**International Labor Defense Committee (By@Miss Teri )
**With the continual violations of civil liberties committed by the government during the First World War, especially the rulings of Schenck v. United States and Debs v. United States against the defendants, there was a need for an organization to defend the rights of Americans and free speech. With this principle in the mind, as the two cases were moving through the courts, the Civil Rights Bureau was founded in 1917. Lead by anti-war activists Roger Nash Baldwin and Crystal Eastman, it had significant ties to the Socialist Labor Party, though no official connection existed between the two at the time.
The nascent organization would find itself busy during the Biennio Rosso, defending the right to strike and protest, and battling the government repression in the courtrooms. They would work in the conjunction with the SLP’s General Defense Committee in these efforts. As the Biennio Rosso died down, Baldwin was inspired to commit to direct action for the organization. The SLP (now the Workers’ Party) agreed, especially with the new wave following the Biennio Rosso.
On January 15th, 1920, the CRB and GDC agreed to merge into the International Labor Defense Committee. Whilst officially a legal aid and defense organization for the Workers’ Party and other socialist activists, it would also defend any others whose civil liberties were violated by the government. On the Executive Committee included Baldwin, Eastman, Joseph Brodsky, Helen Keller, CE Ruthenberg, Felix Frankfurter, and LE Katterfeld. Their immediate test case came in the form of the Sacco and Vanzetti case. The two organizers were given assurances of a fair trial, and the ILDC were brought on as their legal defense. However, despite these assurances and the defense of the ILDC, the two were still convicted on circumstantial evidence, and sentenced to death.
In 1922, the ILDC would be sublimated into Comintern’s newly formed International Red Aid network, which was to give material aid to imprisoned radical activists around the world. However, Baldwin, over the objections of some on his further left, wanted to expand that focus (at least in the United States) to those who were the victims of bourgeois laws and government attacks, even if they didn’t politically align with the WPA.
In this spirit, the Committee would expand its purview from just protecting WPA activists from persecution. In the South, they would attempt to protect African Americans falsely accused of crimes, to very limited success. They would also try to defend various authors charged under obscenity laws,such as James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and even reactionary HL Mencken.
One of their highest profile cases was in 1925, when a teacher was charged with the teaching of the theory of evolution, in defiance of state law. Clarence Darrow, an ILDC lawyer who had represented both Eugene Debs and Big Bill Haywood over the course of his career, represented the teacher, and used the trial to fight for the repeal the law, fighting against former Populist nominee William Jennings Bryan representing the prosecution. The case had been a test case for the group, to highlight the anti-evolution laws across the country. The teacher had purposely taught it as an act of protest. The case would ruled in favor of Iowa (though Bryan would pay the fine imposed).
Some criticized the expanded focus on civil liberties and others on how legal means often never worked. Nevertheless, the leaders of the Committee, including Crystal Eastman, Samuel Leibowitz, and Roger Nash Baldwin (who would publish the book, Liberty under the Soviets after a visit there), would go on to help form the legal framework in post-revolution America.
Excerpts from Lenina Jackson,Red Ravens: A History of the Pioneer League , (Umoja, New Afrika: Maypole Books, 1975)*
The precursor to the modern Pioneer League was founded on 7 March 1913 as the Red Falcon Youth Movement. Modeled explicitly off Socialist Youth of German - The Falcons, the initial Red Falcons was chartered by parents and educators from the Socialist Labor Party to serve as an alternative to the parochial, middle class Boy Scouts of America.
In spite of this opposition, the nascent Red Falcons borrowed heavily on the organizational model of the Boy Scouts. They wore similar uniforms, taught similar skills, and merely replaced the “apolitical” conservative politics of the Boy Scouts with secular, socialist themes. The Red Falcons, however, were doomed to be a stillborn organization, squeezed by the wartime environment that rationalized away such luxuries, and the often underhanded competition from the BSA, which used a variety of tactics, including court injunctions utilizing their special Congressional charter, to try to edge out the competition.
Many of the older Red Falcons and their guides would be drafted into the war effort. Those that survived came home embittered and radicalized. While the organization itself would become defunct during the turmoil of the Biennio Rosso, local troops would continue operating in some areas.
For American workers, especially those trying to raise families through this period, the Boy Scouts went from being distastefully WASPy to being outright reactionary. The faces of the National Guardsmen and police corralling them back to work had been the faces of jeering Boy Scouts only a few years prior. The need for an alternative became more urgent than ever.
By 1920, the pillarisation of American society was fait accompli. Three broad camps had emerged with civil society, supported by a broad constellation of civic organizations. The so-called “mainstream”, centered around the Republican Party, the proletarian organizations associated with the Workers’ Party, and Southern organizations connected to the Democratic Party.
In March 1921, the Young People’s Socialist League became the Young Communist League. At the first National Congress of the YCL, held in New York City between 6-12 June 1921, one of the many resolutions adopted by the organization was the re-establishment of a working-class Scouting movement. At the suggestion of the Russian Komsomol observer Semyon Petrov*, the name “Pioneer League” was adopted by the draft resolution, based on a similar organization being chartered in Russia.
[…]
In spite of the bitter rivalry between the Boy Scouts and the Pioneer League, in organizational terms the two were very similar in the period from 1921. This should be of little surprise, because many of its adult leaders were former Boy Scouts, and the rest made no secret of cribbing many basic concepts from their rivals.
The flagship organization was called the Pioneers, analogous to the flagship Boy Scouts of the BSA. Unlike the BSA, the Pioneers were coed, accepting all between the ages of 11 and 17. Younger children would be part of the Young Pioneers, analogous to the BSA’s Wolf Cubs.
Pioneers are organized into local groups called cadres, analogous to a troops of the BSA. A cadre typically consists of between 12 and 50 pioneers, and typically would meet weekly. Larger cadres would be divided into cells for many activities. Each cadre is led by a uniformed adult member, called a Pioneer Leader. Multiple cadres would be organized into a group.
A particular cadre would be numbered, while a group would be associated with a geographical area. Groups would be collected into regional councils, and in turn those councils would form the National Councillar Congress.
Like the BSA, the main focus of the Pioneers was outdoor fieldcraft. Unlike the BSA, the Pioneers made no distinction between “men’s work” and “women’s work”. It’s stated mission was always one to make its members into “complete human beings.” To this end, it offered a broader range of instruction, encompassing political and intellectual ideas, the skills of living in urban spaces, as well as nautical skills like sailing.
The early uniforms differed from the military-style uniforms of the BSA, exchanging the blue neckerchiefs for red ones.
[…]
The Pioneer League boomed in membership alongside the economy and birthrates of the so-called “Roaring Twenties”. It provided a means for working-class youths to socialise together and experience life outside the cities. And because the organization was open to all, regardless of race or ethnicity, it played a crucial role in teaching tolerance and solidarity in the new generation.
Which is not to say this was an easy process. The Pioneer League’s refusal, like all other organs and affiliates of the Workers’ Party, to comply with Jim Crow segregation law in the South meant it was a de facto criminal organization there. When a Birmingham, Alabama rally was disrupted by the Alabama State Police on 26 May 1923, the sight of police beating boys and girls and trying to herd them into police vans made national news, and ignited a political firestorm.
Similarly, the rivalry with the Boy Scouts caused numerous public relations problems. During the “Second Period” policies ranging from 1924 to 1929, the instructions handed from Moscow dictated a turn away from radicalism towards more conciliatory positions during this period of working class retreat. The effect of this policy radiated through all parts of the WPA, including the Pioneer League. Olive branches were extended to the Boy Scouts, and attempts were made to heal the rift in the scouting movement through joint-events.
Some of these Joint Jamborees in the summer of 1926 went off well. Working class youths mingled with the children of landlords, shopkeepers, planters and businessmen. Good natured competition in athletic events were the spirit of the summer. And the presence of girls in these camping events proved extremely popular, shifting the tide of opinion in the BSA towards cooperation with or even integrating the Girl Scouts of America.
Naturally, political questions could not be avoided. Debates, some planned, others extemporaneous, were common. However, in several of these jamborees, notably the Illinois Jamboree, brawls broke out between Boy Scouts and Pioneers. Over the course of the three-day event outside Springfield, recriminations and resentment over disciplinary action festered, providing a powder keg waiting for the right spark. As camp was being broken down on the third day, tensions were high, and a scuffle broke out between a Boy Scout and a Pioneer over the affections of a Pioneer girl.
A very messy brawl broke out, as the battle lines were instantly drawn. The fight occasionally extended to the adult members, with each side’s leaders mistrusting the others. While no one died, pictures of the brawl would be printed in the Chicago Tribune and turn into a national level embarrassment.
Excerpts from Agi Chen “From the Ground Up: Reforms of the United States Army in the 1920s” in Military Review , Vol. 60, Issue 3, (July 1982)*
The harrowing experience of the Great War shattered the institutional confidence of the United States Army. The intensity of combat had not only annihilated the officer corps, it revealed gaping flaws in the entire doctrinal-institutional system of the US Army.
The statistics are harrowing, even to the survivors of the apocalyptic conflict with Nazi-Fascism. The United States Military Academy’s Class of 1915 comprised of 168 young men, were graduated early in January to meet the demand for officers for the war mobilization. Of these 168, 71 would die in action or from their wounds by 1919. Another 22 were discharged as severely wounded. And while they bore the heaviest burden, all the classes at West Point were haunted by reunions with halls filled with empty chairs.
They died because the Army had not prepared them. The soldiers, NCOs and officers of the American Expeditionary Forces would be forced to learn from cruel experience the modern art of military command, because all of the educational institutions of the US Army, from West Point on up, had been completely deficient.
[…]
There is no shame in learning from imitation. As its historians noted, the US Army was a shameless imitator of whoever had won the last major European war. And following the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, the US Army borrowed heavily from the aesthetics and institutions of the Prussian military tradition ascendant in the Imperial German military.(1) But this imitation was skin-deep.
While Germany in this period was an authoritarian, illiberal regime, the privileged military caste was internally liberal and meritocratic. From the children aged 10 to 18 of the Kadettenschule to the student officers of the Prussian Kriegsakademie , cadets in the German military system lived in a system of relatively collegial respect. Advancement was based on merit, especially in the vital military areas of tactics. Instructors treated cadets with adult-like respect, and rewarded the well-performing students with free-range privileges.
By contrast, the relatively liberal American society had created a barbaric and hidebound military educational system. Whether in the flagship academy at West Point, or state academies like the Virginia Military Institute, a rigid hierarchy based on seniority was enforced. A culture of hazing and abuse had developed for decades. Instructors rewarded orthodoxy, not innovation, and at the Command and General Staff College in Ft. Leavenworth, deviation from the school approved solutions in exercises invited censure, often public.
The curriculum at West Point gave an unrelenting focus on mathematics and science, but very little instruction time for more direct military focuses. Worse, students had no access to modern equipment, very little instruction in practical field exercises or command, the instructors offered no insight into how to lead men in combat. Or to prepare them how to die.(2)
In the Great War, this resulted in disaster in the early years. Pre-war officers were largely unprepared, sadistic, or both. The diamonds in the rough that emerged from the baptism of fire, such as George Patton, George Marshall, David Eisenhower, or Douglas MacArthur, would go on to play an outsized role in the coming decades. Whether reactionary or revolutionary, the one thing that united their shared experience was almost quitting due to the experience of hazing at VMI or West Point.
The officers that gained the respect of the rank and file were either among the previous exceptions or had risen from the rank and file via “battlefield commission”. Many had been picked for their leadership abilities following Infantry School and given rush courses in OCS stateside or directly elevated due to acumen on the battlefield. They learned on the job or they died. And while exact statistics are not known, the practice of enlisted men and NCOs “fragging” sadistic or incompetent officers was common enough to in the front of most field officer’s minds.
[…]
Though in keeping with the American Cincinnatian tradition of resigning his officer commission upon election to civilian office, Lieutenant General Leonard Wood remained very much the military’s man as president. Even to committed communists, in the fallout of the Great War and the Biennio Rosso, this was not a bad thing, for he had taken the National Army’s grievances to heart, and due to the scale of the war effort, the military’s grievances were very much the body-politic’s grievances.
His tenure as Secretary of War had led to sobering realisations that the US military-industrial system was fundamentally broken. Victory had come through being fortunate enough to have time to learn the hard-way and build a battle-tested army through on-the-job apprenticeship. In a hypothetical future conflict, they would not be likely to be so lucky.
President Wood began his first term by cleaning out the officer corps of deadwood. These dismissals were centered around the instructors at West Point and Ft. Leavenworth. Younger, more dynamic officers were promoted to their place. Then Major General Douglas MacArthur would become the new Superintendent of the USMA, and through his personal connection to the President, he enjoyed influence that exceeded his rank.
The old system of seniority was abolished. Hazing was stamped out; it was now a breach of the cadet code of conduct to fail to inform of violations, especially hazing. The new curriculum focused heavily on war games and simulations. The new instructors, handpicked by MacArthur from the best leaders of the Great War, taught cadets leadership and camaraderie. Their wounds and amputated limbs carried an almost holy level of authority. As then Major Martin Abern said in his invocation to the new class of first-years in September 1924, “You are here to learn how to live. And to learn how to die.”
The revolution in the USMA was not without controversy. But the Army’s reformers were faced with a choice between building an effective army, or one politically reliable to bourgeois interests. In an interesting historical irony, MacArthur would prove to be one of the most passionate defenders of “letting communists into the Academy leadership” in the early 20s.
Many in Wood’s party balked at this. But there was no alternative. The competent, dynamic young officers were either red or pink in the early 1920s. The previous efforts to stamp out communism violently had been worse than useless. Wood instead would attempt to be the healer to the divided country, and take steps to settle what he considered were the legitimate grievances they had about the country.
[…]
The Army’s other chief problem was that the Congress was notoriously stingy, and always beat swords into ploughshares, often to an excessive degree. Much of the doctrinal-educational mistakes stemmed ultimately from a political system unwilling to meet even the basic funding requirements for the Army. Cadets often lacked firearms or ammunition to practice with, to say nothing of modern exercises.
Wood’s 1921 Congressional agenda was dominated by his efforts to ensure that all of the hard work from the years of bloody struggle would not be undone. Many Congressional leaders across party lines had, for various reasons, hoped to return to the pre-war status quo of a tiny professional patronage army, which could not be countenanced.
Wood came to immediate loggerheads with First Secretary James Mann, who had put the popular backbencher proposal to repeal the Selective Service Act of 1915 on the agenda of the House of Representatives. After veto threats and government shutdown threats were issued, the two began to work towards the center.
The US Army needed soldiers, especially reservists. Voluntary enlistment had proven to be insufficient. Maintaining a large citizen-army was politically impossible. A compromise was struck, which preserved the Selective Service system but inactivated it in peacetime. Instead, the federal government asserted increased control over the state National Guards, directing them to adopt Selective Service in exchange for federal funding.
Under the Selective Service Act of 1921, the states would maintain draft boards, and would call up citizens to serve six months in the National Guard. Upon completion of this term, they would join the National Guard Reserve, and would owe a certain number of training days per year. Citizen-soldiers would receive decent pay and benefits for service. In the vent of war, the National Guard would come under federal control, and its reservists would be called up for service in the National Army.
The Regular Army would remain a core professional service, but coupled with the National Defense Act of 1921, the Army’s primary role would shift towards being a professional officer and NCO cadre force to facilitate a rapid mobilization of the National Army.
The weak link in this chain would be the states. While targets would be provided by the US Army’s General Staff, state governments had no political or benefit to meeting them. Most state National Guards would maintain only token level compliance. By 1925, the states combined would barely meet 600,000 Guardsmen (both professional and citizen-soldiers), half the desired strength.And this paper strength does not account for serious deficiencies in readiness, training and equipment that would plague many regiments.
What it did accomplish was to separate the National Guard from the country clubs. Putting ordinary citizens in the Guard took them out of play as a tool of labor management. National Guard officers and men could not be counted on to serve as the last ditch resort of management. During the 1920s, this shift in the political centre of gravity ensured strikes and lockouts would be settled largely by negotiation rather than violence.
(1) The various states of the German Empire maintained separate militaries, and each contributed to the German Army largely autonomous national contingents.
(2) If you would like to know more, check out Jörg Muth, Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces, 1901–1940, and the Consequences for World War II , (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2011)
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