Julius Gerber

Julius Gerber (1872–1956) was a leading Socialist Party of America party official and politician during the first two decades of the 20th century. Gerber headed the important Socialist Party unit for New York City and its environs from 1911 through 1922. He played a key role in the party split of 1919, out of which the Communist Party emerged.

Gerber was born December 24, 1872 in Riga, Latvia, then part of the Russian empire. His father was a tradesman. The Gerbers were Jewish, and as members of a persecuted minority, the family fled Tsarist Russia in 1886, landing in New York. Young Julius took a job as a sheet metal worker at the age of 14, a task at which he remained until 1911. He was a member of the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union. There is no record substantiating Julius Gerber arrived in the United States with any family member. According to his USA passport applications of 1928 and 1931, he arrived in the United States in either September 1887 or August 1888 at the age of 16 or 17. He applied for and was granted USA citenship on October 27, 1893 in Kings County, Brooklyn, New York. He married Lena Sacht on February 13, 1892 in New York according to their marriage license.

Gerber was a committed socialist from an early age, joining the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP) in 1890.

In the bitter 1899 split of the SLP, Gerber allied himself with the pro-American Federation of Labor insurgents headed by Henry Slobodin and Morris Hillquit against the regular faction of Daniel DeLeon and Henry Kuhn. Julius was made the organizer of Local New York of the new organization, a group calling themselves the Social Democratic Party after the DeLeon-Kuhn faction won control of the party name and logo as the result of a lawsuit. In August 1901 this Eastern SDP group united with a Midwestern group of the same name to establish the Socialist Party of America. Gerber was elected as the first Secretary of Local New York SPA following formation of the new organization.

...
Wikipedia