SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY

SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY. The Social Democracy of America, a radical labor organization, was formed at Chicago, 15–18 June 1897, of sections of the American Railway Union, the Socialist Labor Party clubs, and various religious and trade union groups. The collapse of the Knights of Labor in the 1880s and the violent repression of labor strikes at Homestead, Pennsylvania, and Pullman, Illinois, in the 1890s had convinced radical leaders that they needed to build popular political support for their cause. Eugene V. Debs advocated implementation of a "colonization" plan, whereby the Socialists would concentrate their forces on a western state, such as Colorado, in which unemployment was to be abolished, cooperative industry fostered, and a Socialist government voted into office. This scheme of colonization was repudiated in June 1898, during the Social Democracy's first national convention, by a group of Socialists led by Debs, Victor L. Berger, and Jesse Cox. This group, made up of thirty-three delegates who preferred direct political activism to state colonization, quickly formed the Social Democratic Party of America. Later that year the Social Democrats were able to send two members to the Massachusetts legislature and to elect the mayor of Haverhill, Massachusetts; during the presidential election of 1900, their candidate, Debs, polled 87,814 votes. The subsequent fusion in 1901 of anti–De Leonites in the Socialist Labor Party and the Social Democratic Party led to a new party designation, the Socialist Party of America. During the next two decades Socialist candidates captured seventy-nine mayoralties throughout the country.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Shannon, David A. The Socialist Party of America: A History. New York: Macmillan, 1955.

Young, Marguerite. Harp Song for a Radical: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1999.

HarveyWish/a. g.

See alsoRadicals and Radicalism ; Socialist Movement ; Socialist Party of America .