Congressman, newspaper editor, and co-founder of the Socialist Party of America, Victor L. Berger (February 28, 1860-August 7, 1929) was arguably the most successful politician in his party's history. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin's Fifth Congressional District six times, Berger was the first Socialist to sit in Congress. He built his national successes on a well-organized Milwaukee political machine that remained a power throughout the first quarter of the twentieth century. Temperamental, egotistical, and caustic, he nonetheless retained the respect and admiration of many. He had a reputation for personal generosity, and even his opponents described him as personally charming. Believing that socialism would evolve gradually rather than through revolution, Berger called for social and economic reforms, such as unemployment compensation and federal old-age pensions.
Born to a comfortable Jewish family in Nieder-Rehbach in Austria-Hungary, Berger received extensive schooling in Budapest and Vienna, although he never was awarded a college degree. The threat of conscription into the Austro-Hungarian army led to Victor's emigration to America in 1878, followed shortly thereafter by his family. After living briefly in New York City, his parents and siblings settled in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Victor, however, traveled around the country, holding odd jobs before moving to Milwaukee in 1881. The large German-speaking community there provided ample opportunities for Berger, who soon became active in German-American organizations and wrote for the German-language press as a drama critic. He began teaching German and other subjects in the Milwaukee public schools in 1883 and in 1886 became a naturalized citizen.
During the 1880s, Berger became fascinated with the political and social issues of his time, imbibing the latest socialist thought imported from Germany through Milwaukee's active Turnverein (social and athletic clubs that promoted free thinking). In December, 1892, he resigned his teaching position and purchased the German-language labor newspaper Milwaukee'r Volkszeituna, renaming it Wisconsin Vorwaerts (Forward). Berger ran the Vorwaerts as a daily from 1893 until 1898 and as a weekly thereafter. Although he gave up the editorship of the paper in 1911, he retained financial control through the Milwaukee Social-Democratic Publishing Company, a firm he created for his publishing operations.
Berger's publishing endeavors were always designed to promote his political views, and he recognized that he needed an English-language vehicle to succeed. He acquired the weekly Social-Democratic Herald in 1901, moved the paper from Chicago to Milwaukee, and published it until 1913. However, a weekly paper could not compete with the English-language dailies that criticized socialism. Consequently, Berger founded the daily Milwaukee Leader in 1911 and served as its editor until his death. Although the Leader usually failed to show a profit, it provided Berger with a living and an opportunity to promote his ideas. In addition to the Leader and the Vorwaerts, Berger (and later the Milwaukee Social-Democratic Publishing Company) published Wahrheit (1893-1910), Vanguard (1902-1908), Naprzod (1912-1915), Wisconsin Comrade (1914-1916), Coming Nation (1916-1917), Commonwealth (1918-1921), and New Day (1921-1922).
Although Berger earned his livelihood from his newspapers, he remained greatly interested in politics and the labor movement. During the 1880s Berger joined the Knights of Labor and became a member of the Socialist Labor Party, but he left the latter organization in 1889. From the beginning, Berger sought to tie his publishing operations to the labor movement. The Vorwaerts served as the official newspaper of the Wisconsin State Federation of Labor and the Milwaukee Federated Trades Council, thus creating the links between organized labor and Berger's political machine. The support of organized labor provided Berger with the funds needed for financing the Leader and for Brisbane Hall, which served as headquarters for the Leader and for the party. Starting in 1898, Berger began attending national conventions of the American Federation of Labor, where he regularly locked horns with Samuel Gompers, who opposed Berger's efforts to tie the labor movement to the socialist cause.
During the 1890s, Berger dabbled with Populism, serving as a delegate to the 1894 state convention of the People's Party and as a delegate to the party's 1896 national convention, where he attempted to secure the presidential nomination for Eugene V. Debs. The party's endorsement of William Jennings Bryan ended Berger's connections to the Populists. In the following year, Berger assisted Debs in converting the remnants of the American Railway Union into the Social Democracy of America. Berger and Debs bolted from their own organization in 1898 and formed the Social Democratic Party, which led in 1900 to the first of Debs's five runs for the presidency.
In 1901 the Social Democratic Party merged with a dissenting faction of the Socialist Labor Party to create the Socialist Party of America, and Berger retained an important leadership role. (Berger opposed the name change and the Milwaukee branch retained the Social Democrat label until 1916.) The party was racked with factional disputes, most notably in 1905, when Berger was removed and later restored to a seat on the National Executive Committee; in 1912, when the party adopted an anti-sabotage clause in its constitution, an action that led to the expulsion of William “Bill” Haywood; and in 1919, when the party splintered and its left-wing members formed two communist parties.
Although Berger occasionally lost party battles, his faction of right-wing socialists usually remained firmly in control of the party's apparatus. Despite charges of bossism, Berger remained popular with the party's rank and file and regularly won reelection to the party's governing National Executive Committee. He served as the party's delegate to international socialist conventions in 1909, 1910, 1923, and 1925. As a “constructive socialist” influenced by the writings of German Social Democrat Eduard Bernstein, Berger remained at odds with the more radical members of his party. Berger believed that the cooperative commonwealth would come about through gradual evolution, just as capitalism evolved from feudalism.
Although Berger was a force in the formation of the Socialist Party on the national level, his greatest successes were local. Berger built a disciplined party organization in Milwaukee; with its ties to local labor organizations and with the help of Berger's publishing operations, it remained a city power for decades. Berger established a local branch of the Social Democracy of America in 1897 and offered a slate of candidates for office the following year.
Building on criticism of corruption in city government, Berger's party began to win local elections in 1904, when the Socialists elected nine city aldermen, four county supervisors, four state assemblymen, and one state senator. Berger himself ran for mayor in the spring of that year, finishing third with 25 percent of the vote, and for Congress in the fall, finishing second with 28 percent of the vote. The Socialist sweep of 1910 captured national attention, with the party winning control of the mayor's office, the city council, and the county board and gaining in the Wisconsin state legislature. Berger himself won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first Socialist elected to that body.
As the sole member of his party in Congress, Berger hoped to accomplish little more than promoting socialism. He viewed himself as the representative of all workers, and the substantial amount of his congressional correspondence that came from outside his district shows that many rank-and-file socialists concurred with that opinion. Given his minority status, Berger gained publicity for his old-age pension bill, the first of its kind introduced into Congress, won a congressional investigation into the 1912 textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and initiated impeachment proceedings that led to the resignation of a federal judge who revoked the naturalization papers of an IWW member.
Although Berger and his comrades believed their party was on the upswing and that their success would be duplicated throughout the country, they in fact had reached their high point. Even though Berger would be elected to Congress five more times and Socialist Daniel Webster Hoan held the Milwaukee mayor's office from 1916 to 1940, never again would Berger's machine achieve such power. A coalition of Democrats and Republicans swept the Socialists from office in 1912 and brought Berger home from Congress.
American involvement in World War I effectively destroyed the Socialist Party as a national vehicle, made Berger into a vigorous civil libertarian, and curiously revitalized his political career. Ironically, in view of his later persecution for his opposition to the war, Berger lost the 1914 congressional election to a candidate who charged that Berger was unsympathetic to Germany. Before American entry into the war, Berger favored neutrality and attended the founding meeting of William Howard Taft's League to Enforce Peace.
Berger consistently opposed American involvement in any wars except strictly defensive ones. In light of increasing American support for the war, Berger's stance cost him dearly. The Socialist Party met in an emergency convention the day after the United States entered the war and condemned American participation. Berger openly opposed the war and organized a local branch of the anti-war People's Council, although he attempted to walk a careful line in the Milwaukee Leader. Nonetheless, on October 3, 1917, the Leader lost its second-class postal permit. Berger appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, eventually losing on March 7, 1921, with Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis dissenting. The Harding administration restored the Leader's mailing privileges on May 31, 1921. The loss of the postal permit was nearly disastrous; the paper lost mail subscribers and local businesses felt pressured to drop their advertising. In addition, the post office opened his personal mail throughout the summer of 1918 and refused to deliver any mail to the Leader starting in August, 1918.
While Berger found ways to keep the newspaper in business, he became increasingly enmeshed in legal difficulties. Indictments were handed down in Wisconsin and Illinois, charging him with conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act. Despite the charges (or perhaps because of them) Berger's political career was more successful than ever. He received 26 percent of the popular vote when he ran for the U.S. Senate in April, 1918, and carried eleven Wisconsin counties, even though newspapers refused to print his advertisements, his billboards were defaced, and he was unable to rent halls for speeches. The following November, Berger won election to the U.S. House of Representatives with 43 percent of the popular vote.
Berger had little time to savor his victory; between December 9, 1918, and January 8, 1919, he and four other socialists stood trial in Chicago for conspiracy. J. Louis Engdahl (editor of the American Socialist), Adolph Germer (the party's secretary), William Kruse (secretary of the Young People's Socialist League), Irwin St. John Tucker (editor of the party's literature department), and Berger were found guilty in a trial over which Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis presided. On February 20, Judge Landis sentenced each of the men to twenty years in federal prison and refused to set bail. The defendants immediately appealed their conviction and were set free after posting a $500,000 bond. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually heard the case and overturned the conviction by a six to three vote on January 31, 1921, ruling that Judge Landis had acted improperly when he denied the defendants' request for a change of venue because he had expressed bias against German-Americans. The Justice Department formally dropped the case and entered a nolle prosequi motion on January 8, 1923.
Berger's conviction raised questions about whether the House of Representatives would seat him when he attempted to claim his seat. Berger maintained that until the courts decided his appeal, he was eligible for his seat, but when he appeared in the House on May 19, 1919, Speaker Frederick H. Gillett prohibited Berger from taking the oath of office and appointed a special committee to consider his eligibility. The committee held hearings that dragged on through September, 1919, and eventually decided that Berger was ineligible because he had given aid and comfort to the enemy. On November 10, the House declared Berger's seat vacant by a vote of 311 to 1.
The Socialists immediately re-nominated Berger, while the Democrats and Republicans agreed on a fusion candidate. In the special election of December, 19, 1919, Berger won the biggest victory of his life, with more than 55 percent of the popular vote. Berger appeared in the House with his credentials on January 10, 1920, and the House again refused to seat him, this time by a 330 to 6 vote. The Socialist Party again re-nominated Berger, but Wisconsin Governor Emanuel Philipp refused to call a third election, and the Fifth Congressional District remained unrepresented for the remainder of the Sixty-sixth Congress.
Berger won 45 percent of the vote in the November, 1920, general election but lost to a fusion candidate. Beginning in 1922, Berger won three consecutive elections to the U.S. House of Representatives with 53, 42, and 49 percent of the vote, respectively. Each time, he was seated without objection. During his six years in Congress, Berger won the respect of his non-socialist colleagues. In addition to such usual socialist causes as nationalization of the railroads and telegraph and telephone companies, he advocated civil-liberties legislation, repeal of Prohibition, revision of the Versailles Treaty, and rehabilitation of Germany.
Although Berger remained a socialist for the rest of his life and served as the party's national chairman from 1927 until his death, he realized that the party was dead except in Wisconsin and cooperated with efforts to create a new national reform party. He convinced Wisconsin's socialists not to oppose Robert M. La Follette, Sr.'s candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 1922, and he attended an organizational meeting of the Conference for Progressive Political Action that year. Two years later, he persuaded the national party not to nominate a presidential candidate but rather to offer its slot to La Follette. The failure of the La Follette campaign to develop into a new party disappointed Berger, who had hoped that the Socialists would take part in a new national coalition.
Berger ran for reelection to Congress in 1928, but he lost by about seven hundred votes. Following his defeat, Berger hoped to retire from the newspaper business and sought a purchaser for the Milwaukee Leader. Before he could dispose of the paper, however, he was seriously injured in a streetcar accident on July 27, 1929, and he died eleven days later, on August 7.
Berger's party did not achieve the success it sought, but viewed from the perspective of mainstream American politics rather than by standards of Marxist purity, he was far from a failure. By keeping social and civil liberties issues in the public eye, he helped transform the debate over what was politically possible. His congressional service provided a degree of respectability that social democracy had previously lacked because of its association in the public mind with violence and anarchism. His fight for free speech chipped away at narrow interpretations of the First Amendment, and many of the once-radical ideas he advocated, such as unemployment compensation and federal old-age pensions, have become commonplace--but only after they shed the taint of socialism.
Throughout his career, Berger was assisted by his wife, Meta Schlichting Berger (February 23, 1873-June 16, 1944) who achieved prominence in her own right in local educational circles. The daughter of a Milwaukee school commissioner, Meta was a student of Victor's, and he frequently dined at the Schlichting house following the death of her father in 1883. She graduated from Milwaukee State Normal School in 1894 and taught until her marriage to Victor on December 4, 1897. With his prodding, she became involved in Socialist politics and in 1909 was elected to the Milwaukee school board, a post to which. she was reelected in 1915, 1921, 1927, and 1933. In 1915-1916 she served as president of the board.
Meta supported her husband's political activities and was active in educational, pacifist, and women's rights issues. She played a crucial role on her husband's behalf in 1918 and 1919. While Victor was preoccupied with avoiding imprisonment, she helped run his successful campaign for Congress. After his conviction in 1919, she and other women raised $500,000 in a single day to post bond for Berger and the other defendants.
Meta also took an active part in the women's suffrage movement, serving as a vice-president of the Wisconsin Woman Suffrage Association from 1914 until 1917, when she resigned to join the more radical National Woman's Party. She served on the Wisconsin Board of Education, 1917-1919, the Wisconsin Board of Regents of Normal Schools, 1927-1928, and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1928-1934.
Following Victor's death in 1929, Meta assumed his seat on the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party. She was proposed as a congressional candidate in 1930, but her use of non-union labor on the family's farmhouse north of Milwaukee cost her the nomination. Two years later, she was considered for the vice-presidential nomination at the Socialist Party convention, but she withdrew her name. During the 1930s and especially after her 1935 trip to Russia, Meta became increasingly sympathetic toward the Soviet Union. Socialist Mayor Daniel Hoan forced her off his campaign committee in 1936 because of her public pro-communist stance, but despite her affiliation with communist-front organizations, the Socialist Party tolerated her membership out of respect for her position as widow of the party's former leader. By 1940, however, the party's national leadership lost its patience and requested that Meta withdraw from the front organizations. She refused and resigned from the Socialist Party in 1940. Because of ill health, she remained relatively politically inactive until her death on June 16, 1944.
The Bergers had two daughters, Doris and Elsa. Doris Berger Welles (later Doris Berger Hursley) (September 29, 1898-May 5, 1984) received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in 1920 and a law degree from Marquette University in 1926. In 1920 she married Colin Welles (1896-1962), a doctoral candidate in botany at the University of Wisconsin. The couple lived in the Philippines while Colin taught at the University of Manila during 1921 and 1922, and after their return to the United States Doris and Colin lived north of Milwaukee on a fox farm owned by her parents. Colin taught science at the Milwaukee Vocational School from 1925 to 1950, and Doris practiced law in Milwaukee. Both Colin and Doris occasionally contributed articles to the Leader although Doris never took an interest in taking over the paper as Victor had hoped. Colin and Doris divorced in 1935, and a year later Doris married Frank Hursley (1902-1989), an English professor at the University of Wisconsin's Milwaukee Extension. Doris worked as an unemployment compensation examiner for the State of Wisconsin from 1936 to 1941 and wrote for radio with her husband during World War II. In 1946 the couple moved to California, where they had successful careers as radio and television scriptwriters.
Elsa Berger Edelman (March 26, 1900-February 16, 1984) received a B.S. in medicine from the University of Wisconsin in 1921 and an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1923. After an internship in Washington, D.C., and additional study at the University of Vienna (Austria), she was licensed to practice medicine in Massachusetts in 1927. She returned to Milwaukee in 1930 and practiced medicine there almost continuously until 1964, when she moved to California. She unsuccessfully ran for the Milwaukee school board in 1945. In 1927 she married Jan Edelman (1900-1963), a native of the Netherlands who worked as an electrical engineer in Milwaukee after receiving a degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1935.
Following Victor Berger's death, some obituaries incorrectly stated that he was survived by a son. Jack Anderson (September 9, 1899-October 26, 1970), who lived in the Berger home for most of his youth, was the son of Meta's sister, Paula, who died in 1902. Anderson lived with the Bergers from around the time of his mother's death until approximately 1918. He later studied animal husbandry and worked for the federal and Louisiana state governments.
Berger and Schlichting Families
Berger Family
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Children of Ignatz (1830-1925) and Julia Berger (1837-1915):
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| Victor (1860-1929) |
married: Meta Schlichting (1873-1944) |
children: |
Doris (1898-1984) |
(married Colin Welles (1896-1962], 1920; divorced, 1935; married Frank Hursley [1902-1989], 1936); children: Deborah Welles Hardy (born 1927); Polly Welles Keusink (born 1930); Bridget Hursley Dobson (born 1938) |
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Elsa (1900-1984) |
(married Jan Edelman [1900-1963], 1927); no children |
| Rose (1861-1928) |
married: Sigmund Morganstern (died circa 1893-1900) |
children: |
Edith (born 1886) |
(married Louis Lehman [born 1872?], 1914); no children |
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Hilda (1887-1942) |
(married William Loewenthal [1877-1973], 1913); child: Alan (born 1914) |
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Sidney (1893-1971) |
(married Viola?); no children |
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Milton (1893-1918) |
(twin brother of Sidney) |
| Mathilde (1863-1957) |
married: Hyman Weingarten (1854-1940) |
child: |
Edna (1894-1992) |
(married Arthur B. Weiss [1895-1966], 1922) |
| Anna (1866-1950) |
married: William Gorman (1863-1918) |
children: |
Sybil (born 1892) |
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Helen (1895-1911) |
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Edna (1897-1966) |
(married ? Mock) |
| Rebecca (1868-1936) |
married: Alexander Gottlieb (1873-1922) (2nd marriage, circa 1900) |
children: |
Richard G. Berger (1893-1977) |
(child of Rebecca's first marriage, originally named George Leverthal and later adopted by Ignatz and Julia Berger) |
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Leah (1901-1982) |
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Ruth (1903-1982) |
| George (born 1871, died after 1925) |
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Reinhard (born 1794?) and Eliza (born 1805?) Schlichting (Meta's paternal grandparents), both born in Germany, came to U.S. approximately 1848. Their children:
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| Gerard (born 1825?) |
| Helena/Helen (born 1831?) |
married: Henry F. Belitz (1817?-circa 1873-1880) |
children: |
Helena (born 1855?) |
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Elizabeth (born 1855?) |
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Franklin (born 1860) |
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William (born 1864?) |
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Alfred (1866-1953) |
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Clara (1868-1938) |
(married Gustave Hipke [1867-1954]) |
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Antoinette (born 1872) |
(married Herman C. Lammers, 1898) |
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Arthur (born 1872) |
| Herman (born 1833?) |
| Reinhard (born 1835?) |
married: Bertha Belitz (1842-1914) |
children: |
Herman (born 1867?) |
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Oscar (born 1868?) |
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Jennie (born 1869) |
(married Charles Goessling) |
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Carl (born 1871) |
| Bernhard (1838-1883) (Meta's father) |
married: Matilda Krak/Krack (1847-1905) (Meta's mother) |
children: |
Paula (1871-1902) |
(married Archibald Anderson [1861-1936]); child: Jack (1899-1970) (raised by Victor and Meta Berger) |
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Meta (1873-1944) |
(married Victor Berger [1860-1929], 1897); children: Doris (1898-1984); Elsa (1900-1984) |
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Hedwig/Hattie (1874-1959) |
(married Frank Schweers [1868-1948], 1909); stepchildren: Franklin/Hi (1896-1948); Edwin (born 1898); Kermit (1901-1974); Carl (1904-1959); Marie (born 1905); child: Harriet (born 1913?) |
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Ernst (1876-1920) |
(married Arline Warnke [born 1899]) |
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Walter (1883-1898) |
| Johanna (Jane) (born 1841?) |
| Eliza (born 1843?) |
| Anthony (Anton) (born 1848?) |
