Mayor Harry Stump (in the middle) and James Maurer (second from the right) sitting with the city's first all Socialist City Council, Reading, PA, 1929.

Credit: Courtesy of the Tamiment Library, New York University.

After voters elected two Socialists to city council in 1929, Reading, PA had the nation's only all Socialist municipal government. In 1930, Reading voters elected Socialist candidates Mrs. Lilith M. Wilson and Darlington Hoopes, Sr., then national party chairman, to the State House of Representatives, then re-elected them in 1932 and 1934. After a Fusion ticket of Democrats and Republicans defeated them in 1931 and 1933, Reading Socialists returned to power in 1935, as the party captured the mayor's office, three council seats, the offices of city treasurer and controller, three seats on the school board, a seat on the board of county commissioners, and two county prison inspector-ships.