Socialism As It Is; A Survey of the World-wide Revolutionary Movement, by William English Walling. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1912.
xii, 452 p. 21 cm.
Published 1918.
A bit about the author, from Richard Schneirov: “The Odyssey of William English Walling: Revisionism, Social Democracy, and Evolutionary Pragmatism,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Vol. 2, No. 4, October 2003.
In the history of American socialism William English Walling occupies a special place. Born into a wealthy Midwestern family, Walling was educated at the University of Chicago and Harvard, but soon found a calling as a social reform activist when he learned first hand about the conditions of working people as an Illinois factory inspector and a habitué of turn-of-the-century social settlement houses and the Jewish ghetto scene. From that point forward Walling was a major influence wherever he directed his fertile mind and instinct for provoking controversy and precipitating new movements. In 1903, Walling helped found the National Women’s Trade Union League and became president of its New York chapter. Six years later he cobbled together a group of anti-racist socialists to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People–then invited W.E.B. DuBois to become editor of its journal, The Crisis.
(If the article wasn’t behind a paywall, I would have tried to provide a more salient quote about this book and its author. It’s amazing to me, however, that such a prominent figure does not yet have a wikipedia entry. And no, I’m not going to add one. How ’bout you do it for me? ;))
I’ll be releasing this book as part of the DP May Day Special Day.
Thanks to Martin Pettit for post-processing this project.