Morris Hillquit was a founder and leader of the Socialist Party of America and prominent labor lawyer in New York City's Lower East Side.
35 Facts About Morris Hillquit
2.
Together with Eugene V Debs and Congressman Victor L Berger, Hillquit was one of the leading public faces of American socialism during the first two decades of the 20th century.
3.
In November 1917, running on an anti-war platform, Hillquit garnered more than 100,000 votes as the Socialist candidate for mayor of New York City.
4.
Morris Hillquit stood as a candidate for United States Congress five times over the course of his life.
5.
Morris Hillquit was born Moishe Hillkowitz on August 1,1869, in Riga, Russian Empire, the second son of German-speaking ethnic Jewish factory owners.
6.
Morris Hillquit later remembered his family as "frightfully poor," with his older brother and sisters working to help support the family.
7.
Morris Hillquit felt compelled to get a job to help alleviate the family's difficult financial situation.
8.
Morris Hillquit joined other young intellectual emigres from Tsarist Russia as a shirt-maker, repetitiously stitching cuffs of garments.
9.
The young Morris Hillquit never progressed past that entry-level task as a shirtmaker.
10.
Almost as soon as he settled in New York, Morris Hillquit was drawn into East Side Jewish radical circles.
11.
Morris Hillquit was then a small, slightly built, frail adolescent with dark hair, dark oval-shaped eyes, and a gentle charming manner.
12.
On his 18th birthday in August 1887, the future Morris Hillquit joined the Socialist Labor Party of America, brought into the ranks by a fellow garment worker and Russian language socialist newspaper editor, Louis Miller.
13.
Morris Hillquit helped to found the United Hebrew Trades, a garment workers' union formed in 1888, while writing for the Arbeiter Zeitung.
14.
Morris Hillquit graduated from New York University Law School in 1893.
15.
Morris Hillquit led the departure of a dissident faction from Daniel De Leon's Socialist Labor Party in 1899 and was a delegate to the group's convention at Rochester, New York in 1900.
16.
Morris Hillquit was a strong supporter of unity with the Chicago-based Social Democratic Party of Victor Berger and Eugene V Debs.
17.
Morris Hillquit remained one of the paramount political leaders of the Socialist Party for the rest of his life.
18.
Morris Hillquit was a pioneer historian of the American radical movement, publishing a broad scholarly survey in 1903 entitled History of Socialism in the United States.
19.
In 1904, Morris Hillquit attended the International Socialist Congress at Amsterdam and was involved with the proposed Anti-Immigration Resolution, which opposed any legislation that forbade or hindered the immigration of foreign workingmen, some forced by misery to migrate.
20.
Morris Hillquit ran for US Congress on the Socialist ticket in the New York 9th Congressional District in 1906 and 1908.
21.
Morris Hillquit replied that he had no new message rather than to reiterate a belief in a two-sided workers movement, with separate and equal political and trade union arms.
22.
Morris Hillquit was elected to the SP's governing National Executive Committee on multiple occasions and was a frequent speaker at national conventions of the party.
23.
Morris Hillquit was a principal co-author of the resolution against the US' entry into World War I, which was passed overwhelmingly both by an emergency Socialist Party convention held just after the April 6th, 1917 declaration of war and by a subsequent membership vote.
24.
In each case, Morris Hillquit argued that the socialist press was truly "American" and that a socialist definition of "patriotism" included the freedoms of press and speech and the right to criticize in a democratic society.
25.
Morris Hillquit was unsuccessful in winning access to the mails for the papers he represented, but he did manage to keep the proprietors of The Masses out of prison.
26.
Morris Hillquit's campaign was based on an anti-war platform and commitment to economical public services and drew the diverse support both of committed socialists, pacifists and other anti-war activists, and pro-war liberals endorsing his campaign as a protest against the government's "sedition" policy, which effectively served to curb freedoms of speech and press.
27.
However, due to ill health Morris Hillquit did not participate in the pivotal 1919 Emergency National Convention at Chicago, which formalized the split of the left wing from the Socialist Party to form the Communist Labor Party of America and the Communist Party of America.
28.
In 1920 Morris Hillquit served as the lead attorney in the unsuccessful defense of the five democratically elected Socialist assemblymen expelled from the New York State Assembly.
29.
From 1922 through the election of 1924, Morris Hillquit was a leading advocate of Socialist Party participation in the Conference for Progressive Political Action.
30.
In 1932, shortly before his death from tuberculosis, Morris Hillquit received over one-eighth of the vote in his second campaign for Mayor of New York City.
31.
Morris Hillquit died of tuberculosis "a few minutes past midnight on October 8th" of 1933.
32.
Morris Hillquit was age 64 at the time of his death.
33.
Morris Hillquit was first and foremost an orator, delivering a torrent of public talks on socialist themes to various audiences throughout his life.
34.
Morris Hillquit wrote frequently for popular magazines and the party press but fairly infrequently for publication in leaflet or pamphlet form.
35.
Morris Hillquit's papers are housed at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin and are available on microfilm.