This article deals with the Wisconsin state affiliate established in 1897 of the Social Democratic Party of America and its successor, the Socialist Party of America. For the current party affiliated with the Socialist Party USA, see Socialist Party of Wisconsin.
The Social-Democratic Party of Wisconsin (SDPW) was established in 1897 as the Wisconsin state affiliate of the Chicago faction of the Social Democratic Party of America. When that organization merged in 1901 to form a political party known as the Socialist Party of America, the Social-Democratic Party of Wisconsin became the state affiliate of that organization, retaining its original name.
The party was responsible for electing the first socialist member of the United States Congress and was the governing party in the city of Milwaukee for many years, electing several long-time mayors. The SDPW experienced a golden period in the 1920s and early 1930s with many electoral successes and extensive influence on state-level legislation.
Historical background
Socialism was by no means new to Wisconsin, a fair percentage of the émigrés from Germany in the dozen years prior to the Civil War, the so-called "Forty-Eighters," had been exposed to radical ideas and been participants in a continent-wide battle against absolutist monarchy. Milwaukee was, among other things, an enclave of German-American radicalism, with some 24% of the city German born in 1895. it was there that the American Socialist movement sank deep roots.
The first socialist newspaper in Wisconsin appeared in Milwaukee in November 1875, a small sheet called Der Sozialist. The paper had a Lassallean political orientation and survived for only about one year. The first English-language paper appeared the next year, when a weekly called Social Democrat saw print. As with Der Sozialist, this paper proved to be short-lived.
Chicago radical publisher Paul Grottkau came to Milwaukee in 1886, bringing with him his newspaper, the German-language tri-weekly the Arbeiter Zeitung (Workers News). This publication continued without interruption, although undergoing a name change to the Volks Zeitung (Peoples' News), until it was sold in January 1893 to a young school teacher named Victor L. Berger and transformed into the Wisconsin Vorwärts ('Wisconsin Forward'). Berger assumed the role of both editor and publisher of the publication, and his emergence in this capacity marked a turning point in the history of the socialist movement in the state. Berger grew his paper by attempting to de-emphasize revolutionary change in favor of incremental reform, and made a conscious effort to forge alliances with the trade union movement of his city and state.
The minimum program which Berger espoused included such things as the municipal ownership of public utilities, the national ownership of mines, abolition of child labor, establishment of income and inheritance taxation, and establishment of state standards for working conditions as well as old age pensions and insurance against sickness. Additional political demands included abolition of the United States Senate and the veto power of the executive branch, and the elimination of the standing army and restrictions upon immigration. Berger's consistent advocacy of this "constructive" program began to be felt and by the end of the 1890s the Milwaukee Federated Trades Council was won over to support of the practical immediate demands espoused by Berger.
In 1901 The Social Democratic Herald, the official organ of the Chicago-based Social Democratic Party of America, moved its office to Milwaukee. This paper would continue as the English-language voice of socialism in Wisconsin through September 1913.
Early organizations
Behind Milwaukee's socialist press, there was an evolving political organization. Between 1874 and 1876 there was a Milwaukee branch of the International Workingmen's Association — the so-called "First International" in which Karl Marx played no small role. Many of the members of this pioneering group, which met at a place called Casino Hall, would go on to become leading members of the Social-Democratic Party during the decade of the 1890s.
The 1877 election saw the first explicitly socialist campaign in Wisconsin, when leaflets touting a so-called "Social Democratic Ticket" were circulated among the workers of Milwaukee.