Utah People's Stories

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: Utah, United States

Timeline

1896: Mrs. Kate S. Hilliard served as a delegate to the Populist Party’s national convention in St. Louis on this day in 1896

1901: Socialist party of America was founded. Chapters opened in cities from Logan, Ogden and Salt Lake to Bingham, Sandy, Manti and Eureka. Since the national organization supported women's right to vote, the movement attracted Utah women. Still they maintained a Victorian bias against women.

Party created a Woman's National Committee. delegates in the 1901 state organizing convention

• Former Populist Kate S. Hilliard. In 1908, Hilliard addressed Ogden's First Congregational Church. In her critique, "Why I Belong to No Church," printed in the March 23 Ogden Standard, the prominent leader claimed any church "as a whole is either silent or against efforts of the working class to free itself from wage slavery." She also ran for the state legislature in the early 1900s
• professional organizer Ida Crouch-Hazlett
• Lucy Hoving joined the fray. A newcomer to Utah in 1888, convert to LDS. Taught in Ogden's public school system, opened a free kindergarten, a school for teachers.
  She took a correspondence course offered by the International School of Social Economy. She evolved into a Socialist orator — and LDS apostate. Aug. 8, 1902, Ogden Standard, reported her untimely death. Crossing the street close to her home, Hoving was "struck by the shaft of a low-wheeled 'bike' carriage [and] instantly killed." Her funeral took place at the home of Socialist friend Kate Hilliard.

In 1910 and 1914, Socialist Olivia McHugh of Murray ran for superintendent of public instruction.

In 1915, McHugh helped create the Utah Women's Peace Party

Virginia Snow Stephen, the daughter of LDS president, Lorenzo Snow, advocated for labor activist and songwriter Joe Hill

Eureka's eclectic Socialist Ladies Club

Supported a series of lectures:

• Mother Jones spoke about unionizing miners
• Coloradan Luella Twining delivered on the perils of capitalism and the emancipation of the working class

Sources

• Stone, Eileen Hallet. "Living history: Women played a big role in Utah’s Socialist party." The Salt Lake Tribune, 3 October 2014.
• John R. Sillito's Women and the Socialist Party in Utah, 1900-1920. 1981 Utah Historical Quarterly
• Mari Jo Buhle's "Women and the Socialist Party." Salt Lake Tribune, July 21, 1914.

• People's History of Utah