The opposition developed both in and outside the Federation.  Inside it was the socialist “industrialist” who advocated a political labor party on a socialist platform, such as the Federation had rejected when it defeated the “program” of 1893,[75] together with a plan of organization by industry instead of by craft.  Outside the Federation the opposition marched under the flag of the Industrial Workers of the World, which was launched by socialists but soon after birth fell into the hands of syndicalists.

However, fully to understand the issue between conservatives and radicals in the Federation after 1905, one needs to go back much earlier for the “background.”

The socialist movement, after it had unwittingly assisted in the birth of the opportunistic trade unionism of Strasser and Gompers,[76] did not disappear, but remained throughout the eighties a handful of “intellectuals” and “intellectualized” wage earners, mainly Germans.  These never abandoned the hope of better things for socialism in the labor movement.  With this end in view, they adopted an attitude of enthusiastic cooperation with the Knights of Labor and the Federation in their wage struggle, which they accompanied, to be sure, by a persistent though friendly “nudging” in the direction of socialism.  During the greater part of the eighties the socialists were closer to the trade unionists than to the Knights, because of the larger proportion of foreign born, principally Germans, among them.  The unions in the cigar making, cabinet making, brewing, and other German trades counted many socialists, and socialists were also in the lead in the city federations of unions in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and other cities.  In the campaign of Henry George for Mayor of New York in 1886, the socialists cooperated with him and the labor organizations.  When, however, the campaign being over, they fell out with George on the issue of the single tax, they received more sympathy from the trade unionists than George; though one should add that the internal strife caused the majority of the trade unionists to lose interest in either faction and in the whole political movement.  The socialist organization went by the name of the Socialist Labor party, which it had kept since 1877.  Its enrolled membership was under 10,000, and its activities were non-political (since it refrained from nominating its own tickets) but entirely agitational and propagandist.  The socialist press was chiefly in German and was led by a daily in New York.  So it continued until there appeared on the scene an imperious figure, one of those men who, had he lived in a country with conditions more favorable to socialism than the United States, would doubtless have become one of the world’s outstanding revolutionary leaders.  This man was Daniel DeLeon.