Morris Hillquit (1869-1933) was a prominent Socialist and labor lawyer and leader in New York City's Lower East Side in the early twentieth century.

Born Moses Hilkowitz in Riga on August 1, 1869, he came to the United States in 1886. He helped found the United Hebrew Trades, a garment workers union formed in 1888 while writing for the Arbeiter Zeitung, a Yiddish-language newspaper. He graduated from New York University Law School in 1893.

He led the departure of the right-wing "constitutional" socialists from Daniel De Leon's Socialist Labor Party in 1899 and formed what later became the Socialist Party of America. He was the foremost theoretician of that party and, along with Victor Berger, clashed with Eugene V. Debs over the Socialist Party's electoral politics and policies toward the American Federation of Labor.

Hillquit opposed the United States' participation in World War I and defended Debs and other socialists charged with espionage for opposing the war. He twice ran for Mayor of New York and ran on five occasions for Congress. His unsuccessful run for Mayor in 1917—when he ran on an anti-war platform that attracted support from some parts of the Irish and German community but frightened conservative elements in the Jewish community—marked in many ways the high point for socialist politics in New York City.

Sources

• Howe, Irving, World of Our Fathers, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976. ISBN 0151463530.

• Epstein, Melech, Profiles of eleven; profiles of eleven men who guided the destiny of an immigrant society and stimulated social consciousness among the American people, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965.