George N. Caylor, former Philadelphia socialist bookseller, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on February 23, 1885. In 1896, the family moved to Philadelphia, where Caylor and his brother, Joseph, were raised in an atmosphere of comparative poverty. While still in school, Caylor worked as a newspaper seller and as an errand boy in a necktie factory. In 1899, after finishing elementary school, he took a full-time position with the neck tie firm, and in 1902, he became the first treasurer (subsequently secretary-treasurer) of the newly-formed Neckwear Cutters Union. Caylor joined the Socialist Party in 1904, and was elected “Literature Agent” for the Philadelphia area. In this capacity, he was responsible for the printing, distribution, and selling of all socialist literature for the Party.
At the age of 21, in 1906, he was the youngest delegate to the Pennsylvania State Socialist Convention in Pittsburgh, where he was elected secretary. Two years later, in 1908, he was the youngest delegate to the National Socialist Convention in Chicago. In 1910, he organized and managed the first socialist book store in the United States (in Philadelphia), and became secretary of the Socialist Literary Society of Philadelphia. He became a superintendent of the necktie firm in 1912, but left the next year to enter business for himself as a salesman of general merchandise (principally shoes). In 1916, Caylor moved to New York where he was associated with the Rand School of Social Science. He traveled in Europe where he met with many of the leading socialist leaders of the time: Ramsey MacDonald, Philip Snowden, Jean Longuet (grandson of Karl Marx), and Foy Litvinoff, to name a few.
In 1923, when he entered the wholesale footwear business in New York, his enthusiasm for the Socialist Party had begun to decline seriously. In 1924, he dropped his membership in the Party with the explanation that “if socialism was going to come, it would have to come through some other means. Socialism to me was still a living thing, but the Socialist Party was dead as far as I was concerned.” He continued his footwear business until 1939, during which time he also served as an arbitrator for the New York State Board of Mediation. He did a lot of traveling throughout the United States and Mexico, and in 1943 he served as an arbitrator for the War Labor Board. In 1948, Caylor retired from business completely, and settled in Orange County, Florida, with his wife Tema. In retirement, he became a prolific “Letter to the Editor” writer, the conservative Orlando Sentinel being the recipient of most of his comments.
