The growth of interest in socialism, however, was by no means confined to the membership of the Socialist Labor party. External events were stirring a consciousness that grave labor problems had arisen within the American Commonwealth. The bloody strikes at Homestead, Coeur d'Alene, Buffalo, and Pullman in the eighties and early nineties moved the country as no preachments of abstract socialist philosophy could ever have done. That such social conflicts were full of serious portent was recognized even by such a remote and conservative thinker as President Cleveland in his message of 1886 to Congress. In that very year, the Society of Christian Socialists was formed, with Professor R. T. Ely and Professor G. D. Herron among its members, and about the same time "Nationalist" clubs were springing up all over the country as a result of the propaganda created by Bellamy's _Looking Backward_, published in 1887. The decline of the Populist party, which had indorsed most of the socialistic proposals that appealed to Americans tinged with radicalism, the formation of local labor and socialist societies of one kind or another, and the creation of dissatisfaction with the methods and program of the Socialist Labor party finally led to the establishment of a new national political organization. This was effected in 1900 when a general fusion was attempted under the name of the Social Democratic party, which nominated Mr. Eugene V. Debs for President at a convention held in Indianapolis. The Socialist Labor party, however, declined to join the organization and went on its own way. The vote of the new party, ninety-six thousand, induced the leaders in the movement to believe that they were on the right track, for this was considerably larger than the rival group had ever secured. Steps were immediately taken to put the party on a permanent basis; the name Socialist party was assumed in 1901; local branches were established in all sections of the country with astonishing rapidity; and a vigorous propaganda was undertaken. In the national election of 1904 over four hundred thousand votes were polled; in 1908, when Mr. Bryan and Mr. Roosevelt gave a radical tinge to the older parties, a gain of only about twenty-five thousand was made; but in 1912, despite Mr. Wilson's flirtation with western democracy and the candidacy of Mr. Roosevelt on a socialistic platform, the Socialist party more than doubled its vote.