Morris Hillquit (August 1, 1869 – October 8, 1933) was a founder and leader of the Socialist Party of America and prominent labor lawyer in New York City's Lower East Side.

[2] At age 15, in 1884, Moishe's father, Benjamin Hillkowitz, lost his factory in Riga and decided to leave for America to improve the family's financial situation.

[6] In his posthumously-published memoirs, Hillquit recalled that cuff-making was "the simplest part and required least skill and training," involving the simple stitching of square pieces of cut cloth.

[8] Within a year or so of joining the SLP, biographer Pratt notes, Moishe became one of the party's leading crusaders against anarchism, publishing a lengthy article "Sotzializm un anarchizm" in the Arbeter Zeitung [Workers' News], a Yiddish newspaper that he helped to establish.

[12] Hillquit led the departure of a dissident faction from Daniel De Leon's Socialist Labor Party in 1899 and was a delegate to the group's convention at Rochester, New York in 1900.

In August 1901 the two groups managed to bury their differences and come together to form the Socialist Party of America (SPA) at a convention in Indianapolis, which Hillquit also attended.

Hillquit was a pioneer historian of the American radical movement, publishing a broad scholarly survey in 1903 entitled History of Socialism in the United States.

The book would be issued in five English-language editions during Hillquit's lifetime and would be translated into a number of the primary languages of the American socialist movement, including German, Russian, Yiddish, Finnish, and Polish.

[13] In 1904, Hillquit attended the International Socialist Congress at Amsterdam and was involved with the proposed Anti-Immigration Resolution, which opposed any legislation that forbade or hindered the immigration of foreign workingmen, some forced by misery to migrate.

[17] His biographer declares: His leadership fanned the fires of Party disagreement and although [Hillquit] was not alone in causing the break in 1913 with an important segment of its left wing, he certainly made a major contribution towards this unfortunate rupture.

[18] In 1911, IWW leader William "Big Bill" Haywood was elected to the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party, on which Hillquit also served.

"[20] The issue of "syndicalism vs. socialism" was bitterly fought over the next two years, consummated by "Big Bill" Haywood's recall from the SP's NEC and the departure of a broad section of the left wing from the organization.

As a staunch internationalist and antimilitarist, Hillquit represented the ideological center of the Socialist Party during the years of World War I, which controlled the organization in coalition with the more pragmatist right wing exemplified by such locally oriented leaders, politicians, and journalists as Victor Berger, Daniel Hoan, John Spargo, and Charles Edward Russell.

[21] Despite official repression, popular patriotic pressure and vigilante action against the SP of A's organization, members and press, Hillquit never wavered on the issue of intervention, staunchly backing Debs, Berger, Kate Richards O'Hare and other socialists charged under the Espionage Act for opposing the war effort.

Hillquit later recalled that Wilson was at first "inclined to give us a short and perfunctory hearing" but as the Socialists made their case to him, the session "developed into a serious and confidential conversation."

"[22] Beginning in June 1917, Hillquit served as chief defense lawyer in a series of high-profile cases on behalf of various socialist magazines and newspapers.

Hillquit argued cases on behalf of a number of important radical publications, including Max Eastman's radical artistic and literary magazine, The Masses; the two socialist dailies — the New York Call and the Milwaukee Leader; the SP's official weekly, The American Socialist; the popular monthly Pearson's Magazine; and the Yiddish language The Jewish Daily Forward.

In 1920 Hillquit served as the lead attorney in the unsuccessful defense of the five democratically elected Socialist assemblymen expelled from the New York State Assembly.

That proved to be Hillquit's final electoral run; during his life, he had been twice a candidate for mayor of New York City and on five times a nominee for the United States Congress.