21 Facts About Charles Ruthenberg

Charles Emil Ruthenberg was an American Marxist politician and a founder and head of the Communist Party USA .

Charles Ruthenberg's parents were ethnic Germans and Lutherans who emigrated from Prussia in 1882.

In later years the elder Charles Ruthenberg went into business for himself with a son-in-law, tending bar at a saloon frequented evenings by those who worked on the docks.

Charles Ruthenberg graduated from the parochial Lutheran school in June 1896.

Charles Ruthenberg went to work in a bookstore, attending Berkey and Dyke's Business College in the evenings for a ten-month course in bookkeeping, accounting, and typing.

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Charles Ruthenberg married Rosaline "Rose" Nickel, of German descent, in June 1904.

Charles Ruthenberg was drawn to more radical politics and in mid-1908 began calling himself a socialist.

Charles Ruthenberg graduated from Columbia Law School in 1909, and joined the Socialist Party of America in the same year.

Charles Ruthenberg was an organizer for and, later, secretary of Local Cuyahoga County from 1909 to 1919.

Charles Ruthenberg contributed material to the official organ of the Socialist Party of Ohio, The Ohio Socialist.

Charles Ruthenberg was elected to the National Committee of the Socialist Party in 1915 but was defeated by Arthur LeSueur at the annual meeting for election to the party's governing National Executive Committee.

Charles Ruthenberg was associated with the far left so-called "Impossibilist" wing of the SPA, which had little hope for the efficacy of ameliorative reform, seeking instead revolutionary socialist transformation.

Charles Ruthenberg was a frequent candidate on the ticket of the Socialist Party.

Charles Ruthenberg was a delegate to the seminal 1917 Emergency National Convention of the SPA.

Charles Ruthenberg was charged for incitement to murder in connection with this event but no conviction was obtained.

Charles Ruthenberg was a Left Wing-supported candidate for the Socialist Party's governing National Executive Committee in the party election of 1919, the result of which was overturned by the outgoing NEC ostensibly on the grounds of election fraud carried out by some of the branches associated with the party's language federations.

Charles Ruthenberg was a delegate to the June 1919 Convention of the Left Wing Section and was elected there as a member of the faction's governing National Council.

In October 1920, Charles Ruthenberg was tried together with his associate Isaac Ferguson in New York for alleged violation of the state's criminal anarchism law, said to have been breached by the Left Wing Section when it published Fraina's Left Wing Manifesto the previous year.

Charles Ruthenberg was immediately made Executive Secretary of the WPA upon his release on bail, with Abram Jakira in charge of daily operations of the parallel and underground CPA.

Above-ground WPA headed by Charles Ruthenberg grew rapidly, boosted by the addition of the massive Finnish Federation to its ranks, while the underground party withered and died, put to bed for good in 1923.

Thereafter Charles Ruthenberg was the sole Executive Secretary of the American Communist Party — a position which he retained for the rest of his life, despite spending much of the 1920s as a leader of a minority faction within the party.