 December 1923, Labor Age Cover | |
| Type | Monthly Magazine |
|---|---|
| Owner(s) | Conference for Progressive Labor Action |
| Founded | January 1922 |
| Ceased publication | March 1933 |
| Country | United States |
Labor Age was a monthly political magazine published from 1922 to 1933. [1] The publisher was by the Labor Publication Society. [1]
Labor Age succeeded the Socialist Review, journal of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. It advocated industrial unionism, economic planning, and workers' education (especially the activities of Brookwood Labor College). It reported extensively on innovative tactics for organizing nonunion workers in mass production industries, identifying tactics that would become standard procedure for union organizers in the 1930s and 1940s. [2]
The Socialist Review and Labor Age were the official publications of the League for Industrial Democracy from 1921–1929. In May 1929, the editors of Labor Age helped to form the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) in order to counter what they considered growing pro-business tendencies in the American Federation of Labor. [3]
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In 1932, the Conference for Progressive Labor Action voted to supplement the monthly Labor Age with a daily newspaper, called Labor Action, but that was never realized. Labor Age ceased publication after the February-March 1933 issue. [4]
Important figures associated with Labor Age were A. J. Muste, James Maurer, Harry W. Laidler, Fannia Cohn, and Louis Budenz. Other contributors of the December 1931 issue included: Judson King, Bruce Crawford, Benjamin Mandel, Sam Bakely, J.B. Matthews, Ludwig Lore, David J. Saposs, and P atrick L. Quinlan. [5]
Abraham Johannes Muste was a Dutch-born American clergyman and political activist. He is best remembered for his work in the labor movement, pacifist movement, antiwar movement, and civil rights movement.
Martin "Marty" Abern was a Marxist politician who was an important leader of the Communist youth movement of the 1920s as well as a founder of the American Trotskyist movement.
The first modern Farmer–Labor Party in the United States emerged in Minnesota in 1918. The American entry into World War I caused agricultural prices and workers' wages to fall, while retail prices rose sharply during the war years. Consequently, farmers and workers made common cause in the political sphere to redress their grievances.
Brookwood Labor College was a labor college located at 109 Cedar Road in Katonah, New York, United States. Founded as Brookwood School in 1919 and established as a college in 1921, it was the first residential labor college in the country. Its founding and longest-serving president was A. J. Muste. The school was supported by affiliate unions of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) until 1928.
The American Workers Party (AWP) was a socialist organization established in December 1933 by activists in the Conference for Progressive Labor Action, a group headed by A.J. Muste.
The Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) was a left-wing American political organization established in May 1929 by A. J. Muste, the director of Brookwood Labor College. The organization was established to promote industrial unionism and to work for reform of the American Federation of Labor. It dissolved itself in December 1933 to form the American Workers Party.
The Communist League of Struggle (CLS) was a small communist organization active in the United States during the 1930s. Founded by Albert Weisbord and his wife, Vera Buch, who were veterans of the Left Socialist movement and the Communist Party USA, the CLS briefly affiliated with Leon Trotsky independently of the Communist League of America. It was affiliated to the International Bureau of Revolutionary Youth Organizations until 1935. The small group dwindled and quietly was terminated in the spring of 1937.
The Toledo Auto-Lite strike was a strike by a federal labor union of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) against the Electric Auto-Lite company of Toledo, Ohio, from April 12 to June 3, 1934.
Samuel Pollock was an American labor union activist and leader. He helped lead two important strikes in 1934, the Auto-Lite Strike and the Hardin County onion pickers strike, before becoming district president of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America.
The Lovestoneites, led by former General Secretary of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) Jay Lovestone, were a small American oppositionist communist movement of the 1930s. The organization emerged from a factional fight in the CPUSA in 1929 and unsuccessfully sought to reintegrate with that organization for several years.
During the ten decades since its establishment in 1919, the Communist Party USA produced or inspired a vast array of newspapers and magazines in the English language.
Benjamin Mandela.k.a. "Bert Miller" was a New York city school teacher and communist activist who later became an ex-communist director of research for the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SIS).
Robert Williams Dunn (1895–1977) was an American political activist and economic researcher. Dunn was an active member of the American Civil Liberties Union from its creation, serving on that group's National Committee from 1923 and on its board of directors from 1933 to 1941. Dunn was the author of a number of books and pamphlets on economic themes relating to the working class published by the Communist Party USA.
Harry Wellington Laidler was an American socialist writer, magazine editor, and politician. He is best remembered as executive director of the League for Industrial Democracy, successor to the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, and for his close political association with perennial Socialist Party Presidential nominee Norman Thomas. He also served a two-year term on the New York City Council.
Fannia Mary Cohn was a leading figure in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) during the first half of the 20th century. She is remembered as one of the pioneers of the workers' education movement in the United States and as a prolific author on the theme of trade union education.
Dennis E. Batt was an American political journalist and trade union activist. Best remembered as the first editor of The Communist, the official organ of the Communist Party of America and leading member of the Proletarian Party of America, in later years Batt's political views became increasingly conservative and he ended his life as a mainstream functionary in the union movement.
The League for Independent Political Action(LIPA) was an American political organization established in late November or early December 1928 in New York City. The organization, which brought together liberals and socialists, was seen as a coordinating agency for a new political party in the United States. No such party was forthcoming, however, and the group remained in existence as a small membership organization into the middle years of the 1930s, when it was gradually rendered obsolete by the move to the New Deal by Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democratic Party. The organization was terminated in 1936.
The Unemployed Councils of the USA (UC) was a mass organization of the Communist Party, USA established in 1930 in an effort to organize and mobilize unemployed workers to advance party policy goals in preparation for an anticipated final conflict to overthrow capitalism.
Jacob Benjamin Salutsky, also known by the alias as J.B.S. Hardman, was a Russian political activist, radical journalist and trade union functionary. Hardman was a proponent of radicalism as a Marxist thinker and a leader of the Jewish Socialist Federation of the Socialist Party of America (SPA). A brief stint in the American Communist movement ended in his expulsion in 1923.
The Workers Party of the United States (WPUS) was established in December 1934 by a merger of the American Workers Party (AWP) led by A.J. Muste and the Trotskyist Communist League of America (CLA) led by James P. Cannon. The party was dissolved in 1936 when its members entered the Socialist Party of America en masse.
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