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Out of this milieu of "beer, socialism, and Deutschland," Victor Berger emerged as the most influential and powerful representative of Socialism in Milwaukee politics. Berger liked to brag that he was the "founder, the leader, and the 'brains' of the [Socialist] party."13 Such claims were not entirely a result of Berger's inflated ego; along with Eugene Debs, Berger formed the Social Democratic Party in 1900, which merged with the Social Labor Party to become the Socialist Party of America in 1901.14 Even Debs, the perennial presidential candidate of the Socialists and the most familiar name in American Socialism, pointed to Berger as the "providential instrument" who had presented him with a message of socialism which "set the 'wires humming in my system.'"15 While Berger set the wires humming in the national Socialist system, he also led the Milwaukee Socialists to a series of groundbreaking victories in the 1910s.16 Under Berger's leadership, the Milwaukee Socialists swept the spring elections of 1910, gaining majorities on the city council and the county board and winning every major city office. Berger himself won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in the fall 1910 elections as the first Socialist to hold that office in America. And from 1916 to 1940, Socialist Daniel Webster Hoan held the office of mayor in Milwaukee.17 With Berger acting the part of crafty political boss, the Socialist party maintained a strength in Milwaukee that few other municipalities experienced. Even though Berger successfully ran for political office as a Socialist, most of his political views were not terribly radical. In many respects, Berger's commitment to winning political contests outweighed his commitment to Marxist or socialist ideologies. Berger even boasted that the Socialist Party's success in Milwaukee was not due to an emphasis on the intellectual aspects of socialism, but was due instead to their emphasis on the practical gains to be made from electing Socialists; as he put it, none of the Milwaukee Socialists' campaign literature "could be called heavy or profound."18 While Berger's socialism was not "heavy or profound," neither was it radical. Berger openly opposed the radical activities of the Industrial Workers of the World19, and upon meeting Upton Sinclair (whose utopianism and advocacy of free love had earned him a reputation as a radical), Berger denounced Sinclair and his followers as a bunch of "well-meaning but impossible crazy chickens."20 Berger did not consider himself a "crazy chicken;" rather, he prided himself on his belief that "Capitalism will not vanish in one day, in one year, or in one decade."21 Berger did not expect to tear the moorings of capitalism away with violent, sudden revolution; instead, he promoted a gradual and peaceful "revolutionizing of the minds, the only true revolution there is."22 And following the "October" Russian Revolution of 1917, Berger spent much time and energy trying to convince his detractors that he was a Social Democrat, not a Bolshevist radical.23 Even Collier's Weekly applauded Berger for his conservative stance in the House, noting with pleasure in 1912 that "Mr. Berger rarely takes extreme ground."24 But for all his ideological indetermination, there was one issue upon which Berger did take an extreme ground. |
