Frederic Faries "Fred" Heath (1864–1954) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 socialist politician and journalist who was a founding member of the Social Democratic Party of America in 1897 and the Socialist Party of America

Socialist Party of America

The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...

 in 1901. He was an elected official in Wisconsin

Wisconsin

Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...

 for nearly half a century.

Early years

Frederic F. Heath was born September 6, 1864 to a Republican

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Milwaukee is the largest city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, the 28th most populous city in the United States and 39th most populous region in the United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. According to 2010 census data, the...

. As a young man, Heath worked variously as a teacher, a printer, a wood engraver, and an artist for wood engravers, the latter trades rendered largely obsolete by the invention of the linotype machine

Linotype machine

The Linotype typesetting machine is a "line casting" machine used in printing. The name of the machine comes from the fact that it produces an entire line of metal type at once, hence a line-o'-type, a significant improvement over manual typesetting....

 and the half-tone printing process. He moved to Chicago in 1886, moving to Florida in 1887 to publish a magazine called the Florida Fruit Grower. In 1888 he returned to his native Milwaukee, where he drew portraits and wrote editorials for the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel.

Socialist Years

Heath later recalled that he had been won over to socialist ideas by Looking Backward

Looking Backward

Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is a utopian science fiction novel by Edward Bellamy, a lawyer and writer from western Massachusetts; it was first published in 1887...

, a popular utopia

Utopia

Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...

n novel of Edward Bellamy

Edward Bellamy

Edward Bellamy was an American author and socialist, most famous for his utopian novel, Looking Backward, set in the year 2000. He was a very influential writer during the Gilded Age of United States history.-Early life:...

 published in 1888:

"I capitulated to it at once, and a few years later was the author of a series of reports of the sessions of a mythical Bellamy club, in a Chicago illustrated paper, of which I myself was editor, articles which afford me amusing reading today, you may believe. By this time I had come to think myself a socialist, yet kept on religiously voting for 'protection' of American industry."

Heath indicated that he was brought into the actual socialist movement through three influences: Julius Wayland

Julius Wayland

Julius Wayland was a Mid-Western US socialist during the Progressive Era. He is most noted for publishing Appeal to Reason, a socialist publication often deemed to be the most important socialist periodical of the time....

 and his newspaper The Coming Nation, forerunner to the Appeal to Reason

Appeal to Reason

The Appeal to Reason was a weekly political newspaper published in the American Midwest from 1895 until 1922. The paper was known for its radical politics, lending support over the years to the Farmers' Alliance and Populist movement before becoming a mainstay of the Socialist Party of America...

; stray copies of literature produced by the Socialist Labor Party of America; and a direct acquaintance with Victor L. Berger

Victor L. Berger

Victor Luitpold Berger was a founding member of the Socialist Party of America and an important and influential Socialist journalist who helped establish the so-called Sewer Socialist movement. The first Socialist elected to the U.S...

, a former teacher who had become the editor of the German-language socialist daily newspaper in Milwaukee. Heath later wrote:

"The Milwaukee Socialist movement at that time was a large one, wholly outside the SLP (which was regarded as too narrow and stagnating), and was composed of German-Americans. The word got abroad among them that a Yankee had turned Socialist, and they began to see the beginning of the end! The great desire among the German Socialists in the country at that time was to have Socialism become native to the soil; for they saw that there could be no progress otherwise. To have the ice broken locally, therefore, by means of a real descendant of Pilgrim New England, was no everyday matter — so I learned later."

After being introduced to a regular meeting of German-American socialists by Berger as the "first Yankee Socialist in Milwaukee," the gathering conducted the remainder of its proceedings in English. Heath would remain close to Berger for the rest of Berger's life, crediting Berger with having played a great influence in mellowing the "fanaticism" of a "terribly academic" young convert to the socialist cause.

Along with Berger and Eugene V. Debs

Eugene V. Debs

Eugene Victor Debs was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World , and several times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States...

, Heath helped to establish the Social Democracy of America in 1897, an organization which became the Social Democratic Party of America (SDP) the following year, by way of a split of Berger's minority "political action" wing from the majority, who favored the establishment of a socialist colony. Heath was the chairman of the meeting of seceders at which the new party was formed. Heath was elected a member of the National Executive Board of this new political party at its founding, a position that he continued to hold until the party dissolved itself in 1901 by merging with dissidents from the Socialist Labor Party headed by Morris Hillquit

Morris Hillquit

Morris Hillquit was a founder and leader of the Socialist Party of America and prominent labor lawyer in New York City's Lower East Side during the early 20th century.-Early years:...

 and Henry Slobodin to establish the Socialist Party of America. Heath played an active role in negotiating this unity as an official representative of the SDP during the previous year.
In 1900, Heath became one of the first historians of the Marxist movement in America when he authored a thin volume called Socialism in America (better known as Social Democracy Red Book). He wrote for (and later edited) the weekly newspaper of the SDP, the Social Democratic Herald, as well as producing material for other papers under various pen names. The Social Democratic Herald was moved to Milwaukee in August 1901, with Heath taking over as editor, and was published continually there as a weekly until the launch of Victor Berger's daily, the Milwaukee Leader

Milwaukee Leader

The Milwaukee Leader was a socialist daily newspaper established in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in December 1911 by Socialist Party chief Victor L. Berger...

in December 1911.

During the early 1920s, Heath was named editor of the Socialist Party's short-lived weekly newspaper based in Milwaukee, The New Day.

Heath was a member of the International Typographers Union and a founder and director of the Milwaukee Ethical Society.

From 1904 to 1906, Heath served as a Milwaukee alderman

Alderman

An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members themselves rather than by popular vote, or a council...

. He was sat on the Milwaukee School Board from 1909–1910 and was a County Supervisor from 1910 to 1948.

Works

• The Social Democracy Red Book. Progressive Thought no. 10. Terre Haute, IN: Debs Publishing Co., 1900.
• "How I Became a Socialist," The Comrade, April 1903.
• "Indiana Governor Incites Legion Lawlessness Toward Debs!" The New Day, vol. 4, no. 4, whole no. 86 (Jan. 28, 1922), pp. 25, 28.
• "'Let Them Come; I Fear No Man,' Debs Tells Indiana Governor," The New Day, vol. 4, no. 5, whole no. 87 (Feb. 4, 1922), pp. 37-38.

Further reading

• Kipnis, Ira. The American Socialist Movement, 1897-1912. New York: Columbia University Press, 1952.
• Quint, Howard H. The Forging of American Socialism: Origins of the Modern Movement. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1953.