Meyer London

London was born in Kalvarija, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire) on December 29, 1871. Meyer's father, Efraim London, was a former Talmudic scholar who had become politically revolutionary and philosophically agnostic, while his mother had remained a devotee of Judaism.[2] His father had established himself as a grain merchant in Zenkov, a small town located in Poltava province of Ukraine but his financial situation was poor, and in 1888 his father emigrated with Meyer's younger brother to the United States, leaving Meyer behind.

Meyer attended Cheder, a traditional Jewish primary school in which he learned Hebrew, before entering Russian-language schools to begin his secular education.[3] In 1891, when Meyer was 20, the family decided to follow his father to America so Meyer terminated his studies and departed for New York City,[3] taking up residence in the city's largely Jewish Lower East Side.

In America, Meyer's father had become a commercial printer, doing jobs in the Yiddish, Russian, and English languages and publishing his own radical weekly called Morgenstern.[4] Efraim London's shop was a hub of activity, bringing together Jewish radical intellectuals from throughout the city, many of whom met and influenced the printer's son with their ideas.[4]

Meyer earned money as a tutor, taking on pupils at irregular hours and teaching literature and other topics. He later obtained a job as a librarian, a position which allowed him sufficient time to read about history and politics and to study law in his free time.[4] Meyer also frequented radical meetings, gradually developing proficiency as a public speaker and participant in public debates.[5]

In 1896, London was accepted to the law school of New York University, attending most of his classes at night.[5] He completed the program and was admitted to the bar in New York in 1898,[5] becoming a labor lawyer, taking on cases which fought injunctions or defending the rights of tenants against the transgressions of landlords. London did not handle criminal cases, but rather limited himself to matters of civil law.[6]

Congressman Meyer London at a rally for striking Brooklyn streetcar workers, 1916.

In the 1890s, London joined the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP), standing as its candidate for New York State Assembly in 1896.[7] He was attracted by Eugene V. Debs and his new Social Democracy of America (SDA) and resigned from the SLP to help establish Local Branch No. 1 of the Social Democracy in New York in 1897.[7] He was a delegate to the June 1898 convention of SDA in Chicago and was one of the political action-oriented minority which bolted the June 1898 convention to establish the Social Democratic Party of America (SDP) following a dispute over the strategy of socialist colonization.

In 1898, London again ran for New York Assembly in the old 4th Assembly District, this time as the candidate of the SDP.[8]

In the summer of 1901, the Chicago-based SDP merged with another group of former adherents of the Socialist Labor Party to form the Socialist Party of America (SPA), and London transferred his political allegiance to the new organization. He ran for a third time for the 4th Assembly District seat in 1904, this time under the banner of the SPA.

The Russian Revolution of 1905 was deeply inspirational to the former citizen of the Tsarist regime, and London threw himself into the task of speaking to mass meetings organized to help raise funds for the relief of Jewish victims of the pogroms which erupted at that same time.[9] London also engaged in fund-raising on behalf of the Bund, the Yiddish-language revolutionary movement in regions with significant Jewish populations in the old Russian Empire.[10]

London was active in the 1910 New York Cloakmakers strike, during which the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) brought out 50,000 in a successful struggle for higher wages and better work conditions against their employers. In his capacity as counsel for the ILGWU, London drew up and published a communique in the name of the strike committee.[11] In this manifesto, London declared:

We charge the employers with ruining the great trade built up by the industrious immigrants. We charge them with having corrupted the morale of thousands employed in the cloak trade. ... Treachery, slavishness and espionage are encouraged by the employers as great virtues of the cloakmakers. This general strike is greater than any union. It is an irresistible movement of the people. It is a protest against conditions that can no longer be tolerated. This is the first great attempt to regulate conditions in the trade, to do away with that anarchy and chaos which keeps some of the men working sixteen hours a day during the hottest months of the year while thousands of others have no employment whatever. ... We appeal to the people of America to assist us in our struggle.[12]

London argued against an injunction issued against the strikers before the New York Supreme Court en route to a victory of the strikers after a labor action lasting the better part of two months.

In January 1916, London was joined by Socialist Party leaders James Maurer (left) and Morris Hillquit (center) in a meeting with President Woodrow Wilson trying to forestall American entry into World War I.

London's place in the cloakmakers' strike made him one of the best-known public faces of the Socialist Party in New York City and over the course of three runs for Congress he gradually constructed a winning coalition, emerging victorious despite the violence and fraud practiced by the campaign of his Tammany Hall-supported Democratic opponent in the election of 1914. London thus became the second Socialist elected to Congress, following Wisconsin's Victor Berger.[13]

London was a cousin in the family of Tony Judt.[23] He was an uncle of Ephraim London, and through Ephraim, grandnieces were Sheila Michaels, a remarkable activist in her own right, whom Ephraim never publicly acknowledged as his daughter,[24] and Ephraim's nieces Harriet Fraad and Rosalyn Baxandall; their mother Irma was his sister.[25]

London died on Sunday, June 6, 1926. As he was crossing Second Avenue at 15th Street, he was caught in the middle of heavy automobile traffic passing in both directions. London became confused and when he halted in the middle of the road he was struck by a driver of a car, suffering internal injuries.[26] The driver rushed him to Bellevue Hospital, where London's daughter was an intern. When she saw her father, London's only concern was that the driver not be punished. "It's not his fault", said London "and he is a poor man."[27] London died at 10 o'clock that night at the age of 54, after physicians had labored for 11 hours to save him.[26]

News immediately began to spread about the death of the beloved Congressman and crowds immediately began to gather in front of the hospital, the Londons' home, and the building of The Jewish Daily Forward newspaper.[26] The next day, London's body was taken to the Forward building, where it lay in state while 25,000 men, women, and children filed past the casket, paying their respects.[28] A funeral followed on Wednesday, June 10, one of the greatest mass displays of mourning in New York City's history, witnessed by an estimated 500,000 people.[29] The streets were jammed with a procession of 50,000 people, as hundreds of thousands crowded windows and hung from fire escapes or stood along the procession route in a crowd jammed six people deep.[29]

London's body was interred at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Glendale, New York, in the borough of Queens.[30]

In spite of his votes against the previous world war, London became the namesake of a World War II Liberty ship, the USS Meyer London, launched in 1943.

One of the buildings of Hillman Housing Corporation, a housing cooperative founded by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan is named after him. There is also a K-5 elementary school located in the Lower East Side named after Meyer London, also known as P.S. 2.

In an article for The New York Review of Books, historian Tony Judt writes that London is a relative of his: "Our cousin Meyer London had emigrated in 1891 to New York from a nearby village; there he was elected in 1914 as the second Socialist congressman before being ousted by an ignominious alliance of wealthy New York Jews disturbed by his socialism and American Zionists aghast at his well-publicized suspicion of their project."[31]

• List of Jewish members of the United States Congress

• Meyer London Papers, Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.

• Frieburger, William. "The Lone Socialist Vote; A Political Study of Meyer London." PhD diss., University of Cincinnati, 1980.
• Goldberg, Gordon J., Meyer London: A Biography of the Socialist New York Congressman, 1871-1926. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2012.
• Goldberg, Gordon J., Meyer London: A Political Biography. PhD dissertation, Lehigh University, 1971.
• Lewbel, Sam R. "Meyer London and the 67th Congress: The Socialist in the Harding Years 1921-1923." Master's thesis, Central Connecticut State University, 1979.
• Marx, Lewis. Meyer London. New York: The Tamiment Library, New York University, 1975.
• Perkal, Meyer Leon. "Meyer London and Jewish trade unionism in New York, 1896-1926" PhD diss., Brooklyn College, 1964.
• Rogoff, Harry, An East Side Epic: The Life and Work of Meyer London. New York: Vanguard Press, 1930.