That's not the reason why "socialism" (however you define it) didn't take root in America. There was a time when the labor movement was strong, Eugene V. Debs

That's not the reason why "socialism" (however you define it) didn't take root in America. There was a time when the labor movement was strong, Eugene V. Debs was a serious presidential candidate (even being pardoned by the then-POTUS Warren G. Harding over his sedition charge) and radical syndicalists like the IWW were influential. These proclivities were largely staved off through sleights of hand like Wilson's New Freedom and later the New Deal, which appeared to achieve socialistic ends, but largely through statist and corporatist means that didn't pose much of a threat to the establishment. An interesting example is that the National Recovery Administration part of the First New Deal was originally proposed by the then-president of General Electric, Gerard Swope.