its nominee for President at
each Presidential election, since its foundation (1900, 1904, and
1908).[145]

Aside from a brief experience with the so-called municipal Socialism in
Massachusetts in 1900 and 1902, the national movement gave little
attention to the effort to secure the actual enactment of immediate
reforms until the success of the Milwaukee Socialists (in 1910) in
capturing the city government and electing one of its two Congressmen.
There had always been a program of reforms indorsed by the Socialists.
But this program had been misnamed "Immediate Demands," as the Party had
concentrated its attention _almost exclusively_ on its one great demand,
the overthrow of capitalist government.

In the fall elections of 1910 it was observed for the first time that
certain Socialist candidates in various parts of the country ran far
ahead of the rest of the Socialist ticket, and that some of those
elected to legislatures and local offices owed their election to this
fact. This appeared to indicate that these candidates had bid for and
obtained a large share of the non-Socialist vote. A cry of alarm was
thereupon raised by many American Socialists. The statement issued by
Mr. Eugene V. Debs on this occasion, entitled "Danger Ahead," was
undoubtedly representative of the views of the majority. As Mr. Debs has
been, on three occasions, the unanimous choice of the Socialist Party of
the United States as its candidate for the Presidency, he remains
unquestionably the most influential member of the Party. I, therefore,
quote his statement at length, as the most competent estimate obtainable
of the present situation as regards reformism in the American Socialist
movement:--

"The danger I see ahead," wrote Mr. Debs, "is that the Socialist
Party at this stage, and under existing conditions, is apt to
attract elements which it cannot assimilate, and that it may be
either weighted down, or torn asunder with internal strife, or that
it may become permeated and corrupted with the spirit of bourgeois
reform to an extent that will practically destroy its virility and
efficiency as a revolutionary organization.

"To my mind the working-class character and the revolutionary
integrity of the Socialist Party are of the first importance. _All
the votes of the people would do us no good if our party ceased to
be a revolutionary party or became only incidentally so, while