Socialist Party of America Membership Card -- Clarissa L. Pendleton

United States, 1910. Near-fine.. An official Socialist Party of America Membership Card, recording the membership of Connecticut resident Clarissa Louisa Pendleton. On the verso are twenty (20) official Socialist Party stamps, showing that Pendleton has paid dues for each month; there is also a larger "special stamp" issued as a "Special Assessment" by the "State and Congressional Campaigns 1910 State of Conn.", presumably noting her donation to a local campaign that year.

Measures 5" by 6", printed on red card. Clarissa "Clara" Louisa Pendleton (1867-1961) was born in Hebron, Connecticut to Dr. Cyrus Pendleton, a prominent local physician who served as town clerk and selectman. She was a graduate of the Northfield, Massachusetts Seminary and of the New Haven Training School for Nurses (Connecticut Historical Society).

The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a socialist political party in the United States formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party of America who had split from the main organization in 1899.

In the first decades of the 20th century, the SPA drew significant support from many different groups, including trade unionists, progressive social reformers, populist farmers and immigrants. The party's staunch opposition to American involvement in World War I, although welcomed by many, also led to prominent defections, official repression, and vigilante persecution. The party was further shattered by a factional war over how to respond to the October Revolution in the Russian Republic in 1917 and the establishment of the Communist International in 1919—many members left the party for the Communist Party USA.