Those attracted to the socialist party by its sweeping claims are of two main types.  The one is the low-paid industrial wage-worker; the other is the sympathetic person of education or of wealth (or of both), who has become suddenly aroused to the misery in our industrial order.  To both of these types, feeling intensely on the subject, the socialist party appeals as the only party with promises sweeping enough to be attractive.  The one becomes the proletarian, the other the intellectual, the one becomes the workshop, the other the parlor-socialist.  Many of the latter type are persons overburdened either with unearned inherited wealth or with an undigested education.  Many of them, having enjoyed for a time the interesting experience of radical thought and of bohemianism, come later to more moderate social opinions.

Sec. 22. #Growth and nature of the socialist vote.# In 1912 the socialist party in the United States polled 900,000 votes in the presidential election.  The socialist parties in the various lands have almost steadily grown, and now cast votes numbering in the aggregate six to ten million (as variously estimated, the name socialist being elastic).  The socialist parties may be expected to continue growing.  They will ultimately gather within their folds most of the ultra-discontented, and others that are not able to find an alternative economic philosophy and a plan that inspire their hopes.  But the socialist party vote is made up of men of many shades of opinion, a large number of whom hold only the mildest sort of socialistic philosophy.  Not many of the more than 3,000,000 social-democratic voters in Germany before the war were members of the regular party organization; but they supported the party as the one unequivocal way to declare themselves against militarism and undemocratic class-government.  In the United States only about one tenth of the socialistic party voters have been enrolled as members of the party.

Sec. 23. #Economic legislation and the political parties.# This floating socialist vote is now so large that it is eagerly sought by candidates of the older parties.  These independent voters care little for the radical and distant tenets of the socialist party leaders, and these, to attract wider support, are forced to place increasing stress upon immediate and moderate reforms.  On the other hand, men of larger qualities of leadership in the older parties are constantly adopting and advancing pending measures of social reform.  Where this is not done the socialist party tends more quickly to develop into the one powerful party of protest and of popular aspiration, receiving support from many elements of the middle and small propertied classes and from non-radical wageworkers.  This movement from both sides is leaving less noticeable the contrast between the socialist party and other parties claiming to be “progressive” or “forward looking.”  The strongest allies of the more radical communistic faction of the