"Red Tom" Hickey: The Uncrowned King of Texas Socialism by Peter Buckingham

Abstract

Reviewed by: "Red Tom" Hickey: The Uncrowned King of Texas Socialism by Peter Buckingham Thomas Alter II "Red Tom" Hickey: The Uncrowned King of Texas Socialism. By Peter Buckingham. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2020. Pp. 416. Photographs, appendices, notes, bibliography, index.) Irish-American Socialist Thomas Hickey has long been an enigmatic figure. Just about every study of Progressive Era Texas labor history includes at least a brief mention of him. He gained the admiration of thousands of downtrodden tenant farmers and the wrath of economic and political elites. However, there was no full account of Hickey's life until this one, [End Page 234] Peter Buckingham's impressive biography. Buckingham's enjoyable storytelling befits Hickey's life of rebellion, heartbreak, drink, and unfulfilled dreams. The book also includes appendices containing two of Hickey's stump speeches, allowing readers the rare chance to absorb Hickey's own words. The little that was previously known about Hickey came from his time as a leader of the Texas Socialist Party and as an editor of its newspaper, The Rebel, which grew to the third largest socialist paper in the country. Buckingham has pieced together Hickey's history from archives in Ireland and across the United States, including an extensive use of the Hickey Papers at Texas Tech University. Hickey was born in 1868 in Ire-land and immigrated to the United States in 1892. When he was an infant his family moved to Dublin where his father was a Fenian, who opposed British rule of Ireland. This influence would stick with Hickey his entire life; in Texas Hickey viewed the struggle of tenant farmers for landownership through an Irish lens. The conflict between labor and capital that defined much of life in the United States at this time radicalized Hickey further, and he joined the Socialist Labor Party. Based in Brooklyn, Hickey toured the country as a stump speaker and close ally of party leader Daniel DeLeon before he ran afoul of DeLeon's sectarian control and was expelled from the party in 1901. It has been decades since historians have looked closely at this period of internal party conflict, but Buckingham provides fresh insights on this topic that should draw the attention of those interested in the history of socialism. After being expelled, Hickey headed west and found work as a lumberjack in Washington and a miner in Montana before settling in Texas around 1907. He became one of the U.S. government's main targets during the post-World War I Red Scare, which effectively crushed the Texas Socialist Party. Hickey then attempted to start a few radical newspapers and even gave the oil business a try, all unsuccessfully, before dying of throat cancer in 1925. According to Buckingham, "Hickey's life was shaped by being both the son of a proud Fenian in one century and the father, in his own right, of a powerful political movement in faraway Texas in another" (2). Referring to Hickey as the father of the vibrant socialist movement of Texas in the early twentieth century is a bit of an exaggeration. Throughout the book, Buckingham suggests that the Texas Socialist Party would not have succeeded as it did without Hickey's speaking, writing, and organizing skills. But, because Buckingham does not take into account the decades-long history of radicalism in Texas, "Red Tom" Hickey should not be taken as a history of that radicalism, but as a biography. One can argue the Texas Socialist Party would have achieved the same level of success even without Hickey because it already had the required people, organizing experience, and skills before his arrival. [End Page 235] That being said, Hickey did make valuable contributions to the socialist movement in Texas and became a key figure in the state's rich history of agrarian radicalism. This is what Buckingham reveals with his book, making a valuable contribution that joins the list of required readings on Texas working-class history. Thomas Alter II Texas State University Copyright © 2020 The Texas State Historical Association