¹ This article, in a much more primitive form, was first delivered as a paper at a conference, “Eugene V. Debs and the Politics of Dissent in Modern America,” held in Terre Haute, Indiana, at Indiana State University, November 10–11, 2000.1 would like to thank my fellow panelists Sally M. Miller and Jacob H. Dorn for their support and encouragement, James R. Barrett for his insightful criticisms, and to the conference organizer and editor of this special issue of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Richard Schneirov, for his suggestions and consideration. Finally, I would like to note the intellectual and emotional comradeship of Linnea Goodwin Burwood who has made me not only a better historian but also one more sensitive to transnational commonalities and parallels through her work on Russian labor and women, and on anarchism and civil liberties in the United States and beyond.

² In Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? [First published as Warum gibt in den Vereinigten Staaten keinen Sozialismus?] (Tubingen, 1906), Werner Sombart ironically concluded, much as did Jackson, Frederick Turner in “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association For the Year 1893 (Washington, 1894): 197–227Google Scholar, that from then on the development of the United States would mirror far more closely that of Europe as a consequence of the maturation of industrial society.

³ Buhle, Paul, Marxism in the United States: Remapping the History of the American Left (rev. ed., London, 1991)Google Scholar; Bell, , “The Background and Development of Marxian Socialism in the United States,” in Socialism and American Life, vol. I, eds., Egbert, Donald Drew and Persons, Stow (Princeton, 1952): 213–405.Google Scholar

⁴ Debsian Socialism here is a short-hand. It refers to a variety of socialist beliefs and practices. For example, while Debs was the point of reference for most Socialists outside the large metropolitan areas who generally shared his views or whose own views came from roughly the same sources, there was no uniformity. Thus, while Kate Richards O'Hare certainly sounded a great deal like the evangelizing, militant Debs, she was much more reformist than revolutionary when it came to tactics and policy. In this, she represented a strain of Great Plains socialism. Similarly, Rocky Mountain socialists tended to be militantly class-conscious and dismissive of reformism, a trend exemplified by their SPA national executive board hero, William D. Hay wood, until his ouster from that body in 1913 for advocating sabotage and direct action. For biographical information and analysis of Debs see, Ginger, Ray, Eugene V. Debs: The Making of an American Radical (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; Salvatore, Nick, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana, 1982)Google Scholar; and Burwood, Stephen, “Eugene V. Debs” in The Dictionary of Literary Biography: Radical & Reform Writers, ed., Rosendale, Steven (Columbia, SC, forthcoming 2003).Google Scholar

⁵ For example, see the Roundtable on Transnational History, The Journal of American History 86 (December 1999).Google Scholar

⁶ Rodgers, Daniel T., Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA, 1998).Google Scholar

⁷ On a more mundane level, inleresl in other nations' socialism can be gauged by the second issue in 1885 of the British Commonweal, edited by William Morris. In it, articles appeared by Stepniak (Russia), Fricdrich Engels (Germany and England), and Paul Lafarguc (France), together with messages of support from August Bebel (Germany), Wilhelm Liebknecht (Germany), Edouard Vaillant (France), Paul Lafargue (France), Leo Frankel, Karl Kautsky (Germany), Petr Lavrov (Russia), and Domela Nieuwcnhuis (Netherlands). Thompson, E.P., William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (New York, 1977), 383.Google Scholar

⁸ Thelen, David, “The Nation and Beyond: Transnational Perspectives on United States History,” The Journal of American History 86 (December 1999): 972–73.Google Scholar

⁹ Thelen's summary of transnationalism, it should be noted, is not without dissent. I have taken it here as a convenient and reasonable definition. It should be noted that comparative history pre-dates transnationalism as a sub-field of the historical profession and practitioners of it may be uncomfortable being considered a part of the latter trend. A collection of essays on Comparative History appeared as early as 1968. See Vann Woodward, C., ed., The Comparative Approach to American History (New York, 1968).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Examples of Communist historians who have written on the SPA, fixated by the concept of historical determinism include ira Kipnis, . The American Socialist Movement. 1897–1912 (New York, 1972)Google Scholar and Foner, Philip. The History of the Labor Movement in the United Slates, 5 vols. (New York, 1947–1980).Google Scholar

¹¹ Anti-Communist Socialists have often been those most of service to the historical reconstruction of Debsian Socialism. An early example was Shannon, David, The Socialist Party of America: A History (New York, 1955).Google Scholar Perhaps the most notable New Left historian in this context was James Wcinstein who attempted to create a “usable past” to recreate a non-sectarian American Socialist movement in the 1960s as part of the New Left project in the journal Studies on the Left: Essays in History and Politics From Studies on the Left, 1959–1967. See Weinstein, James and Eakins, David W., eds., For a New America (New York, 1970).Google Scholar See also Weinstein, . The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912–1925 (New York, 1967)Google Scholar and Ambiguous Legacy: The Left in American Politics (New York, 1975). Weinstein's efforts provoked what is still the most sustained debate on American Socialism, one that brought together New Left historians, labor historians, historians of American radiealism, and the older generation of consensus historians in Laslett, John H.M. and Lipset, Seymour Martin, eds., Failure of a Dream? Essays in the History of American Socialism (Garden City, NY, 1974).Google Scholar Weinstein's colleague, Ronald Radosh, after sharing the New Left position, became a notable neo-conservative and left-baiting journalist.

¹² For early examples, see Hartz, Louis, The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution (New York, 1955)Google Scholar and an interesting article by Samson, Leon, “Americanism as Surrogate Socialism,” in Laslett and Lipset, Failure of a Dream? 426–42.Google Scholar

¹³ Bell, Daniel, Marxian Socialism in the United States (Ithaca, NY, 1996)Google Scholar; Trachtenberg, Alan, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Munslow, Alun, Discourse and Culture: The Creation of America, 1870–1920 (London, 1992).Google Scholar

¹⁴ One exception was Green, James R., Grass-Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest, 1895–1943 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1978).Google Scholar Figures for SPA electoral strength were gleaned by Weinstein and have been subsequently accepted and used by later commentators.

¹⁵ Wright, Anthony, Socialisms: Theories and Practices (New York, 1986), 10.Google Scholar This point is made less strongly, but can be seen distinctly in Braunthal, Julius, History of the International, vol. 1: 1864–1914 (trans. Collins, Henry and Mitchell, Kenneth, New York, 1967), 271–304.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Lindemann, Albert S., A History of European Socialism (New Haven, 1983), xi.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Gay, Peter, The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein's Challenge to Marx (New York, 1962), 7.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Rebérioux, Madeleine, “Party Practice and the Jaurèsian Vision: the SFIO (1905–1914),” in Socialism in France: From Jaurès to Mitterand, ed., Williams, Stuart (New York, 1983): 15–26.Google Scholar Rebérioux also noted that pamphlets and almanacs sold far better than books among socialists and potential socialists.

¹⁹ Goldberg, Harvey, The Life of Jean James (Madison, WI, 1962), 293–357Google Scholar; Morgan, Kenneth, Labour People: Leaders and Lieutenants, Hardie to Kinnock (New York, 1987), 23–87.Google Scholar

²⁰ A recent brilliant contribution to the argument for the continuity of a spectrum of progressive reformism during this period, and in a transnational context, is Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings.

²¹ Miller, Sally M., Victor Berger and the Promise of Constructive Socialism (Westport, CT, 1973)Google Scholar; Pratt, Norma Fain, Morris Hillquit: A Political History of an American Jewish Socialist (Westport, CT, 1979)Google Scholar; and Buhle, Paul, “Morris Hillquit,” Encyclopedia of the American Left, eds., Buhle, Mari Jo, Buhle, Paul, and Georgakas, Dan (New York, 1990): 312–14.Google Scholar

²² Miller, Sally M., “Americans and the Second International,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 120 (October 1976): 372–87.Google Scholar

²³ On Mooney, see Gentry, Curt, Frame-Up: The Incredible Case of Tom Mooney and Warren Billing (New York, 1967)Google Scholar and Ward, Estolv Ethan, The Gentle Dynamiter: A Biography of Tom Mooney (Palo Alto, CA, 1983).Google Scholar On Foster, see Barrett, James R., William Z. Foster and the Tragedy of American Radicals (Urbana, 1999), 42–50.Google Scholar

²⁴ While Morris Hillquit was angered over the election results fearing that O'Hare in particular would embarrass the SPA with her rural ignorance, this does not appear to have been the case even though, according to Sally Miller, she was “almost star-struck” at meeting the luminaries of the International. Even in Kansas, it appears, she had been taught, read, and absorbed the works and speeches of these men. Miller, Sally M., From Prairie to Prison: The Life of Social Activist Kate Richards O'Hare (Columbia, MO, 1993), 103.Google Scholar

²⁵ Perhaps the most egregious example of the denial of the transnational context in examining the majority of American Socialists is in the examination of The Appeal To Reason by Shore, Elliott in Talkin' Socialism: J.A. Wayland and the Role of the Press in American Radicalism, 1890–1912 (Lawrence, KS, 1988).Google Scholar Shore was transfixed by the fact that the paper published advertisements (as did other left-wing papers) and therefore had to be captive to the dominant corporate ethos.

²⁶ For the newspapers considered here, circulation figures in 1913 were The Appeal to Reason 761,747; The National Rip-Saw 150,000; and The Rebel 23,750.

²⁷ Morgan, W.S., “What Socialism Stands For,” National Rip-Saw, August 1912.Google Scholar

²⁸ Anon., “We Want Socialism,” The Appeal to Reason, May 17, 1913.

²⁹ Hickey, Tom, “Salutory,” The Rebel, July 1, 1911.Google Scholar

³⁰ Ibid., “The Renters Union,” The Rebel, July 29, 1911.

³¹ The phrase “Golden Age of Marxism” was coined by Kolakowski, Leszek in Main Currents of Marxism, 3 vols. (trans. Falla, P.S., Oxford, UK, 1978).Google Scholar Even more explicit two years later, Hickey declared, “I am a Socialist because I believe in the fundamental proposition of scientific Socialism as laid down by Marx and Engels…I shall fight while there is breath of life in my body for the establishment of that co-operative order of society in which we shall succeed in: EMANCIPATING SOCIETY AT LARGE FROM ALL EXPLOITATION, OPPRESSION, CLASS DISTINCTIONS AND CLASS STRUGGLES.” The Rebel, August 16, 1913.

³² An example of his unrestrained polemical style can be seen in this brief extract: “This windbag devotes almost one-third of his pamphlet…to this twaddle, which is so agreeable to the bourgeoisie.” Lenin, Vladimir, The Renegade Kautsky (1918Google Scholar), quoted in The Lenin Anthology, ed., Robert C. Tucker (New York, 1975): 463.

³³ Green, Grass-Roots Socialism.

³⁴ Marx, Karl, “The Future Results of British Rule in India,” New York Daily Tribune, August 8, 1853Google Scholar quoted in Karl Marx: Selected Writings, ed., David McLellan (New York, 2000): 335–36.

³⁵ Marx to Annenkov, December 1846, quoted in McLennan, , Karl Marx, 193.Google Scholar Another example of Marx the polemicist can be found in his Herr Vogt (1860). In it he attacked a bastion of British conservatism: “By means of an ingenious system of concealed plumbing, all the lavatories of London empty their physical refuse into the Thames. In the same way every day the capital of the world spews out all its social refuse through a system of goose quills, and it pours out into a great central cloaca – the Daily Telegraph.” Quoted in Wheen, Francis, Karl Marx: A Life (New York, 2000), 242.Google Scholar

³⁶ For an instructive comparison, we might look also to the international anarchist movement. While the New York-based journal Mother Earth focused at least as much on culture, literature, and thought as any anarchist journals in Europe, the San Francisco based paper The Blast echoed the straightforward and sometimes melodramatic language of other western papers (like The Rebel), concentrating mainly on issues of interest to American workers but at the same time deeply influenced and involved in international ideas and events. For an analysis of the paper's content and excellent illustrations of its style, see Burwood, Linnea Goodwin, “Alexander Berkman: Russian-American Anarchist” (Ph.D diss., State University of New York, Binghamton, 2001): 180–97.Google Scholar

³⁷ Hickey, Tom, “The Renters Union,” International Socialist Review (August 1912)Google Scholar, reprinted in The Rebel, August 10, 1912.

³⁸ Downing, George, “Why Every Farmer Should Vote the Socialist Ticket,” Appeal To Reason, November 3, 1906.Google Scholar

³⁹ The best succinct treatment of the SRs remains Venturi, Franco, Roots of Revolution: a History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia (trans. Haskell, Francis, New York, 1960).Google Scholar For a more focused examination of the SRs during the Russian Revolutions of 1917, see Radkey, Oliver, The Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism: Promise and Default of the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries, February to October 1917 (New York, 1958).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ In response to a letter from the Russian Populist and later Marxist, Vera Zasulich in 1877, Marx described the rural commune as “the mainspring of Russian social regeneration.” He wrote, “If the revolution comes at an opportune moment, if it concentrates all its force to ensure the free development of the rural commune, this commune will soon develop into an element that regenerates Russian society and guarantees superiority over countries enslaved by the capitalist system.” A more mature attitude was expressed by Marx in some of his last published writing in 1883 in his Preface to the Russian Edition of the Communist Manifesto: “If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.” Quoted in McLellan, , Karl Marx, 576Google Scholar, 580, 584. By 1895, however, Marx's close collaborator Friedrich Engels, saw the opportunity slip away as capitalist relations of production in agriculture spread more widely into the Russian countryside. In “Social Relations in Russia,” Engels expressed his pessimism and reinforced the orthodox Marxist notion that revolutionary transformation from capitalism to socialism would have to come from the most industrialized proletariat, the workers of Western Europe. Quoted in The Political Ideas of Marx And Engels, vol. II, ed., Richard N. Hunt (Pittsburgh, 1984): 306–08.

⁴¹ Foner, Philip S. and Miller, Sally M., eds., “Introduction,” Kate Richards O'Hare: Selected Writings and Speeches (Baton Rouge, LA, 1982): 16Google Scholar

⁴² Hampden Jackson, J., Jean Jaurès: His Life and Work (London, 1943), 15.Google Scholar

⁴³ In Scotland, always distinct from England, the Land Question remains. Over the past twenty years, left-leaning groups in Scotland like the Scottish Labour Party, the Scottish National Party, and the Labour Party have continued to campaign during elections on the Land Question.

⁴⁴ Debs, Eugene V., “Sweeping the South,” The Rebel, July 6, 1912.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Victor Berger was the unsuccessful SPA delegate at the 1909 International Socialist Congress. Miller, Sally, “Americans and the Second International,” 377.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Karl Marx, Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: An Introduction. Quoted in Wheen, , Marx: A Life, 58.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Before World War One, Christian labor federations were active in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Austria, Italy, and Switzerland. An International Federation of Christian Trade Unions was formed at The Hague in 1920. Figures given by John Windmuller demonstrate its following: Germany, 1.25 million members; France, 140,000; Italy, 1.25 million; Hungary, 189,000; Belgium, 150,000; and Netherlands (Catholic), 170,000. See Windmuller, , The International Trade Union Movement (Boston, 1980).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Young, James D., Socialism Since 1889: A Bibliographical History (Totowa, NJ, 1988), 3.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Ameringer, Oscar, “A Straight Talk on a Tangled Subject,” National Rip-Saw, March 1914.Google Scholar

⁵¹ “Five Minute Sermon,” The Rebel, September 11,1915. Similarly, J.H. Wilkinson, writing in from Mounds, Oklahoma, quoted passages from Leviticus and Isaiah to conclude, “The wolf is Wall Street, the lamb is the laboring people. Who is God's elect that shall long enjoy the work of their own hands, it is the people living under a Socialist government which justice makes right. Now if God's word is with the Socialist party, who can be against it? Under Socialism we will not labor in vain nor bring forth for trouble.” “Five Minute Sermon: The Holy Bible and the Socialist Platform,” The Rebel, August 16, 1913. For a more expansive examination of “Religion as Revolution,” see the article of the same name by Bouck White, Pastor of the Church of the Social Revolution in New York City, The Rebel, February 22, 1913.

⁵² Debs, Eugene, “The Canton, Ohio Speech,” in Eugene V. Debs Speaks, ed., Tussey, Jean Y. (New York, 1972): 255–56.Google Scholar

⁵³ Young, , Socialism Since 1889, 61, 92.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ For a good description of such encampments, see “Stupendous Socialist Encampment,” The Appeal To Reason, September 5, 1908, in “Yours For the Revolution:” The Appeal to Reason, 1895–1922, ed., John Graham (Lincoln, NE, 1990): 196–97. Shannon, , The Socialist Party of America, 27Google Scholar, gives an account of the encampments and their character. Ameringer wrote about how he conducted his smaller-scale speaking swings. “Having selected a promising school district or village, I secured the permission of the proper wardens or directors to use their church or school. Then gathering my little flock together, I started preaching Marxism. As the meeting proceeded, attendance grew so that, by the end there was usually only standing room left, and quite often not even that.” Ameringer, Oscar, If You Don't Weaken: The Autobiography of Oscar Ameringer (New York, 1940), 274.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Just one example from an advance notice in The Rebel serves to show just how small were many of the stops on such lecture tours. Each summer, socialist encampments featured speeches by Debs, O'Hare, Lowe, Mills, Ameringer and other leading party speakers. In 1914, in Texas, The Rebel put out the usual call for locals to organize such events. Encampments were announced at the following venues, almost all small and rural: New Castle, San Angelo, Gouldbusk, Ben Wheeler, Ezzell, Paint Rock, Dunn, Gustine, Goldthwaite, Glen Cove, Grand Saline (site of the first Socialist Encampment a decade earlier), Kennard, Burkett, Rails, Wood Lake, Plainview, McLean, Wheeler, Paducah, Tolbert, Woodson, O'Brien, and Whitesboro. The Rebel, July 4, 1914. In his autobiography, Ameringer related some of the hamlets and small towns he spoke in. Places like Little River, “a two-by-four hamlet,” Fort Townshend, “a small sawmill town in the southern part of what was once Indian country,” and Frogville “a sawmill town on the Red River.” Ameringer, , If You Don't Weaken, 241Google Scholar, 243, 253.

⁵⁶ Multiple subscriptions were common in this the golden age of magazines made possible throughout the heartland states by the introduction of Rural Free Delivery in the 1890s. Some socialists even made their living exclusively or partly from selling socialist subscriptions. The Appeal at one point in 1913 had 80,000 activists in what was dubbed the Appeal Army. Louis Klamroth for years supported himself on the road by sales of radical books, pamphlets, and the Appeal. Similarly, Millard Price in Seattle made his living exclusively from his red barrow. As reported in the International Socialist Review, Price's sales for May 1912 were: Appeal to Reason, 500; Chicago Daily Socialist, 1500; Milwaukee Leader, 1350; Coming Nation, 800; California Social Democrat, 800; The Commonwealth, 80; New York Sunday Call, 80; National Rip-Saw, 20; Hope, 50; International Socialist Review, 250. The report appeared in a regular feature, “News and Views,” International Socialist Review (July 1912): 83.

⁵⁷ The Rebel, January 13, 1917.

⁵⁸ For example, Berger was quoted in an advertisement that ran through the latter months of 1911 endorsing the Library of Original Sources published by the University Research Extension Company of Madison, Wisconsin. Under a picture of Karl Marx, he was quoted as saying, “A few socialist phrases are not sufficient to make a scientific socialist. In order to know why socialism is coming, a socialist must have an idea of evolution, he must know history, he must know something of economic development…To show how the Socialist Republic will develop out of the present system, the Library of Original Sources has been published. It is a treasure mine.” See The Memphis Social Democrat, September 30, 1911.