He ran for Congress on a socialist platform, receiving 40 percent of the votes cast, but was defeated by the incumbent Republican Congressman.

Following completion of his schooling, Wilson worked for the next four years as a Methodist pastor and social worker in nearby Chicago.

The injustices, misery, and wretchedness, and the unequal struggle of the workers against such frightful odds compelled me to study the underlying causes of this social agony — and I became a Socialist.

[5]Wilson first became involved in the organized socialist movement late in the 1890s as an active member of the Brotherhood of the Cooperative Commonwealth, an organization which sought to establish socialist colonies in the new state of Washington with a view to taking over the state government and establishing a cooperative rather than profit-driven economy.

Such a passage as that beginning with the phrase, "No man can serve two masters," is nothing short of a brief but comprehensive Social Program.

At that 1912 gathering, Wilson joined with Ernest Untermann, Joshua Wanhope, and Robert Hunter as a majority of the Committee on Immigration in offering a resolution on immigration which was pro-exclusionary, backing the American Federation of Labor in its desire to stop manufacturers from importing cheap, non-union labor from the Far East.

[9] Before he became mayor of Berkeley, Wilson ran for governor of California in 1910 on the Socialist ticket and received 12% of the votes cast.

"[11] Wilson asserted in a 1911 pamphlet that this social revolution was "now on" and declared If God is ever to wipe away the tears from the face of man this age-long wrong [capitalism] must be overthrown.

[12]Wilson was a strong supporter of the "single tax" movement begun by Henry George, arguing that land gained its value through the collective activity of humanity, not by the individual owner, and that the city, "the Social Mother in whose household we all live" should support itself by taxing this collectively created value.

[13] Not sharing the organization's staunch anti-militarist perspective, Wilson withdrew from the Socialist Party at the outbreak of World War I.