D. Hoopes, 93; Candidate of Socialist Party

Darlington Hoopes, the Socialist candidate for President in 1952 and 1956 and a former Pennsylvania state legislator, died Monday at a nursing home near Reading. He was 93.

The son of Quakers, Hoopes studied agriculture at the University of Wisconsin but then turned to law, receiving his legal education largely through correspondence courses.

He practiced law in Reading, a base for Socialist political sentiment in the 1930s and 1940s. He served as national chairman of the Socialist Party for 20 years and was elected to three terms in the Pennsylvania Legislature in the 1930s.

In 1933, Hoopes introduced and helped pass the state’s child labor law.

Hoopes was the Socialists’ vice presidential candidate in 1944 with perennial Socialist presidential candidate Norman Thomas. When Thomas declined to run a seventh time, Hoopes ran for President on the ticket in 1952 when Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson. Unlike those of the major candidates, Hoopes’ campaign cost him only $150.

He campaigned for the nationalization of banks, railroads, coal mines and the steel industry, and for strengthening the United Nations, effecting world disarmament and reuniting East Germany and West Germany.

“The wealthy have long used the power of government to enrich themselves. In a democracy, government is a tool that should be used to advance the common welfare,” he said in a radio address shortly before the 1952 election.

He received about 21,000 votes to Eisenhower’s 33 million.

Hoopes also ran in 1956, when Eisenhower again defeated Stevenson. Hoopes’ name appeared on the ballots in only about 10 states.