"The rebuke of the National Executive Committee was in the form of an amendment to the original motion to adopt its report. The amendment carried by 63 to 39.... "Perhaps Frederick Haller expressed the general sentiment of the convention when he said: "'We must endorse this supplemental report of the National Executive Committee, but we must go back to our constituents and tell them that we gave the National Executive Committee hell.'"
These "constituents," the rank and file, determine the character of the party, and not the thimble-rigging games of their political leaders, who support themselves and have "made a good thing" out of Socialism by carrying water on one shoulder for gullible voters, and on the other for their credulous disciples. This is not the first time that self-serving, hypocritical teachers, in compassing sea and land to make proselytes, have made them twofold more the children of hell than themselves.
The National Emergency Convention of 1919 affords still other evidence of the mind of the rank and file of the Socialist Party in the report of the committee which investigated the referendum vote of 1919 which the old National Executive Committee had suppressed. The "Call," September 1, 1919, says: