James Maurer

James Hudson "Jim" Maurer (April 15, 1864 – 1944) was a prominent American trade unionist who twice ran for the office of Vice President of the United States on the ticket of the Socialist Party of America.

James H. Maurer was born in Reading, Berks County, Pennsylvania on April 15, 1864 and was one of three brothers. His father, James D. Maurer, was a shoemaker who later served as a Police officer in Reading. Maurer first went to work at age 6 as a newsboy, becoming an assistant to a plumber at the age of 10, later becoming a full-fledged plumber. The Maurers were of Pennsylvania Dutch ethnic extraction and the family counted ancestors in America dating back nearly two centuries.

Maurer joined the Knights of Labor labor union on his 16th birthday in April 1880. He was also active in the Single Tax movement associated with Henry George. In the early 1890s, he joined the People's Party, a populist political organization which attempted in particular to advance the cause of the nation's farmers. He was introduced to socialist ideas near the end of the decade, spending nearly a year to read Karl Marx's Capital before joining the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP) in 1899. Maurer helped to organize Section Hamburg, Pennsylvania SLP in February of that year.

From 1901 he was a member of the Plumbers and Steamfitters Union. Throughout his later life Maurer was strongly supportive of the American Federation of Labor and he came to strongly disapprove of the SLP's efforts to establish a competing socialist trade union to the AF of L, the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance and left the SLP to join the Socialist Party of America (SPA) in 1901 over this issue. He ran for Governor of Pennsylvania on the Socialist Party ticket in 1906, garnering nearly 26,000 votes.

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