It is difficult to read about the Socialist movement in Washington State during the first quarter of the 20th century without running across the name of Emil Herman. Yet today he is known only to a few people who enjoy digging into the obscure corners of the local political past. So far as I can find, no one has ever provided a decent summary of his all-too-brief life. For you academics out there interested in Washington State labor history or in American political prisoners, this guy is waiting for your attention. You scholars can fill in the gaps I am woefully missing in my modest effort to cover his political life. Like some other previous Socialist Party ungovernors, Herman died young as a result of breaking his health in the course of carrying his political message with a religious zeal.

After Emil met his untimely end his widow, Ruby, wrote an essay on his career for the Oct. 19, 1928 Labor Journal (Everett, Wash.), which is the source for her quotes I'll be using.

Emil was born in Germany in 1879. His family came to the U.S. in 1882. Apparently his father, Frederick, had socialist leanings.

Ruby Herman: "He was born in Germany and brought to this country by his parents at the age of three. His childhood was the customary one of struggle with poverty and injustice-- a struggle which was maintained with very little occasional diminishment until the end. His father had some small experience as a socialist in Germany and things he would say started the mind of the boy to consideration of our social-economic problems, with the result that as soon as he had attained an age which would permit such a thing he applied for membership in the Socialist Labor Party and was admitted. When the split took place which caused the formation of the Social-Democratic parties in several states, the organization which has since become national in scope and known as the Socialist Party, he left the Socialist Labor Party and identified himself with the new organization-- in whose ranks he remained afterward."

He basically comes in under the historical radar until 1901, when an Emil Herman emerges as a clerk in the Seattle-based Washington Harness and Saddlery Company. Same guy? Perhaps. I have no record of where he was raised to adulthood. He just suddenly appears.