Reading, Pennsylvania, at one time was the shining
example of Socialism in the United States. The “S-word” has been and will be
bandied about in the current 2016 election imbroglio, where many people think
it is a relatively new term.
On the
contrary! Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Reading were
places where Socialists enjoyed electoral success. Milwaukee and Reading has
large numbers of German immigrants and their descendants. About two million
Germans left the Wilhelmine Reich
from 1871-1900, and many of them were Social Democrats (among them my
great-grandfather, Peter Friederich Gross, who became a Knight of Labor in Allegheny
County, PA.)
In 1901, the
Socialist Party was established in Reading. While the party suffered on account
of its opposition to Us involvement in World War I, afterwards it enjoyed
success in several places. With reference to Reading, there were Socialists as
mayor, city council, county officials, and in the legislature.
John Henry Stump,
mayor several times, urged Socialists to focus on bread-and-butter issues
instead of abstract intellectual debate. Incidentally, Stump was a solid
citizen, and a member of the Evangelical Congregational Church. His
administration brought decent drinking water to Reading. Americans took that
for granted until the crisis in Flint, Michigan.
I will post
a few links. My seminary internship was at St. John’s Lutheran in Reading
during 1979-1980. Several friends still keep in touch with me. Reading is
immortalized as “Brewer” in John Updike’s Rabbit
novels. As for Socialist memories, there were not many from my time there.
I do remember going to a Democratic function in the Spartaco Club, with murals
bearing vivid colors and Italian slogans and old-timers drinking beer out of
those small glasses favored by older establishments.
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