National Convention Of The Socialist Party Held At Chicago, Illinois, May 1 To 6, 1904. Stenographic Report By Wilson E. Mcdermut. Edited By William ... The National Committee Of The Socialist Party
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William Mailly was an American socialist and journalist. Also, he was a dramatic critic.
Background
William Mailly was born on November 22, 1871, in the poorhouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the son of John Mailly and Mary McDowell. His Irish father was a heavy drinker who frequently deserted his mother and the seven children of whom only three boys survived childhood.
When William was three his mother took the family back to her native Scotland and his earliest recollections were of Lennoxtown and of a Glasgow close. Afterward, she started a laundry in Liverpool and at twelve William left school to become her errand boy.
Tips received for delivering laundry he spent for theatre tickets and thus began his lifelong devotion to the drama.
Career
In 1889, Mailly's father brought the family to America and William became a section hand in Illinois and later a coal miner in Alabama. Mailly's intelligence, a gift for friendship, and a keen sense of humor, together with his attractive brown eyes and eager, searching expression, almost immediately made him a leader.
At twenty-one, he was an organizer and the next year state secretary of the United Mine Workers of America. For a time associate editor of the Birmingham Labor Advocate, in 1896, he went to Nashville, became secretary of the Tennessee Federation of Labor, and edited the Nashville Journal of Labor.
Having become an admiring friend of Eugene V. Debs he assisted, in 1898, in forming the Social Democratic party at Chicago. Shortly afterward he was made an organizer for that party in New York City and later went to Massachusetts for the "Social Crusaders. "There he edited the Haverhill Social Democrat, assisted in electing Socialist mayors in Haverhill and Brockton, and in 1902 became secretary of the state party.
His success in that office and as secretary of the "Unity convention" in 1901 led to his choice, early in 1903, as national secretary of the Socialist party, with headquarters first at Omaha and later at Chicago.
At a time when the movement was in special need of English-speaking leaders, Mailly threw into his task executive ability, forthright sincerity, infectious enthusiasm, and a devotion transferred from the Catholic religion which he early discarded. But he was primarily an idealist and writer and in 1905, having more than doubled the number of organized states, got the party out of debt, and managed the campaign of 1904 in which socialism first became a real factor in American politics, he declined re-election as secretary though, for the next year, he was a member of the national executive committee.
For a time he was a joint publisher of a Socialist paper at Toledo, Ohio, but from 1907 to 1909 he was managing editor first of the New York Worker and later of the Evening Call. In May 1909, he resigned to become a dramatic critic for the Twentieth Century Magazine and to write articles and stories for the Arena, Independent, Munsey's Magazine, and other periodicals.
At the time of the Triangle fire, he was business manager of the Ladies Waist Makers' Union and the burden of relief work and agitation for better fire protection for workers thrown upon him proved too heavy for his strength, already weakened by diabetes.
During the last six months of his life, he was associate editor of the Metropolitan Magazine. His early death cut short a career of much promise as a writer and pioneer in interpreting the effect of the drama upon social ideals.