I think we might think of the history of “socialism” in the United States: it started with the Whigs, and their belief in “local improvements” that would improve overall productivity in the future. The Erie Canal was the first such improvement. Then you had, in fact, the Republican Party, not only fighting the Civil War, but subsidizing and encouraging railroads, getting public education off the ground, etc. A very ambitious “socialist” agenda. They wanted a high-wage, not a low-wage economy. The industrial economy really took off after the Republican Civil War. Later, Republicans abandoned blacks in the South and became more a party of the Gold Standard and Wall Street, anti-labor and pro-prohibition. In the ’20s, Republicans turned into something like Reaganism: low taxes, anti-worker’s rights, and culturally limited.