Meyer London | |
|---|---|
 Portrait byHarris & Ewingc. 1910s–1920s | |
| Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromNew York's12th district | |
| In office March 4, 1921 – March 3, 1923 | |
| Preceded by | Henry M. Goldfogle |
| Succeeded by | Samuel Dickstein |
| In office March 4, 1915 – March 3, 1919 | |
| Preceded by | Henry M. Goldfogle |
| Succeeded by | Henry M. Goldfogle |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1871-12-29)December 29, 1871 |
| Died | June 6, 1926(1926-06-06) (aged 54) New York City, U.S. |
| Resting place | Mount Carmel Cemetery |
| Political party | Socialist Labor(before 1897) Social Democracy(1897–1898) Social Democratic(1898–1901) Socialist(after 1901) |
| Spouse | |
| Children | Isabel |
| Relatives |
|
| Alma mater | New York University Law School |
Meyer London (December 29, 1871 – June 6, 1926) was aLithuanian-bornJewish American lawyer and politician fromNew York City. He was legal counsel to theInternational Ladies' Garment Workers' Union during the 1910 New York Cloakmakers strike. He represented theLower East Side of Manhattan for two nonconsecutive terms and was one of only two members of theSocialist Party of America elected to theUnited States Congress.[1] His opposition toAmerican entry into World War I and his refusal to introduce a congressional resolution supporting the creation of aJewish state inPalestine created controversy that limited his political career.
London was born inKalvarija, Lithuania (then part of theRussian Empire) on December 29, 1871. Meyer's father, Efraim London, was a formerTalmudic scholar who had become politically revolutionary and philosophicallyagnostic, while his mother had remained a devotee ofJudaism.[2] His father had established himself as agrain merchant inZenkov, a small town located in thePoltava province ofUkraine, but his financial situation was poor, and in 1888 his father immigrated with Meyer's younger brother to the United States, leaving Meyer behind.
Meyer attendedCheder, a traditional Jewish primary school in which he learnedHebrew, before entering Russian-language schools to begin hissecular education.[3] In 1891, when Meyer was 20, the family decided to follow his father to America so Meyer terminated his studies and departed for New York City,[3] taking up residence in the city's largely JewishLower East Side.
In America, Meyer's father had become a commercial printer, doing jobs in theYiddish, Russian, and English languages and publishing his own radical weekly calledMorgenstern.[4] Efraim London's shop was a hub of activity, bringing together Jewish radical intellectuals from throughout the city, many of whom met and influenced the printer's son with their ideas.[4]
Meyer earned money as atutor, taking on pupils at irregular hours and teaching literature and other topics. He later obtained a job as a librarian, a position which allowed him sufficient time to read about history and politics and to studylaw in his free time.[4] Meyer also frequented radical meetings, gradually developing proficiency as apublic speaker and participant inpublic debates.[5]
In 1896, London was accepted to thelaw school ofNew York University, attending most of his classes at night.[5] He completed the program and wasadmitted to the bar in New York in 1898,[5] becoming a labor lawyer, taking on cases which foughtinjunctions or defending the rights oftenants against the transgressions oflandlords. London did not handlecriminal cases, but rather limited himself to matters ofcivil law.[6]
In the 1890s, London joined theSocialist Labor Party of America (SLP), standing as its candidate forNew York State Assembly in 1896.[7] He was attracted byEugene V. Debs and his newSocial Democracy of America (SDA) and resigned from the SLP to help establish Local Branch No. 1 of the Social Democracy in New York in 1897.[7] He was a delegate to the June 1898 convention of SDA in Chicago and was one of the political action-oriented minority which bolted the June 1898 convention to establish theSocial Democratic Party of America (SDP) following a dispute over the strategy of socialist colonization.
In 1898, London again ran for New York Assembly in the old 4th Assembly District, this time as the candidate of the SDP.[8]
In the summer of 1901, the Chicago-based SDP merged with another group of former adherents of the Socialist Labor Party to form theSocialist Party of America (SPA), and London transferred his political allegiance to the new organization. He ran for a third time for the 4th Assembly District seat in 1904, this time under the banner of the SPA.
TheRussian Revolution of 1905 was deeply inspirational to the former citizen of theTsarist regime, and London threw himself into the task of speaking tomass meetings organized to help raise funds for the relief of Jewish victims of thepogroms which erupted at that same time.[9] London also engaged in fund-raising on behalf ofthe Bund, the Yiddish-language revolutionary movement in regions with significant Jewish populations in the oldRussian Empire.[10]
London was active in the 1910 New York Cloakmakers strike, during which theInternational Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) brought out 50,000 in a successful struggle for higher wages and better work conditions against their employers. In his capacity as counsel for the ILGWU, London drew up and published a communique in the name of the strike committee.[11] In this manifesto, London declared:
We charge the employers with ruining the great trade built up by the industrious immigrants. We charge them with having corrupted the morale of thousands employed in the cloak trade. ... Treachery, slavishness and espionage are encouraged by the employers as great virtues of the cloakmakers. Thisgeneral strike is greater than anyunion. It is an irresistible movement of the people. It is a protest against conditions that can no longer be tolerated. This is the first great attempt to regulate conditions in the trade, to do away with that anarchy and chaos which keeps some of the men working sixteen hours a day during the hottest months of the year while thousands of others have no employment whatever. ... We appeal to the people of America to assist us in our struggle.[12]
London argued against an injunction issued against the strikers before theNew York Supreme Court en route to a victory of the strikers after a labor action lasting the better part of two months.
London's place in the cloakmakers' strike made him one of the best-known public faces of the Socialist Party in New York City and over the course of three runs forCongress he gradually constructed a winning coalition, emerging victorious despite the violence and fraud practiced by the campaign of hisTammany Hall-supportedDemocratic opponent in the election of 1914. London thus became the second Socialist elected to Congress, followingWisconsin'sVictor Berger.[13]
As a Congressman, Meyer London was one of 50 representatives and six senators to vote against entry intoWorld War I. Once America was at war, however, London felt obliged to support the nation's efforts in the conflict. He strongly opposed theEspionage Act of 1917 and theSedition Act of 1918, which made criticism of the president or the war a crime,[14] and in the end cast the only vote in the House against the Sedition Act of 1918.[15] These actions angered his constituency but London said: "I wonder whether I am to be punished for having had the courage to vote against the war or for standing by my country's decision when it chose war."[16]
London's support of the Wilson administration's war effort enraged many within the Socialist Party, who saw London's actions as a rank betrayal of the party's anti-militarist program. In a statement to members of the Socialist Party, London's radical opponents chronicled his transgressions:
He ignored theSt. Louis Resolution right after it was adopted. He refused to introduce bills suggested by the National Executive Committee. He neglected every opportunity of manifesting the attitude of the Socialist Party ... When London sent his famous telegram to Russia not to conclude a separate peace, a good many of us felt that he ought to be recalled from Congress. If we had no courage to recall him then, let us have courage now to reconsider his nomination.[17]
As a Jewish Socialist, London's position onZionism further complicated his political situation. Although he upset socialist Labor Zionists by refusing to introduce a resolution endorsing theBalfour Declaration into the House of Representatives, London did not oppose the right of Jews to live "a separate and distinct national existence fortified by a Jewish state ... All that I ask of them is that they should not speak in the name of all Jews." Further, London believed in the possibility of a specifically socialist Jewish state, so long as it "can be accomplished without violating the Socialist principle which forbids forcible annexation."[18] However, London's refusal to introduce the resolution united many Zionists against him. The Jewish community was further fragmented in opposition to London, withOrthodox Jews advocating his defeat because he was not religious while rich and powerful Jews worked against him because he was a socialist. Uptown Jews likeJacob Schiff,Louis Marshall,Nathan Straus, and RabbiStephen S. Wise urged the Jews to redeem themselves by rejecting London.[19]
London was thus placed in the uncomfortable position of simultaneously being attacked both as a dangerous radical on the one hand and as acollaborationist traitor to radicalism on the other; as un-American and pro-German on the one hand and as an American nationalist and abettor of militarism on the other; for subsuming the Socialist program in the interest of the Jews in his district on the one hand and for neglecting the sweeping desire for Jewish nationhood in the interests of socialist internationalism on the other.[20] This proved too much even for the powers of political incumbency to overcome. With the Democratic and Republican parties united behind a single "fusion" candidate and his own supporters fragmented, London narrowly lost reelection in 1918, falling toHenry M. Goldfogle by a tally of 7,269 to 6,519.[21]
Two years later, in 1920, the Lower East Side sent London back to Congress. The vote was 10,212 for London to 8,054 for Goldfogle. InIsrael and the American National Interest, Cheryl A. Rubenberg states: "On September 21, 1922, the American Congress passed a joint resolution stating its support for a homeland in Palestine for the Jewish people".[22] He was defeated for reelection two years later bySamuel Dickstein.
London married Anna Rosenson, a dentist who was a fellow Socialist[23] and immigrant from the Russian Empire,[24] in 1899.[25] They had one daughter together, Isabel, who became aphysician.[23][26] He was an uncle ofEphraim London, and through Ephraim, grandnieces wereSheila Michaels, a remarkable activist in her own right, whom Ephraim never publicly acknowledged as his daughter,[27] and Ephraim's niecesHarriet Fraad andRosalyn Baxandall; their mother Irma was his sister.[28] London was also a cousin in the family ofTony Judt.[29]
London died on Sunday, June 6, 1926. As he was crossingSecond Avenue at 15th Street, he was caught in the middle of heavy automobile traffic passing in both directions. London became confused and when he halted in the middle of the road he was struck by a driver of a car, suffering internal injuries.[30] The driver rushed him to Bellevue Hospital, where London's daughter was an intern. When she saw her father, London's only concern was that the driver not be punished. "It's not his fault", said London "and he is a poor man."[31] London died at 10 o'clock that night at the age of 54, after physicians had labored for 11 hours to save him.[30]
News immediately began to spread about the death of the beloved Congressman and crowds immediately began to gather in front of the hospital, the Londons' home, and the building ofThe Jewish Daily Forward newspaper.[30] The next day, London's body was taken to theForward building, where it lay in state while 25,000 men, women, and children filed past the casket, paying their respects.[32] A funeral followed on Wednesday, June 10, one of the greatest mass displays of mourning in New York City's history, witnessed by an estimated 500,000 people.[33] The streets were jammed with a procession of 50,000 people, as hundreds of thousands crowded windows and hung from fire escapes or stood along the procession route in a crowd jammed six people deep.[33]
London's body was interred atMount Carmel Cemetery inGlendale, New York, in the borough ofQueens.[34]
In spite of his votes against the previous world war, London became the namesake of aWorld War IILiberty ship, theUSSMeyer London, launched in 1943.
One of the buildings ofHillman Housing Corporation, ahousing cooperative founded by theAmalgamated Clothing Workers of America, on theLower East Side of Manhattan is named after him. There is also a K-5elementary school located on the Lower East Side named after Meyer London, also known as P.S. 2.
In an article forThe New York Review of Books, historianTony Judt writes that London is a relative of his: "Our cousin Meyer London had emigrated in 1891 to New York from a nearby village; there he was elected in 1914 as the second Socialist congressman before being ousted by an ignominious alliance of wealthy New York Jews disturbed by his socialism and American Zionists aghast at his well-publicized suspicion of their project."[35]
| U.S. House of Representatives | ||
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| Preceded by | Member of the U.S. House of Representatives fromNew York's 12th congressional district 1915–1919 | Succeeded by Henry M. Goldfogle |
| Preceded by Henry M. Goldfogle | Member of the U.S. House of Representatives fromNew York's 12th congressional district 1921–1923 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
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| National | |
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