New York Call
Encyclopedia
The New York Call was a socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

 daily newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

 published in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 from 1908 through 1923. The Call was the second of three English-language dailies affiliated with the Socialist Party of America
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...

 to be established, following the Chicago Daily Socialist (1906-1912) while preceding the long running Milwaukee Leader
Milwaukee Leader
The Milwaukee Leader was a socialist daily newspaper established in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in December 1911 by Socialist Party chief Victor L. Berger...

 (1911-1938).

Political background

In 1899 a bitter factional war swept the Socialist Labor Party of America
Socialist Labor Party of America
The Socialist Labor Party of America , established in 1876 as the Workingmen's Party, is the oldest socialist political party in the United States and the second oldest socialist party in the world. Originally known as the Workingmen's Party of America, the party changed its name in 1877 and has...

 (SLP), pitting loyalists to the party's English-language newspaper, The People
The People
The People, previously known as the Sunday People, is a British tabloid Sunday-only newspaper. The paper was founded on 16 October 1881.It is published by the Trinity Mirror Group.In July 2011 it had an average daily circulation of 806,544....

, and its intense and autocratic editor, Daniel DeLeon, against a dissident faction organized around the party's German-language paper, the New Yorker Volkszeitung
New Yorker Volkszeitung
New Yorker Volkzeitung was a German language labor daily newspaper which suspended publishing during the Great Depression, in October 1932. At the time it was the only German language daily in the United States and one of the oldest radical left newspapers in the nation...

. In addition to personal antipathy, the two sides differed on the fundamental question of trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

 policy, with the DeLeon faction favoring a continuation of the party's policy of establishing an explicitly socialist union organization and the dissidents seeking to abandon the course of dual unionism
Dual unionism
Dual unionism is the development of a union or political organization parallel to and within an existing labor union. In some cases, the term may refer to the situation where two unions claim the right to organize the same workers....

 so that closer relations to the established unions of the American Federation of Labor
American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...

 could be forged.

A bitter split had ensued, with the dissident wing — pejoratively called "Kangaroos" by the DeLeonist SLP Regulars — attempting to appropriate the name of the organization and its English-language newspaper for themselves. The matter ended up in the courts, with SLP Executive Secretary Henry Kuhn, Daniel DeLeon, and the Regulars victorious in the legal battle. The losers were forced by the court to change their name and the name of their publication so that no electoral or commercial confusion would result from the factional dualism.

On April 28, 1901, the losing side in the litigation, the so-called "Socialist Labor Party" headquartered in Rochester, New York
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...

, headed by Henry Slobodin, relaunched their weekly New York City newspaper with a new name — The Worker. Old numbering used previously for their version of The People was carried forward, with the first issued under the new banner designated "Volume 11, Number 4." The paper was edited by Algernon Lee
Algernon Lee
Algernon H. Lee was an American socialist politician and educator, best known as the Director of Education at the Rand School of Social Science for 35 years.-Early years:...

, assisted by Horace Traubel, Joshua Wanhope, and others.

Fundraising efforts

Even before the split there had been an effort by New York members of the SLP to establish an English-language daily newspaper. In November 1900 a meeting was held in Clarendon Hall on East 13th Street and it determined to revive an esstially defunct organization founded in 1886 for the purpose of starting a newspaper, the Workingmen's Co-operative Publishing Association (WCPA), with a goal of publishing an English daily as soon as a fund of $50,000 was accumulated for the task. After a search, Julius Gerber
Julius Gerber
Julius Gerber was a leading Socialist Party of America party official and politician during the first two decades of the 20th century. Gerber headed the important Socialist Party unit for New York City and its environs from 1911 through 1922...

 managed to locatesix surviving members of the old WCPA who remained interested in starting a new socialist newspaper were located and the organization was thus relaunched on its new task.

Fundraising proved neither quick nor easy. In November 1901 a fair was held for the benefit of the Volkszeitung, raising several thousand dollars over a four day period so in the fall of 1902 the WCPA decided to repeat this idea to raise funds for the English daily the next spring. The fair was held in March 1903; during its 16-day duration a linotype
Linotype
The Mergenthaler Linotype Company is a corporation founded in the United States in 1886 to market the linecaster invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler...

 machine was put into action as a practical demonstration and a sample newspaper called the Daily Globe was produced. Raffles were conducted, amusements held, food and drink sold, and several thousand dollars were raised for the future English daily, which was planned to be revisit the name New York Daily Globe on a permanent basis. This idea came to naught, however, when another New York paper changed its name to the Globe early in the spring of 1904. Suggestions were made for a new name for the forthcoming publication and the Daily Call was decided upon, with a launch date of September 1, 1904 targeted.

The WCPA and its project lost its fundraising mojo, however, owing to the excitement and expense of the 1904 Presidential campaign of Eugene V. Debs
Eugene V. Debs
Eugene Victor Debs was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World , and several times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States...

 and New York Socialist Party stalwart Ben Hanford. By the end of June it had become clear that the drive to raise even the more modest sum of $35,000 would be met in failure and the birth of the Daily Call was necessarily postponed.

While another successful fundraising fair was held in 1905, a growing range of new projects among New York Socialists, including the Rand School of Social Science
Rand School of Social Science
The Rand School of Social Science was formed in New York City by adherents of the Socialist Party of America in 1906. The school aimed to provide a broad education to workers, imparting a politicizing class-consciousness, and additionally served as a research bureau, a publisher, and the operator...

, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society
Intercollegiate Socialist Society
The Intercollegiate Socialist Society was the a Socialist student organization from 1905-1921. It attracted many prominent intellectuals and writers and acted as the unofficial Socialist Party of America student wing...

, the Christian Socialist Fellowship, and New York City elections in 1907 robbed the project to establish a daily Socialist newspaper of active supporters. By the fall of 1907, the number of people actively working on the project of establishing a daily paper was down to just six people, including future chief of the New York organization Julius Gerber
Julius Gerber
Julius Gerber was a leading Socialist Party of America party official and politician during the first two decades of the 20th century. Gerber headed the important Socialist Party unit for New York City and its environs from 1911 through 1922...

 and past National Executive Secretary of the Springfield wing of the Social Democratic Party William Butscher. A decision was made to hold one more fundraising fair and then to launch the paper on May Day
May Day
May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....

, 1908, regardless of whether or not the desired nest egg of $50,00 had been accumulated. The fair proved a financial success, the proposed May Day launch of the Call was moved back to Memorial Day
Memorial Day
Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May. Formerly known as Decoration Day, it originated after the American Civil War to commemorate the fallen Union soldiers of the Civil War...

, and the daily newspaper was born.

Launch of the daily

On May 30, 1908, the new socialist daily newspaper was launched — the New York Call. While the Yiddish-language and German-language socialists of New York City had long had daily newspapers of their own, The Call was remarkable as the first such effort for English-speaking radicals.

Editorial offices were established at 6 Park Place in New York City, in a building subsequently removed and replaced by the massive Woolworth Building
Woolworth Building
The Woolworth Building is one of the oldest skyscrapers in New York City. More than a century after the start of its construction, it remains, at 57 stories, one of the fifty tallest buildings in the United States as well as one of the twenty tallest buildings in New York City...

. Veteran journalist George Gordon was named the first editor of the publication and former Socialist Party Executive Secretary William Mailly
William Mailly
William "Will" Mailly was an American socialist political functionary, journalist, and trade union activist. He is best remembered as an early National Executive Secretary of the Socialist Party of America and as the first managing editor of the socialist daily newspaper, the New York Call.-Early...

 the paper's managing editor. Other key members of the early editorial and writing staff included W.J. Ghent, Louis Kopelin, and Algernon Lee
Algernon Lee
Algernon H. Lee was an American socialist politician and educator, best known as the Director of Education at the Rand School of Social Science for 35 years.-Early years:...

. At the end of October 1908, nationally famous muckraking
Muckraker
The term muckraker is closely associated with reform-oriented journalists who wrote largely for popular magazines, continued a tradition of investigative journalism reporting, and emerged in the United States after 1900 and continued to be influential until World War I, when through a combination...

 journalist Charles Edward Russell
Charles Edward Russell
Charles Edward Russell was an American journalist, politician, and a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People...

 was brought aboard as associate editor, having recently joined the Socialist Party.

The Call became the second English-language socialist daily in America, following the Chiicago Daily Socialist, established in 1906, but preceding the long-running Milwaukee Leader
Milwaukee Leader
The Milwaukee Leader was a socialist daily newspaper established in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in December 1911 by Socialist Party chief Victor L. Berger...

, which launched in 1911.

The daily papers of the Socialist Party were dominated ideologically by the organization's dominant "constructive socialist"
Reformism
Reformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...

 alliance, with the Chicago Daily Socialist in the hands of editor A.M. Simons, the Milwaukee Leader under the general editor control of party founder and U.S. Congressman Victor L. Berger
Victor L. Berger
Victor Luitpold Berger was a founding member of the Socialist Party of America and an important and influential Socialist journalist who helped establish the so-called Sewer Socialist movement. The first Socialist elected to the U.S...

, and the Call firmly in the hands of loyalists to Morris Hillquit
Morris Hillquit
Morris Hillquit was a founder and leader of the Socialist Party of America and prominent labor lawyer in New York City's Lower East Side during the early 20th century.-Early years:...

. The party's revolutionary socialist
Revolutionary socialism
The term revolutionary socialism refers to Socialist tendencies that advocate the need for fundamental social change through revolution by mass movements of the working class, as a strategy to achieve a socialist society...

 Left Wing was left to find other vehicles for its ideas, such as the monthly magazine published by Charles H. Kerr, the International Socialist Review
International Socialist Review (1900)
The International Socialist Review was a monthly magazine published in Chicago, Illinois by Charles H. Kerr & Co. from 1900 until 1918. The magazine was chiefly a Marxist theoretical journal during its first years under the editorship of A.M. Simons. Beginning in 1908 the publication took a turn to...

 as well as a small handful of weekly papers.

Despite the Call's importance to the American socialist movement and to later historians of American radicalism as a "newspaper of record," the publication was never a circulation powerhouse in the vein of J.A. Wayland's Appeal to Reason. In 1916, with Socialist Party membership waning from its peak four years earlier, circulation of the New York Call stood at an unimpressive 15,000 copies per issue — less than half of the average circulation of the Milwaukee Leader.

Fundraising to support the cost of a daily newspaper proved an ongoing battle for New York City Socialists, with future member of the SPA's National Executive Committee Anna A. Maley given a full-time job as fundraiser for the publication. Throughout its history proved essential for the Call to raise additional operating revenue supplementary to the funds generated by newsstand sales and advertising.

Key content

The Call was very much a New York City newspaper, featuring news of the city and the world at the front of the paper, editorial comment and news of party affairs towards the back. The paper featured a "Women's Department" overseen by the high profile activist wife of a "millionaire Socialist," Rose Pastor Stokes
Rose Pastor Stokes
Rose Harriet Pastor Stokes was a Jewish-American socialist activist, writer, birth control advocate, and feminist. She was active in labor politics and women's issues, and was a founding member of the Communist Party of America in 1919. She was a figure of some public notoriety for having married...

. Editorial cartoons
Editorial cartoon
An editorial cartoon, also known as a political cartoon, is an illustration containing a commentary that usually relates to current events or personalities....

 were given a prominent place, with material contributed by Ryan Walker and others.

One of the contributions to the paper of lasting impact was a short story written by New York Socialist Ben Hanford in 1909, at a time when he was dying of cancer. The story, "Jimmie Higgins," was a salute to the rank-and-file Socialist everyman, a committed volunteer who loyally performed the myriad of unpublicized and unglamorous laborious tasks that were essential to the successful functioning of any political organization. The Higgins character proved enduring, being further immortalized in a 1919 novel by Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...

, Jimmie Higgins: A Story.

The Call also provided substantial original coverage of various labor disputes, such as the New York shirtwaist strike of 1909
New York shirtwaist strike of 1909
The New York shirtwaist strike of 1909, also known as the Uprising of the 20,000, was a labor strike primarily involving Jewish women working in New York shirtwaist factories. Led by Clara Lemlich and supported by the National Women's Trade Union League of America , the strike began in November 1909...

 and disasters such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York and resulted in the fourth highest loss of life from an industrial accident in U.S. history...

.

Opposition to World War I

In April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...

, who had recently won re-election to a second four year term of office behind the slogan
Slogan
A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a political, commercial, religious and other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose. The word slogan is derived from slogorn which was an Anglicisation of the Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm . Slogans vary from the written and the...

 "He Kept Us Out of War, asked Congress for a declaration of war
Declaration of war
A declaration of war is a formal act by which one nation goes to war against another. The declaration is a performative speech act by an authorized party of a national government in order to create a state of war between two or more states.The legality of who is competent to declare war varies...

 against imperial Germany
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...

. That same month, with emotions running high, elected delegates of the Socialist Party of America gathered at their 1917 Emergency National Convention to determine party policy on the war. The organization reaffirmed its staunchly anti-militarist stance, declaring its opposition to the European war and American participation in in.

In June 1917, as part of the move of the United States government to military conscription, so-called "Espionage Act" legislation was passed making the obstruction of military recruitment
Military recruitment
Military recruitment is the act of requesting people, usually male adults, to join a military voluntarily. Involuntary military recruitment is known as conscription. Many countries that have abolished conscription use military recruiters to persuade people to join, often at an early age. To...

 a crime. Mere opposition to the American war effort via public speech or the printed word was interpreted by the Wilson Administration, and affirmed by the courts, as a violation of the law and a wave of prosecutions and administrative actions followed, including action by Postmaster General
Postmaster General
A Postmaster General is a postmaster responsible for an entire mail distribution organization . The term may refer to:* Postmaster General of the United Kingdom* The head of the Hongkong Post...

 Albert S. Burleson
Albert S. Burleson
Albert Sidney Burleson was a United States Postmaster General and Congressman. Born in San Marcos, Texas, he came from a wealthy Southern family. His father, Edward Burleson, Jr., was a Confederate officer. His grandfather, Edward Burleson, was a soldier and statesman in the Republic of Texas and...

 to ban offending newspapers from the mail. Mailing privileges of the New York Call were quickly revoked as part of a general offensive against the Socialist Party's press.

Charles Ervin, managing editor of the Call during this period, decided that, beginning on Monday, December 3, 1917, the paper would be printed in the evenings and would handle its own distribution. The paper continued to be distributed outside of New York by first class mail at this time. At a meeting announcing the decision, Ervin was asked about the paper's attitude towards the U. S. Government and the war. He said that his criticism of the war was not to be understood as criticism of the government. In particular, Ervin told a New York Times reporter that:

I have always attacked Kaiserism. I attacked the German Kaiser and his militarism in 1913 when The New York Times was praising him. I am not a pacifist. I am a fighter, and my ancestors fought in the civil war. Just now, however, I believe it most important for me personally to fight capitalism and Kaiserism in this country.

The Call was forced to make due for the duration of the war primarily with door-to-door sales by carriers
Newsboy
-Personal nicknames:* "Newsboy", a horse-racing tipster writing in The Daily Mirror* Jeremy Wells, a television personality-Other uses:* Newsvendor model, a demand forecasting model from operations research,...

 and at newsstands. The paper did not have its second-class mailing privileges restored until June, 1921.

Response to the Russian Revolution of 1917

With the advent of the Bolshevik Revolution in the fall of 1917, the Call was taken by surprise. On December 26, 1917, the paper editorialized that events in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 had "got clean away from us" and that the editors could "make nothing of it at present, nor predicate anything for its future from present reports." The paper made its columns available both to supporters and critics of the Bolsheviks
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...

 in Soviet Russia, but were generally supportive of the Russian Revolution in its earliest phase. As with the Jewish Daily Forward, later a bastion of anti-communism
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...

 in the Socialist Party, The Call was not severely critical of V.I. Lenin and his regime until after the end of the Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...

 and the destruction of the internal left wing political opposition in 1921.

As historian Theodore Draper
Theodore Draper
Theodore H. "Ted" Draper was an American historian and political writer. Draper is best known for the 14 books which he completed during his life, including work regarded as seminal on the formative period of the American Communist Party, the Cuban Revolution, and the Iran-Contra Affair...

 noted:


"Many months after it happened, the Bolshevik revolution was still a very hazy and contradictory phenomenon. It was not simple and clear even to the participants. In its first stage, the Bolshevik regime consisted of a coalition between the Bolsheviks, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, and minor groups. Long-time Marxists
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

 and anarchists
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...

 pulled together against the common enemy...



"Thus it was possible for the American Left Wing to see the Bolshevik revolution in its own image. It could make itself believe that the Soviets were merely Russian equivalents of 'industrial socialism' or 'industrial unionism
Industrial unionism
Industrial unionism is a labor union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union—regardless of skill or trade—thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in bargaining and in strike situations...

'..."


Only in its last years, well after the 1919 departure of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party
Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party
The Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party was an organized faction within the Socialist Party of America in 1919 which served as the core of the dual communist parties which emerged in the fall of that year — the Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party of America.-Precusors:A...

 to establish the nascent American Communist movement, would the Call become consistently critical of the excesses of the Russian Communist Party.

Termination and legacy

The paper was terminated in 1923.

A complete run of the New York Call has survived and is available via master negative microfilm from the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...

 in New York City.

The papers of the Workingmen's Co-operative Publishing Association are held by the Tamiment Library of New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

 in two archival boxes. The material is open for the use of researchers without restriction.

See also

  • Socialist Party of America
    Socialist Party of America
    The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...

  • Non-English press of the Socialist Party of America
    Non-English press of the Socialist Party of America
    For a number of decades after its establishment in August 1901, the Socialist Party of America produced or inspired a vast array of newspapers and magazines in an array different languages...

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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