Organize! Oh, toilers, come organize your might;
Then we’ll sing one song of the workers’ commonwealth,
Full of beauty, full of love and health.
-Joe Hill
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday November 23, 1916
Minneapolis, Minnesota – New Mayor Is a Socialist Union Organizer
From the American Socialist of November 18, 1916:
For the first time in the history of the nation a Socialist congressman has been re-elected. Meyer London has been sent back to Washington for two years more by the twelfth New York district to speak for labor in the national capitol.
For the second time a Socialist has been elected mayor of a large city against the combined opposition of all the old parties. Thomas H. Van Lear has been chosen chief executive of Minneapolis, Minn., the metropolis of the northwest.
These are two big victories won at last Tuesday’s election in the face of all the handicaps imposed by a presidential contest, in which every possible effort was exerted to center attention on one or the other of the old political parties.
The total vote in the twelfth New York district gives London, Socialist, 6,102; Sanders, democratic, 5,759, and Block, republican, 970. London’s plurality is 343.
With the returns from six precincts still missing the vote in the Minneapolis mayoralty contest was as follows: Van Lear, Socialist, 34,369; Otto S. Langum, anti-Socialist, 29,807; Van Lear’s majority, 4,562…
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Victory of Masses Over Big
Business InterestsBy MORRIS BACKALL.
THOMAS H. Van Lear, the Socialist Mayor of Minneapolis, is 47 years old. He was born in Maryland of a poor family. At nine years of age he was compelled to go to work in the coal mines. He is a machinist by trade. He is an organizer of the International Machinists’ Union for the district extending from St. Paul to the Pacific Coast. He has been a delegate to the American Federation of Labor for the last ten years. He is a delegate to this year’s convention of the American Federation of Labor which met this week in Baltimore. He has been a member of the Socialist Party since 1900.
He is a very able speaker, has a strong personality, is a man with back-bone! He impressed his opponents from the start of the campaign. The Socialist Party of Minneapolis nominated him as candidate for Mayor six years ago, when he was defeated in a three-cornered contest by only a few hundred votes.
Big Business Alarmed.
The corporations of Minneapolis became alarmed at this show of Socialist strength and passed a nonpartisan law for the city. Four years ago Van Lear was nominated again as Socialist candidate for Mayor, and only after a strong anti-Socialist campaign, filled with mis-statements and unscrupulous methods by the opposition, was he defeated by only a very few votes. This year he was again nominated, but he had on his side 90 per cent of the 20,000 members of the labor unions of Minneapolis. The unions organized the campaign conference and helped out with money, literature, and mass meetings. They even issued a weekly bulletin called the “Campaign News”.
The corporations, on the other side, put out a nominee, Sheriff Langum, who could not appear before the campaign meetings because he didn’t know what to say. His speeches were prepared by the capitalist press. The big business interests conducted their campaign with a quarter of a million dollars and had all the capitalist newspapers on their side. They announced their willingness to pay $10,000 for the support of the labor unions.
Fought For Labor.
Van Lear had on his side all the unprejudiced elements and the organized labor people. He gained his popularity in taking part in the fights and battles of the labor organizations in Minneapolis; he helped with advice, and in other ways, the teamsters, the carpenters, the tailors and other labor organizations of the town.
After he was elected, he gave out a statement that the victory belongs to the common people and the unprejudiced citizens of the town, and he expressed his hope that the voters who cast their votes against him for Langum will combine together with the thousands of his friends and help him make a better city, and to give Minneapolis a government, the best it has ever had. He declared the contest was between the corporations, the street railway company, that wanted to grab a new franchise six and one-half years before the old one expires, on the one side, and the organized trade unionists and Socialists, on the other.
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SOURCE & IMAGES
American Socialist
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Nov 18, 1916
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/american-socialist/v3n19-nov-18-1916-TAS.pdf
See also:
Thomas Van Lear
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Van_Lear
Meyer London
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meyer_London
The Machinists’ Monthly Journal of January 1917
“Official Organ of the International Association of Machinists”
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=9vHNAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA65
Report of Delegates of I. A. of M. to the Metal Trades Department, the American Federation of Labor and the Building Trades Department:
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=9vHNAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA71
…Brother Van Lear was unable to be present at the opening of this convention on account of the very strenuous campaign he had been through for Mayor of Minneapolis, and Brother Hannon, of the General Executive Board, was appointed in his place. We wish to say that Brother Van Lear’s remaining away was amply justified by the fact that he is the next Mayor of Minneapolis, and we are sure that we express the sentiment of the entire membership of the I. A. of M. in wishing him every success in his new position…
[Photograph added.]
IAM Emblem, from Machinists Monthly, Dec 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=9vHNAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA3