London, Meyer

LONDON, MEYER (1871–1926). Trade union lawyer and Socialist congressman, Meyer London favored peaceful and evolutionary methods to achieve the cooperative commonwealth. “As a Socialist,” London declared, “instead of denying the existence of the class struggle, I seek to minimize its bitterness.”

London was born in Russia and emigrated to New York’s Lower East Side in 1891, where his father had published the first radical Jewish newspaper in America. Preferring action to words, he opted for a legal career. Joining first the Socialist Labor Party, London quickly switched over to the new Socialist Party, attracted by its working-class roots and American leadership.

As a lawyer, London’s most significant achievement came as counsel to striking cloak-makers in 1910. For eight weeks, fifty thousand workers stayed away from their machines, while London negotiated with the employers and mediator Louis Brandeis. The resulting agreement, known as the Protocol, created a mechanism for resolving labor grievances without resorting to strikes. In 1912, London handled the legal work during the twelve-week strike of seven thousand furriers and again emerged victorious.

With strong trade union support, London defeated the incumbent Democratic congressman from the Lower East Side in 1914, making him only the second Socialist representative ever to sit in the House and the first from the East Coast. He won reelection in 1916. London championed numerous social welfare measures, but his major activity during his first term was vehement opposition to the Wilson administration’s preparedness program. He voted against the declarations of war against Germany and Austria-Hungary.

London’s positions after April 1917 antagonized both the extreme Right and the extreme Left. He opposed the conscription law and the Espionage and Sedition acts, stands that “one-hundred percent American” groups considered treasonous. Similarly, left-wing Socialists were infuriated by London’s decision not to vote against military appropriations and financing bills, but merely to be recorded as “present.” Citing his “duty” to American soldiers to “provide them with everything they need,” London appealed to his fellow Socialists for “common sense in their attitude in this great crisis of the world.” But many radicals believed London had betrayed the Saint Louis Platform declaration to resist all wartime activity; they were further incensed by his efforts to keep Russia in the war and his criticism of the Brest-Litovsk treaty. London’s opposition to Allied intervention in Russia did not appease them. The congressman also faced attacks from Zionist organizations upset by his refusal to endorse a Jewish homeland in Palestine. With the Democrats and Republicans united behind a single “patriotic” candidate, the Socialists split, and the Zionists hostile, London lost his seat in November 1918.

Two years later, London recaptured his place in Congress. He fought unsuccessfully against the tariff and tax policies of the Harding administration, but did gain passage of the first law sponsored by a Socialist congressman: a measure giving greater protection to workers of bankrupt firms. Gerrymandering of his district’s boundaries made reelection in 1922 an impossibility, and London never again held public office.

Epstein, Melech, Profiles of Eleven. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965. Pp. 161-187.

Goldberg, Gordon J., Meyer London: A Biography of the Socialist New York Congressman, 1871-1926. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2013.

Gorenstein, Arthur, "A Portrait of Ethnic Politics: The Socialists and the 1908 and 1910 Congressional Elections on the East Side," Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, 50 (March 1961), 202-238.

Sorin, Gerald, "Tradition and Change: American Jewish Socialists as Agents of Acculturation," American Jewish History, 79 (Autumn 1989), 37-54.

Meyer London Papers, Guide. Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, New York University. http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_028/