hitting every dwelling in the city, in a 24-hour period. An efficient political machine to rival those of the so-called "old parties" was thereby developed — a factor not to be underestimated in any assessment of the organization's electoral success. The SDP scored its biggest electoral triumph to date in the spring of 1910 when Emil Seidel was elected as Mayor of Milwaukee. One key factor behind socialist success in this race was a breakthrough by the SDP among working class Polish-American voters, who had traditionally supported candidates of the Democratic Party. Seidel's victory capped a decade of steady SDP growth in Milwaukee mayoral elections, in which the party's candidates had seen the number of socialist votes cast grow by a factor of 8 between the election of 1900 and the end of the decade. In the fall 1920 election, the Socialist Party of Wisconsin elected 3 State Senators and another 9 of its members to the Wisconsin Assembly. This was topped in the 1922 election, which saw the return of Victor Berger to Congress, while 2 party members were elected to the State Senate and another 10 were sent to the Assembly. The party did not run a candidate for U.S. Senate in 1922, avoiding a race which was handily won by popular progressive Republican Robert M. La Follette, Sr. over his Democratic challenger by a margin of nearly 5-to-1. Sewer Socialists The SDPW was the center of what was derisively termed "Sewer Socialism" within the socialist movement: an element which favored democratic socialism over Orthodox Marxism, deemphasizing social theory and revolutionary rhetoric, in favor of honest government and efforts to improve public health. The Sewer Socialists fought to clean up what they saw as "the dirty and polluted legacy of the Industrial Revolution," cleaning up neighborhoods and factories with new sanitation systems, city-owned water and power systems, and improved education. Successor organizations In December 1972, when in convention a majority of the Socialist Party voted to change the name of the organization to Social Democrats, USA so as to better work within the Democratic Party, a secessionist Wisconsin contingent was influential in the formation of a new organization dedicated to the traditional vision of independent political action, the Socialist Party, USA. Prominent members Oscar Ameringer Louis A. Arnold Allan L. Benson Meta Berger Victor L. Berger Winfield R. Gaylord Frederic Heath Daniel Hoan W. A. Jacobs Ralph Korngold