Dates

• Existence: 1904-2002

Biography

Lement Harris was born in 1904 to Gertrude Upham and John Francis Harris. John Harris was the co-founder of Texaco and the Wall Street brokerage firm of Harris, Winthrop, and Co. Lement was educated in exclusive eastern prep schools and graduated from Harvard in 1926. Not having decided upon a career, he went to work on a farm in Pennsylvania where he was to remain for three years. While working as a farm laborer he read and was influenced by the works of Gandhi and Tolstoi. He was also exposed to a fellow worker who had been a member of a trade union delegation to the Soviet Union. Harris decided that he too must go there to see how the new society was working. He was introduced to Harold Ware, a communist and IWW organizer, who was running a farm in the North Caucasus area. Ware promised him employment when he came to the Soviet Union. His time in Russia was life-altering and he returned to the United States convinced that the Soviet system was in all ways superior to the West. Back home, he and Ware conducted a nine month survey of life in rural America. They published their results in The American Farmer. It was after this tour that Harris officially joined the Communist Party, of which he was a member until his death in September of 2002.

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