Meyer London (December 29, 1871 – June 6, 1926) was a Lithuanian-born Jewish American lawyer and politician from New York City. He was legal counsel to the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union during the 1910 New York Cloakmakers strike. He represented the Lower East Side of Manhattan for two nonconsecutive terms and was one of only two members of the Socialist Party of America elected to the United States Congress. His opposition to American entry into World War I and his refusal to introduce a congressional resolution supporting the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine created controversy that limited his political career. In the December 7, 1917 vote to declare war against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Senate was unanimous, 74–0, while the vote in the House was 350–1, with London being the sole member of Congress to vote against.
Early life and education
Meyer London was born in Kalvarija, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire) on December 29, 1871. His father, Efraim London, was a former Talmudic scholar who had become politically revolutionary and philosophically agnostic, while his mother had remained a devotee of Judaism.Harry Rogoff, An East Side Epic: The Life and Work of Meyer London. New York: Vanguard Press, 1930; p. 8. His father had established himself as a grain merchant in Zenkov, a small town located in the Poltava province of Ukraine, but his financial situation was poor, and in 1888 his father immigrated with London's younger brother to the United States, leaving him behind.
London attended Cheder, a traditional Jewish primary school in which he learned Hebrew, before entering Russian-language schools to begin his secular education.Rogoff, An East Side Epic, p. 9. In 1891, when London was 20, the family decided to follow his father to America, so London terminated his studies and departed for New York City, taking up residence in the city's largely Jewish Lower East Side.
In America, London's father had become a commercial printer, doing jobs in the Yiddish, Russian, and English languages and publishing his own radical weekly called Morgenstern.Rogoff, An East Side Epic, p. 10. Efraim London's shop was a hub of activity, bringing together Jewish radical intellectuals from throughout the city, many of whom met and influenced the printer's son with their ideas.
London earned money as a tutor, taking on pupils at irregular hours and teaching literature and other topics. He later obtained a job as a librarian, a position which allowed him sufficient time to read about history and politics and to study law in his free time. London also frequented radical meetings, gradually developing proficiency as a public speaker and participant in public debates.Rogoff, An East Side Epic, p. 11.
In 1896, London was accepted to the law school of New York University, attending most of his classes at night. He completed the program and was admitted to the bar in New York in 1898, becoming a labor lawyer, taking on cases which fought injunctions or defending the rights of tenants against the transgressions of landlords. London did not handle criminal cases, but rather limited himself to matters of civil law.Rogoff, An East Side Epic, p. 19.
Career
In the 1890s, London joined the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP), standing as its candidate for New York State Assembly in 1896.Rogoff, An East Side Epic, p. 14. He was attracted by Eugene V. Debs and his new Social Democracy of America (SDA) and resigned from the SLP to help establish Local Branch No. 1 of the Social Democracy in New York in 1897. He was a delegate to the June 1898 convention of SDA in Chicago and was one of the political action-oriented minority which bolted the June 1898 convention to establish the Social Democratic Party of America (SDP) following a dispute over the strategy of socialist colonization.
In 1898, London again ran for New York Assembly in the old 4th Assembly District, this time as the candidate of the SDP.Rogoff, An East Side Epic, p. 21.
In the summer of 1901, the Chicago-based SDP merged with another group of former adherents of the Socialist Labor Party to form the Socialist Party of America (SPA), and London transferred his political allegiance to the new organization. He ran for a third time for the 4th Assembly District seat in 1904, this time under the banner of the SPA.
The Russian Revolution of 1905 was deeply inspirational to the former citizen of the Tsarist regime, and London threw himself into the task of speaking to mass meetings organized to help raise funds for the relief of Jewish victims of the pogroms which erupted at that same time.Rogoff, An East Side Epic, p. 24. London also engaged in fund-raising on behalf of the Bund, the Yiddish-language revolutionary movement in regions with significant Jewish populations in the old Russian Empire.Rogoff, An East Side Epic, p. 27.
London was active in the 1910 New York Cloakmakers strike, during which the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) brought out 50,000 in a successful struggle for higher wages and better work conditions against their employers. In his capacity as counsel for the ILGWU, London drew up and published a communique in the name of the strike committee.Rogoff, An East Side Epic, p. 33. In this manifesto, London declared:
We charge the employers with ruining the great trade built up by the industrious immigrants. We charge them with having corrupted the morale of thousands employed in the cloak trade. ... Treachery, slavishness and espionage are encouraged by the employers as great virtues of the cloakmakers. This general strike is greater than any union. It is an irresistible movement of the people. It is a protest against conditions that can no longer be tolerated. This is the first great attempt to regulate conditions in the trade, to do away with that anarchy and chaos which keeps some of the men working sixteen hours a day during the hottest months of the year while thousands of others have no employment whatever. ... We appeal to the people of America to assist us in our struggle.Rogoff, An East Side Epic, p. 34.
London argued against an injunction issued against the strikers before the New York Supreme Court en route to a victory of the strikers after a labor action lasting the better part of two months.
London's place in the cloakmakers' strike made him one of the best-known public faces of the Socialist Party in New York City and over the course of three runs for Congress he gradually constructed a winning coalition, emerging victorious despite the violence and fraud practiced by the campaign of his Tammany Hall-supported Democratic opponent in the election of 1914. London thus became the second Socialist elected to Congress, following Wisconsin's Victor Berger.
U.S. Congress
As a Congressman, Meyer London was one of 50 representatives and six senators to vote against entry into World War I. Once America was at war, however, London felt obliged to support the nation's efforts in the conflict. He strongly opposed the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, which made criticism of the president or the war a crime,Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, The Fate of the Jews: A People Torn between Israeli Power and Jewish Ethics. New York: Times Books, 1983; p. 110. and in the end cast the only vote in the House against the Sedition Act of 1918. These actions angered his constituency but London said: "I wonder whether I am to be punished for having had the courage to vote against the war or for standing by my country's decision when it chose war."Melech Epstein, Profiles of Eleven, p. 183.
London's support of the Wilson administration's war effort enraged many within the Socialist Party, who saw London's actions as a rank betrayal of the party's anti-militarist program. In a statement to members of the Socialist Party, London's radical opponents chronicled his transgressions:
He ignored the St. Louis Resolution right after it was adopted. He refused to introduce bills suggested by the National Executive Committee. He neglected every opportunity of manifesting the attitude of the Socialist Party ... When London sent his famous telegram to Russia not to conclude a separate peace, a good many of us felt that he ought to be recalled from Congress. If we had no courage to recall him then, let us have courage now to reconsider his nomination.Cited in Rogoff, An East Side Epic, p. 159.
As a Jewish Socialist, London's position on Zionism further complicated his political situation. Although he upset socialist Labor Zionists by refusing to introduce a resolution endorsing the Balfour Declaration into the House of Representatives, London did not oppose the right of Jews to live "a separate and distinct national existence fortified by a Jewish state ... All that I ask of them is that they should not speak in the name of all Jews." Further, London believed in the possibility of a specifically socialist Jewish state, so long as it "can be accomplished without violating the Socialist principle which forbids forcible annexation."Yellowitz, Irwin. "Morris Hillquit: American Socialism and Jewish Concerns," in American Jewish Historical Quarterly, vol. 68 (December, 1978), pp. 163-188. See pp. 169-170 for quote from London. However, London's refusal to introduce the resolution united many Zionists against him. The Jewish community was further fragmented in opposition to London, with Orthodox Jews advocating his defeat because he was not religious while rich and powerful Jews worked against him because he was a socialist. Uptown Jews like Jacob Schiff, Louis Marshall, Nathan Straus, and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise urged the Jews to redeem themselves by rejecting London.Feuerlicht, The Fate of the Jews, p. 113.
London was thus placed in the uncomfortable position of simultaneously being attacked both as a dangerous radical on the one hand and as a collaborationist traitor to radicalism on the other; as un-American and pro-German on the one hand and as an American nationalist and abettor of militarism on the other; for subsuming the Socialist program in the interest of the Jews in his district on the one hand and for neglecting the sweeping desire for Jewish nationhood in the interests of socialist internationalism on the other.Rogoff, An East Side Epic, p. 160. This proved too much even for the powers of political incumbency to overcome. With the Democratic and Republican parties united behind a single "fusion" candidate and his own supporters fragmented, London narrowly lost reelection in 1918, falling to Henry M. Goldfogle by a tally of 7,269 to 6,519.Rogoff, An East Side Epic, p. 163.
Two years later, in 1920, the Lower East Side sent London back to Congress. The vote was 10,212 for London to 8,054 for Goldfogle. In Israel and the American National Interest, Cheryl A. Rubenberg states: "On September 21, 1922, the American Congress passed a joint resolution stating its support for a homeland in Palestine for the Jewish people"."Congressional Resolution Favoring the Establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish People, Sept. 21, 1922," John Norton Moore, ed., The Arab Israeli Conflict III: Documents.Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974; pp. 107-108 . He was defeated for reelection two years later by Samuel Dickstein.