James Oneal

James J. Oneal (March 13, 1875 – December 12, 1962), a founding member of the Socialist Party of America (SPA), was a prominent socialist journalist, historian, and party activist who played a decisive role in the bitter party splits of 1919–21 and 1934–36.

Oneal was born March 13, 1875, in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of an iron worker. Upon the death of his father, Oneal was forced to leave school to go to work in a steel mill to help support his family. Oneal attended public school only to the 6th grade, relying instead upon self-education.

Oneal was an early convert to social democratic politics, joining the Socialist Labor Party of America in 1895 before leaving to join the Chicago-based Social Democratic Party of America (SDP) of Victor L. Berger and Eugene V. Debs shortly after its founding in 1897. Long a resident of Terre Haute, Indiana, Oneal was a close personal friend of his neighbor Debs.

Oneal was a delegate to the 1900 convention of the SDP and to the 1901 Unity Convention at which the Socialist Party of America (SPA) was born. He was also elected as the first State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Indiana, state affiliate of the SPA, shortly after establishment of the new party. The following year Oneal was elected to the governing National Committee of the SPA as the representative of the Socialist Party of Indiana.

In 1903, Oneal moved to Omaha and went to work in the party's National Office as an assistant to Executive Secretary William Mailly. He continued in that role until 1905, at which time he left to become the Associate Editor of the New York Worker, forerunner of the great Socialist daily, the New York Call. After leaving the Worker in 1908, Oneal returned home to Indiana, where he was elected the State Secretary of the SP of Indiana from 1911 to 1913. By 1915, Oneal had relocated again, this time to Massachusetts, where he was elected State Secretary of that party in 1915, continuing in that post until 1917.

Oneal attended virtually every convention of the SPA as a delegate, including the seminal Emergency National Conventions of 1917, as a delegate from Massachusetts, and 1919, as a delegate from New York. Oneal also ran for office on the Socialist ticket, standing for President of the Brooklyn Board of Aldermen in 1919.

Oneal's main occupation in these years was that of Socialist journalist. From 1918 until the end of the publication in 1923, Oneal was the editorial writer for the SPA daily, the New York Call. In that role he was extremely influential during the factional party turmoil which erupted in 1919, a power made even more forceful when combined with the voice and vote which Oneal held on the party's governing 15 member National Executive Committee, to which he was elected in 1918. After the demise of the daily Call, Oneal was instrumental in starting its weekly successor, The New Leader, and he served as editor of that long-running publication from its establishment in 1924.

The inner-party political situation during the war years has long been caricatured as a struggle between an ultra-revolutionary Left Wing and a "conservative" Right Wing. In actuality, the political views within the party's so-called Right Wing were more akin to a rainbow than a dichotomy. Perspectives among Party Regulars ranged from Christian socialism and tepid Sewer Socialism on the one hand to staunch support for the anti-militarist resolution adopted at the 1917 St. Louis emergency national convention and an earnest desire to initiate socialist society via the ballot box. James Oneal's own orientation in these years was closer to the latter pole, along with other main political leaders of the party, such as Eugene V. Debs, Morris Hillquit, Adolph Germer, and John M. Work. The true "Right Wing" of the party (exemplified by a large section of the publicists associate with the party, including Allan L. Benson, Charles Edward Russell, John Spargo, Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, and Carl D. Thompson) peeled away in 1917-18, as American participation in the European conflict became a reality and Woodrow Wilson's argument that this was indeed a "war to make the world safe for democracy" made converts.