Meyer London

• Meyer London
• Born: December 29, 1871
• Died: June 6, 1926

Labor lawyer and socialist congressman, was born in the Russian-Polish province of Suwalki, the oldest child among the five sons and five daughters of Ephraim London and Rebecca (Berson) London. His mother, who came from a family of learned rabbis, was a pious Jew; his father, although trained as a Talmudic scholar, was a freethinker who advocated advanced ideas in the articles he occasionally wrote for Hebrew journals, and a “luftmensch”—an impractical dreamer with no trade, profession, or fixed source of income. After failing as a grain merchant in Zenkov, where the family had moved when Meyer London was a child, his father went to America with the second son, Louis, leaving his oldest to look after the family and continue his studies.

At the gymnasium he attended Meyer London tutored other pupils and became involved with a circle interested in radical ideas. Shortly before Meyer’s twentieth birthday his father, having bought a small printing shop in New York City where he was publishing a radical weekly called Morgenstern, sent for the rest of his family. In his father’s shop, a gathering place for young intellectuals, Meyer London continued his tutoring and, having rapidly learned to read English, lectured on such topics as the revolutionary sentiments in the works of Dickens and Carlyle. He took a job in a circulating library, which enabled him to read widely in American history and politics, attend New York University Law School at night, and take part in the Friday evening discussion groups at the Hebrew Institute (later the Educational Alliance), where he soon won respect as a debater.

In 1896, the year he entered law school, Meyer London was nominated for the state assembly by the Socialist Labor party. At the same time he joined the group within the party who were in rebellion against the autocratic rule of Daniel de Leon and his policy of organizing rival labor unions in opposition to the American Federation of Labor. London’s group believed that socialism must be built on a foundation of labor solidarity, and were attracted to the new Social Democratic party founded in the Midwest by Eugene Debs and Victor Berger because of its working-class and native-American orientation. In 1897 London joined the Debs group and became one of the founders of the Socialist Party of America, formed after several realignments and mergers of various socialist factions.

In New York City politics Meyer London, a perennial candidate for the legislature, was instrumental in persuading East Side Jewish immigrants that it was more important to fight the corruption of Tammany Hall than to work for revolution in Russia. Speaking as an American to Americans, he attracted an especially large following among young people, helped give the Socialist party an air of moral and ethical dignity, and was the only Jewish socialist respected by Irish and German groups. Many of his associates expected that he would leave the East Side to further his political career, but he stayed on at his home base as an activist lawyer who donated much of his income to labor and Jewish causes. He took no clients he did not respect, never rejected those who could not pay, and maintained a decent standard of living only through the contributions of his wife, Anna Rosenson, a dentist whom he married in 1899. They had one daughter, Isabelle.

Meyer London served the labor movement as legal counsel, policy adviser, negotiator, and powerful orator. In 1907 he helped the jewelry workers’ union to rebuild after a disastrous two-year strike, refusing a fee for representing them, and in the same year helped to win the fur workers’ strike. In 1908 he donated money for the survival of the struggling International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. His major achievement as a labor lawyer was his role in formulating the protocol that settled the massive cloakworkers’ strike of 1910-1911 and later defending the agreement, which exchanged a no-strike pledge for a series of reforms, against a combination of conservatives and left-wing militants. Through its guarantee of both union and employer responsibility, the protocol marked a turning point in the history of organized labor. London was also one of the founders of the Workingmen’s Circle, a mutual benefit and educational society. Although essentially an assimilationist, he supported Jewish causes out of loyalty to those who suffered discrimination anywhere. He was elected chairman of the Jewish Relief Committee to help pogrom victims, and played a leading part in securing cooperation among various factions of the Jewish Congress.

In 1914 Meyer London was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives on the Socialist ticket, representing the Ninth (later the Twelfth) District. In 1916 he defeated a Democratic-Republican fusion candidate put into the field expressly to secure his defeat. Narrowly beaten in 1918, he was elected again in 1921. A gerrymander the following year made further election from the district impossible, and he left Congress in 1923. London was a short, slightly built man with sharp and mobile features. As a speaker he was most effective at mass meetings where he dealt in the folk humor so dear to his audiences. His speeches in the House, although often witty, were those of an advocate, and taken together they present a comprehensive statement of socialist philosophy. He advocated old-age and unemployment insurance, maternity allowances, abolition of child labor and of injunctions in labor disputes, the nationalization of coal mines, and antilynching measures. He opposed high protective tariffs, restrictions on immigration, and property qualifications for voting in Puerto Rico. He spoke out against American intervention in Mexico and higher military budgets. After the outbreak of World War I he urged strict neutrality, and opposed America’s entering the war, the draft, and the espionage laws. He was denounced as unpatriotic for these stands and at the same time was sharply attacked by left-wing socialists for voting in favor of the military budget after the U.S. entered the war. The combined assaults, which included numerous statements from Jewish leaders accusing him of giving Jews a bad name, contributed to his defeat in 1918.

Although Meyer London’s spells of black melancholy grew more frequent in the 1920s as he watched his beloved Socialist party being destroyed by the defection and constant attacks of its secessionist left wing, now the Communist party, he was still at the height of his powers when he was killed in an auto accident near his home on East 18th Street. He left an estate of less than $4,000, but more than 25,000 people passed by his coffin as it lay in the Jewish Daily Forward building. He was buried in Mount Carmel cemetery in Queens, where for many years the Workingmen’s Circle held annual ceremonies beside his grave.

Materials on Meyer London’s philosophy and activities are scattered in the files of the Jewish Daily Forward, the Arbeiter Zeitung, the New York Call, and the Congressional Record for the 64th. 65th. and 67th Congresses. H. Rogoff, An East Side Epic (1930) is the only biography. See also obituary sketches in The Nation and Outlook, June 23, 1926, obituaries in the New York dailies, and the article by A. Lee in The Dictionary of American Biography.