A hundred years ago Democrats and Republicans were united in their hatred for socialism. Unlike today, however, socialism was not simply a mythical bogeyman. There was a real Socialist Party. It was growing and it was a threat to the two major parties. This was true on a national level where presidential candidate Eugene V. Debswas barnstorming the country in his own “Red Special” train and it was true on a local level where Socialists came to power in a number of American cities.
Within five years, the party had been destroyed, its leaders jailed or exiled, and the United States had embarked on its long adventure of international militarism. And although the destruction of the Socialist Party was clearly a bipartisan mission, it was the Democratic Wilson administration which used the Espionage Act of 1917 and the 1919 Palmer Raids to suppress every kind of radical dissenter.
It was with this history I mind that I recently visited Schenectady, New York, where the charismatic socialist George Lunn dominated city politics for a decade before eventually cutting his losses and becoming a Democrat.
This small industrial city is best known as the home of General Electric. Although the headquarters is no longer here, manufacturing does continue, although nothing like what it was a century ago.
In 1910 24,000 people worked for GE or the American Locomotive Company, and 55% of the city’s 73,000 residents were foreign-born. Rapid growth had led to housing shortages, poor and overcrowded schools, a faltering sewer system, bad roadways – all aggravated by graft and no-bid contracts presided over by a bipartisan series of crooked city officials.
Lunn had arrived in 1904 as minister of the Dutch Reformed Church and was soon hammering away from the pulpit at corrupt politicians and he did not hesitate to name names. Soon enough, his congregation asked him to move on. He responded by founding his own Peoples Church and carrying on the fight. In 1910 he founded a weekly paper, The Citizen, and joined the local Socialist Party.
The Schenectady Socialists had been led by Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a German-born engineer for GE whose genius at developing new patents for the company earned him the right to indulge in radical politics. Steinmetz developed key theories for the improvement of electrical motors and attracted great attention by his experiments in the production of man-made lightning. A hunchback and dwarf, he had adopted the middle name Proteus after a dwarf in the Odyssey.
Steinmetz and friends
A socialist from his youth who had fled Germany because of his politics, Steinmetz was a fascinating individual but not the kind to make a good candidate for mayor. Lunn, however, was slender and handsome, an eloquent speaker and a veteran of the Spanish-American War. The engineer was overjoyed to have the 38 year old minister carry the party’s standard in the 1911 municipal elections.
Lunn’s oratory was said to be remarkable and he swept into office with a full slate of aldermen. He moved quickly to reform the city, raising the pay for municipal workers, appointing Steinmtez to head the School Board and introducing the novelty of accepting bids for city contracts. He reassessed property, raising the business district’s taxes by $2 million and cutting taxes on workers homes by $300,000. He started free trash collection, free dental care and bought tracts of lands to create the city’s still-existing parks. For his part, Steinmetz built new schools, hired school doctors and nurses and launched programs for deaf, developmentally delayed and tubercular children.
Lunn and his comrades did spread themselves a little thin, it appears. For much of the Fall of 1912, the party was deeply involved in supporting the textile workers of nearby Little Falls. Lunn and other party members were repeatedly arrested in a free speech battle that sounds much like the Occupy struggles of our own time. (Fair disclosure: The Little Falls strike is the main focus of my own research and the subject of my recent book)
Schenectady's Central Park is one of Lunn's lasting achievements
Some projects faltered, such as plans to sell coal and ice at cost to city residents and to run a municipal grocery store. His secretary Walter Lippmannquit, claiming Lunn was not radical enough to be a real socialist. In 1913 the Republicans and Democrats joined with the Progressives to form a Fusion ticket hat defeated Lunn, but in 1915 he was re-elected against all three establishment parties.
A study of Schenectady newspapers from that era, including the party’s own Citizen, reveals the usual shortcoming of Leftist parties: internal doctrinal wrangling turned personal and purists began to attack the pragmatists. Lunn was kicked out of the party!
Fed up, the mayor became a Democrat and was elected to Congress just in time to become an ardent supporter of Mr. Wilson’s war. His two Congressional speeches which I read foreshadow the same arguments that are still used to justify each of America’s new wars.
While Eugene Debs and other national party leaders went to jail for speaking against the war, Lunn grew close to the more liberal wing of New York’s Democratic party. Defeated for Congress in 1918, he was elected to two more terms as Schenectady’s mayor in 1919 and 1921. In 1922 was elected Lieutenant Governor. In 1925 Governor Al Smith appointed him to the state’s Public Service Commission where he served until his retirement in 1942.
Lunn’s is a fascinating American story, echoing themes that are still very contemporary. He was a Christian minister obsessed with politics, but unlike many preachers then and now who serve as shills for the rich, he was influenced by the Social Gospelpromoted by Walter Rauschenbusch and other progressive Christian thinkers.
His pragmatism is also very much in the American tradition and it was not surprising that his more doctrinaire followers broke with Lunn. He preferred to quote Lincoln and the Constitution rather than Marx and he shifted from Republican to Socialist to Democrat over the years. He was a nationalist, fought against Spain in 1898, and believed that U.S. national honor required entry into World War I. His long commitment to the state’s Public Service Commission was useful but distinctly unglamorous work.
Like most politicians, Lunn could be accused of selling out or looking out for his own interests. But I don't think such charges would be fair. As far I can judge, he never sacrificed his own principles. In contrast to city administrations before and since, there is not the slightest taint of scandal surrounding his name. More radical socialists might call him a fraud but it is important to note that he only joined the party to run for office and only left it when he was thrown out. The Schenectady Socialist Party evaporated when he was no longer at its helm but as a Democratic mayor he carried on much the same policies as under the Socialist label.
Given this record, it is no surprise that George Lunn never became the figure of legend and inspiration that was the fate of so many radicals of his generation: Emma Goldman, Big Bill Haywood, Joe Hill, Eugene V. Debs. But fame was never on Lunn's agenda, despite his considerable personal magnetism. He believed in government and wanted to make it work for people and my own view is that he did more to improve the lives of working people than those who never made the compromises necessary to attain political power.
A more detailed version of this diary can be found at my blog, Upstate Earth.