August Palm
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August Teodor Palm (February 5, 1849 - March 14, 1922) was a Swedish socialist activist and a key person in introducing the Social Democratic labour movement in Sweden, leading it in a reformism direction.
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[edit] Life
[edit] Early activism
The son of a school teacher near Malmö, he remined orphan at the age of 10, he was trained to be a tailor. At the age of 18, he made a training journey through Denmark and Germany, after which he settled in 1874 as a tailor in Haderslev in Northern Schleswig. Also in 1874 he married Johanna Larsson.
During his journey in Germany, he came to know the socialist ideas, and in 1877 he was evicted from that country because of his socialist agitation. He then stayed in Storheddinge in Denmark until 1881, when he returned to his native Sweden. On November 6 of the same year, while in Malmö, Palm gave the first socialist speech ever in Sweden, and entered a political tour to Gothenburg and Stockholm.
[edit] Agitator
In March 1882, he started the newspaper Folkviljan ("Will of the People") in Malmö, and acted as its editor until 1885, when it was discontinued. Instead, Palm moved to Stockholm and on September 25, 1885 began printing the newspaper Social-Demokraten ("The Social Democrat"), acting as its editor for its first year. From the fall 1886, Hjalmar Branting took over as editor-in-chief.
Palm's greatest contribution was as an agitator for trade union and socialist ideas, constantly touring around the country, often making speeches at the roadside - since he was barred from using lecture halls. Another of his messages, and perhaps the most important, was to expose the liberal middle-class discourse, with its claim to originate with "friends of the workers", as self-seeking and power-hungry careerism. Palm's constant argument was that working-class members were fully competent to look after their own interests.
[edit] Visit to the US
In 1900, August Palm was invited by the Scandinavian club of the Socialist Labor Party of America in Providence, Rhode Island, in cooperation with similar clubs in New York City and Brooklyn, to visit the United States, as a means to attract more members to these clubs. The trip started on September 1, 1900 and is described in the Swedish book Ögonblicksbilder från en tripp till Amerika ("Snapshots from a Trip to America"), published in 1901. He was much impressed by the improved conditions that workers enjoyed in America, and hoped that Swedish workers would one day reach the same material wealth.
[edit] Books by August Palm
- Några drag ur mitt lif ("Some Excerpts from My Life"), 1899
- Ögonblicksbilder från en tripp till Amerika ("Snapshots from a Trip to America"), 1901
- Ur en agitators lif ("From the Life of an Agitator"), 1904
