Thomas, Elizabeth H.

Elizabeth H. Thomas came from a Quaker background and had a considerable amount of personal wealth. She had been involved with the Russian anti-czarist movement, Hull House in Chicago, and the socialist movement in New York before moving to Milwaukee in 1900. She was a shareholder and president of the Milwaukee Social-Democrat Publishing Co. (MSDPC), founded by fellow Milwaukee socialist Victor Berger, from 1902 to 1929. She was an editor for the Social-Democratic Herald and the Milwaukee Leader, two socialist newspapers run by the MSDPC, and helped the newspapers get much of their funding. The MSDPC helped fund the Oklahoma Leader, another branch of the Milwaukee Leader. Thomas had occasional conflict with Victor Berger and challenged his authority at the newspaper, although they continued working together. Thomas eventually took over Berger's duties when he became a state representative. Thomas was the secretary of the Social Democrat Party in Milwaukee from 1901 to 1919. She served on the school board from 1915-1921, and was the director of it for part of that time. Her close involvement with the Milwaukee socialists eventually got her charged by the United States government under the Espionage Act, but she never went to trial and the charges were dropped in 1922. For several years before Thomas' election, the Socialist party in Milwaukee had been attempting to put more Socialists on the school board. Their first victory came when they were able to make school board membership an elected, rather than appointed, position in the first decade of the century. Meta Berger, a prominent Milwaukee Socialist who was involved at MSDPC and married to Victor Berger, was elected to the board in 1909, and the Socialist party consistently filled some of the other seats, but not a majority. Other women on the school board occasionally aligned themselves with the Socialist contingent, particularly women who were reformers, settlement workers, and members of women's clubs. Some examples include Mrs. C.B. Whitnall, Mrs. Charles Norris, and Lizzie Black Kander.