July 1922.
^^Call, 15, 16 July 1922. Minutes of convention called by the Joint Committee for Independent Labor Political Action, New York, 15 July
1922, American Labor Party Minutes, 1922-1924 Folder, Tamlment Institute.
workers by hand or brain faced a crisis; unions, free speech and
liberties were under attack, especially from "the open shop drive". The two main parties were controlled by the invisible "monied" interests. Therefore workers had to "destroy old parties". A long list of demands
that were typical of FLP or even progressive policy followed. There was nothing particularly radical about the platform, though it did oppose USA intervention in Haiti, San Domingo, Mexico and Russia. It also supported the ongoing miners' strike and called for the release of all political prisoners. The platform ended with proposals to increase democracy by measures such as referendum and recall, proportional representation, and the putting of constitutional amendments to referendum. The newly formed ALP sent out a call for trade unions to back a labour party on the British model to the national committee of the CPPA.^
Ironically, the Socialists now promoted an identical progressive programme for which they had criticized the FLP in the past. There was no mention of Socialist control of the state, or workers’ control in
industry. The call for the repeal of Esch-Cummmings meant demanding the return of the railroads to government control, exactly the policy they had criticized the FLP for making in the past. The Socialists still maintained their own programme, but they had dropped their radical critique in the pursuit of unity.
Though supported by the Socialists, the reconstructed ALP was far weaker than the party formed in 1919. It did not have the support of the CTLC, the WTUL, or even as many unions as before. The Socialists were also weaker. The original party had formed at a time of growing militancy and trade union membership; now it was relaunched in a situation of few strikes and declining union membership. The strikes that did take place were defensive, against wage cuts or to keep union recognition. Though the economy had recovered, in many sectors
unemployment remained high. Thus it was in far more difficult
circumstances than at the time of the original launching of the ALP in 1919 that the Socialists turned to a strategy of labourism.
This late conversion would not revive them, nor their new
allies. If there had been an opportunity to establish a labour party in New York it was in 1919, not 1922. It is possible that in 1919
Socialist support might have established a substantial minority
presence for the party; it possibly would have elected at least one congressman. It is also likely the defeat of progressive forces in the central labour bodies might have been prevented. The Socialists had amalgamated with the shadow of a labour party movement. They would have to find more powerful forces to realize their aims.