Louis Waldman

Louis Waldman (January 5, 1892 – September 12, 1982) was a Ukrainian-born Jewish-American garment worker, engineer, lawyer and politician who was a leading figure in the Socialist Party of America from the late 1910s through the mid-1930s. A founding member of the Social Democratic Federation and a prominent New York labor lawyer, he was expelled from the New York State Assembly in 1920 during the First Red Scare.

Louis Waldman was born on January 5, 1892, in Yancherudnia, Ukraine, not far from Kiev, the son of a Jewish innkeeper who was one of the few literate men of the village. Waldman emigrated to America in the summer 1909 at the age of 17, arriving in New York City to join his sisters on September 17. Waldman first worked in a metal shop before becoming an apprentice garment lining cutter in one of the sweatshops of the city. He joined a union and participated in the 11-week New York cloakmakers' strike of 1910, while attending high school in the evenings. Upon conclusion of the strike and resumption of his job, Waldman was fired and blacklisted for carrying out his function as a union representative in supervising the enforcement of the union contract in his shop. Barred from the garment industry, Waldman thereafter worked unsuccessfully as a door-to-door peddler of ribbon before taking a job in a cardboard box factory.

Waldman graduated from high school in the spring of 1911 and, owing to a lack of funds for college, enrolled in the Cooper Union to study engineering that fall.

Waldman witnessed the Triangle Waist Company fire of 1911. Packed into a tight space and locked away from means of escape, 146 workers from the building's 9th floor died that day in one of the greatest tragedies in New York City's history. At a memorial meeting held at Cooper Union in the aftermath of the fire, Waldman saw and heard Socialist leader Morris Hillquit speak for the first time, an event which inspired Waldman to engage in "a veritable orgy of reading" on socialism and thereby won the young man over to the socialist cause.

Waldman graduated from Cooper Union in June 1916 with a degree in engineering, and worked as a construction engineer during the day while following his ambition to become a lawyer by attending law school in the evenings.

He was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1923 and worked thereafter as counsel for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, for the New York Central Trades and Labor Council, and for various other unions in the building and garment trades.

In 1916 the young engineer Louis Waldman was approached at a meeting of his Socialist Party branch and was drafted into becoming a candidate of the party for the New York State Assembly. Although he protested that between his engineering job and his evening studies of law he had no time for campaigning, the party official approaching him smiled and replied, "Campaigning? Who said anything about campaigning? We just want someone to run for office. If you get more than seven hundred votes we'll be lucky. The real campaigns this year will be for Meyer London and Morris Hillquit." And thus was born a Socialist Party politician. Waldman did actually campaign, however, mounting the platform to give public speeches, at which he gradually improved. Waldman performed well in the 1916 election, tripling the Socialist tally while losing to his Democratic opponent by a few hundred votes.

In the fall of 1917, with America embroiled in the European conflict and a section of the American electorate radicalized by the turn towards war by the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson, Waldman ran for the Assembly again as a Socialist, this time winning election. Waldman was a member of the State Assembly (New York Co., 8th D.), sitting in the 141st New York State Legislature, one of 10 Socialists elected to the Assembly of 1918, the best electoral performance that the organization would ever achieve.