Socialists found obstacles in Bangor

Bangoreans were passionate about politics a century ago. They loved fiery oratory. Socialists on soapboxes could attract hundreds of spectators. But when two specimens of the Socialist persuasion turned up in the Queen City just before the state election in 1906, an alliance of conservative forces conspired to thwart their exercise of free speech, or so some people said.

James F. Carey, a prominent Massachusetts Socialist who would one day run for the U.S. Senate from Maine, came to town on Aug. 14 in an effort to bolster the candidacy of Charles L. Fox, the Socialist candidate for Maine’s governor and the only Socialist anywhere on the state ticket.

This was back in the days when Maine held its state elections early. The saying “As Maine goes, so goes the nation” still held sway. If Fox did well in Maine’s state election on Sept. 10, the nation would take notice. A lot was at stake as Socialists were battling the American Federation of Labor and the radical International Workers of the World for union members.

Carey’s speech had been scheduled to take place in West Market Square. A huge crowd gathered, but just as he was about to mount the improvised rostrum, Capt. Perkins of the Bangor police put a damper on things.

“Have you a permit to hold a public meeting?” Perkins asked Simeon Stetson, the local Socialist organizer. Stetson responded “with considerable emphasis,” according to the Bangor Daily News, that a permit was unnecessary, that there was no law prohibiting the right of free speech, and that any orator, Socialist or otherwise, had a perfect right to express opinions on a public street. The captain, backed up by a few officers, was persistent, however, pointing out that the growing crowd was blocking traffic including the trolley cars that normally moved through the square.

It was 8 p.m. and the crowd was getting restless. Carey seemed philosophical. With Capt. Perkins’ blessing, he trooped off to nearby Center Park, where City Hall stands today. The multitudes followed. Carey’s audience “blackened the broad slope leading to the Universalist Church and overflowed by many scores into Park and Harlow streets. It was an attentive audience too – one held by the spell of the speaker’s magnetic personality,” said the newspaper.

Carey spoke from the lighted bandstand. His message was simple: The government was corrupt at all levels. “The wealth of the country was produced by labor. Capital itself produces nothing. … Why should those who produce everything have nothing, while those who produce nothing have everything?” He made his points with “the directness and force of so many bullets,” wrote the reporter.

The next Socialist event, on Aug. 25, took on an uglier tone. This time Simeon Stetson scheduled the bandstand in Center Park, a logical choice considering what had happened on Aug. 14. The speaker was M.W. Wilkins, a Socialist organizer from California. Once again hundreds of people showed up. But the park, which was usually “brilliantly illuminated” with electric lights from sunset until daylight, was dark, reported the BDN. The city official who turned on the lights couldn’t be found for nearly an hour. To make matters worse, the door to the bandstand was locked, forcing Wilkins to speak standing on a box. Then, when Wilkins finally launched into his talk, “noisy hoodlums” began to disrupt the affair. “[It] was not until someone went and hunted up a policeman that anything like order prevailed,” the newspaper reported.

The ill treatment inspired Wilkins to shower invective on the enemies of socialism. “This is no new experience for us. We have been driven from street corners, put in jail, lights have been turned out on us and our meetings disturbed by hired hoodlums many, many times before, …” he said. “What does the mayor or the chief of police of Bangor expect to gain from such dirty little tricks as this?”

Then he attacked the city’s Democratic administration, the first in its history. “I am told that this city is under a Democratic administration. I thought so. Nine-tenths of the trouble we Socialists have is in Democratic cities.” It’s safe to say, however, that many Republican businessmen feared and loathed Socialists even more than the Democratic union promoters did.

The tirade was continued by a member of the audience: “I am a citizen and taxpayer and I am ashamed of my city … this man has just as much right to have a chance to talk as a Democrat campaign speaker. If they’d been advertised to speak, there’d been lights and there’d been police, by gosh. There wouldn’t have been any hunting all over the city for Dan Sexton to light up, and there wouldn’t have been any of those jailbirds and barroom bums disturbing the meeting. Well, I guess not.”

Wilkins gave several more speeches as the week went on, but they received little press coverage. The crowds grew smaller. It was difficult competing with the popular Eastern Maine State Fair, which was going on at Maplewood Park on the other side of town.

The initially large attendance at these Socialist pep rallies was not indicative of the political tide. Republicans and Democrats still marshaled most of the votes on Election Day. Charles L. Fox received only 1,551 votes out of a total of 133,500 votes cast for governor. The big issue in Maine was not capitalism versus labor. It was the eternal liquor question, and Republicans and Democrats retained a near monopoly over that discussion.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.