John W. Slayton
John W. Slayton (1863–1935) was an American socialist lecturer and politician. He is best remembered as one of the Socialist Party of America's leading propagandists in the Eastern United States during the decade of the 1910s. Biography Early years John W. Slayton was born in January 1863 in Virginia. He was unable to read until the age of 13 and attended a total of only 15 months of school in a rural log school house. Instead, Slayton developed himself through self-education, studying in his spare time. Slayton was a carpenter by trade and a member of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. Slayton moved to New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1900, where he served for a time as the business agent of the local Building Trades unions. He remained an active member of the Carpenters Union, attending many of the group's national conventions and serving as its delegate to four national conventions of the American Federation of Labor. Political career John W. Slayton was a pioneer American socialist, a member of the Social Democratic Party of America in the late 1890s. Slayton's first foray into electoral politics came in 1900, when he ran for U.S. Congress on the Social Democratic