Social Democratic Party of America
The Social Democratic Party of America (SDP) was a short-lived political party in the United States established in 1898.
This article is about the 1898 socialist party that became the Socialist Party of America. For the 1874 socialist party that merged into the Workingmen's Party, see Social-Democratic Workingmen's Party of North America.
Social Democratic Party of America
June 11, 1898
July 28, 1901
The group was formed out of elements of the Social Democracy of America (SDA) and was a predecessor to the Socialist Party of America which was established in 1901.
Organizational history[edit]
Forerunners[edit]
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.[1]
Formation[edit]
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.[2]
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.[2]
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, populists and unaffiliated radicals. The party initially sought to establish socialist cooperative colonies. In August 1897, a three-member Colonization Committee was established, consisting of Col. Richard J. Hinton (Washington, D.C.), Wilfred P. Borland (Bay City, Michigan) and Cyrus Field Willard (Chicago). 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 Social Democracy and help to build the notion of social ownership of productive capital in a single moment, it was hoped.