m and the labor organizations.
When, however, the campaign being over, they fell out with George on the
issue of the single tax, they received more sympathy from the trade
unionists than George; though one should add that the internal strife
caused the majority of the trade unionists to lose interest in either
faction and in the whole political movement. The socialist organization
went by the name of the Socialist Labor party, which it had kept since
1877. Its enrolled membership was under 10,000, and its activities were
non-political (since it refrained from nominating its own tickets) but
entirely agitational and propagandist. The socialist press was chiefly
in German and was led by a daily in New York. So it continued until
there appeared on the scene an imperious figure, one of those men who,
had he lived in a country with conditions more favorable to socialism
than the United States, would doubtless have become one of the world's
outstanding revolutionary leaders. This man was Daniel DeLeon.

DeLeon was of South American ancestry, who early immigrated to New York.
For a time he was teacher of languages at Columbia College; later he
devoted himself thoroughly to socialist propaganda. He established his
first connection with the labor movement in the George campaign in 1886
and by 1890 we find him in control of the socialist organization. DeLeon
was impatient with the policy of slow permeation carried on by the
socialists. A convinced if not fanatical Marxian, his philosophy taught
him that the American labor movement, like all national labor movements,
had, in the nature of things, to be socialist. He formed the plan of a
supreme and last effort to carry socialism into the hosts of the Knights
and the Federation, failing which, other and more drastic means would be
used.

By 1895 he learned that he was beaten in both organizations; not,
however, without temporarily upsetting the groups in control. For, the
only time when Samuel Gompers was defeated for President of the
Federation was in 1894, when the socialists, angered by his part in the
rejection of the socialist program at the convention,[77] joined with
his enemies and voted another man into office. Gompers was reelected the
next year and the Federation seemed definitely shut to socialism. DeLeon
was now ready to go to the limit with the Federation. If the established
unions refused to assume the part of the gravediggers of capitalism,
designed for them, as he