II.

Formation of the Socialist Party of America

In 1901 a unity convention was held and several groups merged to form the Socialist Party of America. They included Hillquit and his faction of the Socialist Labor Party; Debs, Berger, and other Social Democrats; and Herron’s Christian Socialists. By 1912 party membership had increased to approximately 118,000. Debs was the Socialist Party’s presidential candidate in 1904, 1908, and 1912. He received about 900,000 votes, or 6 percent of the popular vote, in the 1912 election. In that year the party had more than 1,000 members in public office, including mayors, aldermen and councilmen, policemen, and other officials. Influential publications circulated the reformist policies, or “immediate demands,” of the party, dedicated to achieving socialism through peaceful, democratic methods. The party also played an important role in the growth of labor unions in the United States.

The Socialist Party opposed World War I (1914-1918) and the belligerent role of the United States in what it regarded as an imperialist conflict. However, some of the party’s leaders resigned to support U.S. involvement in the war. The party’s antiwar stance was an important factor in its undoing. Debs was arrested in Canton, Ohio, for a speech criticizing the war effort and sentenced to ten years in prison under the Espionage Act of 1917. Dozens of like-minded Socialists were jailed under the Sedition Act of 1918. Party membership also declined drastically because of the antiwar policy.

In 1920, while in prison, Debs was again the party candidate for the presidency. He received 919,799 votes, the largest vote ever cast for a presidential candidate of the Socialist Party. Meanwhile, the Russian Revolutions of 1917 led to a split in the party in 1919. The left wing of the party, which later came to constitute the Communist Party (see Communism), advocated similar revolutionary methods and recommended the establishment of a dictatorship by the workers in the United States. The moderate wing was anti-Communist. The establishment of the Farmer-Labor Party in 1920 also drew many of the Socialist Party’s members. By then, Socialist Party membership had declined to approximately one-fourth its size in 1918.