{"id":192588,"date":"2021-06-05T11:32:18","date_gmt":"2021-06-05T11:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2021\/06\/meyer-london-socialist-party-congress\/"},"modified":"2021-06-05T12:11:55","modified_gmt":"2021-06-05T12:11:55","slug":"when-jewish-immigrant-workers-helped-elect-a-socialist-congressman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/06\/05\/when-jewish-immigrant-workers-helped-elect-a-socialist-congressman\/","title":{"rendered":"When Jewish Immigrant Workers Helped Elect a Socialist Congressman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Jewish garment workers in New York City's Lower East Side were central to the Socialist Party. And in 1914, they formed the backbone of the successful Socialist congressional campaign of Meyer London, contributing whatever they could despite their desperate poverty.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n Meyer London giving a speech, circa 1915. (Kheel Center \/ Flickr)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

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.<\/p>\n

The three-month campaign season leading up to the election had been trying, but Goldfogle and his Tammany Hall<\/a> backers had decades of experience campaigning among the disparate populations of the Twelfth District. Despite the shifting demographics of the neighborhood, and Tammany\u2019s increasingly tarnished reputation, it seemed that the Democratic Party retained its hold on the support of the Lower East Side.<\/p>\n

But something was wrong. In the final tally of Republican and Democratic votes, nearly 6,000 votes were unaccounted for. Gradually, election counters realized they had made a serious mistake. Goldfogle, with his 4,944 votes, may have had a vast lead over his Republican opponent, but the real winner of the election was neither a Democrat nor a Republican. With 5,808 votes, the new congressman for the Twelfth Congressional District was Meyer London<\/a>, a lawyer and labor organizer best known for his participation in the 1910 Cloakmaker\u2019s Strike<\/a>, and a candidate from the Socialist Party of America<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This was only the second Socialist congressional victory in United States history, and the first in New York City. The New York Times<\/em> reported, \u201cSo little attention was given to him [London] on Tuesday night that in tabulating the returns, his candidacy was overlooked\u2026 [W]hen it became known that London actually had beaten Goldfogle the Socialists turned loose and gave him a big reception.\u201d<\/p>\n

The men who elected Meyer London lived in a small corner of the east side of the island of Manhattan, close enough to walk easily to the riverside or to the garment factories at Union Square. It was the most densely populated part of the city, which made it the most densely populated part of the state, and of the entire country.<\/p>\n

It was also home to the highest percentage of non-naturalized immigrant \u201caliens\u201d in the city. Of the 83,847 men and women who lived in the Fourth Assembly District, 41,404 were not naturalized.\u00a0But despite their legal status, these new New Yorkers found ways to make their voices heard in elections that were meant to exclude them from the governance of their own city.<\/p>\n

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Meyer London, circa 1915. (Kheel Center \/ Flickr)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The neighborhood where Meyer London campaigned in 1914 is part of what New Yorkers today would call the Lower East Side; in 1914, they called it the lower east side, the East Side, the Jewish East Side, or simply, the Ghetto. To the people who lived there, it might not have seemed like one neighborhood at all, but a series of interlocking ethnic enclaves: the Galician Jews in their community between Houston and Grand Street, Hungarian Jews above Houston but below the Italians, the Russian Jews below Grand, the Poles and the Ukrainians further north around Tompkins Square Park, and dozens of other self-identified groups scattered 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>\n

The 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>\n

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Working women carrying bundles of garments home for assembly on Bleecker Street in Manhattan, circa 1912. (Library of Congress)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Contributions 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>\n