Nation: AN AMERICAN CONSCIENCE

Utopia is not a republic of fraternity to be taken by violence. Neither can it be taken by men who have no vision of better things for mankind.

—Norman Thomas, 1963

HE spent most of his 84 years tugging at America's lapels, beseeching it to share his vision of better things. Goad and gadfly to his country's conscience, he espoused a variety of socialism that was questioning rather than doctrinaire, Christian rather than Marxist, democratic rather than totalitarian. Much of what he sought in social welfare legislation was eventually adopted by those who once recoiled from his proposals. "The ultimate token of approval," he said with rueful satisfaction, "is that the Democrats and Republicans have stolen my thunder." Son of a Presbyterian minister, valedictorian of Princeton's class of 1905, six times Socialist candidate for President of the U.S., Norman Mattoon Thomas made an his toric mark. He died in his sleep last week in a Long Island nursing home.

Thomas was born and grew up in Marion, Ohio, and earned pocket money delivering the Marion Star, published by Warren Gamaliel Harding. After Princeton, he did social work at Manhattan's Spring Street Presbyterian Church and Settlement House, traveled around the world, took a divinity degree at Union Theological Seminary, and then became pastor of an East Harlem church. His work in city slums led him to socialism, and he became a pacifist during World War I, thus alienating many of his patriotic friends and earning enduring hostility from others. He entered politics in 1924 as the Socialist and Progressive candidate for Governor of New York. After the death of Eugene V. Debs in 1926, he became leader of the U.S. Socialist Party and two years later ran for President for the first time. In 1932, at the depth of the Depression, he polled 884,649 votes; in his last race in 1948, he got only 139,572.

Socialism and Rheumatism. He was an indefatigable barnstormer, crisscrossing the U.S. in each of his presidential campaigns, riding the upper berth of a Pullman sleeper to save money, lecturing in the booming, resonant tones of a prophet. As early as 1928, he argued for old-age pensions and public works, the five-day week and unemployment insurance. When Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal made those ideas law, socialism's appeal to the U.S. working class began to diminish. "It was often said," Thomas reflected, "that Roosevelt was carrying out the Socialist Party platform. Well, in a way it was true —he carried it out on a stretcher."