The Intercollegiate League for Industrial Democracy (known from 1933 as the Student League for Industrial Democracy) was the official youth section of the League for Industrial Democracy and a de facto junior section of the Socialist Party of America during the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s. The organization merged with a student organization sponsored by the Communist Party, USA in 1935 to form the American Student Union. Organizational history Background In 1921 the Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS) was transformed into the League for Industrial Democracy (LID). With the change in name, the organization broadened its scope to become a more of a general educational society that included not only collegians and alumni, but also non-collegians in its ranks and activities. The organization continued to arrange campus lectures, as well as publishing pamphlets and off-campus speaking tours, but paid little attention to the organization of active campus groups. League student organizations continued at the University of Wisconsin, Columbia, Vassar, Yale, Harvard, the University of Texas, and elsewhere, but the emphasis of the national organization remained on building a non-campus movement in tangent with the Socialist Party. By 1929 student members of the LID were outnumbered by non-student members. An Intercollegiate Student Council existed within the group to coordinate the activities of college students, but this was "poorly organized and somewhat inactive," according to historian Robert Cohen. Depression era activity The coming of the Great Depression had a radicalizing influence on many students, who saw world capitalism in a state of chaos. Members of the Intercollegiate LID energized by the 1932 Presidential campaign of Norman Thomas, as well as competition with the Communist-led National Student League. In 1932 the student members of the LID held their own national convention which abolished the old Intercollegiate Student Council of the LID and elected instead a new National Executive Committee and national chairman, Maurice Newfield. The new independent organization began to issue a new national magazine, Revolt, (later named Student Outlook) and in 1933 formally adopted for itself the name "Student League for Industrial Democracy" (SLID). Between 1933 and 1935 SLID participated in protests over violations of student free speech, the reception of a "good will tour" of students from Fascist Italy, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and instances of racial discrimination, often in conjunction with the Communist Party-led National Student League (NSL). One of the group's most dramatic activities was organizing