gely to voters who only partially or
occasionally support the Socialist Party and have no connection with the
organization.

Thus, Mayor Stitt Wilson of Berkeley, California, has refused to comply
with this custom of executing an undated resignation from office in
advance of election, and the local organization has defended his action
on the ground that the "Berkeley municipal charter, providing as it does
for the initiative, referendum, and recall, there is no necessity for
any official placing his resignation in the hands of the local,"
ignoring the fact that a handful of the least Socialistic of those who
had voted for Mr. Wilson in cooeperation with his opponents could defeat
a recall unanimously indorsed by the Socialist Party. According to this
principle a mere majority in the Socialist Party would be helpless
against a mayor who is allowed to make his appeal to the far more
numerous non-Socialist and anti-Socialist public.

As the custom of requiring signed resignations, by which alone the
Socialist Party controls its members in public office, is not yet
prescribed by the Party constitution, local and state organizations have
a large measure of autonomy, and the Berkeley case was dropped until the
next national convention (1912). But the action taken by the Socialists
of Lima, Ohio, indicates that the Party will not allow itself to be
destroyed in this manner. Mayor Shook, by his appointment to office of
non-Socialists, and even of a prominent anti-Socialist, caused the local
that elected him to present his signed resignation to the city council,
which the latter body ignored at the mayor's request. The mayor was
promptly expelled from the Party, and the Socialists of the country have
almost unanimously approved the expulsion.[202]

The comment of the _New York Call_ on this incident undoubtedly reflects
the feeling of the majority of the Socialist Party:--

"Owing to the multiplicity of elections we must go through, owing
to the peculiar division and subdivision of the administrative
authority in this country, this is a thing we shall have to face
with accumulating frequency. But that the Socialist Party is sound
on the theories of what it is after, and on its own rights as an
organization, are both demonstrated by the action taken by Local
Lima. The members permanently expelled the traitor. Now let him go
ahead and do what he can, personally gain what he can. He does