Morris Hillquit | |
|---|---|
 Hillquit in 1917 | |
| National Chairman of the Socialist Party of America | |
| In office August 7, 1929 – October 8, 1933 | |
| Preceded by | Victor L. Berger |
| Succeeded by | Leo Krzycki |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Moishe Hillkowitz (1869-08-01)August 1, 1869 |
| Died | October 8, 1933(1933-10-08) (aged 64) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Political party | Socialist Labor(1887–1901) Socialist(1901–1933) |
| Spouse | |
| Children |
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| Occupation | Lawyer,political activist |
| Signature |  |
Morris Hillquit (August 1, 1869 – October 8, 1933) was a founder and leader of theSocialist Party of America and prominentlabor lawyer in New York City'sLower East Side. Together withEugene V. Debs and CongressmanVictor L. Berger, Hillquit was one of the leading public faces ofAmerican socialism during the first two decades of the 20th century.
In November 1917, running on an anti-war platform, Hillquit garnered more than 100,000 votes as the Socialist candidate for mayor of New York City. Hillquit again ran for mayor of New York in 1932. He also stood as a candidate for the United States Congress five times over the course of his life.
Hillquit was born Moishe Hillkowitz on August 1, 1869, inRiga, Russian Empire, the second son of German-speaking ethnic Jewish factory owners.[1] From the time he was age 13, young Moishe attended a non-Jewish secular school, the Russian language Alexander Gymnasium.[2] In 1884 when Moishe was 15, his father, Benjamin Hillkowitz, lost his factory in Riga and decided to leave for America to improve the family's financial situation.[3] Together with his oldest son, he set out for New York City, where he procured a two-room apartment in a tenement house.[4]
In 1886, Benjamin sent for the rest of the family, and they joined him in New York.[3] The family remained poor, living in a tenement in a predominantly Jewish area of theLower East Side.[5] Then he worked on various short-term jobs in the New York City textile industry and as a picture frame maker in a factory.[5] Morris later remembered his family as "frightfully poor," with his older brother and sisters working to help support the family.[4]
Hillquit felt compelled to get a job to help alleviate the family's difficult financial situation.[4] Since his English was poor and his body frail, employment options were limited.[6] He joined other young intellectual émigrés from Tsarist Russia as a shirt-maker, repetitiously stitching cuffs of garments.[6] In his posthumously published memoirs, Hillquit recalled that cuff-making was "the simplest part and required least skill and training," involving the simple stitching of square pieces of cut cloth.[6] The young Hillquit never progressed past that entry-level task as a shirtmaker.[6]
Hillquit's biographer, Norma Fain Pratt, remarks that Moishe was quickly drawn to the socialist movement in America:
Almost as soon as he settled in New York, Hillquit was drawn into East Side Jewish radical circles. He was then a small (5'4"), slightly built, frail adolescent with dark hair, dark oval-shaped eyes, and a gentle charming manner. He was immediately attracted to other young Jewish immigrants, mostly former students, now shop workers, who considered themselves intellectuals — a new radicalintelligentsia ... For the most part their radicalism was rooted in their experiences in the European socialist andanarchist movements. But emigration and economic hardships in the United States also contributed to their further radicalization. As foreigners in America they were situated far enough outside the society to observe its failings. As frustrated but literate people, they were ambitious enough to participate in it. The young intellectuals were interested in finding alternatives to their present circumstances; their solution was to transform them.[7]
On his 18th birthday in August 1887, the future Hillquit joined theSocialist Labor Party of America, brought into the ranks by a fellow garment worker and Russian language socialist newspaper editor,Louis Miller. Moishe became a member of Section New York's Branch 17, a Russian-speaking unit established by Jewish émigrés fromtsarist Russia not long before his joining.[8]
Within a year or so of joining the SLP, biographer Pratt notes, Moishe became one of the party's leading crusaders against anarchism, publishing a lengthy article "Sotzializm un anarchizm" in the Arbeter Zeitung [Workers' News], aYiddish newspaper that he helped to establish. Hillkowitz contrasted theindividualism of anarchism with the communalism of socialism in the piece.[9] During that time the 19-year-old Hillkowitz worked as the business manager of theArbeter zeitung, a paper that was jointly founded withAbraham Cahan, Louis Miller, andMorris Winchevsky in an effort to reach the city's Yiddish-speaking immigrant working class about socialism in their own idiom.[10] Hillkowitz, ironically, was not fluent in Yiddish, having been raised with the German and Russian languages.[11]
He helped to found the United Hebrew Trades, a garment workers' union formed in 1888, while writing for theArbeiter Zeitung. He graduated fromNew York University Law School in 1893.[12] He was admitted to the New York State Bar Association in November of that same year.[12]
Hillquit led the departure of a dissident faction fromDaniel De Leon's Socialist Labor Party in 1899 and was a delegate to the group's convention at Rochester, New York, in 1900.[12] He was a strong supporter of unity with the Chicago-basedSocial Democratic Party ofVictor Berger andEugene V. Debs. In August 1901, the two groups managed to bury their differences and come together to form theSocialist Party of America (SPA) at a convention inIndianapolis, which Hillquit also attended.[12]
Morris Hillquit remained one of the paramount political leaders of the Socialist Party for the rest of his life.
Hillquit was a pioneer historian of the American radical movement, publishing a broad scholarly survey in 1903 entitledHistory of Socialism in the United States. The book would be issued in five English-language editions during Hillquit's lifetime and would be translated into a number of the primary languages of the American socialist movement, including German, Russian, Yiddish, Finnish, and Polish.[13]
In 1904, Hillquit attended theInternational Socialist Congress at Amsterdam and was involved with the proposed Anti-Immigration Resolution, which opposed any legislation that forbade or hindered the immigration of foreign workingmen, some forced by misery to migrate. The resolution read:
In further consideration of the fact that WORKINGMEN OF BACKWARD RACES (CHINESE, NEGROES, ETC.) are often imported by capitalists in order to keep down the native workingmen by means of cheap labor, and that his cheap labor, which constitutes a willing object for exploitation, live in an ill-concealed state of slavery, — the Congress declares that the Social Democracy is bound to combat with all its energy the application of this means, which serves to destroy the organizations of Labor, and thereby to hamper the progress and the eventual realization of Socialism.[14]
Hillquit ran for U.S. Congress on the Socialist ticket in the New York 9th Congressional District in 1906 and 1908.[15] In the latter campaign, Hillquit garnered 21.23% of the vote in a losing effort against aDemocratic incumbent.[16]
After the campaign, Hillquit turned his attention to inner-party affairs, which brought him into conflict with the SPA'ssyndicalist Left Wing. His biographer notes at least four serious points of departure between Hillquit and theIndustrial Workers of the World wing of the party: a disbelief in the stability and the efficacy of industrial unions, a distaste for the strike-oriented tactics of the IWW as opposed to collective bargaining, a belief in the separation of functions between the political and labor wings of the workers' movement, as opposed to the IWW's desire to make industrial organization primary, and theradical tone of IWW propaganda, which Hillquit believed alienated much of society from the socialist movement and marginalized the left.[17] His biographer declares:
His leadership fanned the fires of Party disagreement, and although [Hillquit] was not alone in causing the break in 1913 with an important segment of its left wing, he certainly made a major contribution towards this unfortunate rupture.[18]
In 1911, IWW leaderWilliam "Big Bill" Haywood was elected to the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party, on which Hillquit also served. The syndicalist and the electoral socialist squared off in a lively public debate in New York City's Cooper Union on Jan. 11, 1912. Haywood declared that Hillquit and the socialists ought to try "a little sabotage in the right place at the proper time" and attacked Hillquit for having abandoned the class struggle by helping the New York garment workers negotiate an industrial agreement with their employers. Hillquit replied that he had no new message rather than to reiterate a belief in a two-sided workers movement, with separate and equal political and trade union arms. "A mere change of structural forms would not revolutionize the American labor movement as claimed by our extreme industrialists," he declared.[19]
Hillquit's battle against the syndicalist left of the party continued at the 1912 National Convention, held in May in Indianapolis. Hillquit's biographer notes that
As chairman of the Committee on Constitution he more than likely authored the amendment to the Party's Article II, Section 6, which provided for the expulsion from the Party of "any member of the party who opposes political action or advocates crime, sabotage, or other methods of violence as a weapon of the working class to aid in its emancipation ..." He voiced his justification for the anti-sabotage amendment by reassuring the convention that "if there is one thing in this country that can now check or disrupt the Socialist movement, it is not the capitalist class; it is not the Catholic Church; it is our own injudicious friends from within."[20]
The issue of "syndicalism vs. socialism" was bitterly fought over the next two years, consummated by "Big Bill" Haywood's recall from the SP's NEC and the departure of a broad section of the left wing from the organization. The radical wing never forgave Hillquit for his anti-IWW orientation and made him a major whipping boy in the big split that was to come.
As a staunchinternationalist andantimilitarist, Hillquit represented the ideological center of the Socialist Party during the years of World War I, which controlled the organization in coalition with the more pragmatist right wing exemplified by such locally oriented leaders, politicians, and journalists asVictor Berger,Daniel Hoan,John Spargo, andCharles Edward Russell. He was elected to the SP's governing National Executive Committee on multiple occasions and was a frequent speaker at national conventions of the party. Due to his foreign birth, however, Hillquit was not constitutionally eligible to serve as president or vice president of the United States and thus never was a candidate of the party for national office.
Hillquit was a principal co-author of the resolution against theUS' entry into World War I, which was passed overwhelmingly both by an emergency Socialist Party convention held just after the April 6th, 1917 declaration of war and by a subsequent membership vote.[21] Despite official repression, popular patriotic pressure and vigilante action against the SP of A's organization, members and press, Hillquit never wavered on the issue of intervention, staunchly backing Debs, Berger,Kate Richards O'Hare and other socialists charged under theEspionage Act for opposing the war effort.
On January 26, 1916, Hillquit was part of a three-person delegation toWoodrow Wilson to advocate part of the Socialist Party's peace program, which proposed that "the President of the United States convoke a congress of neutral nations, which shall offer mediation to the belligerents and remain in permanent session until the termination of the war." A resolution had been offered in the House of Representatives byMeyer London of New York, the party's lone representative, and Wilson received Hillquit, London, and socialist trade unionistJames H. Maurer at theWhite House, along with various other delegations. Hillquit later recalled that Wilson was at first "inclined to give us a short and perfunctory hearing" but as the Socialists made their case to him, the session "developed into a serious and confidential conversation." Wilson told the group that he had already considered a similar plan but chose not to put it into effect because he was not sure of its reception by other neutral nations. "The fact is," Wilson claimed, "that the United States is the only important country that may be said to be neutral and disinterested. Practically all other neutral countries are in one way or another tied up with some belligerent power and dependent on it."[22]
Beginning in June 1917, Hillquit served as chief defense lawyer in a series of high-profile cases on behalf of various socialist magazines and newspapers. The Wilson administration, headed in the matter byPostmaster GeneralAlbert Burleson, began to systematically ban specific issues or entire publications from the mail, or to force publications into financial peril by denying them access to low-cost periodical rates. Hillquit argued cases on behalf of a number of important radical publications, includingMax Eastman's radical artistic and literary magazine,The Masses; the two socialist dailies — theNew York Call and theMilwaukee Leader; the SP's official weekly,The American Socialist; the popular monthlyPearson's Magazine; and the Yiddish languageThe Jewish Daily Forward. In each case, Hillquit argued that the socialist press was truly "American" and that a socialist definition of "patriotism" included the freedoms of press and speech and the right to criticize in a democratic society.[23] Hillquit was unsuccessful in winning access to the mails for the papers he represented, but he did manage to keep the proprietors ofThe Masses out of prison.
In the summer of 1917, with nationalism and pro-war sentiment sweeping the nation, Hillquitran for Mayor of New York City. Hillquit's campaign was based on an anti-war platform and commitment to economical public services and drew the diverse support both of committed socialists, pacifists and other anti-war activists, and pro-war liberals endorsing his campaign as a protest against the government's "sedition" policy, which effectively served to curb freedoms of speech and press.[24] Hillquit seems to have been largely immune from attack by the Socialist Party's left wing or other radicals during the high-profile campaign,[24] which ended with Hillquit collecting an impressive 22% of the citywide vote. That campaign, combined with the ongoing electoral success of CongressmanMeyer London (elected as a Socialist in 1914, 1916, and 1920), marked the high point for Socialist Party politics in New York City.
As a member of the SP's National Executive Committee Hillquit worked closely with National SecretaryAdolph Germer andJames Oneal to defend the party from what in modern parlance might be described as an "unfriendly takeover" by itsrevolutionary socialist left wing. However, due to ill health Hillquit did not participate in the pivotal1919 Emergency National Convention at Chicago, which formalized the split of the left wing from the Socialist Party to form theCommunist Labor Party of America and theCommunist Party of America. Instead, Hillquit was ensconced in a sanitorium in upstate New York, recovering from another bout oftuberculosis, and was informed about the events of the convention after the fact.
In 1920 Hillquit served as the lead attorney in the unsuccessful defense of thefive democratically elected Socialist assemblymen expelled from theNew York State Assembly. Hillquit's efforts to see AssemblymenOrr,Claessens,Waldman,DeWitt, andSolomon restored to office was ultimately unsuccessful.
From 1922 through the election of 1924, Hillquit was a leading advocate of Socialist Party participation in theConference for Progressive Political Action (CPPA).
As a celebrated leader of American Marxism andacculturated Jew, Hillquit never became closely associated with the specifically Jewishleft wing, but he played a role in the Jewish trade union movement, being for a time the lawyer of theILGWU. He also never became a Jewish nationalist of any kind; quite the contrary, he was ideologically disposed against it, but in 1926 he confessed, "Zionism makes a strong emotional appeal to me, chiefly as a manifestation of awakening national self respect of the Jewish people." He quickly added however that Zionism, like all other national movements, must guard itself against the dangers of degeneration into jingoism—"If it ever developed in that direction, it will forfeit all claims to Socialist sympathy."[25]
Hillquit became national chairman of the Socialist Party upon the death of Victor L. Berger in 1929, holding the office until his own death in 1933.[26]
In 1932, shortly before his death from tuberculosis, Hillquit received over one-eighth of the vote inhis second campaign for Mayor of New York City. That proved to be Hillquit's final electoral run; during his life, he had been twice a candidate for mayor of New York City and five times a nominee for the United States Congress.
Hillquit married his first cousin, Vera Levene, onNew Year's Eve, 1893. They had three children together: Nina, Leonard, and Walter.[1]
Hillquit died of tuberculosis "a few minutes past midnight on October 8th" of 1933.[27] He was aged 64 at the time of his death.
Hillquit was first and foremost an orator, delivering a torrent of public talks on socialist themes to various audiences throughout his life. In his memoirs, Hillquit conservatively estimates the total number of such speeches to have been "at least 2,000."[28] He often appeared in public debates taking up the socialist banner. He wrote frequently for popular magazines and the party press but fairly infrequently for publication in leaflet or pamphlet form.
Despite the fact that Hillquit was not a prolific pamphleteer, he did author a number of substantial books, including a serious academic history of socialism,History of Socialism in the United States (1903, revised 1910 — translated into Russian, German, and Yiddish); works of popularization, such asSocialism in Theory and Practice (1909) andSocialism Summed Up (1912); a short theoretical piece,From Marx to Lenin (1921), as well as a posthumously published memoir,Loose Leaves from a Busy Life (1934).
Hillquit's papers are housed at theState Historical Society of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin and are available on microfilm.
One of the buildings of theEast River Housing Corporation, ahousing cooperative started by theInternational Ladies' Garment Workers' Union inCooperative Village on the Lower East Side, was named in Hillquit's honor.
