Socialist Labor Party
Which political party did Ella Reeve Bloor belong to from 1898 to 1901?
Ella Reeve Bloor Ella Reeve Mother Bloor ( July 8 , 1862 – August 10 , 1951 ) was an American labor organizer and long-time activist in the socialist and communist movements . Bloor is best remembered as one of the top-ranking female functionaries in the Communist Party USA and as one of the most prominent socialist feminists in United States history . Biography . Early years . Ella Reeve Mother Bloor was born Ella Reeve on Staten Island on July 8 , 1862 , the daughter of Harriet Amanda ( née Disbrow ) and Charles Reeve . She grew up in Bridgeton , New Jersey . She was married first to Lucien Bonaparte Ware , then Louis Cohen , and finally Andrew Omholt . Ella married Lucian Ware in February 1882 , at ages of 19 and 27 , respectively . In the following 10 years , the couple had seven children . However , three died by the age of 3 ( Pauline Stites Ware , Charles Reeve Ware , and Lucien Bonaparte Ware , Jr [ twin to Harold ] ) , leaving 4 children : Grace , Helen , Harold and Hamilton Disbrow Ware . Her daughter , Helen Ware , was a concert violinist while son , Harold Ware , became an agriculture expert as an activist in the Communist Party of America . One of her other sons was Hamilton D . Buzz Ware , an artist and prominent leader in the Village of Arden , Delaware , where she lived for many years . Ella and Lucien divorced in 1896 and the following year , at about age 35 , she married Louis Cohen . In the following three years , the couple had two children : Victor Hugo Cohen and Carl M . Cohen . Ella and Louis Cohen likely divorced by 1906 . In 1930 , at about age 68 , Ella married Andrew Omholt . Early political career . Ella became involved in several reform movements including the prohibitionist Womens Christian Temperance Union ( WCTU ) and womens suffrage . She was the author of two books for children , Three Little Lovers of Nature ( 1895 ) and Talks About Authors and Their Work ( 1899 ) . In 1897 Ella was a founding member of the Social Democracy of America , a new organization established by her friend Eugene V . Debs and Victor Berger — a group which would later emerge as the Social Democratic Party ( SDP ) . She later recalled : When I joined the Social Democracy I was living in Brooklyn and I had married for the second time . My husband , Louis Cohen , was a socialist . I was pregnant with the first of the two children of that marriage . The railroad men [ Debs supporters ] came to my house so I could continue to act as [ local ] secretary . But a new disappointment was in store for me . The Social Democracy , I soon discovered , was a utopian scheme . Debs plan was to form an ideal colony out West to show by example that socialism could work . From the outset I told the members of my group that this colonization scheme was unsound , not real socialism at all . I stayed with it for a while because of my loyalty to Debs , and because this was the nearest thing I had yet found to a socialist movement . Debs set up a paper in Chicago called The Social Democrat . At his request I wrote a childrens column for it . The children answered the appeals of Debs and his colonization committee by sending me money . I felt it was unfair to collect money for something that did not yet exist . People were already selling out businesses to join the colony . A national convention was held in Chicago [ June 7–11 , 1898 ] and our local sent delegates . Among them was my husband who still felt that anything Debs was in must be all right . I agreed to withhold final judgment until the delegates returned . When they came back and reported that plans to establish the colony would continue , I resigned . I simply could not stay with anything so unscientific . Shortly after her resignation from the Social Democracy , Ella attended a meeting in New York of the Socialist Labor Party , at which editor of the party newspaper Daniel DeLeon was the speaker : He was small and slight and prematurely gray , and spoke very deliberately and convincingly . The Socialist Labor Party was a revolutionary party in those days and DeLeon , its leader , was a brilliant theoretician and speaker , a courageous fighter against capitalism.. . I was impressed with his analysis of the evils of the capitalist system , and of the fallacy of isolated socialist colonies as a way of achieving socialism . I felt that at last here was scientific socialism and joined the SLP . Daniel DeLeon and I became friends.. . I became very much interested in the New York Labor News Company — the first organization that published revolutionary books and pamphlets in English on a large scale . Its manager was Julien Pierce . Together we proofread the pamphlets translated by DeLeon , often having o reconstruct the English , a greater task than we ever let him know . Ella was elected to the governing General Executive Board of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance ( ST&LA ) , the SLPs trade union affiliate . She was also the ST&LAs organizer for Essex County , New Jersey and was sent to Philadelphia by the organization in an effort to organize street car workers there . Ella recounted her growing disaffection with the SLP in her 1940 memoir : Gradually the defects of the SLP were brought home to me . I found many workers antagonistic because I was organizing a rival union . The STLA was weakening the AF of L <nowiki> [ </nowiki>American Federation of Labor<nowiki> ] </nowiki> by drawing off its more radical elements and leaving the reactionaries in control , and was itself organized on too narrow and sectarian a basis to accomplish anything . Furthermore , the SLP as a political party had little real influence because DeLeon was against taking part in the immediate struggles of the workers.. . I began very early to see the importance of a united trade union movement , and felt that Socialists should work within the AF of L . I felt that DeLeon understood Marx very well abstractly but knew little about the practical needs of the labor movement . The last time I talked with DeLeon I told him I was moving to Philadelphia and was willing to accept the secretaryship of the SLP local there , which had been offered me , but I could not go along with their principles wholeheartedly . As a good friend of mine , DeLeon accepted what I said without anger , but would not change his methods . Soon after her arrival in Philadelphia , a state convention of the SLP decided to leave the party en masse to form a new organization in the nether region between Morris Hillquits dissident so-called Kangaroo faction which broke away in 1899 and DeLeons hardline SLP . Ella opposed this new organization , which called itself The Logical Center and included Lucien Sanial , a former top official in the SLP . Ella had been watching with interest the formation of the Socialist Party of America ( SPA ) in 1901 and decided to leave her new Pennsylvania comrades to rejoin her friend Gene Debs as a member of his new organization . In subsequent years , Bloor worked as a trade union organizer and helped during industrial disputes in Pennsylvania , Michigan , Colorado , Ohio and New York . She organized strikes across a wide range of industries including miners , hatters , steelworkers , and needle-workers . In 1905 Bloor helped a fellow member of the Socialist Party of America , Upton Sinclair , gather information on the Chicago stock yards . Ella partnered with colleague Richard Bloor , and the last name stuck , though the pair were never married . Her work and pen-name eventually appeared in Sinclairs best-selling book , The Jungle . Bloor ran unsuccessfully for political office several times under the Socialist Party of America , including secretary of state for Connecticut in 1908 where she was the first woman to run for state office and Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1918 . In 1938 she ran for Governor of Pennsylvania under the American Communist Party . Communist period . Ella Reeve Bloor was one of the founders of the Communist Labor Party of America , which stemmed from the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party . In 1921 and 1922 , Bloor attended the second conventions of the Comintern in Moscow . She was also a delegate to the founding convention of the Red International of Labor Unions in July 1921 , at which she used the pseudonym Emmons and voted on the basis of credentials issued by three locals of the International Association of Machinists . Upon her return from the Soviet Union , Bloor hitchhiked throughout the United States while writing articles for the Daily Worker . Bloor was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party USA from 1932 to 1948 where she organized tirelessly . During this time , she toured the Midwest , organizing farmers , leading farmers strikes , and giving speeches . Many of these speeches were focused on womens rights , especially suffrage and its connection to their rights as laborers . After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 , Bloor became an advocate of American participation in World War II . Later she argued for an early invasion of Europe to create a Second Front . Death and legacy . Ella Reeve Bloor died on August 10 , 1951 in Richlandtown , Pennsylvania . She is buried in Harleigh Cemetery in Camden , New Jersey . Today , Ella Reeve Bloor is remembered as one of the most prominent socialist feminists in United States history . She gave countless speeches and lectures focusing on topics of womens suffrage and mobilization as workers , often stressing the “direct connection between the ballot and our work . For some , Bloor echoed the voice of working women in the early twentieth century by vocalizing the intersection of socialism and suffrage . She argued that because working women were marginalized by the law as it was , their only form of political power was through protest which frequently proved dangerous and ineffective . She believed that women needed the right to vote if they hoped to have a say in changing laws and therefore improve their working conditions and lives in general . Bloors autobiography , We Are Many , was published in 1940 and served as the basis for the Woody Guthrie song , 1913 Massacre . Life magazine photographed Bloors public funeral reception in Harlem . Alice Neels 1951 painting of her funeral reception , The Death of Mother Bloor , shows her in front of a line of mourners passing by her bier . It was included in the 2021 Alice Neel retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City . Her granddaughter was actress Herta Ware who was married to Will Geer from 1934 to 1954 .