[1] Heath later recalled that he had been won over to socialist ideas by Looking Backward, a popular utopian novel of Edward Bellamy 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.

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.

[3] Along with Berger and Eugene V. Debs, 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.

[7] 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.

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