The Socialist Party of America was in the throes of a membership decline throughout the decade of the 1920s, the communist left wing of the organization having been suspended, expelled or split from the organization beginning with the seminal 1919 Emergency National Convention of the party. Dues-paying membership fell during this period from more than 100,000 to less than 10,000. The party's finances were similarly deeply affected and the organization felt pressed to explore new means of reaching an increasingly apathetic public. At its December 1926 quarterly meeting the governing National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party decided to erect a radio broadcasting station as a memorial to its recently deceased co-founder, Eugene V. Debs, who had died in October of the previous year.