The Glowing Dream: A history of Socialist America

Math is Math and the socialist caulcution problem is solid.
Again, I have an issue with this ridiculously over-simplistic view of socioeconomics. As someone has already pointed out, many economies in the past were command economies, and many of the societies that had these economies were quite prosperous. You can't just cry "socialist calculation problem!" and expect reality to follow suit.
 
Again, I have an issue with this ridiculously over-simplistic view of socioeconomics. As someone has already pointed out, many economies in the past were command economies, and many of the societies that had these economies were quite prosperous. You can't just cry "socialist calculation problem!" and expect reality to follow suit.
Every socialist County has failed the Warsaw pack become capitalist Yugoslavia and The Soviets dissolved. China basically capitalist in all but name and is keeping North Korea afloat. Theirs a reason for that it isn't the big bad yanks its the fact you cannot get the info needed for priced without a free-market. And before you say anything no Sweden is not a socialist state. Socialism is not whenever the government does something.
 
Rereading the piece I noticed that the term 'revolutionist' instead of revolutionary is used. Is that a deliberate example of the divergence of descriptions ITTL?

Also to the main content, it is really interesting to see how the SLP is diverging from what I understand about their contemporaries in the Second International amongst the major parties with the primarily revolutionary character of the party under it's veneer of respectability in contrast to the more reformist European counterparts. Has that caused any sort of friction for the SLP in comparison to the rest of the Second International?

I use 'revolutionist' and 'revolutionary' interchangeably in the story. The former was somewhat more common than it is now in the earlier half of the century (at least, that's the impression I get).

Also I intend to do a chapter soon covering the outside word again, including the Second International.

Are you seriously comparing a bronze age economy with a modern industrial one.

If the economic calculation problem is solid than I don't see why economic calculation sans prices should be any more possible in a bronze age economy than an industrial one, since AFAIK Mises meant to demonstrate that socialist economic calculation is impossible in principle not just practically.
 
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I use 'revolutionist' and 'revolutionary' interchangeably in the story. The latter was somewhat more common in the earlier half of the century (at least, that's the impression I get).

Also I intend to do a chapter soon covering the outside word again, including the Second International.



If the economic calculation problem is solid than I don't see why economic calculation sans prices should be any more possible in a bronze age economy than an industrial one, since AFAIK Mises meant to demonstrate that socialist economic calculation is impossible in principle not just practically.

Smaller economy that has much less demand for consumer goods ect ect. It's silly to compare the two modern economics just doesn't work that way. Also please explain why all modern socialist states are shitholes have reformed or collapsed. And no Sweden and Denmark are capitalist welfare is not socialism.
 
It's silly to compare the two modern economics just doesn't work that way
The economic calculation problem states that command economies are impossible in principle to my (admittedly amateur) understanding. It's not a matter of scale, but of function, at least to Mises & co. They believed that any command economy was bound for failure, so showing one existed and prospered historically is at least something of a wrench in the argument that they're infeasible, which is what you lead with.

I don't think anyone is denying the vast chasm of difference between a bronze age and an industrial age economy in terms of scale etc.
 
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Smaller economy that has much less demand for consumer goods ect ect. It's silly to compare the two modern economics just doesn't work that way. Also please explain why all modern socialist states are shitholes have reformed or collapsed. And no Sweden and Denmark are capitalist welfare is not socialism.
Because our history evolved in a way to where socialism become synonymous with authoritarianism. No doubt in part because most all socialist states became or are authoritarian to various different degrees. Nothing is set in stone when it comes to history and the fun of alternate timelines is to portray a different world. A democratic or far less all pervading authoritarian vision of socialism I believe is quite realistic had the right people and factors been at play. Had the American Revolution played out differently and the French Revolution still happen, we' could be having this same discussion but in regards to "republicanism" instead for instance.

The tenants of Vanguardism I believe is what led to the authoritarian tendency of socialism. Like many republics draw their inspiration from America or parliamentary states from Britain, so did socialists from what become of the USSR. For that same reason it is why you see a great deal of disillusionment and giant pushback from leftists/socialists against the USSR even before the Russian Civil War was finalized.
 

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Economic planning is possible, if you have the prices and numbers accounted, following neoclassical economics modelled.

But it is impossible to do so, to model all of this and centralized. So you gotta decentralize and decentralize it for all the regions the firms. It must be voluntary, democratic and self-managed.

But all societies all have to meet a surplus or profit, even in socialist ones, because material self-interests are always gonna exist.

It must make economic sense, and everyone else must be allowed to sell products and crops. Even among people who employ five people, you got self-interest and it follows the rule of workers getting the product of their labour.
 
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Economic planning is possible, if you have the prices and numbers accounted, following neoclassical economics modelled.

But it is impossible to do so, to model all of this and centralized. So you gotta decentralize and decentralize it for all the regions the firms. It must be voluntary, democratic and self-managed.

But all societies all have to meet a surplus or profit, even in socialist ones, because material self-interests are always gonna exist.

It must make economic sense, and everyone else must be allowed to sell products and crops. Even among people who employ five people, you got self-interest and it follows the rule of workers getting the product of their labour.

What you describe is capitalism.
 
The economic calculation problem states that command economies are impossible in principle to my (admittedly amateur) understanding. It's not a matter of scale, but of function, at least to Mises & co. They believed that any command economy was bound for failure, so showing one existed and prospered historically is at least something of a wrench in the argument that they're infeasible, which is what you lead with.

I don't think anyone is denying the vast chasm of difference between a bronze age and an industrial age economy in terms of scale etc.
My opinion is they cannot work for a large industrial and service based economy like 20th century America.
 

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What you describe is capitalism.
There is a book, "Markets in the Name Of Socialism", by Johanna Bockman, there's a long history of market socialism and using the justification of workers getting their full value of their labour, starting from Thomas Hodgskin.

My opinion is they cannot work for a large industrial and service based economy like 20th century America.
It did not stop the 20th century French and the Japanese from using economic planning. Oh yes, they did, using neoclassical economics. And many socialists including Michael Harrington liked and would implement it as socialist alternative.
 
Anyone feel like this timeline's America is a house on the sand (like the Biblical parable). One wave and the entire structure collapses.
 
Anyone feel like this timeline's America is a house on the sand (like the Biblical parable). One wave and the entire structure collapses.
Yep. That's usually how it goes with revolution timelines. Things get gradually worse and the situation more unstable until this boil over.
 
He spoke English well enough, though the accent remained.

A minor aside but there is an alleged anecdote that Lenin spoke English with an Irish accent IOTL, due to hiring an Irish English tutor to help himself be understood when he was in London. The claims for this are dated to around 1920 so it's possible that it either hasn't happened yet or been butterflied away ITTL. Alternatively, ITTL he might seek out the services of a tutor in New Orleans which could lead to some interesting results.
 
A minor aside but there is an alleged anecdote that Lenin spoke English with an Irish accent IOTL, due to hiring an Irish English tutor to help himself be understood when he was in London. The claims for this are dated to around 1920 so it's possible that it either hasn't happened yet or been butterflied away ITTL. Alternatively, ITTL he might seek out the services of a tutor in New Orleans which could lead to some interesting results.
Lenin with a Cajun accent would be HILARIOUS.
 
Campaign Season, 1904
Conceived in Liberty: The Life and Death of the American Republic, 1776 to 1919 by Richard White (Excerpt)
(© 1995, Melbourne University Press)

Privately, McKinley thanked God that his second term was finished. He only hoped his health had not been so wrecked that he mightn’t live a few extra years in peace once he left the Executive Mansion.

What was far from clear was who the Republican Party would run in his stead.

1904 was to be an election like no other. Unemployment now hovered at 28%, far worse than it had ever been during the darkest days of the ’93 crisis. It seemed every day carried news of some new assassination, or bombing, or gunfight.

Darrow and Frick had swept congress in ’02. It seemed now to be truly possible, even likely, one of them would similarly march into Washington come November. The panic was palpable.

“We are done! It is finished!” cried Rep. Henry Teller (R-CO) in congress, at the news that martial law had been declared again in Florida. “The Republic has only to die.” He apologized for his outburst, but retracted nothing he’d said. That was 10 October 1903.

Debates in congress were increasingly stormy and seemed to consist ever more of the Socialists and Nationalists shouting at each other across the chamber.

In the House, Socialist representative Ed Wetzel (S-FL) stood up and announced that the PRA was “an impotent sham,” and that it “mocked the people’s suffering.” He prophesied, “the worker will only have rest when the red flag is flying everywhere.”

Congressman George Malby (N-NY) sprang up and shouted, “we’ll have that filthy rag ripped down!”

“It will float over your grave!” Wetzel retorted.

The argument deteriorated, and the two men sprang at each other. The Sergeant-At-Arms pulled them apart, but not before they had managed to bloody one another’s faces.

At the next session, Wetzel arrived with a revolver on his hip. He made a point of ostentatiously lifting his jacket to flash the weapon to his fellows. Malby and the other Nationalists (and not a few others) were enraged. Soon enough, a number of Nationalist representatives were also wearing holstered revolvers to congress.

On 8 September 1903, a motion was passed 267-124 prohibiting the carriage of firearms into the Capitol. Soon, the Sergeant-at-Arms was demanding congressmen unholster and hand over their weapons before entering the chamber. They could be collected on the way out.

Thus, the situation in the vaunted halls of American government mirrored that in the streets.

Amid the chaos, one man had decided on his course of action. That was Theodore Roosevelt. He would seek the GOP’s nomination for himself, and he intended on getting it. His popularity with the general public was high. Among those who resented the power of the trusts, Roosevelt had garnered a reputation as McKinley’s ‘good advisor’, always trying to pull him away from business and towards the people. Of course, that was an exaggeration, but it stuck.

But Roosevelt had many enemies within the Republican Party. Perhaps more enemies than friends.

Mark Hanna, the party’s invincible boss, was ever hostile. He had no intention of handing the GOP over to “that cowboy.” On Hanna’s side were Attorney General Philander Knox and House Speaker Joseph Cannon, among others. They were determined a ‘sound, sensible,’ man be nominated. Another McKinley.

But Roosevelt was gathering his own allies. He counted among them Secretary of State John Hay, Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and Secretary of War Elihu Root. These men had been sufficiently shaken by the tumult to realize the country needed a change. Another four years of McKinley would do nothing at all to alleviate the situation.

In agreement with this judgment was McKinley himself. Those who knew him said they thought the old politician to have aged twenty years since 1900. He counted his presidency as an abysmal failure and was heard privately to curse the day he ever stood for office. He himself hoped for Roosevelt’s nomination, despite the man’s decidedly un-conservative ideas in many spheres and went so far as to say he saw in Roosevelt ‘what little hope is left to this country.’

As 1903 melted into 1904, the titanic struggle was on.

Roosevelt had one major advantage, and it was this: a large number of ‘conservative’ Republicans, whose primary concern was the maintenance of the country’s economic system as it was, and the suppression of Socialism, had already deserted to Frick’s Nationalists. It was by no means a majority, but it was a substantial minority. This left the party’s conservative wing weakened in comparison with the ‘progressive’ wing that favored Roosevelt.

Then Roosevelt developed a scheme that many, even his allies, viewed as utterly mad.

He was, like most, sincerely worried about the growing popularity of the SLP and the Nationalists. It seemed entirely likely that either Frick or Darrow would take a plurality of the vote in 1904. Roosevelt did not want to chance it. So, he reached out to another man who had risen to national prominence on the back of the ‘common man,’ who had won fame for himself challenging the stolid old entrenched masters of his party: William Jennings Bryan.

In early May of 1904, Roosevelt wrote Bryan a letter, asking to meet with him at his earliest possible convenience. Bryan was curious but suspected some manner of political trap. Nevertheless, after some thought, he met with Roosevelt at the man’s private residence in the Catskills.

Roosevelt’s proposal was bold but simple. He wanted to merge the Republican and Populist tickets and run with Bryan as his VP.

Bryan was stunned. It would have been unimaginable only four years ago. In 1896 it would have seemed a fever dream.

But times were changing fast.

Roosevelt was prepared to make concessions, such as lowering certain tariffs and coining silver again (though he stopped short of acceding to Bryan’s full “16:1” program). But such petty policies faded into irrelevance, now, he said. The Republic itself was in danger. It could not be allowed to tumble into the abyss that awaited on both the left and the right.

“You would lose half your party with me,” Bryan warned him.

“But I would make it up with yours,” Roosevelt countered. “And I fear that half might very well cast their ballots for Frick, regardless.”

Bryan did not reject the proposal outright. The two men shook hands and parted.

When news of the meeting broke, the GOP descended into chaos. It was charged that Roosevelt had lost his mind. RNC chair George Cortelyou, also secretary of commerce and labor, even said that “Roosevelt…must be removed, at all costs.”

A not insubstantial number of Republicans in fact left the party and went over to the Nationalists when they got wind of Roosevelt’s madcap plan.

Hanna wired him in furious desperation, begging, “SIR COME TO YOUR SENSES.”

But there were those, including the old Senator Henry Teller, and Roosevelt’s long-time ally Henry Lodge, who tentatively supported the fusion idea. Lodge was, though friendly to Roosevelt, a conservative. Only a year before, by his own admission, he would have fled in terror from the prospect of a united front with William Bryan of all men. But “the country is menaced by twin specters,” he despaired. “This is an age of monsters. Against monsters, one cannot choose his allies.”

The conservative Republicans were in a tizzy, desperate to win, desperate to stave off the assault from all sides. At last, unable to find a suitable champion, Mark Hanna elected to step into the ring and challenge ‘the cowboy’ himself. Hanna ultimately chose the aging Joseph Cannon—despised by radicals for his introduction of the Red Act years ago—as his running mate. Neither man was in very good health.

The Republican Party’s National Convention gathered at the Chicago Coliseum on 21 June 1904.

Hanna spoke first. He appealed to the party’s history, to the first half of McKinley’s administration and the ‘progress’ it had seen. He begged, again and again, for ‘sensibility.’ “Now,” Hanna said. “Is the time to plant ourselves where we stand and cry ‘reason! Let reason rule!’”

In view of the fact that the Coliseum was surrounded by state militiamen, and that many of the delegates’ cabs and motorcars had been pelted with stones by Socialist youths on the way to the convention, Hanna’s pleas rang hollow.

Then Roosevelt spoke.

He began by making clear his heartfelt regret that the country had ever come to the place at which it was. But it had, and Roosevelt said that they—the Republican Party—bore a not insubstantial share of the blame.

“We have been creatures of the trusts and the cartels for too long. We have starved the workingmen and women of this country—what right do we have to cry ‘betrayal!’ when so starved, they swallow poison?”

There were shouts of “shame, shame!”

There was also much applause.

“Where’s Bryan?” someone jeered, to laughter.

“Bryan is not here,” Roosevelt waved down his accusers, before speaking the immortal words of that convention: “But I believe this country is worth free silver. And Mr. Bryan believes it is worth a Republican president. Do you disagree?”

On the first ballot, Roosevelt picked up 521 delegates. It was a majority, but only just.

The floor dissolved into shouting and hollering as Hanna’s delegates demanded a rather pointless recount. When it became clear there would be no such thing, they did what Frick’s delegates had done four years previously and stormed out.

What was left of the GOP acclaimed their presidential and vice-presidential nominees for the year 1904: Theodore Roosevelt and his running mate, William Bryan.

Their platform was bare and simple enough. The trusts would be broken up, and the LDP outlawed as a criminal association in contravention of the dead-letter Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Likewise, the full force of the law would come down on ‘anarchist deviants.’ Immigration would be curtailed, both to protect the bargaining power of the American working class, and to prevent the infiltration of European radicals into that working class. The PRA would be expanded, though not drastically so. Roosevelt’s promises to Bryan regarding free silver and tariffs remained, for now, off the record.

It was a centrist programme par excellence.

The Conservative Republicans that repudiated Roosevelt soon dissolved. A great many of them, including Hanna’s VP-hopeful, the old veteran Cannon, went over to Frick. He was, as Cannon put it, “tragically, the only force that might prevent our country’s utter dissolution.”

The rump that remained insisted on nominating Hanna, anyhow. Then, on 20 August, Hanna inconveniently died of typhoid fever. The conservative GOP remnant quickly melted away before the coming storm.

They voted for Frick or they voted for Roosevelt. There was no other choice.

The Populist Party had much less trouble accepting the controversial alliance. Its members were largely loyal to Bryan, personally—it was said they would have shouted “hurrah for the Great Commoner” if he ran on a ticket with Satan himself. Furthermore, Bryan’s constituency felt they had precious few options besides.

Once, the plight of the farmer had captivated the nation. Now, it seemed, the humble smallholder was receding into irrelevance before the hordes of unemployed industrial workers and impoverished sharecroppers massed together under the red flag. Those who had lost their land increasingly went over to the Socialists. Those who feared the reds above all else would cast their ballots for Frick.

Left for Bryan was a shrinking core of small farmers who still clung tenaciously to their patches of earth and maintained a fervent, quasi-religious faith that free silver would solve all of their problems. But there was still a million or so of these men, at least. And perhaps they would be enough.

Darrow and Frick were renominated without any fuss.

But this time, Frick’s campaign would be different. With ‘Trust-Buster Roosevelt,’ as he was coming to be called, on the stage, business despaired at the degeneration of its once ever-reliable GOP. They had been glad to stick with McKinley in 1900. But they did not want to stick with Roosevelt, so long as there were options.

And the option, in this case, was Henry Frick.

Frick, still burned that so many of the men he considered natural allies had not supported his first campaign, relished their reversal. Men as grand as Rockefeller and Morgan came to him, offering sundry millions to raise him to the presidency.

The LDP officially endorsed the National Party. Flexing its economic muscle, it was soon estimated that, despite its voters comprising only some 30% of the electorate, nearly 60% of published campaign material in 1904 was that of the Nationalists.

For the first time, America felt the true might of the Cartel whose shadow had long extended over the land. Socialist and Republican-Populist speakers found their venues denied them. Their papers were shut down without warning by orders of municipal governments (usually, the municipal government had received a curt warning a day before from some local office of Standard Oil or New York Central, explaining very politely that the slander put out in The Daily People was not appreciated, and ought to be curtailed at the earliest possible convenience). Socialist rallies were disrupted by young men of the middle class in shirtsleeves, armed with knives or even revolvers. Sometimes they were paid, sometimes they came of their own initiative to crack a ‘red dago’ skull or two. The chairman of an STLA Ironworkers’ local in Richmond was shot point blank in the head a few weeks before the election as he stopped to purchase a newspaper.

On 20 July, Frick held a banquet at his old friend ‘Andy’ Mellon’s home in Pittsburgh. Attending were some of those great names of the day: Rockefeller himself was there. So was Vanderbilt. H.H Rogers, William Clark. They were well aware it was Frick’s little triumph and held their tongues.

Of course, there exist no minutes of the evening. But it seems clear Frick clearly and coldly presented to his fellow capitalists the facts of the matter.

Sarah McKentire, one of Mellon’s maidservants, would decades later recall what she could of the meeting.

Dinner was finished, and everyone was patting his stomach. They were all very fat and happy. But they were actually not so happy, because they all kept looking at Mr. Frick. He did not sit at the head of the table—that was Mr. Mellon—he sat to Mr. Mellon’s left, so he did not really stick out. But he had been very quiet all evening, and left the talking to Mr. Mellon, and also to Mrs. Frick, who was there and who was a great deal friendlier than her husband.

I came to clear away the plates, and finally that was when Mr. Frick got up to speak. All the men—all these men who were so much richer than he was, and who were supposed to be so much more powerful—turned to watch him.

He gave a short speech; I don’t really remember. It was very vague. But then he said, “gentlemen, when I am president, you may rest easy. All of your hard-earned holdings will be safe with me.” The fellows clinked their glasses in merriment and laughed. I recall Mr. Vanderbilt burped. Then Mr. Frick said, “but in that day, you will remember
who the president is.” They stopped the clinking. They were all quiet for a little while. I remember it felt like someone had stolen their voices away. They looked at each other. Some of them even looked embarrassed. Then someone said, “hurrah!” and the clinking started up again.

I guess Mr. Frick was clear enough. He would be their friend, but he wasn’t going to be their front man.


Nevertheless, the Cartel had little choice beside Mr. Frick, now that his two rivals were Roosevelt and Darrow.

Frick did not really need the backing of the LDP—he could certainly fund his own campaign—but he had it anyway and relished having it. If nothing else, he enjoyed watching the great robber barons crawl to him on their hands and knees.

The country’s big cities were awash in Nationalist electoral propaganda. In San Antonio, the wall of a meat packing plant was entirely given over to fifty-foot-high letters spelling “VOTE FRICK!” in stark black and gold paint. In Charleston, men hurled pamphlets from the windows of private vehicles as they careered through the streets.

Party speakers were accompanied by brass bands; audiences were kept safe from Socialist toughs by well-armed CS men, state militia, or local volunteers.

One of Frick’s most popular posters simply bore a reproduction of the man’s face over the words, “GIVE ME A MAJORITY AND I WILL GIVE YOU BACK YOUR COUNTRY.”

The Socialists and the Republican-Populists fought hard with their comparatively meager resources, but they were indeed comparatively meager.

A Delaware printing house putting out posters for Roosevelt found itself inexplicably shuttered and its printers seized. In Pittsburgh, copies of ‘the Way Forward’ were confiscated by the police as ‘obscene’ material.

In early October, Roosevelt arrived in San Francisco to speak to supporters. Traveling down Market Street, he and his entourage were forced to brave a gauntlet of police with their rifles, called out by the city’s recently elected Nationalist mayor. Ostensibly, it was to hunt out the ‘anarchists’ that had recently bombed a newspaper office, but the real motive was clear enough.

Roosevelt in particular was not helpless. He did have his friendly and well-heeled backers. Henry Lodge, for one, and his vast wealth along with his many influential friends. Charles Schwab, who was still somewhat bitter about being undercut by Frick’s US Steel, donated generously to the Republican campaign. The Roosevelt family itself was hardly mired in penury.

But Frick easily outspent him at least 2:1.

The Socialists, of course, trailed far behind in corporate donations. But even they were not entirely destitute. Though popular history has the SLP surviving solely on the humble dues of common workers, the party had its share of wealthy sympathizers. Darrow himself contributed heartily to the SLP’s coffers. Fellow travelers among the intelligentsia and middle classes in New York or Washington pitched in where they could.

And the party had one most unsuspected backer: Andrew Carnegie.

Carnegie was, of course, no Socialist. Nor was he really even a progressive in the Roosevelt mold. He certainly did not wish to see private property done away with in the United States.

But he did hate Henry Frick. And as he saw it, with the collapses of both the Republicans and the Democrats, the SLP had the best chance of keeping his old rival out of the Executive Mansion. He did not expect an outright win for Darrow, either. If he had, he would likely not have given a cent to his campaign. It seems his goal was to force a deadlocked election out of which some nebulous compromise might arise. In private, Carnegie claimed he would “fund the devil himself,” before he would consent to a President Frick.

The great philanthropist’s contributions were meant to be a secret, but they became a public one soon enough.

Soon Carnegie had been granted, by Socialists and everyone else, the new sobriquet, ‘the Bankroller of the Workers’ Revolution.’

Frick was naturally furious and promised to “do in that low-down bastard Andrew” once and for all at the first opportunity.

In fact, there was plenty of ‘doing-in’ during the election season of 1904.

At least 93 killings were officially recorded as directly related to the election in the days leading up to 8 November, and countless more were injured.

In Peoria, a band of armed Socialists opened fired on a Nationalist rally, killing two. In Tallahassee County, Florida, a Socialist schoolteacher was decapitated with a machete coming out of her schoolhouse, a particularly hideous excess among hideous excesses. In the Lower East End, Manhattan, two Jewish Socialists were shot dead by vigilantes, one of whom was caught and beaten to death by some comrades of the slain.

Militia was called out, withdrawn, and called out again. Martial law went into effect in dozens of counties across the country.

McKinley suffered another heart attack on 22 October, which left him able to work only from bed.

Rhetoric and action grew more and more unhinged as the crisis deepened. Flying red flags, jobless men in Cleveland burnt down the steel plant at which many of them had worked, and then engaged in a brawl with the police. When it was reported that ten of them had been beaten to death (technically inaccurate - it was four), The Daily People cried ‘OUR PATIENCE WEARS THIN!’ An SLP election poster showed a mighty, muscled red fist crushing a black serpent sporting Frick’s beard and dollar signs for eyes. A Nationalist orator in New York swore that when Frick won, they would take “every last red sheeny and dago and toss them all back into the sea.” Many took it on themselves to do just that, and the number of attacks based on racial or ethnic hatred shot up. In an especially gruesome incident that outraged even most in sympathy with the Nationalists, a Sicilian mother and her young son were knifed to death in Chicago.

Candidates spoke in the most Manichean of terms.

Should Frick win, Darrow charged to an audience in the Socialist stronghold of Chicago, “you, labor, and all mankind, will be crushed under the iron heel of a despotism as relentless and terrible as any despotism that has blackened the pages of the history of man.”

Frick, of course, said the victory of the Socialists would be “the last plunge into anarchy, murder, godlessness, and all the horrors of hell loose on the world.”

On 8 November, with this feeling in their hearts, the people of the United States went to the polls.
 
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Selections From the Platforms of the Major Parties, 1904
THE NATIONAL PARTY

...We of the National Party realize we are newcomers, and that we ask much when we ask the confidence of you, the American people. But we realize also that these are times unlike which any our Republic has faced, and that such tempestuous times call for such men unlike any which our Republic has wanted in the past…

…The National Party disdains all anarchy and lawlessness. We have no quarrel with the law-abiding champion of labor, and we detest all efforts to establish an identity between the worker and the anarchist. We do insist on the fiercest and most definite punishment for the terror-spreaders, the partisans of the red flag who wish to dissolve property, order, religion, and good government into a welter of primitive chaos. There is no hope in the creed of Socialism, and it must wound every patriot’s heart to watch it take root among the discontented of this land. We demand that all murderers, and the egregious destroyers of property, who commit their deeds in the name of revolutionary ideals be liable to capital punishment…

…We realize the United States have long stood as a beacon of hope to the dispossessed of the earth, who wish only prosperity and peace for themselves and their descendants. As such, we by no means wish to turn our faces from those of foreign lands who seek to live honestly among us. That being so, we recognize also that among these honest men and women come hordes of foreign incendiaries bearing lunatic philosophies and bloodied daggers. These we will not countenance among the body politic. And so while we ask no further restrictions on foreign immigration beyond those now in existence, we demand the term of residence qualifying an alien for naturalization be extended from five to ten years, so that only those who have proven themselves worthy of a stake in our country may fairly involve themselves in its civic life…

…We challenge those who aver that the consolidation of production is an inherent evil. These are not ‘monstrous cartels,’ but rather the natural and beneficial outcome of competition, through which those that have proven themselves in the arena of commerce inevitably come to the fore. As such, those who counsel the division, or worse, the socialization of benign industrial combinations would do great harm to the economic life of the country. We oppose any measures to these ends unreservedly…

…The war in the Philippines must be brought to a swift and immediate end. We must demonstrate we can stand for ourselves and the Filipino people alike. The insurgents must and can be rendered incapable of further depredations…

…This is not a contest between peaceable men over matters of policy. This is, quite simply, a contest between those who mean to save civilization, and those who wish to drag it into perdition. The republic cries out for salvation, and we are the only men disposed to answer.



THE SOCIALIST LABOR PARTY

…Capitalism has outlasted its historic moment and has ceased to be an instrument of progress. It delivers now only hideous poverty and repression to the working people of the earth in general, and of the United States in particular. Productive capacity has grown by leaps and bounds, so that our ancestors would marvel at the wonders we have built. And yet, the fruits of this industry are delivered up to the exclusive enjoyment of an ever-smaller handful of men, while the vast masses sink further and further into immiseration…

…Now, in this last hour of the capitalist system, the master classes have made their bid for total despotism. No longer able to delude the worker with false promises of prosperity and equality, they seek instead to crush him down by force and secure their rule forever more. Parliaments and laws are eroding more every day in favor of bayonets and bullets…

…We demand that the wealth produced by the many be enjoyed by the many. As such, we demand the passage into collective ownership of the great trusts that instead of enriching American life with their fantastic works and machines, have made it hardly worth living. The railroads, the telegraphs and telephones, the oil fields, the mines of gold and coal, must become the possessions of the workers that work them…

…We demand the immediate abolition of the uncivilized practice of child labor, by which boys and girls in the full flower of their youth are driven to waste it away in toil, their only reward mutilation, exhaustion, and an early grave…

…We demand equal suffrage for the female sex on the level with that of the male…

…We demand the institution of proper relief for the jobless workers of this country, irrespective of age, condition, or civic status…

…These are only the opening salvoes of our crusade. We will have in the end our great Commonwealth of Toil, where poverty, tyranny, and hatred are but distant nightmares, and all men are brothers. It is a long and difficult road we shall travel, but it is one that must be traveled. In the end, it is victory or destruction.


THE REPUBLICAN-POPULIST PARTY

…The purpose of government is to safeguard the life, liberty, and property of its people. When it can no longer do this, that government has failed…

…We have been many things—party men, Republicans, Populists, Democrats. But first and foremost, we must be lovers of our country. There was a time when patriotism was general. Yet, today, it seems that affection for our republic and her institutions is quick decaying, to be replaced my narrow-minded hatreds based on section or class…

…The Republican Party was founded fifty years ago to combat the heinous injustice of human slavery. Today we find ourselves faced with two specters at least as menacing. On the one hand, that of total cartelism and absolute tyranny of the few. On the other, that of utter anarchy and absolute tyranny of the mob. Both would destroy the beautiful inheritance bequeathed to us by our fathers, tested and bettered in the crucible of hideous civil war…

…We may be in agreement on little, but that little is worth everything. We men of the Republican and Populist parties agree that ours is the best government ever erected, and that it is the last, best hope of the earth. We believe our republic is a republic worth keeping. We will not turn her over to those who mean to wreck her…

…We demand, first and foremost, the immediate disbandment of the great Cartel that calls itself the ‘League for the Defense of Property’ and the dissolution of its constituent trusts, and the passage of legislation to keep such monstrous commercial combinations from ever forming again…

…the proscription of all parties or leagues that preach violent revolution against the American government, and the prosecution of their members, in accordance with all of the established laws of the United States of America…

…the legal protection of all workers’ unions that seek, through peaceful and legal means, the defense of the collective rights of American labor…

…a national minimum wage for all American workers….

…the immediate halt to all immigration until the present crisis has run its course, and the regulation of future immigration so that the ability of American workmen to earn a living wage is not grievously impacted…

…without regard for prior or current political affiliation, we appeal to all Americans who love our country. We love her, too. Help us to rescue her.
 
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