electorate as the Social Democratic ticket generated results no better than the Milwaukee mayoral effort, polling a mere 2,544 votes in a statewide race. Development The Social-Democratic Party was buoyed to some extent by an onslaught against the Socialist Labor Party, an ideological battle lead nationally by the Appeal to Reason, a large circulation weekly based in the rural town of Girard, Kansas. The Appeal's 1898 onslaught was followed by a split of the SLP over the question of trade union tactics in the following year. Dissatisfied former member of the SLP in Milwaukee bolted for the Social-Democratic Party, swelling its ranks and reducing the physical and rhetorical volume of its left wing opponents. In 1900 dissident former members of the SLP and the Chicago-based Social Democratic Party managed to patch up their differences long enough to run a joint ticket for the presidency, headed by Eugene Debs for President and Job Harriman of California for Vice-President. Although the SDP leadership remained leery of the former SLP members, organizational unity eventually followed, formalized by a convention in Indianapolis which was gaveled to order on July 29, 1901. The Socialist Party of America was thereby born. Electoral victories The Social-Democratic Party of Wisconsin broke through electorally in 1904, first winning office in the Milwaukee city election in April. That successful campaign saw nearly 20,000 votes cast for the SDP, with ten party members elected as city aldermen and another four as city supervisors. In addition, two party members won positions as justices and two more as constables. Among those elected to office for the first time as incoming aldermen were pioneer English-speaking socialist Frederic Heath and future Mayor Emil Seidel. Newspaper editor Victor Berger finished third in his bid to become Mayor of Milwaukee, but he nonetheless recorded a respectable 15,343 votes (27.2% of those cast) in a three-cornered race. Success continued in November 1904 when the party saw five of its candidates elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly and one other elected to the Wisconsin State Senate. That election also saw the first Congressional campaign of the party's patriarch, Victor Berger, when he stood for election in Wisconsin's 5th Congressional District, centered in Milwaukee. During this campaign the SDP refined its electoral tactics, dividing the distribution of campaign literature in the urban center of Milwaukee on a carefully planned block-by-block basis and managing to distribute 100,000 pieces of campaign literature,