Editing Star City, West Virginia (section)

===Socialist Party government===
By 1910 the [[Socialist Party of America]] had organized a branch in the town and within a year had won four out of five seats in the city council, as part of a wider national political movement of the time.<ref>''Morgantown New Dominion'', January 5, 1912, January 20, 1913, January 9, 1914, January 8, 1915 and January 7, 1916, footnoted in Cresswell, Stephen, [http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh52-5.html "When The Socialists Ran Star City"], (chapter) ''West Virginia History'' Volume 52 (1993), pp. 59-72, via West Virginia Division of Culture and History</ref><ref>Critchlow, Donald T., ed., ''Socialism in the Heartland: The Midwestern Experience, 1900-1925'' (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1986); Judd,Richard W. , ''Socialist Cities: Municipal Politics and the Grass Roots of American Socialism'' (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1989), footnoted in Cresswell</ref>

The Socialist Party would continue to be the dominant party in Star City politics through 1917, when its rival the Citizens' Party took over municipal government. To avoid un-American connotations that became associated with the name after [[World War I]], the Socialist Party of Star City in 1918 renamed itself the Independent Citizens' party and won back local government, partly due to its opposition to the [[regressive tax|regressive]] "capitation tax" the Citizens' Party had imposed.<ref>''Morgantown Post-Chronicle'', January 1 and 5, 1917; ''Morgantown New Dominion'', November 6, 1912, and January 5, 1917; ''Morgantown Weekly New Dominion'', October 10 and 31 and December 12; ''Morgantown New Dominion'' January 3, 1918, and January 1, 1919; Frederick, ''Cinder Heads in the Hills: The Belgian Window Glass Workers of West Virginia'' (Charleston: West Virginia Educational Services, 1988), p. 7, footnoted in Cresswell</ref> However, in 1924, the People's party, formed two years earlier and composed largely of former Citizens' party supporters, took over.<ref>Minute Books, Star City Town Council, Star City town hall, I:163 (1919), II:63 (1922) and 133 (1924), footnoted in Cresswell</ref> Until that time, the Socialists were a mainstay of this working-class town, organizing the Workingmen's [[Co-operative]] Store and creating community pillars with Local Twenty-six of the [[American Flint Glass Workers' Union]] and the [[Young People's Socialist League (1907)|Young People's Socialist League]].<ref>''Morgantown Weekly New Dominion'', October 7, 1914; ''Morgantown New Dominion'', June 12, 1913, January 7 and December 27, 1915, and Barkey, Frederick Allan, "The Socialist Party in West Virginia from 1898 to 1920: a Study in Working Class Radicalism" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1971), p. 118, footnoted in Cresswell</ref>