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paper that, sailing under the name
of Socialism, was, from its inception,
essentially a practical business enterprise for its own employes. That
paper was the New Yorker Volkszeitung.
The fishiness of the Volkszeitung
was too rank to be concealed. Accordingly, about fourteen years ago,
the "Party" element that was sound
in mind and heart found it advisable
to establish a bona fide Party organ
in the German language—Der Sozialist, subsequently named Vor-
waerts, a weekly paper—and later
managed to acquire another weekly,
in the English language, named the
Workman's Advocate. The editors
of these two papers, Rosenberg and
Bushe, respectively, were like the
rest of the "Party's" national officers, weak, insignificant men,
wholly unfit for their responsible
posts. Nevertheless, with all their
unfitness, Rosenberg and Bushe saw
a glimmer of light. A political party that is not in politics struck even
them as absurd. Accordingly, ten
years ago, they began to pull for
political action. This was immediately to run foul of the Volkszeitung. The political field acts as a purifier; it makes havoc of false pretenses. The Volkszeitung was the
"organ of the S. L. P." in this city.
More or less labored articles on Socialism did it no harm, and an occasional good word for the then misnomer of a Socialist Labor Party
was profitable. Without these mon-
keyshines the paper could not, as it
was doing, drain the Party of funds
—funds drained under the pretense
of "upholding the Party press."
That was all right. But actual politics, the putting up of an S. L. P.
ticket and thus "hostilizing custom
ers and advertisers" (AMONG
THE LATTER OF WHOM POLITICAL CANDIDATES OF
THE CAPITALIST PARTIES
APPEARED not infrequently) —
that was a horse of a different color,
that would not do!
The Volkszeitung forthwith began to nag at the then editors of the
Party organs. Rosenberg and Bushe,
being the lightweights they were, allowed themselves to be angered, and
finally driven into a preposterous,
wholly untenable and mischievous
position. Having got them there,
and thus isolated from the rest of
the "Party" members, whom the
deep villainy of the Volkszeitung
intrigue escaped, the Volkszeitung
crowd rose in self-righteous indignation. "Something had to be done
quick"; "the Party had to be
saved," and more such cant, until
the "Party" membership, having
been seasoned by such a campaign
of perfidy, the Volkszeitung crowd
found it safe to carry out their
scheme. One night they broke into
the Party's premises, took the two
papers and all their belongings,
sacked the two editors, and bounced
the National Executive Committee
—and that was the end of that, in
1889.
Ten years have rolled by since—
ten years equivalent to fifty. The
very necessity that the Volkszeitung, together with its disreputable
appendages, was under to disguise
its real purpose behind a false issue,
left it uncovered against the real
danger that it had sought to escape
—POLITICAL ACTION BY THE
S. L. P.
At the same time that the affairs
of '89 were going on in the "Party," a Socialist movement, to the
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