yielding_ more and more to the pressure to modify the principles
and program of the Party for the sake of swelling the vote and
hastening the day of its expected triumph.... The truth is that we
have not a few members who regard vote getting as of supreme
importance, no matter by what method the votes may be secured, and
this leads them to hold out inducements and make representations
which are not at all compatible with the stern and uncompromising
principles of a revolutionary party. They seek to make the
Socialist propaganda so attractive--eliminating whatever may give
offense to bourgeois sensibilities--that it serves as a bait for
votes rather than as a means of education, and _votes thus secured
do not properly belong to us and do injustice to our Party as well
as those who cast them_.... The election of legislative and
administrative officers, here and there where the Party is still in
a crude state and the members economically unprepared and
politically unfit to assume the responsibilities thrust upon them
as the result of popular discontent, will inevitably bring trouble
and set the Party back, instead of advancing it, and while this is
to be expected and is to an extent unavoidable, we should court no
more of that kind of experience than is necessary to avoid a
repetition of it. The Socialist Party has already achieved some
victories of this kind which proved to be defeats, crushing and
humiliating, and from which the party has not even now, after many
years, entirely recovered [referring, doubtless, to Haverhill and
Brockton.--W. E. W.].

"Voting for Socialism is not Socialism any more than a menu is a
meal....

"The votes will come rapidly enough from now on without seeking
them, and we should make it clear that the Socialist Party wants
the votes only of those who want Socialism, and that, above all, as
a revolutionary party of the working class, it discountenances vote
seeking for the sake of votes and holds in contempt office seeking
for the sake of office. These belong entirely to capitalist parties
with their bosses and their boodle and have no place in a party
whose shibboleth is emancipation."[146] (My italics.)

After Mr. Debs, Mr. Charles Edward Russell is now, perhaps, the most
trusted of American Socialists. His statement,