wanted to keep physically, mentally and morally fit. A touch
of tuberculosis which he had cured by shipping as a sailor
for several years, a bad heart which was eventually to
in-
caparitate him, obliged him to be especially careful.
Within the Party~ Foster had an engaging modesty; in
contact with the enemy-class there emerged a powerful pride
in which his person and his class were identical. Once the
Newark police broke up a street meeting at which he spoke.
The
Civil
Liberties Union~f
which
Foster was then a
leading member-
protested and was told that if Foster
would appear
in
person before the
city
commission and ask
for a permit he would be allowed to speak. Foster took me
with him to Newark. We were ushered into a large, smoke-
filled room
in
the
city
hall,
with
a heavy oak table
in
the
center, wooden arm-chairs,
and a red plush carpet studded
with spittoons. The five
commissioners
sat around the table
sullenly. They were either too fat or too
thin;
their faces
were sallow and smirking, the typical faces of petty machine
politicians. One of the
commissioners,
a tall, gray-haired man
with
tortoise-shell glasses, politely asked us to sit down. Then,
very politely, he asked Foster when he wanted to speak,
under whose auspices, on what street-corner,
on what sub-
ject, what literature was going to be distributed.
Foster
. answered gravely, quietly, respectfully.
His views
were well-
known, he would say what he had said at hundreds of meet-
ings throughout the country, he would
distribute
the litera-
ture which the Newark police had illegally confiscated at his
last meeting. Would Foster guarantee there would be no
disturbances?
"Any disturbance I".'e ever seen at a workers'
meeting,"
Foster
said,
"was created by the police or the American
Legion."
This polite conversation went on for over an hour. Sud-
denly one of the silent commissioners,
a fat, pudgy little
object, yelled: "We're wasting time 1We know what you're
here for, Mr. Foster. You're here to make revolutions! We
won't let you do it, understand? You can't speak' in Newark."
. "I am here," Foster
said,
"to exercise my right as an
American citizen to discuss publicly economic and political
questions. You said
if
I applied
in
person for a permit you
would grant
it.
I am applying for it now."
The commissioners laughed. "You can't talk in Newark,"
the grey-haired man with the glasses said. "Not while we
run
this
town.
This
conference
is
over." The
commissioners
stood up.
Foster's face turned white, then very red. He turned to
me and
said in
a strained voice: "Let's go."
"No hard feelings, Mr. Foster," one of the commissioners
said.
Foster did not answer. We wallced out of city hall and
for several blocks neither of us spoke. Then Foster broke
out: "Goddam their dirty hides 1 They can't even keep a
promise. I am the physical, mental and moral superior of
any man
in
that room; I could wipe Newark
with
all five
of them at once; and I've got to crawl 'on my hands and
knees before them to beg for permission to speak. A permit
to which I'm entitled-which
they promised
I"
Then he
quieted down and
said
gravely: "It wasn't meant for me. The
working class has no rights under capitalism."
PARTISAN
REVIEW AND ANVIL
Later, when the Party took over the
Liberator,
I shared
a back room at headquarters with
Louis
Engdahl, one of
the five socialists
indicted
in Chicago during the war, now
editor
of the
W ukly rPorker,
official communist organ.
Engdahl was a tall, red faced middle-westerner with greying
hair
carefully brushed back and heavy glasses. He spoke
in
a
flat monotone and seldom laughed. In conversation, oratory
and articles he was a ma~ter of
cliche;
but he worked
with
the energy and endurance of ten men. No matter how early
in
the morning you came, or how late at night you left,
Engdahl was busy at
his
desk. He did not leave it even for
lunch, but nibbled at a dry sandwich 'or a piece of chocolate
while typing or editing copy. He made up for lack of
originality by a boundless loyalty to the cause
in
which his
whole being was wrapped up. I worked by his s;de day after
day for
six
months, and saw him frequently
in
subsequent,
years until
his
untimely death, and we were friends; yet
it
was a rare occasion when he referred to the little he had
of private life. Everything revolved for him around the
movement. If we went for a soda, he would ask the clerk
about conditions
in
the drug-stores; after a movie, he wouid
lecture you about the importance of the film, how
it
concealed
real conditions and bamboozled the masses. His ~reatest
passion, however, was the revolutionary press; to this he gave
the best of his enormous energy and loyalty; and as
time
went on I could not help comparing the permanent results
of
his
devoted plodding with the ephemeral flashes of more
brilliant but less disciplined journalists on the fringe.., of
the movement.
Now and then I had conferences with the Party secretary,
C. E. Ruthenberg,
a blond, blue-eyed Nordic of German
stock, native of Cleveland, son of a longshoreman,
account-
ant by profession. He had given up that profession long ago
when he became an organizer for the
Socialist
Party in his
twenty-sixth year. We had heard of him for years as a
leader of the revolutionary wing of the socialist movement .
When the United States entered the War
in
1917, he was
among the most vigorous champions of the St. Louis resolu-
tion. His active propaganda against the war resulted in ar-
rest; he was sentenced to a year
in
prison. Released on bail
while
his
appeal was pending, he ran on the
Socialist
ticket
for mayor of Cleveland,
basing his campaign on uncQm-
promising opposition to the war. Despite military
mobiliza-
tion, war hysteria, official terror and White House dema-
gogy, Ruthernberg received more than one-fourth of the
votes cast in the election. Shortly afterwards,
his appeal was
turned down by the higher courts and he was imprisoned in
Canton for ten months. By the time he was released the
War 'was over. Resuming
his
activities in the
Socialist
Party,
he organized and led the May Day demonstration in 1919,
in which forty thousand Cleveland worlcers participated,
in-
cluding fifty A. F. of L. unions. Cleveland police and Ohio
state troops attacked 'the demonstration with fire arms and
tanks. In the street fighting which followed two policemen
were killed. The police retaliated next day by wrecking the
Socialist Party headquarters.
This demonstration led to an
increase of the party membership and of Ruthenberg's re-
putation as a clear-headed, courageous leader.
23
