The Socialist Party of Washington was the Washington state section of the Socialist Party of America (SPA), an organization originally established as a federation of semi-autonomous state organizations.
During the 1910s, the Socialist Party of Washington was one of the largest state affiliates of the SPA in the Western United States, touting a membership which peaked with more than 6,200 paid members. The Socialist Party of Washington is remembered today for its place in the free speech fights of the first decade of the 20th century, during which it was closely connected with the Industrial Workers of the World. It was also the organizational home of a number of key leaders of the early Communist Party of America.
Organizational history
Puget Sound Cooperative Colony
Washington was the home of a number of utopian socialist experiments in the 19th century, beginning with the establishment of Puget Sound Cooperative Colony near Port Angeles in 1887.LeWarne, p. 15. The project was established by Daniel Cronin, an organizer for the Knights of Labor, and George Venable Smith, an attorney – both new arrivals from California. Peter Peyto Good is also cited as a founder of the colony. Despite being progressive advocates of labor rights, Good and Smith were also instigators of anti-Chinese riots and they resented Chinese workers. One hundred thousand dollars were raised through the sale of stock in the project, and 25 full blocks of land on the Ennis Creek platted for future expansion of Port Angeles were purchased from a son of the town's founder.LeWarne, pp. 21–22.
On January 1, 1887, 22 members of the new community were on the town site, a number which had swelled to 239 six months later.LeWarne, pp. 22–23. The aim of the community was to provide each newcomer with "shelter, food, and occupation", and by that summer rudimentary buildings sprung forth as members of the community worked as loggers, carpenters, farmers, cooks, and specialized professions.LeWarne, p. 23. Three pay grades were established for all workers, including officers of the colony, with payment made on the basis of an 8-hour workday (6-hour for women). Payment was made in colony scrip, with legal tender reserved for the colony's purchases from the outside world.LeWarne, p. 43. The colonists worked furiously to construct their own community from nothingness.
By the coming of winter, the deficiencies of the colony became apparent. Money pledged for the purchase of stock had not come in, housing was inadequate, and expenses of nearly $200 a day drained the colony's resources. Disillusionment set in among many of the participants that the enterprise, far from establishing a cooperative community of secure work and plenty, was little more than a land speculation scheme in a new guise.LeWarne, pp. 24–25. If this was not the original intent of the founders, within two years it became the practical reality of the enterprise, as the colony platted an overlooking bluff and sold lots there to outsiders as part of a subdivision called "Edgewood".LeWarne, p. 45. Amidst squabbling over finances and a shortage of ready cash, a wave of lawsuits ensued with 336 legal claims filed against the heavily mortgaged colony and its 196 separate notes and debts.LeWarne, p. 50. Liquidation and the settlement of claims took nearly a decade. The last surviving member of the colony, C. S. Stakemiller, died in 1958.
Equality Colony
If the Puget Sound Cooperative Colony was a matter of local import, a somewhat later attempt at socialist colonization of Washington by the Brotherhood of the Cooperative Commonwealth drew national attention. As early as 1894 the idea had been floated among Eastern socialists that one possible means for achieving a socialist society would be to flood a single state of the union with organized socialist colonies.LeWarne, p. 56. They argued that, through practical experience, the superiority of socialist organization of production and distribution and the virtues of pure democratic government would be demonstrated to hesitant Americans. Once the case was proven in one state, and its elected government won by socialist political candidates, the example would spread to neighboring states and across America, ushering in the Cooperative Commonwealth in America, its participants hoped.
Discussion of this idea began to take place in earnest in the pages of the pioneer radical publication The Coming Nation, published by J.A. Wayland, forerunner of the popular Kansas weekly The Appeal to Reason. By the fall of 1895, a concrete proposal had begun to take shape, advanced by Maine resident Norman Wallace Lermond – a disciple of Edward Bellamy and Laurence Gronlund. Lermond called for the formation of a membership organization to carry on such a colonization program in an unnamed Western state, and he issued a call in the pages of the socialist press for a convention to establish a new organization called the Brotherhood of the Cooperative Commonwealth (BCC). This call was endorsed by an impressive list of 143 of the nation's leading social reformers, including the journalist Henry Demarest Lloyd, union organizer Eugene V. Debs, and religious leader Rev. William D.P. Bliss.
From July 24–26, 1896, an organizational convention for the BCC was held in St. Louis, Missouri, site of a simultaneous gathering of the People's Party, the so-called "Populists". It was hoped that by holding the BCC convention at the same time and place, a large pool of like-minded persons would be assured.LeWarne, p. 57. However, the Populist convention proved to be a protracted and contentious affair, as the people were divided over the question of endorsement of Democrat William Jennings Bryan; this absorbed the attention of Lermond, Maine's People's Party delegate.LeWarne, pp. 57–58. The BCC convention was effectively reduced to an announcement of candidates for officers and the construction of a constitution to be voted on by mail.LeWarne, p. 59.
Officers were elected on September 19, 1896, a list which included Debs as organizer. He converted to the ideas of socialism while in jail as a result of the 1894 Pullman Strike, and he also saw in the BCC's colonization plan a possibility for gainful employment for railroad workers blacklisted for membership in his failing American Railway Union. (ARU)LeWarne, pp. 60–61. The Coming Nation continued to beat the drum of publicity for the project. The colony in Skagit County, near the small town of Edison, was established in the November 1897."Socialist Colony is in Washington," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, vol. 33, no. 25 (Dec. 9, 1897), pg. 1. Three members of the "Equality" colony would go on to become important leaders in the early Socialist Party of Washington — Harry Ault, an associate editor of The Socialist and later editor of the Seattle Union Record; George Boomer, a left winger who was the first representative of the SPW to the National Committee of the Socialist Party of America; and David Burgess, an organizer in the early days of the party and later State Secretary of the organization.Carlos A. Schwantes, Radical Heritage: Labor, Socialism, and Reform in Washington and British Columbia, 1885–1917. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979; pp. 88–89.
Burley Colony
While supportive of the idea of socialists targeting a single state for colonization, Eugene Debs was also committed to building a political party. The scheduled June 1897 convention of the ARU in Chicago proved to be the group's last. On Tuesday, June 15, a speech by Debs began a three-day summation of the union's activities and a wrapping up of loose ends. Three days later, the organization formally declared itself the Social Democracy of America and opened its doors to outside participation, including representatives of the Socialist Labor Party of America, its trade union arm the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, the Scandinavian Cooperative League, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, the Chicago Labor Union Exchange, and other groups. The gathering adopted a declaration of principles and elected officers, with a 5-member Executive Board which included Debs as governing chairman of the organization.News report in The Social Democrat [Terre Haute], vol. 4, no. 13 (July 1, 1897), pg. 1.
The Social Democracy of America was initially oriented towards a policy of colonization; they named a 3-member "Colonization Committee" on August 1, 1897, consisting of Col. Richard J. Hinton (Washington, DC), Wilfred P. Borland (Bay City, MI), and Cyrus Field Willard (Chicago, IL). This trio moved their focus for a colony to seed the future "Cooperative Commonwealth" from Washington state to the Cumberland plateau of Tennessee.Tim Davenport, "Socialist Party of America (1897–1946): Party History," Early American Marxism website. Retrieved April 2, 2010.
At its so-called "First National Convention" in June 1898, the Social Democracy of America split over the colonization issue, with Debs and his brother Theodore, Victor Berger, and others bolting the gathering to establish the Social Democratic Party of America. The majority of the Social Democracy plowed ahead with their colonization scheme, turning their focus once again to Washington state. They assigned Cyrus Field Willard the task of locating a site for their initial colony and gave him authority to "do what in his judgment appeared the right thing to do."
Willard went to Seattle to consult with SDA member J.B. Fowler, who pointed out the good harbors on southern Puget Sound. There they found Henry W. Stein, who was sympathetic to them politically and had just become the executor of land in rural Kitsap County that was open for sale. In September 1898 the SDA re-incorporated in Seattle as the Co-Operative Brotherhood and on October 18 they purchased for $6,000. The first colonists arrived at Burley, Washington on October 20, 1898.LeWarne, pp. 136–138.
By 1901 the colony had grown to include 115 participants, including 45 men, 25 women, and 45 children.Richard C.S. Trahair, Utopias and Utopians: An Historical Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999; pg. 54. This group living at Burley was supported by a network of about 1,000 others nominally participating in the organization off site.
Originally named "Brotherhood", the inhabitants gradually began to refer to it as "Burley" after the nearby Burley creek. A colony scrip was created that included a $1 denomination for an eight-hour work day and smaller units, called minims, for minutes worker over or less than six hours.LeWarne, p. 140. "Circle City" was the informal name of a group of buildings near the water.LeWarne p. 154.
The colony subsisted on agriculture, fishing and logging; they also made income selling cigars, jam, subscriptions of its magazines, and membership in the B.C. It rented out use of its mill and rooms in its "Commonwealth Hotel" for visitors.LeWarne, p. 150 passim. The colony's newspaper, the Co-operator stayed in publication from December 1898 to June 1906. Originally an 8-page weekly, it changed to a 32-page monthly in 1902 and to a 16-page magazine in October 1903.LeWarne, pp. 141, 152, 269.
The colony went into decline in the early twentieth century. In December 1904 some members abandoned the communal concept and reorganized as the Burley Rochdale Mercantile Association, and three months later the Co-operative Brotherhood itself re-organized into a joint stock company. By 1908 there were 150 members of the Brotherhood, only 17 of them residents of the colony. The trustees called a meeting of stockholders to dissolve the Brotherhood in late 1912, but it lacked the two-thirds majority, whereupon those who were in favor of disbanding took the company to court. On January 10, 1913 Judge John P. Young ordered the Cooperative Brotherhood dissolved and put its assets into receivership. The last of its properties were sold off in 1924.LeWarne, pp. 148, 164–165.