British Columbia : the people's story 11 - THE SOCIALIST TRADITION: By HAL GRIFFIN ONG before the first socialist organisation was formed in British Columbia, socialist ideas were taking shape in the minds of many workers. They came into the newly-discovered hard-rock mines of the Kootenays with the ‘American miners. They. followed the new railroads with the Russians and Ukrainians, They were taken into the logging camps by Finns and Swedes and spread among the fishing settlements of the coast by Norwegians and Croatians. They were carried into the trades by English, Scottish and German immigrants and into the coal mines by Czechs and Italians. Variously inter- preted, awkwardly grasped and wielded at first, they fused with struggles engendered by bitter exploitation to become a political force whose imprint upon province and country deepens as it approaches the socialist future. The proud tradition, the experience gained. from so many betrayals, the unending struggle against opportunism, between those who sought only to reform capitalism and too often were themselves reformed and those who fought to end capitalism—all these had their small beginning in the late nineties of the last century when Socialist Leagues, after the pattern of those already established in Ontario, began to spring up in the hard-rock mining centres of the Kootenays, at Slocan, Greenwood and elsewhere, and the coal mining centres of Vancouver Island, notably Nanaimo, where the Revolutionary Socialist party was formed around 1898.. The first Socialist organisation in Vancouver was founded by Arthur Spencer, a railway worker who secured a transfer from Hamilton with that purpose in mind. In 1898 he organ- ised a branch of the Socialist Labor party and at the same time set up its economic counterpart, the Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance. Founded in the United States as the: Working Men’s party in 1876 and changing its name a year later, the Socialist Labor party, in its early years, had worked with the Knights of Labor and actually held the leadership of many assemblies. Similarly, its members had worked within the American Federation of Labor after its formation in 1881. But in, 1890 Samuel Gompers, the dominant leader of the AFL, refused to grant a charter to the New York Central Labor Union on the ground that the New York section of the Socialist Labor party was affiliated to it. And in 1895, at its Washington convention, the Knights of Labor refused to seat Daniel De Leon, then editor of The People, a Socialist Labor paper, as a delegate. The Socialist Labor party severed all relations with the Knights of Labor and at the same time embarked on ‘an open struggle with the AFL, Gompers, who once had proclaimed his socialist sympathies, was following a policy of collabo- rating with the employers to win concessions for the skilled workers at the expense of the semi-skilled and unskilled. Its inevitable accompaniment was a repudiation of socialist ideas and a defense of the capitalist system. Despairing of unseat- ing the bureaucratic machine through which the increasingly conservative AFL leaders maintained themselves in office, the Socialist Labor party turned to dual unionism, a policy that had the effect of withdrawing the most militant workers from the craft unions, weakening the trade union movement as a whole and strengthening the hand of the conservative AFL leaders. In 1898, when Spencer founded the Vancouver branch, the Socialist Labor party was at the height of its influence in the U.S., with a membership of some 350,000. By contrast, the membership of the Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance, never more than 20,000, was declining, ‘Already, strong sec- tions of the party were demanding a change in policy toward the trade unions and the Vancouver branch had been in existence for only a few months when a split in the party divided its own thin ranks. In 1899, the New York section of the party, empowered by convention to elect the new national executive committee, voted opponents of De Leon’s dual union policies into office. But the old leadership refused to give up its posts and the party was divided between two organised factions, each call- ing itself the Socialist Labor party. The new committee called a convention at Rochester, attended by delegates representing a majority of the party membership, at which the Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance was rejected for support of the established unions. Then the convention invited the Social Democratic party, organised in 1898 under the leadership of Eugene V. Debs from socialist groups outside the Socialist Labor party, to join it. The outcome was the holding of a unity convention at Indianapolis in 1901 at which the Socialist Party.of the United States was launched. $03 % xt In distant Vancouver, where the Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance was no more than a name, the split was reflected in a similar division over policy toward the unions, with the majority breaking away to form the United Socialist Labor party and seek alliances with other Socialist. groups. Socialist Leagues from Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland and the Kootenays were represented at the new party’s convention held in Vancouver in the spring of 1900, at which Will MacClain, an official of Vancouver Trades and Labor Council, was nominated to contest a Vancouver seat in the forthcoming provincial election—the first Socialist candidate to contest public office. Recognising the trade unions as “a carrier of the gospel,” the new party called on its members to join and strengthen them and “to educate your fellow unionists on questions of socialism and the labor movement on economic and political lines.” Within the year, branches of the United Socialist Labor party had been formed at several provincial centres and the Lardeau Eagle, published at Ferguson by R. Parm Pettipiece, had assumed the role of the new party’s semi-official journal. At Vancouver, Victoria and Nanaimo during these same years the trade union movement had been vigorously pressing its own demand for independent political action on the Trades and Labor Congress. In 1899 it took the initiative itself by forming a Labor party at a provincial convention in Vancou- ver attended by trade union delegates from the three main centres, The demand for the eight-hour day headed its plat- form, with compulsory arbitration, public ownership of basic industries and the single tax as the main planks. Inevitably, as a reflection of the prevailing sentimet in the labor move- ment, it included Asiatic exclusion among its demands. In the 1900 provincial election the new Labor party made its greatest impact upon Nanaimo. It re-elected Ralph Smith in Nanaimo City and John Radcliffe, its candidate in Nanaimo South, came within 24 votes of defeating James Dunsmuir, the millionaire coal owner who became the new premier. In Vancouver the two Labor candidates, Joe Dixon and F. Williams, and the United Socialist Labor candidate, Will MacClain, polled substantial votes but fell far short of election. In the federal election that same year, Ralph Smith resigned his seat in the legislature to contest the Nanaimo federal constituency. Running as an Independent Labor candidate, he won the seat with Liberal support to share with W. A. Puttee, editor of the People’s Voice, organ of Winni- peg Trades and Labor Council, who won election in Winnipeg, the distinction of being the first Labor members of parlia- ment. And in the ensuing provincial byelection in 1901, Irish-born James Hurst Hawthornthwaite won the Nanaimo City seat to become the first Socialist member of a provincial legislature. % % % The rapid advances made by the labor movement around the turn of the century were reflected in the wooing of the labor vote by all candidates, particularly the Liberals, and the violent resistance of the employers to the spread of trade union organisation. Concluded on next page June 6, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE— Commentary on capitalism” WENTY-FIVE years ago ™ 1923, a very important meet ing was held at the Edgewatel Beach Hotel in Chicago. Tho present were: ; @ The president of th ia est independent ste® company; ‘ @ The president of the Ne tional City Bank; pe @ The president of the late est utility company; @ The president of the larg est gas company; ss @ The greatest wheat spect lator; = @ The president of the New York Stock Exchange 6 @ A member of the ¥™ cabinet; as @ The head of the worl greatest monopoly; ok ® The president of the Ba of International %¢ ments~ That was a quarter of @ cel tury ago. What became of th men? a Charles Schwab, the Pi dent of the largest indepet dent steel company, We bankrupt and lived on aif rowed money for five Y® before his death. : Samuel Insull, the preside of the greatest utility © pany, died a fugitive justice and penniless in 4 eign land. i owed Hopson, the pres dent of the largest gas © any, is now insane. : Arthur Cutten, the great wheat speculator, died abl? —ainsolvent. Richard Whitney, the dent of the New York Exchange, was recently leased from Sing Sing. of Albert Fall, the member the U.S. cabinet, was parde ah from prison so he could dt home. atest Jesse Livermore, the 8!©*, “pear” in Wall Street, He suicide. 4 of Ivar Krueger, the he ot greatest monopoly, die a icide. per Leon Fraser, the preside of the Bank of Internati? nt pr pres stoc Settlements, died a suict a { | Lunatics, crooks, suc what a commentary on thé "4, tem that made these M® gods! Sherwood forest” now all union me? sr WAS bound to. some day, considerME spit egalitarian tradition Hood. out ° Sherwood Forest, hana? po Robin and his merry b@P’ ype | soaked the rich to oe ent poor, is now 100 Ped if union, it has been revea . Nottingham. fn hi All forestry workers nee” heralded spot are now ized. Z pact § y i, aS pee , A