Victor Berger
(1860 – 1929)
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Victor Berger (February 28, 1860 – August 7, 1929) was an Austrian-American socialist politician and journalist who was a founding member of the Social Democratic Party of America and its successor, the Socialist Party of America. Born in Austria-Hungary, Berger immigrated to the United States as a young man and became an important and influential socialist journalist in Wisconsin. He helped establish the so-called Sewer Socialist movement. Also a politician, in 1910, he was elected as the first Socialist to the U.S. House of Representatives, representing a district in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
In 1919, Berger was convicted of violating the Espionage Act for publicizing his anti-interventionist views and as a result was denied the seat to which he had been twice elected in the House of Representatives. The verdict was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court in 1921, and Berger was elected to three successive terms in the 1920s.
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American Socialism, July 9, 1898
Review of National Committee Meeting: St. Louis, January 29-February 1, 1903
Editorial in Opposition to Paul Carpenter for County Court Judge, March 18, 1905
Letter to the National Committee, SPA, April 1, 1905
No Imposibilism for Us!, September 1906
Are Socialists Practical, June 23, 1917
IWWs Not Traitors (interview), September 6, 1917
Socialism, Revolution, & Civilization, August 19, 1918
The Fourth Liberty Loan, September 28, 1918
Punishment of Political Offenders in Germany and America, October 10, 1918
Autocracy, Democracy, Hypocrisy, October 18, 1918
In the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, October 19, 1918
Letter to the National Executive Committee of the SPA preferring charges against Alfred Wagenknecht, May 22, 1919
Excerpt of a Letter to Morris Hillquit, August 20, 1919
In Defense of Representative Government: Speech to Congress, October 17, 1919
The Party and the Future, August 13, 1921
The Ku Klux Klan, October 26, 1923