Channels, Spring 2017

P age 66 Schwartz • Inspiration or Distraction? brought in roughly 919,000 votes, slightly above his 1912 total but a decrease in percentage of the national vote from 6 percent to 3 percent. 75 Once more, the old radical strongholds in the west declined in their contribution to the Socialist Party, as less than 6 percent of Oklahoma voters chose Socialism for the first time in a decade. Nevertheless, New York alone contributed over 200,000 votes, and more than 11 percent of Wisconsin voters polled for Debs due to the continued influence of Victor Berger once again in Congress. Therefore, in his last campaign, despite the hopes of the Socialist Party leaders, Debs was unable to regain the support of radicals, instead collecting the support of a slowly dwindling faction of reformers. Eugene Debs had great opportunities to lead the Socialist Party of America during its zenith from 1896 to 1921, and he often did so as its figurehead. But he missed the need for political organization. In 1904, prominent political figure Mark Hanna noted that American workers would not be “led away from the straight road by hot headed members.” 76 Several factors contributed to American workers’ disposition against Socialism. America’s basic history of individualism remained deeply ingrained in the fiber of her citizens in this period of history, and workers found it hard to conceive of themselves as part of a collective. Socialism was also new and theoretical. Marx’s historical dialectic was not something that could be explained to miners who had worked to support their families since childhood. Certainly these workers were unhappy with their current conditions, which motivated them to go hear Debs speak when he would campaign. Nevertheless, promises of utopia were not enough to push the majority of workers to cast a presidential vote for a strange new party. The legitimacy of Socialism would have to grow over long periods of time in winnable local and state elections to change this perception. Unfortunately, those leaders in the Socialist Party of America who favored the workable methodology of gradualism also held fundamentally different conceptions of Socialism from Eugene Debs, leaving him unwilling to fully adopt their methods. Instead, he maintained full confidence in his revolutionary ideology of creating the full freedom for the people that the American Founders intended and that would inevitably lead to a communal utopia. With such faith in the people and the democratic institutions of America, if not the men empowered by them, Debs was naturally led into broad campaigns. He was always hoping that he could open the eyes of the masses and that a sudden flood tide would sweep Socialism to victory. Indeed, one commentator did write that “Debs’ personality is doing most of the Socialist campaigning” because the workers could feel his energetic, caring spirit. But that is not what Americans expected of a president. 77 These campaigns exhausted his energy and prevented him from playing the leading role in internal part conflicts which might have kept the Socialist Party together through the trials that created 75 Ibid, 189. 76 Morgan, H. Wayne. 1962. Eugene V. Debs; socialist for President . n.p.: Syracuse, University Press, 1962., 77. 77 Gannett, Lewis S. 1920. "The Socialist Campaign." Nation 111, no. 2884: 401. Points of View Reference Center, EBSCOhost (accessed April 2, 2016).