Forerunners Following the defeat of the 1894
American Railway Union (ARU) strike, the former populist
Eugene V. Debs exhaustively read socialist literature provided to him by Milwaukee publisher
Victor L. Berger and other independent socialists. Debs converted to the socialist cause, believing in the aftermath of the suppression of the ARU strike by federal troops that trade union action alone was insufficient to bring about the liberation of the working class. In this same summer, smarting from a failed effort at establishing a socialist community near
Tennessee City, Tennessee, publisher
Julius Wayland established in
Kansas City a new socialist weekly newspaper,
Appeal to Reason, eventually moving the operation for financial reasons to a small town in southeastern Kansas called
Girard. This paper was a major success, quickly gaining a paid subscribership of 80,000 and invigorating the socialist movement. A new colonization project was conceived through this paper, the
Brotherhood of the Cooperative Commonwealth, which aimed to seed an undecided western state with socialist colonies and to electorally take over the government of that state, thus establishing a foothold for socialism in America. Debs was named the head of this project and the planets were thus aligned for the formation of a new national political organization. A convention of the remnant of the American Railway Union was called for June 15, 1897, in Chicago.
Formation The convention which gave birth to the new organization actually began as a final conclave of the ARU, which opened Tuesday morning June 15, 1897, in Handel Hall, Chicago. Director William E. Burns called the meeting to order and A.B. Adair of the Typographical Union presided. President of the ARU Eugene V. Debs delivered an address to the assembled delegates. The first three days of the convention were occupied with hearing reports of officers and of committees and closing up the affairs of the ARU. On Friday, June 18, the organization formally changed its name to the
Social Democracy of America and adopted a Declaration of Principles. The convention was then thrown open to delegates representing other organizations. Those represented included the
Socialist Labor Party, the
Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, the Scandinavian Cooperative League, the Metal Polishers and Buffers' Union, the
United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, the Chicago Labor Union Exchange and an assortment of other organizations. The Social Democracy of America initially did not have an official head—its executive powers were vested in an executive board, with a chairman (Eugene V. Debs) merely presiding over the activities of that body. The unit of organization of the Social Democracy was the local branch of at least five members. On the first Tuesday in April, each of these local branches was to elect a single representative to the state union, the state-level governing body. On the first Tuesday in May, all the state unions were to assemble and elect one representative each to the National Council, which was in turn to meet on the first Tuesday in May and elect a five-member Executive Board, which was to hold office for a term of one year. An initiation fee of 25 cents was set and monthly dues pegged at 15 cents per month. Office of the organization was established at 504
Trude Building, Corner of Randolph and Wabash Aves., Chicago. The Colonization Committee delivered a lengthy report, detailing the proposed purchase of a Colorado gold mine and the establishment of a colony around that operation. This imaginative (or hallucinatory) plan fanned the sentiments of the party's political actionists (who called themselves the "antis"), who found themselves more anxious than ever to disentangle themselves from what they perceived as an unsavory stock-selling scheme. A caucus was held of the "anti" faction on the third evening of the convention at which the group determined to fight the colonization program without compromise. During the fourth day of the proceedings on Friday, June 10, things turned increasingly bitter when James Hogan of Utah delivered a two-hour report as vice chairman of the national executive board and treasurer, during the course of which he directly attacked Secretary Sylvester Keliher (a political actionist), alleging incompetence or dishonesty. The day was absorbed by a bitter debate over the program of the organization, with the main object of division a minority report put forward by John F. Lloyd on behalf of the colonizationists (disparagingly called the "goldbrick" faction by the "antis"). The arguments went on all day Friday June 10, finishing at 2:30 am with a vote in which the colonization minority plank was carried by a vote of 53 to 37. The meeting was adjourned and many delegates straggled off to bed, the anti-colonization faction already having decided to depart the organization and to establish a political party of their own in the aftermath of defeat on the colonization issue. The "anti" faction gathered in Parlor A of the hotel across the street where most of them were staying and in hushed tones continued their discussion until 4 am. The split of the Social Democracy in America into a colonization organization on the one hand and the electorally-oriented Social Democratic Party of America on the other demoralized many American socialists. According to founding member
Frederic Heath, "the split ... disheartened many Socialists, so that the party grew very slowly. It was not until fully a year after [the split] that real headway began to be made, outside of a few party strongholds like Massachusetts, Milwaukee, and St. Louis". A political-action faction led by
Victor Berger left the party convention and founded the Social Democratic Party as an explicitly socialist alternative to the mainstream parties. Later that year, the Social Democratic Party managed early success when two members of the party were elected to the
Massachusetts General Court. The colonizationists had taken the Social Democracy of Americans periodical (
Social Democrat) so the Social Democratic Party started a new national publication (
Social Democratic Herald) during the negotiations for the unity of the Socialist Party of America, when it was decided that the party would not publish an official national publication so the newspaper was sold to the Milwaukee Social Democrats led by Victor Berger. Membership data on the organization is scarce. In his official report to the 1900 convention of the party, National Secretary-Treasurer
Theodore Debs indicated that as of March 1, 1900, the dues-paying membership of the party was 4,536, participating in 226 active local branches. Of these, the younger Debs brother indicated that 985 members and 53 branches had been established during the previous 60 days, implying a significantly lower membership for the years 1898 and 1899. Henry L. Slobodin was formally elected executive secretary of the Rochester organization, which tentatively continued to call itself the Socialist Labor Party and to issue its own English language newspaper under the name of
The People. The convention repudiated the
Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, the hated "dual union" umbrella organization established by the regular party in 1896 in opposition to the AFL, instead proclaiming its support for the struggles of all trade unions without regard to affiliation. A new platform was adopted and revised by-laws approved. The gathering also enacted a resolution calling for unity with the Social Democratic Party and named a Unity Committee, headed by Morris Hillquit, to attend the forthcoming convention of the party and to there make a unity appeal. When the New York courts ruled decisively in favor of the claim of DeLeon, Kuhn and the Regulars in the matter of the ownership of the name logo and publication of the Socialist Labor Party against the claim of the dissidents, the Rochester group changed the name of their organization to Social Democratic Party of America, anticipating a rapid merger with Berger, Debs and the Midwestern organization of the same name. The Eastern group established party headquarters in
Springfield, Massachusetts and became known as the Springfield SDP in distinction to the Chicago SDP. According to the report of National Secretary William Butscher made to the July 1901 convention that established the Socialist Party of America, the Springfield SDP had a paid membership of 5,310 in the continental United States, with another 1,080 members in
Puerto Rico, for a total of 6,390 as of January 1, 1901. A membership of 7,328 in 147 locals was reported by Butscher for the first six months of 1901, with another 82 locals failing to report. == Notable members ==