Language federation

The Language Federations also served as an important cultural resource for immigrants, allowing them to maintain contact with political developments in their homelands and providing a gathering place for strangers in a strange land.

Many groups had their own halls for dances and social gatherings which still exist, in name if not in function, in America's largest cities of the East and West Coasts and Midwest.

Each Language Federation arose at different times, as members of those national, ethnic or religious groups arrived in the United States.

In addition, they typically sprung up at the grassroots level, affiliating with other local groups to form national federations before attaching themselves to political parties.

The SPA's executive committee formally expelled seven of these language federations in May 1919 when it became clear that they favored the left wing in the impending split within the party.

The party met with resistance, however, particularly from the Finnish Federation, whose members feared losing what influence they had if they were submerged within a larger English-speaking organization.

During its affiliation with the SPA it established its own Workers' College in Minnesota, published three newspapers, and divided the federation into three regional districts, with differing political outlooks.

More formal parties, however, tended to fragment, both on ideological grounds and on the distinction between newly arrived "greenhorns" with Bundist politics and the more assimilated immigrants from earlier decades.

The Bundist tendency eventually prevailed after thousands of Jewish socialists fled Poland and Russian in the aftermath of the failed 1905 Revolution.

The Lithuanian Socialist Federation, founded in 1905, grew rapidly with an influx of members who had come to the United States to escape repression after the 1905 Revolution.

The organization suffered splits, however, when anarchist and more strictly nationalist elements left and lost nearly half its members when it affiliated with the SPA in 1914.

The Alliance of Polish Socialists in America was formed as an emigre group, dedicated to making revolution in Poland, rather than the United States.