Early American radical paper promoted the 'sociališt dream'

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Whene To Find Us SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 1989 19 Talking Socialism: JA. Wayland and the Role of the Press in American Radicalism, 1890-1912, by Elliott Shore, The University Press of Kansas, 1988.

This is a well-documented new book on the rise and growth of early American "grass roots" socialism and the significant role of the radical press in agitating, organizing, and promoting that movement.

Elliot Shore, with the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, N.J., is BOOK REVIEW considered a leading authority on the alternative press. He has deliberately chosen the rather narrow time period of 1890 to 1912 to focus on the career of J.A. Wayland, who achieved permanent fame as America's greatest producer of radical mass-circulation newspapers.

Wayland was the editor, publisher, and main writer of The Appeal to Reason, a weekly socialist paper that he started in 1895. Upton Sinclair once stated that as many as 4 million were loyal readers of the tabloid. Sinclair's famous novel, "The Jungle," exposing the meat-packing industry of Chicago, was serialized first in the pages of The Appeal to Reason.

In 1906, The Appeal printed a special edition, the famous "Rescue Edition," in support of "Big Bill" Haywood and other Colorado mine leaders who were being framed on a bomb plot charge in which Idaho's Governor Steunenberg was killed. The newspaper roused the entire labor movement to join forces in common defense efforts across the country.

A total of 3,100,000 copies were printed and were probably largely responsible for helping to free Haywood and the other leaders. Two years later, in 1908, The Appeal printed the astounding total of 25,000,000 copies of the "Rescue Edition."

Government harassment

Despite the popularity of The Appeal To Reason, the fact is that neither a socialist transformation of American society nor a viable mass socialist party occurred. Shore provides a thoughtful and penetrating analysis of this failure.

To be sure, the federal government took an active role of harassment almost from the very moment The Appeal was launched. There had been several attempts by the post office to initiate new mailing "regulations" that directly undercut the paper's circulation.

After Eugene V. Debs' historic " Arouse the Slaves" article in the "Rescue Edition," Canada banned the newspaper for "sedition." Shore reprints a copy of a 1907 edition of The Appeal that features across the front page a blank section titled "censored by the Attorney General of the United States"

No less a figure than President Theodore Roosevelt actively pursued the fight to close down The Appeal. Soon after Debs wrote his stirring appeal on behalf of the miners, the government had criminal charges brought against "Fighting Editor" Fred D. Warren (who had taken over the helm of The Appeal in 1904).

"A business institution"

While granting that this harassment by the government was important, Shore views the demise of The Appeal, and with it of the socialist movement, as based more significantly on factors resulting from the reformist outlook of a large part of the movement's leadership. These factors were personified in the life of J.A. Wayland.

Wayland's early career had been based on real estate speculations in Colorado. He described himself at first as a "radical republican." He then briefly joined the populist movement and, after a flirtation with utopian colonies (he founded the Ruskin colony in Tennessee) and launching several newspapers, he finally settled on publishing The Appeal.

To Wayland, Appeal business institution. He fervently believed that by using the press and utilizing boosterism and American "get-rich-quick" schemes, he could put socialism firmly into the American political landscape.

Such practicés as these, Shore notes, eventually caught up to Wayland. In 1903, The Appeal's staff of 100 employees went out on strike against him. The employees pointed to a number of glaring unsocialist practices that Wayland pursued, such as maintaining a sweatshop and allowing the business managers to make insulting remarks toward women workers (known as "the girls").

Wayland had also opposed unionism at the newspaper plant, although he gave lip service to it in his articles. At other times, he had indicated that he was not in favor of strikes, which did not endear him to the more theoretically grounded writers who were Marxists.

No party organ Although Wayland, for a very brief period, had indentified with the Socialist Labor Party Baltimore P.O. Box 16005 Baltimore, MD 21218 Boston P.O. Box 1046 GMF Boston, MA 02205 (617) 497-0230 Chicago P.O. Box 578428 Chicago, IL 60657 (312) 327-5752 Cincinnati P.O. Box 21015 Cincinnati, OH 45219 (513) 272-2596 Cleveland P.O. Box 6151 Cleveland, OH 44101 (216) 429-2167 Detroit P.O. Box 32546 Detroit, MI 48232 Los Angeles P.O. Box 60605 Terminal Annex Los Angeles, CA 90060 (213) 250-4608 For information in other cities call 415-821-0458. of Daniel De Leon (at one time he even published the SLP's platform to promote it), he never utilized The Appeal as the organ of any socialist party.

Shore recalls that when the sagging fortunes of The Appeal were at a low point, Wayland offered to sell the paper to the Socialist Party. But the party declined this important opportunity, presenting the argument that its constitution forbade it from adopting an official party organ.

Today, with citizens gaining more and more of their information from non-print sources, the American left is more isolated from reaching the public than it was before World War I. What it does publish is not often available through such commercial distributors as newsstand agencies—a situation that has changed little since Wayland complained about it in the 1890s. The wire services are as closed to radical reportage as they were a century ago.

Yet American radicals continue to dream the dream that Wayland dreamed-namely, convincing the mass of people to remake American society through the truth of the printed word. That these dreams are still dreamed shows the indomitable spirit of social conscience, but the means for spreading the word are as restricted as they were when Wayland was talking socialism.

Minneapolis

P.O. Box 14087 Dinkeytown Station Minneapolis, MN 55414 New York P.O. Box 20209 Ca. Finar 693 Columbus Ave.

New York, N.Y. 10025 San Francisco 3435 Army St., Suite 308 San Francisco, CA 94110 (415) 821-0458 Santa Barbara P.O. Box 90644 Santa Barbara, CA 93190 (805) 962-4011

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