Seymour Stedman

Biography

Early years

Seymour Stedman was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on July 4, 1871, the son of ethnic Anglo-Saxon parents with ancestors dating back to the time of the American Revolution. Financial difficulties forced the Stedman family to move west, settling in Solomon, Kansas, where adverse weather conditions forced the family still further towards poverty. Young Seymour was forced to drop out of school in the third grade to take a job tending sheep for $5 a month as a way of helping his family make ends meet.

The Stedman family moved to Chicago in 1881 and Seymour took a job for a manufacturing company, working as a uniformed messenger boy. Stedman later took a job as a janitor for another Chicago firm, an occupation that allowed him ample time for reading. During the course of his reading, he became interested in political ideas for the first time and frequently debated the problems of the world with friends. As a byproduct of his reading and discussions, Stedman became an adherent of the Single Tax system advocated by Henry George, a reform program then in popular vogue.

In 1889 Stedman decided that he wanted to be a lawyer. He was ultimately admitted to the Illinois State Bar Association in 1891.

Political career

In 1890 the precocious Stedman decided that he wanted to become a public orator on behalf of the Democratic Party. He honed his skill speaking before the public, specializing in matters dealing with tariff legislation. His development as an aspiring Democratic politician came to an end in 1894, however, when the great strike of the American Railway Union headed by Eugene V. Debs, centered in Chicago and which Stedman supported as an official public speaker of the union, was crushed by judicial injunction and federal troops sent into Illinois by President Grover Cleveland. Stedman left the ranks of the Democratic Party in protest over this heavy-handed action of the Democratic president.

In the aftermath of the defeated strike, Gene Debs was incarcerated for six months at Woodstock Jail in Chicago, where he was turned to the doctrine of socialism by the jailhouse visits of Milwaukee newspaper editor Victor L. Berger. Stedman would not be far behind the union leader, following a brief stint in the People's Party as a radical populist.

Stedman was elected to the 1896 National Convention of the People's Party, held in St. Louis, where he attempted to start a movement among the delegates to draft Gene Debs as the nominee of the organization for President of the United States. Nearly one-third of the 1300 assembled delegates signed a petition calling for Debs that Stedman circulated. His effort was short-circuited by a trick of the supporters of William Jennings Bryan, however, when the gas lights were shut out on the convention. The following day a statement by Debs was read to the convention indicating that he had no desire to run for president and the bid was over, leaving Stedman to support Bryan in the 1896 campaign.

In 1897 Victor Berger decided to work at converting the Social Democracy of America, an organization established with the goal of constructing a socialist colony in some western American state into a full-fledged socialist political party. He gathered together Debs, Stedman, and others for this cause, which came to a climax at the heated June 1898 convention of the organization. a result that caused Berger, Debs, Stedman, and their co-thinkers to bolt the convention and establish a new political organization of their own — the Social Democratic Party of America (SDP).

Stedman was a member of the governing National Executive Committee of the SDP from 1898. When after much acrimonious debate that organization merged with a similarly named Eastern organization headed by Henry Slobodin and Morris Hillquit to form the Socialist Party of America (SPA) in 1901, Stedman became a founding member of that organization as well.

In 1904, he was the Socialist Party of America's nominee for Cook County state's attorney. Stedman's name was offered for nomination for Vice President of the United States at the SPA's 1908 convention in Chicago, but he trailed Benjamin Hanford in the balloting, losing by a vote of 106 delegates to 46. In 1914, Stedman lost reelection, finishing fifth of five candidates for three seats.

In 1915 Stedman was their candidate for mayor of Chicago and in 1920 for Vice President of the United States, running on a ticket headed by Eugene V. Debs. During World War I Stedman was a prominent defender of war opponents indicted for sedition, most notably Rose Pastor Stokes.

In 1941, Stedman joined the campaign to free Earl Browder, the General Secretary of the Communist Party USA imprisoned on charges of passport fraud. The next year, Stedman joined the party himself, believing that the Socialists had lost the support of the working class.

Death

Seymour Stedman died on July 9, 1948, in Chicago, Illinois. He was honored with an obituary in the Daily Worker.

References

Works

• Socialist Senatorial Nominating Speeches: Barney Berlyn Nominated by Seymour Stedman, Duncan McDonald nominated by C.M. Madsen: A Clear Statement of the Purpose and Policy of the Socialist Party. Chicago: Socialist Party, 1913.
• Issues of 1914. With others. Chicago: Campaign Committee of Cook County Socialist Party, 1914.
• Socialism and Peace. With Oliver Wilson. Chicago: Socialist Party of Illinois, 1917.
• The Debs case; a complete history (with Eugene V. Debs) Chicago, Ill, Socialist Party, National Office, 1919.

References

1. Alexander Trachtenberg (gen. ed.), ''A Political Guide for the Workers, 1920.'' Chicago: Socialist Party of the United States, 1920; p. 15.
2. He approached the [[Dean (education)
3. He was an early booster of Debs for President of the United States, helping to establish the "Central E.V. Debs Club" in Chicago on May 20, 1896, and being elected president of the new booster organization by the gathering.[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/11543796/central_debs_club_is_organized_in/ "Central Debs Club is Organized"], ''Chicago Tribune'', May 21, 1896, p. 7.
4. Trachtenberg, pp. 16–17.
5. Trachtenberg, p. 17.
6. The battle over the main question of colonization versus independent political action was won by the colonization faction by a vote of 53 to 37,Trachtenberg, p. 18.
7. (1911). "Chicago Daily News Almanac". Chicago Daily News Company.
8. "Illinois Blue Book 1913-1914".
9. "Illinois Blue Book 1915-1916".
10. (5 December 1941). "Debs' Running Mate Says Browder Must Be Free". [[Daily Worker]].
11. Howard, Milton. (29 November 1942). "Running Mate of Debs, Now He's a Communist". [[Daily Worker.
12. (13 July 1948). "Seymour Stedman Dies at 76; Was Running Mate of Debs". [[Daily Worker]].