National Party (United States)
The National Party was an early-20th-century national political organization in the United States founded by pro-war defectors from the Socialist Party of America (SPA) in 1917. These adherents of the SPA Right first formed a non-partisan national society to propagandize the socialist idea called the Social Democratic League of America. Many of these individuals were eager for the formation of an alternative political organization to both the old parties and the anti-war SPA and eagerly latched on to a burgeoning movement for a new party that sprouted in 1917.
Pictured is one of the few documents left to posterity by the National Party was the group's platform, produced as a pamphlet.
Basic dues in the National Party were $2 per year. The organization also sought additional "pledges" on the part of its members.
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a socialist political party in the United States formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party of America who had split from the main organization in 1899.
Election poster for Eugene V. Debs, Socialist Party of America candidate for President, 1904
Debs was the founding member of the Socialist Party of America.
Executive Secretary Adolph Germer was one of top five Socialist of America leaders prosecuted by the Department of Justice in 1919.
Alfred Wagenknecht, top leader of the 1919 Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party
