Algie Martin Simons

[4] 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.

[12] 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.

[14] 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.

[9] 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.

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.

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.

[19] 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.

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.

[25] 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.

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.

[26]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.

The first issue of the Review appeared dated July 1900 and featured contributions from William Thurston Brown, English social democrat Henry Hyndman, AF of L trade union activist Max S. Hayes, and Marcus Hitch.

At the 1901 founding convention of the Socialist Party of America held in Indianapolis, to which he was a delegate, Simons was the most vocal advocate of the left wing line of the day, arguing against the adoption of palliative "immediate demands."

[33]The form and content of the Review changed fairly dramatically in the years after Simons' forced departure, with Kerr and his new chief lieutenant, Mary Marcy, soliciting material written on issues of the day by its working class readers.

Shorter articles giving timely news of the contemporary class struggle, profusely illustrated, displaced long and sometimes dreary essays notable only for their lack of passion.

[36] Despite his best intentions of producing a publication that did not dwell in the realm of heavy political exposé, Simons found a paucity of publishable material written on vaguely socialist themes in a light-hearted vein.

[40] Also contributing fiction was a youngster hailing from Philadelphia, who would later achieve wider fame as the owner of the entire Appeal operation, Emanuel Julius, who wrote pedestrian short stories in the O. Henry style for virtually every issue.

On the evening of November 10, 1912, just three days after the finish of Eugene V. Debs' 4th — and arguably most successful — campaign as the Socialist Party's candidate for President of the United States, Wayland retired upstairs to his bedroom.

Harried by the government, despondent over the failure of the Socialist movement to win the support of more than a small fraction of the laboring classes, tired of life, Wayland left an epitaph tucked into a book on his bedside table: "The struggle under the competitive system is not worth the effort; let it pass.

Newspaper publisher Victor Berger, now America's first socialist Congressman, had previously promised Simons a job on his English-language daily, the Milwaukee Leader, if he had ever needed a position.

[44] The Simons played no role in the bustling political activity of the governing Socialist Party in Milwaukee, instead taking an interest in the theater, musical recitals, and public lectures, often in the company of Victor Berger and his wife Meta.

[48] Though both parties agreed in the desirability of the policy which Simons advocated, they proved incapable of its implementation, as the belligerent national governments of both sides shut down all means of contact.

Milwaukee, with deep ethnic connections to Germany, including several German-language newspapers, and many clubs, schools, and social institutions, was a hotbed of pro-German sentiment, whereas Algie and May Simons soon came to take a position which was more or less unabashedly pro-British.

In November 1916, Simons moved over the river and burned his bridges behind him, resigning from the Milwaukee Leader[54] and beginning a series of bitter attacks upon the leadership and policies of the Socialist Party.

[56] Simons became an outspoken advocate of so-called military preparedness, an organized campaign for increased militarization in America sponsored by leading politicians of the day, such as former President Theodore Roosevelt, as well as pressure groups such as the American Defense Society.

On April 6, 1917, one day after President Woodrow Wilson declared war on Germany for its resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in an attempt to maintain the military blockade of its enemies, the Socialist Party of America assembled in St. Louis for an Emergency Convention.

[60] This organization engaged in repressing "unpatriotic" activity during the war, urging boycotts of the German-language press, opposing the teaching of the German language in the schools, coercing citizens into the purchase of government Liberty Bonds, and gathering mobs to shout down socialist and other "disloyal" speakers.

[62] As the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy stood aloof from partisan politics, Simons sought to consort with like-minded fellows in the newly formed Social Democratic League of America, a group which included other former Socialists of a pro-war inclination, such as William English Walling, John Spargo, Upton Sinclair, and Emanuel Haldeman-Julius.

[63] The Social Democratic League conceived of the idea of sending an official American labor delegation to Europe in an attempt to rekindle the lagging support of war-weary European socialists for the effort against Germany.