Algie Martin Simons
Algie Martin Simons was an American socialist journalist, newspaper editor, and political activist, best remembered as the editor of The International Socialist Review for nearly a decade. Originally an adherent of the Socialist Labor Party of America and a founding member of the Socialist Party of America, Simons' political views became increasingly conservative over time, leading him to be appointed on a pro-war "labor delegation" to the government of revolutionary Russia headed by Alexander Kerensky in 1917. Simons was a bitter opponent of the communist regime established by Lenin in November 1917 and in later years became an active supporter of the Republican Party.
Biography
Early years
Algie Martin Simons was born October 9, 1870, in a log house near the hamlet of North Freedom in Sauk County, Wisconsin, the son of a farmer. He was the eldest of four children of Horace B. Simons and his wife, the former Linda Blackmun.Simons' father was descended from English immigrants who had arrived in America in the early 18th Century. His grandfather, Martin Simons, for whom he was named, was born in Ohio in 1812 and moved to Wisconsin in the 1840s, spending some time in Minnesota before returning to Wisconsin during the years of the American Civil War.
On the maternal side, the Blackmuns also had deep roots in New England, with the family already established in upstate New York by the time of the American revolution. The Blackmuns made their way to Ohio before heading North to Michigan and settling for good in Wisconsin in the early 1800s.
After Horace Simons and Linda Blackmun were married in July 1869, the Blackmuns aided the new couple by providing land for them adjacent to the family homestead on Maple Hill, part of the western side of the Baraboo Range. The land was not bountiful and agriculture was difficult; Horace Simons helped make ends meet by working as an employee in the Blackmuns' seasonal roofing shingle mill.
A bookish youth, Simons attended public school at North Freedom, graduating in 1889. He developed the skill of oratory at a young age, winning a local speaking championship in July 1890. After completion of his primary education in North Freedom, Algie commuted 10 miles to Baraboo to attend high school, from which he graduated in 1891.
From there, Simons was off to Madison to attend the University of Wisconsin, majoring in English. While at the university, Simons developed an interest in politics and history and transferred to the School of Economics, Political Science, and History, newly established by Richard T. Ely, to pursue the subject further. In the course of his education, Simons was exposed to socialist ideas, working as an assistant for the liberal Ely on his book Socialism, published in 1894. Simons also later regarded the courses taken from Frederick J. Turner as influential for having instilled the notion of class struggle in his pattern of thinking.
In June 1895, Simons earned his bachelor's degree in Economics, for which he gained special honors for completing a thesis on the topic of "Railroad Pools." Simons also won awards in oratory and debating and accumulated a grade point average which entitled him to membership in Phi Beta Kappa. He was chosen by the faculty to speak at his class's commencement exercise.
Upon graduation, Simons accepted a fellowship with the Associated Charities in Cincinnati, moving into the Cincinnati Social Settlement in September 1895. He was soon brought to Chicago by the head of Associated Charities in Cincinnati to work for the Bureau of Charities there. Simons found the conditions faced by the urban poor of Chicago to be appalling and he began to make a systematic study of daily life in the meatpacking district of the city, publishing his findings in the American Journal of Sociology.
In June 1897, Simons returned to Baraboo and married May Wood, a former high school classmate who would herself eventually become a socialist propagandist of some note.
After three years living in the "Settlements", Simons' self-described "patchwork philosophy" began to give way to Marxism as he daily observed "human misery and intense suffering" on the one hand and "the marvelous productive capacity of the largest industrial establishment in the world" on the other. He attended the 1897 National Conference of Charities and Correction in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and came away disgusted, returning to Chicago and joining the ranks of the Socialist Labor Party. A new chapter in his life had begun.
The Socialist Labor Party
In the spring of 1899, Algie Simons found himself finally able to escape his previous calling of social work for a new career he considered more fulfilling — that of socialist newspaper editor. Section Chicago of the SLP, 26 branches strong, decided at that time to launch its own newspaper in order to cover the news from a more localized perspective than could the East Coast party organ. The erudite and educated Simons was chosen by his party comrades to edit the new publication. In just a few short months this new position would place Simons in direct conflict with party leader Daniel DeLeon, editor of the party-owned weekly of the SLP, The People, published in New York City.The first issue of The Workers' Call was dated March 11, 1899, and featured the first of a lengthy serialized article by Wilhelm Liebknecht, translated by May Wood Simons from the German. Each issue contained four pages of heavily written and densely packed grey type. Cover price was one cent, with annual subscriptions available for 50 cents per year. As a matter of policy, Simons printed the number of "copies actually sold" of the preceding issue in every copy of the paper, indicating an initial sale of 1,875 copies quickly moving to an average sale of about 3,000 copies. Simons gained another spate of readers in June, when it was announced that the Minneapolis SLP newspaper, The Tocsin, was to be merged with The Workers' Call after a run of just over 9 months. By the first day of summer, paid circulation was approaching the 9,000 mark and by the end of July it had sold out a full run of 11,000.
Despite the rosy prospects of Section Chicago's new paper, the summer of 1899 was a moment of severe political crisis inside the SLP. The party had experienced significant growth throughout the decade of the 1890s, but disagreement over the policy of the organization towards the trade union movement had created bitter dissension. Some favored the official line of the party, building the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, a dual union which was distinctly revolutionary socialist in nature to stand in direct challenge to the "conservative" American Federation of Labor. Others objected to the way this new ST&LA had poisoned relations with the existing unions, and instead advocated a renewed commitment to "boring within" the established unions to "win" them to the socialist cause by example and persuasion. Personal acrimony and ambition also played no small role, with self-assured and pugnacious DeLeon and his lieutenant Henry Kuhn butting heads against the more ecumenical supporters of the privately owned German-language socialist paper, the New Yorker Volkszeitung, such as Henry Slobodin and Morris Hillquit.
In 1898, the simmering feud erupted into a full-fledged factional war. With left wing German and Yiddish-language trade unions of New York pulling out of the ST&LA, leaving it a shell, while socialists still in the AF of L were simultaneously dealt a crushing blow to their efforts at the 1898 annual convention of the AF of L to steer the organization in a left wing direction, the Volkzeitung went on the offensive. For the next five months the paper hammered relentlessly at the way the dual union policy had led to an easy "Gompersite" victory. The SLP's English-language People and German-language Vorwaerts returned fire in kind, accusing the dissidents of having traded in socialist principles for the prospect of soft positions as union functionaries. The governing National Executive Committee of the party began unleashing a series of suspensions and expulsions of the dissidents in the name of party discipline.
The dissidents escalated matters further by issuing a factional bulletin devoted to attacks on the party leadership, sent out to the entire party mailing list — an action which further enraged DeLeon and his associates. Things went downhill from there, with fist fights and a full out brawl capping the summer of factional sniping, as both dissidents and regulars claimed for themselves the mantle of the party, its ballot line, and, not coincidentally, the party's assets.
Try as they might, there could be no neutrality in such a situation. Section Chicago first attempted to play the role of mediator in the dispute, suggesting a referendum of the party membership to move headquarters of the SLP from New York City to a less supercharged political environment. Such a position was impossible for DeLeon and the official leadership, who charged Section Chicago with disloyalty, making editor Simons the personal object of enmity. "This A.M. Simons, Editor," DeLeon raged, "really is as much of a simpleton as he is a fraud."
And thus Simons cast his lot with the rebellion. "If there had ever been any doubt in the past three months about the necessity of a revolution in the Socialist Labor Party and the utter abolition of DeLeonism from the American socialist movement, that doubt should be removed by a glance at the last Beekman Street People, Simons replied.
When the smoke of the muskets cleared, DeLeon's forces emerged triumphant, thanks in no small part to a ruling of the New York courts awarding the party name, ballot line, and assets to the Regular faction. Slobodin, Hillquit, and the dissidents, after having called themselves the "Socialist Labor Party" and published an official newspaper called The People until so enjoined by the court; thereafter they attempted to style themselves as a part of the Social Democratic Party of America. The originators of the Social Democratic party, including Milwaukee newspaper editor Victor L. Berger and radical railroad unionist Eugene V. Debs, were deeply distrustful of the motives and worth of the recently recoined DeLeonists from New York who had appropriated their party name. The process of unification of the two organizations was arduous, absorbing the better part of two years.
In August 1901, union between the East coast and Chicago "Social Democratic Parties" was achieved at the 1901 Socialist Unity Convention held in Indianapolis, Indiana. Simons was a delegate to this convention, at which he was one of the most vocal advocates that the new organization should dispense with so-called "immediate demands" from its platform, in favor of limitation to the advocacy of the socialist transformation of society. Simons declared:
Simons' view on this matter of immediate demands represented that of a small left wing minority of the delegates to the Founding Convention and was easily defeated on the floor of that body.