Spargo, John (1876-1966)

English-born US reformer and museum director who emigrated to New York in 1901. A socialist intellectual and skilled orator, he worked on behalf of many social causes. He was a major architect of President Wilson's anti-Bolshevik policy. In 1926 he founded the Bennington (Vermont) Historical Museum and until 1954 served there as a curator of American history.

He was born in Cornwall, England. Leaving the ministry for the labour movement, he attacked the British conduct of the Boer War in his Barry Herald (1899). He exposed childhood poverty in The Bitter Cry of the Children (1906). Moving from New York to Bennington, Vermont, he wrote extensively on socialism and served on the executive committee of the Socialist Party. During World War I he resigned from the Socialist Party.