Seymour Stedman

Seymour Stedman (July 4, 1871 – 1948) was an American from Chicago, Illinois who rose from shepherd and janitor to become a prominent civil liberties lawyer and a leader of the Socialist Party of America. He is best remembered as the 1920 vice presidential candidate of the Socialist Party of America, when he ran for office on a ticket headed by Eugene V. Debs.

Seymour Stedman was born in Hartford, Connecticut on July 4, 1871, the son of ethnic Anglo-Saxon parents with ancestors dating back to the time of the American Revolution. Financial difficulties forced the Stedman family to move west, settling in Solomon, Kansas, where adverse weather conditions forced the family still further towards poverty. Young Seymour was forced to drop out of school in the third grade to take a job tending sheep for $5 a month as a way of helping his family make ends meet.

The Stedman family moved to Chicago in 1881 and Seymour took a job for a manufacturing company, working as a uniformed messenger boy. Stedman later took a job as a janitor for another Chicago firm, an occupation which allowed him ample time for reading in his spare time. During the course of his reading, Stedman became interested in political ideas for the first time and he frequently debated the problems of the world with friends. As a byproduct of his reading and discussions, Stedman became an adherent of the Single Tax system advocated by Henry George, a reform program then in popular vogue.

In 1889 Stedman decided that he wanted to be a lawyer. He approached the dean of the Northwestern University School of Law and told him of his desires, admitting that he had had only three years of formal education. After grilling the youth for an hour to determine Stedman's level of reading capability and intelligence, the dean relented and admitted Stedman to the university. Stedman continued to work as a janitor during the day and attended university lectures in the evening. Stedman was ultimately admitted to the Illinois State Bar Association in 1891.

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