he poverty of the great industrial cities, had
earnestly sought relief in the establishment of cooeperative or
communistic colonies. They believed that people should go into the
country, secure land and tools, own them in common so that no one could
profit from exclusive ownership, and produce by common labor the food
and clothing necessary for their support. For a time this movement
attracted wide interest, but it had little vitality. Nearly all the
colonies failed. Selfishness and indolence usually disrupted the best of
them.

In the course of time this "Utopian" idea was abandoned, and another set
of socialist doctrines, claiming to be more "scientific," appeared
instead. The new school of socialists, adopting the principles of a
German writer and agitator, Karl Marx, appealed directly to workingmen.
It urged them to unite against the capitalists, to get possession of the
machinery of government, and to introduce collective or public ownership
of railways, land, mines, mills, and other means of production. The
Marxian socialists, therefore, became political. They sought to organize
labor and to win elections. Like the other parties they put forward
candidates and platforms. The Socialist Labor party in 1892, for
example, declared in favor of government ownership of utilities, free
school books, woman suffrage, heavy income taxes, and the referendum.
The Socialist party, founded in 1900, with Eugene V. Debs, the leader of
the Pullman strike, as its candidate, called for public ownership of all
trusts, monopolies, mines, railways; and the chief means of production.
In the course of time the vote of the latter organization rose to
considerable proportions, reaching almost a million in 1912. It declined
four years later and then rose in 1920 to about the same figure.

In their appeal for votes, the socialists of every type turned first to
labor. At the annual conventions of the American Federation of Labor
they besought the delegates to endorse socialism. The president of the
Federation, Samuel Gompers, on each occasion took the floor against
them. He repudiated socialism and the socialists, on both theoretical
and practical grounds. He opposed too much public ownership, declaring
that the government was as likely as any private employer to oppress
labor. The approval of socialism, he maintained, would split the
Federation on the rock of politics, weaken it in its fight for higher
wages and shorter hours, and prejudice