THE WASHINGTON SOCIALIST (EVERETT)

The Declaration of Independence
Brought Down to Date

MODERNIZED BY MAYNARD SHIPLEY

         When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one class to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and superior function to which the laws of economic development entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

         We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created with divergent capacities; that they are all endowed by nature with certain needs; that among these are life, liberty, and the attainment of happiness; that to secure these fundamental desires, governments may rightly be instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the duty of the majority concerned to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government …[i]

Adopted by the Socialists of Everett in Mass Meeting Assembled,

Sunday, June 26, 1914.

(Appendix B)

The Washington Socialist was the second of four consecutive Socialist weekly newspapers published in Everett, Washington between January 1911 and June 1918. The first newspaper in this series, the Commonwealth, had been consistently burdened by debt from its inception until in April of 1914 the paper’s printer finally called in the receiver. [ii] Barely skipping a beat (just one issue), editor Maynard Shipley and his Everett Socialist supporters quickly launched the Washington Socialist. Shipley had already been planning to change the Commonwealth to that name to broaden its geographic appeal and financial support, and a test issue of the Washington Socialist had been published on January 28,1914. The new paper lasted until June 1915, when it was reborn again under a new banner, The Northwest Worker. [iii] 

Maynard Shipley, the editor throughout most of this period (August, 1913 to August 1916), dominated the editorial direction and personality of the three newspapers while he remained at the helm. Shipley was an experienced speaker and writer on Socialism, and a former editor of The World, a Socialist newspaper in Oakland, California when he arrived in Everett in July 1913 to present a series of lectures. His reputation preceded him. The trustees [iv] of the then rudderless Commonwealth, “who knew a good thing when they saw it,” [v] quickly signed him up. 

As with its predecessor and successor, the Washington Socialist served as a promotional and educational instrument for the Socialist Party, reporting on international, national, state and local Socialist Party events and issues. The fourth newspaper, the Co-operative News, would take a slightly different tack. Although the Washington Socialist lasted only 14 months, it covered a challenging period for Socialists, including regular election battles (they won one major local election), wars in Mexico and Europe, labor strife in the West, and ongoing internecine ideological squabbles within the local Socialist movement. Noteworthy by their absence, however, were articles on the intense factional disputes in Seattle. Shipley labeled himself a “red” [vi] or revolutionary Socialist, but refused to be drawn into that bitter battle. Shipley feared that the airing of too much internal strife would harm the party’s appeal. [vii] These fundamental disputes were between the hardcore Socialists (the “reds”) who rebuffed cooperation with other leftwing and labor groups, and the moderates (the “yellows”) who were willing to work with other leftists and unionists. [viii]

“Socialist Commissioner Effects Much Needed Change,” read a headline from edition of September 3. The story reported, “Residents of Everett, who have had occasion to visit the city dock during the summer, have no doubt noticed the filthy, unhealthy conditions existing thereabouts. This is not to be marveled at considering that it had not been cleaned for three months before the Socialist commissioner took office. Beginning last week, the dock will be swept weekly...” and “Heretofore, employees of the city working on the East Side bridge have been compelled to work twelve hours daily ... the twelve hours has now been cut down to eight.” The article concluded, “Changes of this nature should convince the most bone-headed worker that it pays to put class-conscious Socialists into office, even if they can’t establish the cooperative commonwealth forthwith. Rome was not built in a day.” [xvii] 

On October 15^th, the paper reported, “For two months Everett has had a Socialist Commissioner of Public Works, and so far nothing has been done to break up homes, destroy religion, nor establish free love.” [xviii] A more detailed end-of-the-year article stated: 

Even the most bitter opponents of Socialism, political enemies of Mr. Salter, have been forced to admit that as a public official, he has given an efficient and entirely honest administration of his department. Though increases in wages have been made in many instances, and an eight-hour day established, the extra expense has been compensated for by the elimination of needless expenditures in other ways. Organized labor, to a man, admit that Salter has voiced the interests of that body on all occasions, insisting always upon union wages and conditions ... It goes without saying that the Socialists of Everett are more than pleased with the results of their many years of patient effort to gain partial or complete control of the city hall. [xix]

 The paper credits Salter with efficiencies in filling city jobs with “men skilled and proficient in the duties involved,” citing the example of an electrician who was “not even an electrician, and never showed up at city hall except on pay day.” Under the heading, “Graft jobs Abolished,” it added, “from 41^st and Colby to the golf links, perhaps a mile in distance, a man was kept with rake and shovel to remove the least roughness or pebbles from the highway for the benefit of pleasure-seeking autoists. Needless to state that no such expenditure of public funds for the benefit of a favored few is now being made.” Even the bartenders were satiated when Salter lead a successful fight to repeal their annual $15 city license. [xx] 

OUR FIFTH BIRTHDAY [xxi]

With this issue this paper ends its fourth year of struggle and triumphs, and begins a fifth year free from debt, having more collectable assets than liabilities. It only remains now to keep up our enthusiasm, to renew our determined efforts to build upon a strong foundation our party press, that the enemy may well fear to lie about our officials, misrepresent our aims, or seek to belittle our program!

WHAT THREE YEARS’ EXPERIENCE COST

      On another page of this issue we publish a statement of what it has cost the comrades of Washington to learn how to run a Socialist paper efficiently and economically. One never gets something for nothing. We Socialists need not, therefore, begrudge the money and efforts which have been expended in finding and developing the talent necessary to establishing a press of our own. [xxii] 

The unsigned article ends with a plea for news articles familiar to editors everywhere: “Each Local in the state should elect a publicity committee whose duty it should be to furnish the party press with news of local activities. The editor of The Washington Socialist cannot do this work for the Locals. Don’t kick for more ‘news’ when you are neglecting to send any news to us. If there is no news about your local, get busy right away and make some news, and report it.” [xxiii]  

The issue’s highlight was a reproduction of the first issue of the Commonwealth, made more interesting for the highly editorialized history that accompanied it—"The Hard Road to Success –How We Achieved It." (Appendix C) “ ‘The Commonwealth’ first saw the light on February 4, 1911, as a four-column, eight-page weekly, under the editorship of O. L. Anderson,” wrote F. G. Crosby. “Like most Socialist papers it was launched amidst unbounded enthusiasm. But its promoters soon learned that it takes more than enthusiasm to run a weekly paper.” Editor followed editor, each seeing their fervor quickly worn down by routine economics—salaries were scarce. One editor, Crosby said, “succeeded in collecting his salary” at the end of his first month and promptly left. He attributes the Washington Socialist’s financial survival to the providential arrival of Maynard Shipley, followed four months later by a competent business manager.  

“From what I can gather from old timers in the movement in Everett, employees of the print shop and others, there has been mismanagement in big gobs from the birth of the paper down to the time its affairs were placed in the hands of the present management,” Crosby continued. “It was largely a matter of making a big splurge on money they did not earn, thousands of copies were printed that were never paid for, galleys and galleys of linotype were thrown in the melting pot that never were used, the salary list was top heavy, not that the office force got it, but they were promised more than the paper could stand, took it when they could get it, and nearly every one quit with a bunch coming...”[xxiv] 

An unsigned editorial entitled “ALL YELLOW – Class Struggle Ignored” (Appendix D) in the same issue took the opportunity to criticize the ideological pedigree of the Commonwealth’s first editor: “A glance at the first page of the first issue of the ‘Commonwealth’ reveals the fact that the ‘Reds’ of Everett, in 1911, were not very well represented by Comrade Anderson, then editor. The first issue, as may be seen, was glaringly Yellow. It was not even somewhat Red. There is nothing on the first page to intimate that it was intended to be a Socialist paper. And it wasn’t. It was ‘On the Side of the People—Always.’ It says so right under the misnomer ‘Commonwealth.’ Look at it, and see for yourself. No, 'The Commonwealth’ was not an anticipatory name; no more so than was the motto thereunder, just quoted.” 

            “To the editor of ‘The Commonwealth’ of February 4, 1911,” the anonymous writer wrote, “ ‘the people’ was a present reality, ‘to whom the common weal (was) the eternal gospel of the beneficent Creator of all.’ The paper was against ‘every individual who (was) an enemy of the common good.’ As far as it was able, it intended to ferret them out, expose and cry out at the top of its voice ‘all individuals who were guilty of ‘fraud, graft and injustice of every kind’—‘call it muckraking or by any other name you please.’ You betcha. That society was divided into two antagonistic classes, the wealth makers and the wealth takers, who could have no ‘common weal,’ and who could not be bunched together into a homogeneous group called ‘the people,’ of this very important fact comrade Anderson seemed to be as naively unconscious…”[xxv] 

The likelihood of war and war itself was frequently the subject of articles, notices and letters. The launch of the Washington Socialist coincided with the seizure of the Mexican port of Veracruz by American Marines in April 1914, and the Arlington Socialist Local lost no time in condemning the American capitalists who were promoting American intervention to protect their investments then at risk in the turmoil of Mexico’s revolutions.

Resolved by Local Arlington, that we have no property interests in Mexico which need protecting. If others have, it is their affair, and it is certainly not up to us or the working people of the United States to go to war to protect the property interests of others; and this is especially true in the present instance where, as we are informed and verily believe, the alleged property interests in jeopardy are owned by the very trust magnates who are most oppressive to the workingmen of this country … therefore, we insist that we have not a man or dollar for a Mexican war. But, resolved, that nothing herein shall be construed as intended to discourage these undesirable citizens of this country who are now most anxious for intervention in Mexico, from going there and enlisting on the firing line and spilling their blood to their heart’s content in battle with each other or with the capitalists of Europe. WM. DeWitt, Secretary J. W. Morris, Chairman [xxvi]

 Four months later, the First World War broke out in Europe. To the Socialists in America, the war presented serious challenges. Socialists were convinced that traditional wars were merely an extension of a crude capitalism that saw wars only as an opportunity for capitalistic profit, while the working classes suffered the battlefield casualties and the inevitable disruptions of civilian lives. American Socialists were concerned for their European brethren who, unlike the American counterparts, had come to play significant parliamentary roles in their respective governments on both sides of the conflict.  

The Everett newspaper carried frequent articles on the dilemma European Socialists faced between upholding their revolutionary principles while, at the same time, responding to the intense nationalism the war engendered. American Socialists saw in this European quandary a clear danger to their own future, a future that would come to pass, and they fought vigorously against American entry in that war. Their opposition to the war produced an anti-religious side to their doctrine that was usually kept hidden from public exposure in more peaceful times to deny their capitalist enemies the opportunity to tar them with an anti-Christian mantle. The war, however, brought out the Socialists’ deep anger against an opiate religion they believed help keep the world’s workers in the capitalists’ tow. That anger is expressed succinctly in an unsigned article entitled "BIRTHDAY OF HELL": 

Six months from January 18th the world may celebrate the birthday of Hell!  Six months ago, August 28th, the Hell of the Twentieth Century was established on earth by professed followers of Jesus of Nazareth, whom the mankillers call the Christ, or the Messiah. For six unspeakably horrible months the leading Christian (?) nations of Europe have been patriotically engaged in the thoroughly characteristic game of “civilization”—War!  Raising Hell!  “Christians” raising Hell, for PROFITS!

            The world has had one continuous Hell of war, or preparation for war since the day one class began to reap profits from the sweat of a neighbor’s brow.  Socialism is opposed to both War and Profits. So the Christians of the world—or the vast majority of them—are opposed to Socialism. They say it’s against religion; that it breeds class hatred; that it will break up the home; that it wants men to “divide up.”

So men uphold capitalism.  Men vote for capitalism …

            Such is capitalism’s 1915 offering!

 The Declaration of Independence Brought Down to Date

MODERNIZED BY MAYNARD SHIPLEY

Adopted by the Socialists of Everett in Mass Meeting Assembled,
Sunday, June 26, 1914. 

            When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one class to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and superior function to which the laws of economic development entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

            We hold these truths to be self-evident:  That all men are created with divergent capacities; that they are all endowed by nature with certain needs; that among these are life, liberty, and the attainment of happiness; that to secure these fundamental desires, governments may rightly be instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the duty of the majority concerned to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their common safety and happiness.  Prudence indeed, will dictate that governments long established shall not be allowed to outlive their usefulness, though all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.  But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, the exploitation of the workers, evinces a design to crush them under an absolute industrial despotism, it is their duty, to overthrow such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.  Such has been the patient suffering of the American wage-slaves; but now necessity constrains them to alter or abolish the bourgeois system of government and exploitation.  The history of the present ruling class is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having for direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over those who produce the wealth of the world.  To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

            The owning class has refused its assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

            We, therefore, the representatives of the workers of all nations, in mass meeting assembled, appealing to the highest sense of justice for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the workers of the world, solemnly publish and declare that the useful wealth produ