Establishment Supporters of the
Socialist Party of America (SPA) were heartened by the results of the
Presidential election of 1904, which saw the party's candidate,
Eugene V. Debs, win approximately 400,000 votes. One supporter in particular, novelist
Upton Sinclair, was motivated to help advance the socialist idea among the political leaders of tomorrow by establishing a new organization targeted at college students. and Harry W. Laidler. The new organization gathered for the first time shortly after the start of the new academic year, meeting on September 12, 1905, in a room at a restaurant in lower
Manhattan. About one hundred supporters of the new organization attended this meeting, chaired by Sinclair, including a number of prominent socialist intellectuals. familiarize students with the inherent evils of [the] American economic and social system based on laissez-faire policies, and promote the establishment of a socialist order.
Structure Rules were laid down as to how to structure the collegiate chapters of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, organizing students on each campus into individual chapters who would fund the central organization through a small percentage of their membership dues collected to the national Society. Chapters would appoint officers, consisting of a President, two Vice Presidents, a Secretary, and a Treasurer, who would be elected annually by the vote of the entire society. The Society's activities would be overseen by these appointed individuals along with six additional members who would form an Executive Committee.
Development The Intercollegiate Socialist Society organized slowly at first, as chapters were banned in most colleges and universities by conservative administrators who had the power to prohibit establishment of student organizations. Chapters slowly came to existence, frequently with names that did not signify its connection to the Intercollegiate Socialist Society at all, an example being the Wesleyan Social Study Club of
Wesleyan University, which was one of the first collegiate organizations associated with the Intercollegiate Socialist Society as well as a chapter established at
Columbia University. Following these clubs, other affiliated socialist clubs were formed at
Harvard University,
Princeton,
Barnard College,
New York University Law School, and the
University of Pennsylvania. The college socialist clubs discussed current issues as well as distributed socialist propaganda and arranged lectures on their campuses to try to get more support the socialist cause.
Transformation In 1921, the Society recognized that socialism had become extremely unpopular in the United States after the violent Russian revolution. While its objectives to promote socialism in the United States didn't change, the name was changed to the
League for Industrial Democracy. In 1960 the League gave birth to
Students for a Democratic Society, the principal representation in the United States of the
New Left. ==See also==