The Masses
Encyclopedia
The Masses was a graphically innovative magazine of socialist politics published monthly in the U.S. from 1911 until 1917, when Federal prosecutors brought charges against its editors for conspiring to obstruct conscription. It was succeeded by The Liberator
and then later The New Masses
. It published reportage, fiction, poetry and art by the leading radicals of the time such as Max Eastman
, John Reed, Dorothy Day
, and Floyd Dell
.
like John French Sloan. These Greenwich Village artists and writers asked one of their own, Max Eastman
(who was then studying for a doctorate under John Dewey
at Columbia University
), to edit their magazine. John Sloan, Art Young
, Louis Untermeyer
, and Inez Haynes Gillmore
(among others) mailed a terse letter to Eastman in August 1912: “You are elected editor of The Masses. No pay.” In the first issue, Eastman wrote the following manifesto:
The Masses was to some extent defined by its association with New York’s artistic culture. “The birth of The Masses,” Eastman later wrote, “coincided with the birth of ‘Greenwich Village
’ as a self-conscious entity, an American Bohemia or gipsy-minded Latin Quarter
, but its relations with that entity were not simple.” The Masses was very much embedded in a specific metropolitan milieu, unlike some other competing socialist periodicals (such as the Appeal to Reason, a populist-inflected 500,000-circulation weekly produced out of Girard, Kansas).
The magazine carved out a unique position for itself within American Left
print culture. It was more open to Progressive Era
reforms, like women's suffrage
, than Emma Goldman
's anarchist Mother Earth
. At the same time it fiercely criticized more mainstream leftist publications like The New Republic
for insufficient radicalism.
World War I
continually exercised The Masses’ political imagination. Its editors believed the cause of the conflict was transparently clear: imperialist international finance capital. Grotesque caricatures of Europe’s wealthy bankers directing workingmen’s guns populated the magazine’s pages. Even before it began, throughout the various scares of 1912 and 1913, the paper consistently railed against militarism
.
After Eastman assumed leadership, and especially after August 1914, the magazine’s denouncements of the war were frequent and fierce. In the September 1914 edition of his column, “Knowledge and Revolution,” Eastman predicted: “Probably no one will actually be the victor in this gambler’s war—for we may as well call it a gambler’s war. Only so can we indicate its underlying commercial causes, its futility, and yet also the tall spirit in which it is carried off.”
Throughout 1916 and early 1917, in a series of ever more desperate editorials and illustrations, Eastman, Reed, and the others urged against American intervention in the war. Worried about newly-enacted sedition laws like the Espionage Act of 1917
, once war was declared in April, the paper resorted to indirect attacks on American participation in the war.
In the midst of the First Red Scare
, the magazine's critiques of patriotism, and especially of the draft, were enough to have it charged under the stringent anti-sedition laws. The United States Post Office, under Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson
, first denied the magazine second-class mailing privileges. News dealers refused to sell the magazine. In November 1917, the editors of The Masses were indicted on charges they had obstructed enlistment. Although a split jury acquitted Eastman and his cohorts a year later, the dramatically higher postal rates were enough to kill the paper on their own.
After The Masses died, Eastman and other writers were unwilling to let its spirit go with it. In March 1918, their new monthly
adopted the name of William Lloyd Garrison
’s famed The Liberator.
The Masses continued to serve as an example for radicals long after it was suppressed. “The only magazine I know which bears a certain resemblance to (Dwight Macdonald
's magazine) Politics and fulfilled a similar function thirty years earlier,” Hannah Arendt
claimed in 1968, was “the old Masses (1911-1917).”
in West Virginia to the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913
and the Ludlow massacre
in Colorado. It strongly sympathized with Big Bill Haywood
and his IWW
, the political campaigns of Eugene V. Debs
, and a variety of other socialist and anarchist figures. The Masses also indignantly followed the aftermath of the Los Angeles Times bombing
.
) and women's suffrage. Several of its Greenwich Village contributors, like Reed and Dell, practiced free love in their spare time and promoted it (sometimes in veiled terms) in their pieces. Support for these social reforms was sometimes controversial within Marxist circles at the time; some argued that they were distractions from a more proper political goal, class revolution. Emma Goldman
once tutted: “It is rather disappointing to find THE MASSES devoting an entire edition to ‘Votes for Women.’ Perhaps Mother Earth alone has any faith in women […] that women are capable and are ready to fight for freedom and revolution.”
Although the magazine's birth coincided with the explosion of modernism, and its contributor Arthur B. Davies
was an organizer of the Armory Show
, The Masses published for the most part realist artwork
that would later be classified in the Ashcan school
. Many illustrations were appended with captions, a policy that irritated John French Sloan
so much he left the magazine's staff.
was a vital, pioneering current in the writing of the time, and several leading lights were willing to contribute work to the magazine without pay. The name most associated with the magazine is Sherwood Anderson
. Anderson was “discovered” by The Masses’ fiction editor, Floyd Dell, and his pieces there formed the foundation for his Winesburg, Ohio
stories. In the November 1916 Masses, Dell described his surprise years before while reading Anderson’s unsolicited manuscript: “there Sherwood Anderson was writing like—I had no other phrase to express it—like a great novelist.” Anderson would later be cited by the Partisan Review
circle as one of the first homegrown American talents.
The magazine's criticism, edited by Floyd Dell
, was cheekily titled (at least for a time) “Books that Are Interesting.” Dell’s perceptive reviews gave accolades to many of the most notable books of the time: An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution
, Spoon River Anthology
, Theodore Dreiser
’s novels, Carl Jung
’s Psychology of the Unconscious
, G. K. Chesterton
’s works, Jack London
’s memoirs, and many other prominent creations.
Articles
The Liberator (magazine)
The Liberator was a monthly socialist magazine established by Max Eastman and his sister Crystal Eastman in 1918 to continue the work of The Masses, which was shut down by the wartime mailing regulations of the U.S. government. Intensely political, the magazine included copious quantities of art,...
and then later The New Masses
The New Masses
The "New Masses" was a prominent American Marxist publication edited by Walt Carmon, briefly by Whittaker Chambers, and primarily by Michael Gold, Granville Hicks, and Joseph Freeman....
. It published reportage, fiction, poetry and art by the leading radicals of the time such as Max Eastman
Max Eastman
Max Forrester Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. For many years, Eastman was a supporter of socialism, a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes...
, John Reed, Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist and devout Catholic convert; she advocated the Catholic economic theory of Distributism. She was also considered to be an anarchist, and did not hesitate to use the term...
, and Floyd Dell
Floyd Dell
Floyd Dell was an American author and critic.-Biography:Floyd Dell was born in Barry, Illinois on June 28, 1887....
.
History
Piet Vlag, an eccentric socialist immigrant from the Netherlands, founded the magazine in 1911. Vlag’s dream of a co-operatively operated magazine never worked well, and after just a few issues he left for Florida. His vision of an illustrated socialist monthly had, however, attracted a circle of young activists in Greenwich Village to The Masses that included visual artists from the Ashcan schoolAshcan School
The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, is defined as a realist artistic movement that came into prominence in the United States during the early twentieth century, best known for works portraying scenes of daily life in New York's poorer neighborhoods. The movement grew out of a group...
like John French Sloan. These Greenwich Village artists and writers asked one of their own, Max Eastman
Max Eastman
Max Forrester Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. For many years, Eastman was a supporter of socialism, a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes...
(who was then studying for a doctorate under John Dewey
John Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
), to edit their magazine. John Sloan, Art Young
Art Young
Arthur "Art" Young was an American cartoonist and writer. He is most famous for his socialist cartoons, especially those drawn for the left wing political magazine The Masses between 1911 and 1917.-Early Years:...
, Louis Untermeyer
Louis Untermeyer
Louis Untermeyer was an American poet, anthologist, critic, and editor. He was appointed the fourteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1961.-Life and career:...
, and Inez Haynes Gillmore
Inez Haynes Irwin
Inez Haynes Irwin was an American feminist author, journalist, member of the National Women's Party, and president of the Authors Guild. Many of her works were published under her former name Inez Haynes Gillmore. She wrote over 40 books and was active in the suffragist movement in the early 1900s...
(among others) mailed a terse letter to Eastman in August 1912: “You are elected editor of The Masses. No pay.” In the first issue, Eastman wrote the following manifesto:
The Masses was to some extent defined by its association with New York’s artistic culture. “The birth of The Masses,” Eastman later wrote, “coincided with the birth of ‘Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
’ as a self-conscious entity, an American Bohemia or gipsy-minded Latin Quarter
Latin Quarter
Latin Quarter is a part of the 5th arrondissement in Paris.Latin Quarter may also refer to:* Latin Quarter , a British pop/rock band* Latin Quarter , a 1945 British film*Latin Quarter, Aarhus, part of Midtbyen, Aarhus C, Denmark...
, but its relations with that entity were not simple.” The Masses was very much embedded in a specific metropolitan milieu, unlike some other competing socialist periodicals (such as the Appeal to Reason, a populist-inflected 500,000-circulation weekly produced out of Girard, Kansas).
The magazine carved out a unique position for itself within American Left
American Left
The American Left consists of individuals and groups, including socialists, communists and anarchists, that have sought fundamental change in the economic, political and cultural institutions of the United States. Although left-wing ideologies came to the United States in the 19th century, there...
print culture. It was more open to Progressive Era
Progressive Era
The Progressive Era in the United States was a period of social activism and political reform that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. One main goal of the Progressive movement was purification of government, as Progressives tried to eliminate corruption by exposing and undercutting political...
reforms, like women's suffrage
History of women's suffrage in the United States
Woman suffrage in the United States was achieved gradually, at state and local levels, during the 19th Century and early 20th Century, culminating in 1920 with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provided: "The right of citizens of the United States to...
, than Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
's anarchist Mother Earth
Mother Earth (magazine)
Mother Earth was an anarchist journal that described itself as "A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature," edited by Emma Goldman. Alexander Berkman, another well-known anarchist, was the magazine's editor from 1907 to 1915...
. At the same time it fiercely criticized more mainstream leftist publications like The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
for insufficient radicalism.
World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
continually exercised The Masses’ political imagination. Its editors believed the cause of the conflict was transparently clear: imperialist international finance capital. Grotesque caricatures of Europe’s wealthy bankers directing workingmen’s guns populated the magazine’s pages. Even before it began, throughout the various scares of 1912 and 1913, the paper consistently railed against militarism
Militarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
.
After Eastman assumed leadership, and especially after August 1914, the magazine’s denouncements of the war were frequent and fierce. In the September 1914 edition of his column, “Knowledge and Revolution,” Eastman predicted: “Probably no one will actually be the victor in this gambler’s war—for we may as well call it a gambler’s war. Only so can we indicate its underlying commercial causes, its futility, and yet also the tall spirit in which it is carried off.”
Throughout 1916 and early 1917, in a series of ever more desperate editorials and illustrations, Eastman, Reed, and the others urged against American intervention in the war. Worried about newly-enacted sedition laws like the Espionage Act of 1917
Espionage Act of 1917
The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law passed on June 15, 1917, shortly after the U.S. entry into World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code but is now found under Title 18, Crime...
, once war was declared in April, the paper resorted to indirect attacks on American participation in the war.
In the midst of the First Red Scare
First Red Scare
In American history, the First Red Scare of 1919–1920 was marked by a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism. Concerns over the effects of radical political agitation in American society and alleged spread in the American labor movement fueled the paranoia that defined the period.The First Red...
, the magazine's critiques of patriotism, and especially of the draft, were enough to have it charged under the stringent anti-sedition laws. The United States Post Office, under Postmaster General 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...
, first denied the magazine second-class mailing privileges. News dealers refused to sell the magazine. In November 1917, the editors of The Masses were indicted on charges they had obstructed enlistment. Although a split jury acquitted Eastman and his cohorts a year later, the dramatically higher postal rates were enough to kill the paper on their own.
After The Masses died, Eastman and other writers were unwilling to let its spirit go with it. In March 1918, their new monthly
The Liberator (magazine)
The Liberator was a monthly socialist magazine established by Max Eastman and his sister Crystal Eastman in 1918 to continue the work of The Masses, which was shut down by the wartime mailing regulations of the U.S. government. Intensely political, the magazine included copious quantities of art,...
adopted the name of William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and as one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United...
’s famed The Liberator.
The Masses continued to serve as an example for radicals long after it was suppressed. “The only magazine I know which bears a certain resemblance to (Dwight Macdonald
Dwight Macdonald
Dwight Macdonald was an American writer, editor, film critic, social critic, philosopher, and political radical.-Early life and career:...
's magazine) Politics and fulfilled a similar function thirty years earlier,” Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...
claimed in 1968, was “the old Masses (1911-1917).”
The labor struggle
The magazine reported on most of the major labor struggles of its day: from the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike of 1912Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike of 1912
The Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike of 1912 was a confrontation between striking coal miners and coal operators in Kanawha County, West Virginia, centered around the area enclosed by two streams, Paint Creek and Cabin Creek....
in West Virginia to the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913
Paterson Silk Strike of 1913
The 1913 Paterson silk strike was a work stoppage involving silk mill workers in Paterson, New Jersey. The strike, which involved demands for establishment of an eight-hour day and improved working conditions. The strike began on February 1, 1913, and ended six months later, on July 28.-History:The...
and the Ludlow massacre
Ludlow massacre
The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the Colorado National Guard on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado on April 20, 1914....
in Colorado. It strongly sympathized with Big Bill Haywood
Bill Haywood
William Dudley Haywood , better known as "Big Bill" Haywood, was a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World , and a member of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America...
and his IWW
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
, the political campaigns 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 a variety of other socialist and anarchist figures. The Masses also indignantly followed the aftermath of the Los Angeles Times bombing
Los Angeles Times bombing
The Los Angeles Times bombing was the purposeful dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times building in Los Angeles, California, on October 1, 1910 by a union member belonging to the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers. The explosion started a fire which killed 21 newspaper...
.
Women's rights and sexual equality
The magazine vigorously argued for birth control (supporting activists like Margaret SangerMargaret Sanger
Margaret Higgins Sanger was an American sex educator, nurse, and birth control activist. Sanger coined the term birth control, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established Planned Parenthood...
) and women's suffrage. Several of its Greenwich Village contributors, like Reed and Dell, practiced free love in their spare time and promoted it (sometimes in veiled terms) in their pieces. Support for these social reforms was sometimes controversial within Marxist circles at the time; some argued that they were distractions from a more proper political goal, class revolution. Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
once tutted: “It is rather disappointing to find THE MASSES devoting an entire edition to ‘Votes for Women.’ Perhaps Mother Earth alone has any faith in women […] that women are capable and are ready to fight for freedom and revolution.”
Illustrations
Arthur B. Davies
Arthur Bowen Davies was an avant-garde American artist and patron.-Biography:He was born in Utica, New York and studied at the Chicago Academy of Design from 1879 to 1882...
was an organizer of the Armory Show
Armory Show
Many exhibitions have been held in the vast spaces of U.S. National Guard armories, but the Armory Show refers to the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art that was organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors...
, The Masses published for the most part realist artwork
Realism (visual arts)
Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...
that would later be classified in the Ashcan school
Ashcan School
The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, is defined as a realist artistic movement that came into prominence in the United States during the early twentieth century, best known for works portraying scenes of daily life in New York's poorer neighborhoods. The movement grew out of a group...
. Many illustrations were appended with captions, a policy that irritated John French Sloan
John French Sloan
John French Sloan was an American artist. As a member of The Eight, he became a leading figure in the Ashcan School of realist artists. He was known for his urban genre painting and ability to capture the essence of neighborhood life in New York City, often through his window...
so much he left the magazine's staff.
Literature and criticism
American realismAmerican realism
300px|thumb|[[Ashcan School]] artists & friends at [[John French Sloan]]'s Philadelphia Studio, 1898American realism was an early 20th century idea in art, music and literature that showed through these different types of work, reflections of the time period...
was a vital, pioneering current in the writing of the time, and several leading lights were willing to contribute work to the magazine without pay. The name most associated with the magazine is Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer. His most enduring work is the short story sequence Winesburg, Ohio. Writers he has influenced include Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, J. D. Salinger, and Amos Oz.-Early life:Anderson was born in Clyde, Ohio,...
. Anderson was “discovered” by The Masses’ fiction editor, Floyd Dell, and his pieces there formed the foundation for his Winesburg, Ohio
Winesburg, Ohio (novel)
Winesburg, Ohio is a 1919 short story cycle by the American author Sherwood Anderson. The work is structured around the life of protagonist George Willard, from the time he was a child to his growing independence and ultimate abandonment of Winesburg as a young man...
stories. In the November 1916 Masses, Dell described his surprise years before while reading Anderson’s unsolicited manuscript: “there Sherwood Anderson was writing like—I had no other phrase to express it—like a great novelist.” Anderson would later be cited by the Partisan Review
Partisan Review
Partisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:...
circle as one of the first homegrown American talents.
The magazine's criticism, edited by Floyd Dell
Floyd Dell
Floyd Dell was an American author and critic.-Biography:Floyd Dell was born in Barry, Illinois on June 28, 1887....
, was cheekily titled (at least for a time) “Books that Are Interesting.” Dell’s perceptive reviews gave accolades to many of the most notable books of the time: An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution
An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution
An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is a 1913 book by American historian Charles A. Beard. It argues that the structure of the Constitution of the United States was motivated primarily by the personal financial interests of the Founding Fathers...
, Spoon River Anthology
Spoon River Anthology
Spoon River Anthology , by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of short free-form poems that collectively describe the life of the fictional small town of Spoon River, named after the real Spoon River that ran near Masters' home town. The collection includes two hundred and twelve separate...
, Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of...
’s novels, Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
’s Psychology of the Unconscious
Psychology of the Unconscious
Psychology of the Unconscious is an important early work of C. G. Jung, published as Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido in 1912.The English translation by Beatrice M...
, G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
’s works, Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
’s memoirs, and many other prominent creations.
Notable contributors
- Sherwood AndersonSherwood AndersonSherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer. His most enduring work is the short story sequence Winesburg, Ohio. Writers he has influenced include Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, J. D. Salinger, and Amos Oz.-Early life:Anderson was born in Clyde, Ohio,...
- George BellowsGeorge BellowsGeorge Wesley Bellows was an American realist painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City, becoming, according to the Columbus Museum of Art, "the most acclaimed American artist of his generation".-Youth:Bellows was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio...
- Louise BryantLouise BryantLouise Bryant was an American journalist and writer. She was best known for her Marxist and anarchist beliefs and her essays on radical political and feminist themes. Bryant published articles in several radical left journals during her life, including Alexander Berkman's The Blast...
- Arthur B. DaviesArthur B. DaviesArthur Bowen Davies was an avant-garde American artist and patron.-Biography:He was born in Utica, New York and studied at the Chicago Academy of Design from 1879 to 1882...
- Dorothy DayDorothy DayDorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist and devout Catholic convert; she advocated the Catholic economic theory of Distributism. She was also considered to be an anarchist, and did not hesitate to use the term...
- Floyd DellFloyd DellFloyd Dell was an American author and critic.-Biography:Floyd Dell was born in Barry, Illinois on June 28, 1887....
- Max EastmanMax EastmanMax Forrester Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. For many years, Eastman was a supporter of socialism, a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes...
- Wanda GagWanda GágWanda Hazel Gág was an American author and illustrator. She was born on March 11, 1893, in New Ulm, Minnesota. Her mother and father were of Bohemian descent. Both parents were artists who had met in Germany. They had seven children, who all acquired some level of artistic talent...
- Jack LondonJack LondonJohn Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
- Amy LowellAmy LowellAmy Lawrence Lowell was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.- Personal life:...
- Mabel Dodge LuhanMabel Dodge LuhanMabel Evans Dodge Sterne Luhan , née Ganson was a wealthy American patron of the arts. She is particularly associated with the Taos art colony.-Early life:...
- Inez MilhollandInez MilhollandInez Milholland Boissevain was a suffragist, labor lawyer, World War I correspondent, and public speaker who greatly influenced the women's movement in America.-Biography:...
- Robert MinorRobert MinorRobert Berkeley "Bob" Minor was political cartoonist, a radical journalist, and a leading member of the American Communist Party.-Early life:...
- John Reed
- Boardman RobinsonBoardman RobinsonBoardman Robinson was a Canadian-American artist, illustrator and cartoonist.-Early years:Boardman Robinson was born September 6, 1876 in Nova Scotia, Canada. He spent his childhood in England and Canada, before coming to Boston in the first half of the 1890s...
- Carl SandburgCarl SandburgCarl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...
- John French SloanJohn French SloanJohn French Sloan was an American artist. As a member of The Eight, he became a leading figure in the Ashcan School of realist artists. He was known for his urban genre painting and ability to capture the essence of neighborhood life in New York City, often through his window...
- Upton SinclairUpton SinclairUpton 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...
- Louis UntermeyerLouis UntermeyerLouis Untermeyer was an American poet, anthologist, critic, and editor. He was appointed the fourteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1961.-Life and career:...
- Mary Heaton VorseMary Heaton VorseMary Heaton Vorse or Mary Heaton Vorse O'Brien was an American journalist, labor activist, and novelist. Vorse was outspoken and active in peace and social justice causes, such as women's suffrage, civil rights, pacifism , socialism, child labor, infant mortality, labor disputes, and affordable...
- Art YoungArt YoungArthur "Art" Young was an American cartoonist and writer. He is most famous for his socialist cartoons, especially those drawn for the left wing political magazine The Masses between 1911 and 1917.-Early Years:...
Further reading
- Fishbein, Leslie. Rebels in Bohemia: The Radicals of The Masses, 1911-1917. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina P, 1982.
- Maik, Thomas A. The Masses Magazine (1911-1917): Odyssey of an Era. New York: Garland, 1994.
- O'Neill, William. Echoes of Revolt: The Masses, 1911-1917. Chicago: Dee, 1966. ISBN 0-929587-15-4.
- Watts, Theodore F. The Masses Index 1911-1917. Easthampton, MA: Periodyssey, 2000.
- Zurier, Rebecca. Art for The Masses: A Radical Magazine and Its Graphics, 1911-1917. Philadelphia: Temple UP. ISBN 0-87722-670-9.
External links
Archives- Cover Illustrations Collection at Michigan State University
- Complete volume/issue inventory of The Masses and U.S. libraries with original holdings
- "The Radical Impulse" from the Library of Congress Exhibition "Life of the People"
- Political Cartoons from the Masses. Marxists Internet ArchiveMarxists Internet ArchiveMarxists Internet Archive is a volunteer based non-profit organization that maintains a multi-lingual Internet archive of Marxist writers and other similar authors...
. Retrieved on March 11, 2006. - Max Eastman archive
- John Reed archive
Articles
- "The Crayon Was Mightier Than the Sword" by David OshinskyDavid OshinskyDavid M. Oshinsky is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian; he currently holds the Jack S. Blanton chair in history at the University of Texas at Austin and is a distinguished scholar in residence at New York University....
in the New York Times (September 4, 1988). - The Masses article on Spartacus online encyclopedia. Retrieved on March 11, 2006.