throughout the area<\/a>.\u00a0The blocks comprising the Twelfth Congressional District were home to large German, Galician, and Lithuanian communities, and many of the district\u2019s inhabitants primarily spoke Yiddish.<\/p>\nThe people of the Lower East Side showed their interest in the election, and their support for London\u2019s candidacy, in true American fashion: through their money. From September to November of 1914, the Local New York Campaign Fund of the Socialist Party ran an extensive fundraising campaign on the Lower East Side. \u201cThe War of the Classes, like any other war,\u201d wrote the Campaign Fund in their September fundraising letter to the Lower East Side, \u201cneeds three things; and those are \u2014 money, money, and then some more money!\u201d<\/p>\n
In those three months, the Socialist Party received $1,704.08 from the people of the Lower East Side; in today\u2019s money, almost $29,768. These donations trickled in in dollars and cents, rarely exceeding five dollars at once. In September, the Fund raised $290.61, and in the next week alone they raised $334.79.<\/p>\n
This was not enough. Following the first week of October, Local New York sent out a letter to their subscribers detailing their fundraising and delivering a plea: \u201cLocal New York has spent for leaflets alone more than the above amoung (sic), but not having the money we had to go into debt\u2026Comrades and friends are therefore requested to send in their contributions now. Now is the time we need the money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Either this request worked, or consciousness of the election was growing, because by the end of October the Fund had raised an additional $389.81, and, in the first week of November, another $492.02.<\/p>\n
Most of the donors to the Fund were individuals living on the Lower East Side, the vast majority of them of German and Russian descent. Almost no individual gave more than once. Very few individuals gave more than a dollar at a time, but adjusted for inflation, a dollar in 1914 is equivalent to twenty-four dollars today \u2014 no small donation for one of the poorest parts of the city. Average donations in the first week of October and the first week of November were higher than the averages at the end of September and October, suggesting that individuals who gave more, gave at the beginning of the month, perhaps just after they\u2019d been paid.<\/p>\nWorking women carrying bundles of garments home for assembly on Bleecker Street in Manhattan, circa 1912. (Library of Congress)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nContributions to the Socialist Party seemed for some to be important enough to warrant a one-time donation of a significant amount, an amount possibly marked out in a monthly budget. The fact that married couples often donated together further suggests that donating could be a household act, and that support for the Socialist Party was perhaps seen as an investment in a realistic future, not an electoral pipe dream.<\/p>\n
Donating to the Socialist Campaign Fund was frequently a communal act. Some of the amounts donated appear to have been taken up by collection at places of work or in social clubs. Victor Koenig, a forty-two-year-old German-born artist working at the Cooperative Press, passed a hat around at his office and sent in $2.75. The German Branch of the Socialist Party donated back the surplus from their picnic in September, a total of $3.25.<\/p>\nThe War of the Classes, like any other war, needs three things; and those are \u2014 money, money, and then some more money!<\/q><\/aside>\nThe largest sums raised by the Campaign Fund were overwhelmingly donated by community organizations. These ranged from branches of the Socialist Party\u2013affiliated Arbeiter Ring, who regularly gave between five and ten dollars, to trade unions such as the Carpenters Local #309 ($25 in September), to groups like Jewish Cremation Society #1 ($1.60 in late October). In total, the Campaign Fund on the Lower East Side received $380.23 from 34 community organizations, an average of $11.18 per donation. The single largest donation to the Campaign Fund came from the Jewish Daily Forward<\/em>, which in November gave $200 collected from readers and supporters.<\/p>\nThe story told by these dollars and cents, collected from household budgets, picnic surpluses, and passing the hat around the office, is one of intense political interest in the meaning of London\u2019s candidacy. The fundraising is doubly important because so few of the people living in London\u2019s district could vote in the actual election. For the disenfranchised, donating a quarter to London\u2019s campaign fund was one of the only concrete ways to make their voices heard in the American political process. But instead of recording their names on the voter rolls, where a Rockefeller was equal to a Rodzinski, these immigrants had their voices weighed according to their money.<\/p>\n
Is the story of campaign fundraising on the Lower East Side in 1914 simply a story of disenfranchised voices pushing back against a system that would silence them to elect a government that met their needs? Perhaps at first glance \u2014 but meditate on it a moment more. Invested in their futures and desiring change in their worlds, these immigrant Lower East Siders wanted to claim their voices in the political system. But instead of the unadulterated power of the vote, they were made to settle for an unequal voice based on their earning power, their family situation, their budget.<\/p>\n
These campaign donations represent, at best, a strong desire for political engagement diverted from the path of official power to the only channel that in the United States has no obstructions: money. They were allowed to place a bet<\/em> on their futures, but not to shape them directly. Using what means they could, these immigrant New Yorkers helped to bring a Socialist congressman to the city they inhabited.<\/p>\nHow many more votes would the Socialist Party have gotten if the franchise was expanded to all those whose life the government touched? The record of the fundraising rolls is a record of a lost Socialist electorate, a phenomenon as relevant now as it was in 1914.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n\n \n
\n \n\n\nThis post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Wednesday, November 4, 1914, Henry Goldfogle was triumphant. It was the day after the election, and the seven-term Democratic congressman from Manhattan\u2019s Twelfth District had just received the results: a smashing victory of 4,944 votes to his Republican opponent\u2019s 1,133. The three-month campaign season leading up to the election had been trying, but Goldfogle [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5645,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192588"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5645"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192589,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192588\/revisions\/192589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}