Social Democratic Party (United States)

The Social Democratic Party of America (SDP) was a short-lived political party

Political party

A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...

in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, established in 1898. The group was formed out of elements of the Social Democracy of America

Social Democracy of America

The Social Democracy of America , later known as the Co-operative Brotherhood, was a short lived party in the United States that sought to combine the planting of an intentional community with political action in order to create a socialist society...

(SDA), and was a predecessor to the Socialist Party of America

Socialist Party of America

The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...

, established in 1901.

Forerunners

Following the defeat of the 1894 American Railway Union

American Railway Union

The American Railway Union , was the largest labor union of its time, and one of the first industrial unions in the United States. It was founded on June 20, 1893, by railway workers gathered in Chicago, Illinois, and under the leadership of Eugene V...

(ARU) strike, the former populist

Populism

Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...

Eugene V. Debs

Eugene Victor Debs was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World , and several times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States...

exhaustively read socialist literature provided to him by Milwaukee publisher Victor L. Berger

Victor L. Berger

Victor Luitpold Berger was a founding member of the Socialist Party of America and an important and influential Socialist journalist who helped establish the so-called Sewer Socialist movement. The first Socialist elected to the U.S...

and other independent Socialists. Debs converted to the Socialist cause, believing in the aftermath of the suppression of the ARU strike by federal troop 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

Julius Wayland

Julius Wayland was a Mid-Western US socialist during the Progressive Era. He is most noted for publishing Appeal to Reason, a socialist publication often deemed to be the most important socialist periodical of the time....

established in Kansas City

Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...

a new socialist weekly newspaper, Appeal to Reason, eventually moving the operation for financial reasons to a small town in southeastern Kansas called Girard

Girard, Kansas

Girard is a city in and the county seat of Crawford County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 2,789.- History :...

. 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. Eugene V. 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 American Railway Union, 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 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 American Railway Union.

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

Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance

The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance - commonly abbreviated STLA or ST&LA - was a revolutionary socialist labor union in the United States closely linked to the Socialist Labor Party , which existed from 1895 until becoming a part of the Industrial Workers of the World at its founding in 1905.The...

, 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 Debs) merely presiding over the activities of that body. The unit of organization of the Social Democracy was the "Local Branch" of at least 5 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 5 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 Social Democracy of America proved to be a short lived and disparate group of Marxists, trade unionists (especially veterans of the ARU, Owenite socialists

Owenism

Owenism is the utopian socialist philosophy of 19th century social reformer Robert Owen and his followers and successors, who are known as Owenites....

, populists

Populism

, and unaffiliated radicals. The SDA initially sought to establish socialist cooperative colonies. In August 1897 a three member "Colonization Committee" was established, consisting of Col. Richard J. Hinton (Washington, DC), Wilfred P. Borland (Bay City, Michigan

Bay City, Michigan

Bay City is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan located near the base of the Saginaw Bay on Lake Huron. As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 34,932, and is the principal city of the Bay City Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is included in the Saginaw-Bay City-Saginaw Township North...

), and Cyrus Field Willard (Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

). This trio explored the possibility of establishing a colony to seed the future "Cooperative Commonwealth" in the Cumberland plateau of Tennessee. As an associated side-project seems to have made a concrete proposal to the city of Nashville to construct 75 miles of railroad for the city — a project which would put to work the blacklisted and unemployed former members of the ARU and SDA and help to build the notion of social ownership of productive capital in a single moment, it was hoped.
In addition to the "colonizationists," who favored concentration of their efforts on building a model economic unit and gaining the achievement of socialism through the power of example there emerged a "political action wing," which sought to achieve socialism

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

through political organization and use of the electoral process, starting with concentration on a single state.

The colonization scheme failed to materialize by the time of the second convention of the SDA, held in Chicago from June 7–11, 1898 and attended by some 70 delegates. Frederic Heath, the first historian of the movement, recounted the gathering in a 1900 book:

"Chairman Debs presided. Outwardly the meeting presented the picture of a pleasing and harmonious gathering, creditable to the Socialist movement. Under the surface, however, there was a hostility that meant almost certain rupture. The presence of such well-known Anarchists as Mrs. Lucy Parsons, wife of one of the victims of the outrageous Haymarket trial, Emma Goldman, common-law wife of Berkman, who shot Manager Frick at the time of the Homestead strike, and others, all enlisted under the colonization wing, the members of which were now using the phrases of the Anarchists at sneering at political action, showed that a parting of the ways must come. It rapidly developed that the colonization forces had organized to get control of the convention and had even gone to the length of organizing local 'branches on paper' within three days before the convention, in order to increase its list of delegates and make its control a certainty. These branches had been organized by William Burns and the other members of the national board, with the exception of Messrs. Debs and Keliher."

In his speech to the convention, delivered June 8, Debs outlined his ideas on the goal of the Social Democracy and the tactics which the organization had best follow:

“The mission of Social Democracy is to awaken the producer to a consciousness that he is a Socialist and to give him courage by changing his conditions. I have not changed in regard to our procedure. Give me 10,000 men, aye, 1,000 in a western state, with access to the sources of production, and we will change the economic conditions and we will convince the people of that state, win their hearts and their intelligence. We will lay hold upon the reins of government, and plant the flag of Socialism on the state house."

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 3rd evening of the convention at which the group determined to fight the colonization program without compromise.

During the fourth day of the proceedings, Friday, June 10, things turned increasingly bitter when James Hogan of Utah delivered a 2 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.

June 11, 1898 marked the conclusion of the convention of the Social Democracy of America as well as the day that 33 delegates bolted to hold a meeting establishing themselves as the Social Democratic Party of America.

The (Chicago) Social Democratic Party Established

The political action wing of the Social Democracy in America bolted the final day of the June 1898 Convention of the Social Democracy of America and instead held their own gathering at Hull House on South Halsted Street in Chicago. Since the gathering was held by a bolting faction of a Convention formally called by the Social Democracy of America, subsequent party histories do not regard this first organizational meeting as a formal "Convention" — although the party organ established at the same time, The Social Democratic Herald, did consider it such.

The fledgling group issued its organizational platform in the form of a "Statement of Principles" on June 11, 1898. In this document, the group categorized socialism as "the collective ownership of the means of production for the common good and welfare" and called upon "the wage-workers and all those in sympathy with their historical mission to realize a higher civilization" to sever ties with existing conservative capitalist and reformist political parties and to instead work for "the establishment of a system of cooperative production and distribution."

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

Frederic Heath

Frederic Faries "Fred" Heath was an American socialist politician and journalist who was a founding member of the Social Democratic Party of America in 1897 and the Socialist Party of America in 1901. He was an elected official in Wisconsin for nearly half a century.-Early years:Frederic F. 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 SDA convention and founded the SDP as an explicitly socialist

Socialism

alternative to the mainstream parties. Later that year the SDP managed early success when two members of the party were elected to the Massachusetts General Court

Massachusetts General Court

The Massachusetts General Court is the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name "General Court" is a hold-over from the Colonial Era, when this body also sat in judgment of judicial appeals cases...

.

The colonizationists had taken the Social Democracy of Americans periodical, Social Democrat; so the Social Democratic Party started a new national publication, Social Democratic Herold during the negotiations for the unity of the Socialist Party of America 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.

In 1900

United States presidential election, 1900

The United States presidential election of 1900 was a re-match of the 1896 race between Republican President William McKinley and his Democratic challenger, William Jennings Bryan. The return of economic prosperity and recent victory in the Spanish–American War helped McKinley to score a decisive...

Eugene Debs

Eugene V. Debs

stood as the party's presidential candidate and received some 87,000 votes. This was considerably more than the established Socialist Labor Party

Socialist Labor Party of America

The Socialist Labor Party of America , established in 1876 as the Workingmen's Party, is the oldest socialist political party in the United States and the second oldest socialist party in the world. Originally known as the Workingmen's Party of America, the party changed its name in 1877 and has...

The ("Rochester" or "Springfield") Social Democratic Party

In addition to the Chicago-based Social Democratic Party of America mentioned above, there was a second Social Democratic Party of America based in Rochester, New York. In the second half of the 1890s, the Socialist Labor Party of America

Socialist Labor Party of America

was showing signs of growth in size and influence. Divisions arose within the organization over the group's relationship to the American Federation of Labor

American Federation of Labor

The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...

and the party's internal regime.

The organization was deeply split between two hostile groups. On one side was a so-called "administration faction," represented by the party's national officials, such as Henry Kuhn, Henry Vogt, and Lucien Sanial, and the editors and staffs of the official party publications, The People
The People
The People, previously known as the Sunday People, is a British tabloid Sunday-only newspaper. The paper was founded on 16 October 1881.It is published by the Trinity Mirror Group.In July 2011 it had an average daily circulation of 806,544....

(English) and Vorwärts (German). This Regular faction included most prominently Daniel DeLeon, editor of The People and the single most influential individual inside the SLP. Against their continued reign stood an opposition faction, centered around the independently-owned German language socialist daily, the Newyorker Volkszeitung, the editor of which was Alexander Jonas.

The latter group was particularly hostile to the trade union policy adopted at the 1896 Convention, believing it to have alienated erstwhile allies in the existing labor movement and thus marginalized the SLP. It also resented the rigid party discipline practiced by the National Executive Committee, which included the expulsions of dissidents and the suspension of entire sections. This festering split erupted in open conflict in July 1899 over the election of a new General Committee (akin to a City Committee) of Section New York, a group to which the 1896 SLP Convention purportedly delegated the power to elect the NEC for the national organization. This new NEC was to in turn have the power of selecting editors of the party's printed organs. Section New York, narrowly controlled by the dissident faction, elected such a General Committee, which met for the first time on July 8, 1899.

This gathering quickly dissolved in acrimony, and a second meeting was hastily scheduled to be held two nights later by the dissident faction. This second session, elected Henry Slobodin as National Secretary and named a new editor of The People, to replace DeLeon, to whom the dissidents felt personal enmity.

This action of the dissident general committee was not recognized by the sitting National Executive Committee, the meeting held to be illegally constitute, and the NEC and the official press continued to conduct their regular operations. The dissidents declared themselves the rightful owners of the Socialist Labor Party's name, logo, and press, and established themselves as such. Two parallel organizations, each designating themself the Socialist Labor Party and issuing a publication called The People, thus emerged in 1899, naming competing full slates of candidates for the elections of 1899. The matter was taken to the "capitalist" courts. The dissidents were derisively referred to in polemics as the "Kangaroos" by the Regulars — the analogy being drawn between the dissidents' free-and-loose interpretation of party legality in the calling and conduct of their reorganizational meetings and the "Kangaroo courts"

Kangaroo court

A kangaroo court is "a mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted".The outcome of a trial by kangaroo court is essentially determined in advance, usually for the purpose of ensuring conviction, either by going through the motions of manipulated procedure or...

of the wild west.

The dissident faction was bolstered by the support of allies in Chicago, centered around an English language newspaper called The Workers' Call, edited by A.M. Simons. This group initially attempted to circumvent the New York NEC of the SLP by declaring itself the official center of the organization in light of the interparty emergency that erupted in the Summer of 1899 as a result of the rupture of Section New York. In response, Section Chicago was suspended by the New York NEC. Dissident Section Chicago moved in fairly short order towards unity the largely German New York SLP Right oppositionists.

An Emergency National Convention was called by the pro-AFL/anti-DeLeon "Kangaroo" dissidents. This gathering was held in Rochester, NY, attended by 59 delegates, and proclaimed itself as the official "10th National Convention" of the Socialist Labor Party. 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

Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance

, the hated "dual union" umbrella organization established by the regular SLP in 1896 in opposition to the AF of L, 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 SDP 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

Springfield, Massachusetts

Springfield is the most populous city in Western New England, and the seat of Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers; the western Westfield River, the eastern Chicopee River, and the eastern...

and became known as the "Springfield SDP," in distinction to the "Chicago SDP."

Notable members

Leonard D. Abbott
Victor L. Berger
Victor L. Berger
Victor Luitpold Berger was a founding member of the Socialist Party of America and an important and influential Socialist journalist who helped establish the so-called Sewer Socialist movement. The first Socialist elected to the U.S...
Barney Berlyn
Ella Reeve Bloor
Ella Reeve Bloor
Ella Reeve "Mother" Bloor was an American labor organizer and long-time activist in the socialist and communist movements.-Early years:...
William Butscher
James F. Carey

John C. Chase
Jesse Cox
Eugene V. Debs
Eugene V. Debs
Eugene Victor Debs was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World , and several times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States...
A.S. Edwards
W.E. Farmer
Margaret Haile
Margaret Haile
Margaret Haile was a Canadian socialist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a teacher and journalist by profession. She was active in the socialist movements in both Canada and the United States. Frederic Heath's "Socialism in America," published in January 1900 in the Social...

Job Harriman
Job Harriman
Job Harriman was an ordained minister who later became an agnostic and a socialist. In 1900 he ran for Vice President of the United States along with Eugene Debs on the ticket of the Socialist Party of America. He later twice ran for mayor of Los Angeles, drawing considerable attention and support...
Max S. Hayes
Max S. Hayes
Maximillian Sebastian "Max" Hayes was a newspaper editor, trade union activist, and socialist politician. He is best remembered as the long-time editor of the Cleveland Citizen and as the Vice Presidential candidate of the Farmer-Labor Party ticket in 1920.-Early years:Max Hayes was born in...
Frederic Heath
Frederic Heath
Frederic Faries "Fred" Heath was an American socialist politician and journalist who was a founding member of the Social Democratic Party of America in 1897 and the Socialist Party of America in 1901. He was an elected official in Wisconsin for nearly half a century.-Early years:Frederic F. Heath...
G.A. Hoehn
Algernon Lee
Algernon Lee
Algernon H. Lee was an American socialist politician and educator, best known as the Director of Education at the Rand School of Social Science for 35 years.-Early years:...
William D. Mahoney

William Mailly
William Mailly
William "Will" Mailly was an American socialist political functionary, journalist, and trade union activist. He is best remembered as an early National Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party of America and as the first managing editor of the socialist daily newspaper, the New York Call.-Early...
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...
Henry Slobodin
Seymour Stedman
Seymour Stedman
Seymour Stedman was a prominent civil liberties lawyer and a leader of the Socialist Party of America. He is best remembered as the 1920 Vice Presidential candidate of the Socialist Party of America, when he ran for office on a ticket headed by Eugene V...
Hermon F. Titus
Hermon F. Titus
Hermon Franklin Titus was an American socialist activist and newspaper publisher. Originally a Baptist minister before becoming a medical doctor, Titus is best remembered as a factional leader of the Washington state affiliate of the Socialist Party of America during the first decade of the 20th...
John M. Work
John M. Work
John McClelland Work was an American socialist writer, lecturer, activist, and political functionary. Work is best remembered as a founding member of the Socialist Party of America and as the author of one of its best-selling propaganda tracts of the first decade of the 20th Century...

External links

Documents from the foundation of the Social Democratic Party. Archived on the Early American Marxism website. Retrieved August 6, 2006.
Declaration of principles of the Social Democracy of America, June 18, 1897. Archived on the Early American Marxism website. Retrieved Jan. 5, 2009.
Guide to the Social-Democratic Party of America Records 1900-1905. Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. New York University. Retrieved August 26, 2006.
Socialist Party of America (1897 - 1946). Party history beginning with formative Social Democratic Party.
Social democracy red book published by the SDP shortly before the merger.

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