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Student Activism in the 1930s
Stanford University Why I am a Socialist--An Historical and Psychological Analysis I am attending the L.I.D. Summer School primarily because I am a Socialist, and because I hope to work in the movement, But why am I a Socialist? On both sides my ancestry is thoroughly American. One great Grandfather on my father's side was born in Ireland, but the rest as far back as they can be traced were born in United States, and my family tradition traces the family back not only to the Mayflower, but indeed to Pocahontas herself. On my father's side for several generations back, the family was engaged in farming and fruit raising in southern Michigan, with only one rebel to be noted--a traveling Quaker preacher who started the abolition movement in the Quaker church. On my Mother's side several successive grandfathers have been lawyers and have been more or less connected with Republican politics--latterly in Buffalo. My mother did not graduate from high school because of poor health, and my father only had two years of college. Both were probably somewhat above average in intelligence as shown by the fact that they had some success in writing short stories. My father and mother were married in Buffalo, and migrated immediately to Bisbee, Arizona, where my father worked in the Copper mines, and where I was born in 1911. Shortly after that event the family moved to San Diego County, California, where the next sixteen years were spent, the first dozen of them in the mountains and the last four in La Jolla, a suburb of San Diego, where the high school was more satisfactory. During most of this time my father was employed in the government service, connected either with the Customs or Immigration Service. Within this period the family was increased with the arrival of one more boy and two girls. Most of my childhood was spent on a small ranch, just two miles from the Mexican border, where we raised goats and bees and referred to ourselves as living in a land flowing with milk and honey, though as a matter of fact the country is rocky, dry, and almost desolate. Living as we did a mile from the nearest neighbor, and not attending public school until half way through the grammar grades, we children learned to be somewhat self-sufficient, and to measure ourselves by our own standards rather than by those of any outside group. After moving to La Jolla the situation was somewhat different. I was by that time in High School, and very soon came under the influence of one of the teachers, who also taught the Sunday School class I attended in the Presbyterian Church, and was advisor to the HIY, the leading boys organization in the High School. His influence was particularly in the direction of independent thought, and action on the basis of individual conviction. Needless to say, in this time I became very religious, but always tried to translate my religion into terms of personal action. In addition it must be confessed that I was quite personally ambitious and more or less regarded myself as a saviour of humanity. I planned to study law, and to go into politics in order to become a great political leader, to lead the way to the establishment of a perfect society, which was at most a very nebulous conception in my mind. The only social interest that appeared during this time, in addition to those connected with personal morality, was in world peace. In the summer of 1928 I went to work as a laborer, and on my first job had to join the union, though I hated it because of some unfortunate experiences of my father, and because in all those high school years I had never heard anything intelligent about unions. In the fall I went to Stanford as a very green freshman. There I joined the YMCA as a natural continuance of my previous interests. In addition to proving such a continuance, the group ultimately proved to be a serious-minded group of campus radicals, but in 1928 at Stanford everyone except these few dizzy dreamers were ardently for Hoover, and I was quite untouched by their strange advocacy of some unknown person named Thomas. My parents (and I) had been for Hoover in 1920 and this was no time to question. Besides that Hoover was going to build that kind of society which in a very nebulous form, I felt I desired--one in which poverty would be abolished, and in which war would be out of the question. Just what happened in the succeeding years I can't say in detail. At first I was registered in the ROTC; but after attending the Asilomar Y conference where Sherwood Eddy was the principle speaker, I became a pacifist during my first year at Stanford. During that same year I can well remember arguing with all the old familiar arguments against the Socialism of a friend of mine, whom I now recognize as a weak liberal. By degrees I rapidly came to accept the religious socialism of my friends and of Sherwood Eddy, and Kirby Page. I didn't join the Socialist Party because I had never heard of it as such, and when I did hear of it I had joined the LIPA instead and was against the Party, because I thought it could get no where until it changed its name. When I was a freshman our group organized a discussion club called the Walrus Club, and many wished to affiliate with the LID, but I was one of the ardent opponents to joining with the reds, though not especially antipathetic to them. It was not until after I had graduated from college and gone to live at home for six months-then in Mill Valley, near San Francisco, that I joined and tried to organize a group of the LIPA. After six months out I returned to graduate work at Stanford in March 1932. Then I discovered a Socialist Local in Palo Alto, joined it, and in the summer organized a Thomas-for-President Club on the campus. Very rapidly the Party became my chief interest, and came to take up more and more of my time. Finishing my graduate year in December, 1932, I was eligible to teach in California, but found the field apparently hopelessly over-crowded. For the next three months, I just continued to live at home, and to work in the Party, and with the campus radicals, with whom I organized a Conference Against War of which I was chairman, and to which came delegates from all the Bay district colleges. A principal issue in the conference was that of possible violence in the class struggle, and because I would not take a position of absolute pacifism, I was regarded as a Communist by many of my friends. Later in the spring I suddenly got the opportunity to come to Washington as a delegate to the Continental Congress, and managed to spend the summer bumming around the East from one relative or friend of the family. The trip was not of particular value to me, because I was seriously sick most of the time. Returning, to California in the Fall, and still finding nothing in the way of a job, I worked for a time in one of the unemployed self-help groups, and I of course continued to work with the Party and the L.I.D. and to study Socialism. During all this time I gradually came more and more to the conclusion that I really didn't want to teach in a capitalist school, but that what I really wanted to do was to put all my energies into working for the revolution. The Party situation was quite discouraging, and at times I felt myself driven toward the Communist position. At this time within the Party in California there developed a so-called "rank and file committee", largely under the leadership of friends of mine-indeed the same friends who had previously accused me of being a communist because of my not being an absolute pacifist. I was quite sympathetic to this group, but never joined because of certain attitudes it held, and because of what seemed to me an unreasonable stress on the United Front issue. However, within the Party I vigorously defended the group as being sincere left-wing Socialists, and when afterward, it developed that they had been for some time members of the C.P., I rather naturally reacted bitterly against them and against the C.P. After about two months spent in San Diego, where the Party was particularly weak, I felt so desperately that I wanted to do something in the movement, and that without direction I could do nothing where I was, that I was very nearly decided to hitch hike to the National Office, and ask if I could not be put to work somewhere. At that very moment I began to get suggestions that I should do organizing work for the Party in various parts of the state. I received a total of four tentative offers, and one ultimately developed into my being made County Organizer for Los Angeles County S.P. This job I started in the middle of March, 1934 and lasted until the middle of June. It was a terribly discouraging experience, and the Party was suffering from two years of bitter factional fighting, from the recent communist disruption, and from the fact that the Sinclair campaign was just rising; and because I had not had the slightest experience or training in organization work. The Party in Los Angeles was in confusion, no one could give me direction, and I was by no means qualified to bring any order out of the chaos that existed. The result was that I did the Party no good, and the only gain was that I learned something of my lack in knowledge and experience needed for Party work. I returned to northern California, directed the physical details of the Socialist Summer school held at La Honda, tried to do some organizing work in Oakland, but found it quite hopeless due to the Sinclair campaign. In the Fall I got a job as an assistant in the Political Science Department at Stanford, and decided to work for my Master's degree, but though I stayed there two quarters, teaching a section in State Government the second quarter, I put too much time on the radical movement to make any substantial headway toward a degree. In March I got a job as a Case Aide for the State Emergency Relief Administration in San Jose, where I worked for three months. The work was quite unsatisfactory for a radical, and the prospect of teaching did not appeal very greatly, especially as jobs were so hard to get, and a close friend had just lost his, merely for serving as secretary of the Socialist local. I realized clearly that what I wanted to do was to work in the movement, and preferably for the Party; but I determined that I would not try to do so again until I had gained some training and experience. Since the L.I.P. Summer School was the only place I could find where I could get such training, I applied here. During all the time that I have been in the Party I have put as much time as possible into study of Socialist principles and the Socialist movement, and the result has been that within the Party I have steadily moved toward the left, and though I am identified with no particular group, I have my[?] myself been working on a vanguard theory, and have introduced resolutions looking in that direction in the last two state conventions of the Party in California, and have been trying to work out an application of the theory within my own local--both I must admit, without much success. I am Chairman of Local Palo Alto, and am first alternate member of the State Executive Committee from Northern California, being defeated for membership on the SEC, because of too strong a left position in the convention. Also I was first alternate delegate from California to the National Convention in 1934. I am here at the summer school in hopes of being able to fit myself to do effective work for the Party. My attitudes on questions of Socialist theory, though in the process of clarification are not solidified, and I hope that in whatever bad habits or mistaken attitudes I have I am sufficiently flexible that these may be so corrected that I may be of use to the movement. I think that I have got over the idea that I, an intellectual, can show the workers the way out. I only hope that as a worker I can participate in a fight to a Socialist victory. My experience in Los Angeles has done a great deal to cure me of my desire to be a "Big Shot", and I would much rather be a follower, working under the complete direction of someone in whom I had real confidence; but in California at least that is an impossibility, so I am here, hoping to gain enough in knowledge and experience to retain sufficient self-confidence and active initiative to be able to go back to work effectively in California. Home | Historical Essay | Documents | Credits |
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