History of The Socialist Movement in The United States - Political Oppression

Political Oppression

Aside from the military, the Socialists would meet harsh political opposition as well when exercising their First Amendment right. On April 7, 1917, the day after the United States entered World War I, an emergency convention of the Socialist party was held in St. Louis. They declared the war “a crime against the people of the United States" and began holding anti-war rallies. Socialist anti-draft demonstrations drew as many as 20,000.

In June 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Espionage Act, which included a clause providing prison sentences for up to twenty years for “Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty… or willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment of service of the United States”. The Socialists, with their talk of draft dodging and war-opposition, found themselves the target of persecution. Scores were convicted of treason and jailed.

After visiting three Socialists imprisoned in Canton, Ohio, Eugene V. Debs crossed the street and made a two-hour speech to a crowd in which he condemned the war. "Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder… The master class has always declared the war and the subject class has always fought the battles," Debs told the crowd.

He was immediately arrested and soon convicted under the Espionage Act. During his trial, he did not take the stand, nor call a witness in his defense. However, before the trial began, and after his sentencing, he made speeches to the jury: "I have been accused of obstructing the war. I admit it. Gentlemen, I abhor war… I have sympathy with the suffering, struggling people everywhere…" He also uttered what would become his most famous words: "While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison, stripped of his citizenship, and disenfranchised for life.

During the war, the Socialists were wracked by assaults on their right to free speech. "The patriotic fervor of war invoked. The courts and jails used to reinforce the idea that certain ideas, certain kinds of resistance, could not be tolerated".

The government crackdown on dissenting radicalism paralleled public outrage towards opponents of the war. Several groups were formed on the local and national levels to silence dissent. The American Vigilante Patrol, a subdivision of the American Defense Society, was formed with the purpose “to put an end to seditious street oratory". The United States Department of Justice sponsored an organization known as the American Protective League, which kept track of cases of “disloyalty.” It eventually claimed it had found 3,000,000 such cases. "Even if these figures are exaggerated, the very size and scope of the League gives a clue to the amount of ‘disloyalty'."

The press was also instrumental in spreading feelings of hatred against dissenters: