The 1922 Bridgman Convention was a secret conclave of the underground

Communist Party of America The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...

(CPA) held in August 1922 near the small town of

Bridgman, Michigan Bridgman is a city in Berrien County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 2,291 at the time of the 2010 census. History There was a place in this area known as Plummer's Pier. In 1856 lumbermen founded Charlotteville in this area. ...

, about outside of the city of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

on the banks of Lake Michigan. The convention, called by the CPA as its annual gathering for the election of officers and making of internal decisions, was attended by a delegate who was secretly an employee of the Bureau of Investigation, who informed his superiors of the date and general location of the gathering. The convention was raided by local and federal law enforcement authorities on August 22, 1922, and a number of participants and a large quantity of documents seized in an operation which garnered national headlines. Two 1923 test trials of the

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

criminal syndicalism Criminal syndicalism has been defined as a doctrine of criminal acts for political, industrial, and social change. These criminal acts include advocation of crime, sabotage, violence, and other unlawful methods of terrorism. Criminal syndicalism la ...

law resulted from the arrests, with

trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ...

leader William Z. Foster freed by a "

hung jury A hung jury, also called a deadlocked jury, is a judicial jury that cannot agree upon a verdict after extended deliberation and is unable to reach the required unanimity or supermajority. Hung jury usually results in the case being tried again. T ...

," while Communist Party leader C. E. Ruthenberg was convicted. Ruthenberg ultimately died of

peritonitis Peritonitis is inflammation of the localized or generalized peritoneum, the lining of the inner wall of the abdomen and cover of the abdominal organs. Symptoms may include severe pain, swelling of the abdomen, fever, or weight loss. One part o ...

in 1927, just after his appeals were exhausted and just before sentence was enforced. No additional trials associated with the 1922 Bridgman raid were conducted.

History

The 1921 Central Caucus split

In the fall of 1921, a section of the Communist Party of America identifying themselves as a "Central Caucus," headed by Executive Secretary Charles Dirba and including Central Executive Committee members John J. Ballam and George Ashkenuzi, split from the CPA to form their own parallel organization. At issue was the decision of the CEC majority to hurriedly establish a parallel

Workers Party of America The Workers Party of America (WPA) was the name of the legal party organization used by the Communist Party USA from the last days of 1921 until the middle of 1929. Background As a legal political party, the Workers Party accepted affiliation fr ...

(WPA), the "above-ground" and "legal" nature of which was believed to risk exposing the organization's largely immigrant membership to easy arrest and deportation.Theodore Draper, ''The Roots of American Communism.'' New York: Viking Press, 1957; pg. 353. The split came after a mere eight months of tenuous unity between Dirba and his associates with the members of the former Communist Labor Party (CLP). Dirba's "Central Caucus" group formally organized themselves as a competing organization, also known as the "Communist Party of America," at a convention held early in January 1922. This gathering, attended by 38 delegates, purported to represent 5,000 party members, fully half of the American communist movement at the time, 80 percent of whom hailed from various

language federation Language federations were formed in the late 19th and early 20th century by immigrants to the United States, primarily from Eastern and Southern Europe, who shared a commitment to some form of socialist politics. Some of these groups joined the S ...

s of the old CPA. The Central Caucus faction objected to the establishment of a public

(WPA) to which all underground party members were required to belong. In addition to security concerns over the WPA, the radical Central Caucus group objected to the WPA's emphasis upon elections, considering this a turn away from the strategy of forcible overthrow of the bourgeoisie through

revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...

and the establishment of the

dictatorship of the proletariat In Marxist philosophy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a condition in which the proletariat holds state power. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate stage between a capitalist economy and a communist economy, whereby the ...

in accord with the Soviet model.Draper, ''The Roots of American Communism,'' pg. 354. This new split of the American communist movement was vexing to the

Communist International The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...

, which insisted upon one unified communist party in each country and which had struggled to unite its American factions ever since the formation of parallel organizations in September 1919. Although the Central Caucus actively campaigned with the Comintern on behalf of its position, going so far as to dispatch John Ballam to Moscow, the Comintern ruled against those participating in the new split and ordered them back into the "regular" CPA.Draper, ''The Roots of American Communism,'' pg. 357. The Comintern ultimatum declared that "All members that do not comply with the nityinstructions within two months from the time they sent out by the CEC of the CP of A stand outside of the CP of A and therefore also out of the Comintern."Cited in Draper, ''The Roots of American Communism,'' pg. 357. A convention was called for August 1922 to formally reintegrate the Central Caucus faction dissidents into the "regular" CPA and well as to decide upon various programmatic initiatives, such as the proposed dissolution of the underground organization in favor of the much more successful WPA. The dates of August 17–23, 1922, were set for the gathering, which was to be held at the Wolfskeel resort at

, site of a 1920 convention of the

United Communist Party of America The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...

which had gone off in secret without complications.