Labor Defender


Labor Defender was a magazine published by the International Labor Defense, itself a legal advocacy organization established in 1925 as the American section of the Comintern's International Red Aid network and thus as support to the Communist Party.

History

In January 1926, the ILD began publishing Labor Defender, as a monthly, profusely illustrated magazine with a low cover price of 10 cents. Magazine circulation boomed. It rose from some 1,500 paid subscriptions and 8,500 copies in bulk bundle sales in 1927, to some 5,500 paid subscriptions with a bundle sale of 16,500 by mid-1928. This mid-1928 circulation figure was said by Assistant Secretary Marty Abern to be "greater than the combined circulation of The Daily Worker, ''Labor Unity, and The Communist'' combined."

Outlook

Labor Defender depicted a black-and-white world of heroic trade unionists and dastardly factory owners, of oppressed African Americans struggling for freedom against the Ku Klux Klan and the use of state terror to stifle and divide and destroy all opposition. Writers included prominent Communists such as trade union leader William Z. Foster, cartoonist Robert Minor, and Benjamin Gitlow, a former political prisoner in New York., as well as non-party voices like novelist Upton Sinclair, former Wobbly Ralph Chaplin, Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs, and Gavin Arthur, grandson of U.S. President Chester A. Arthur. Between April 1936 and December 1937, Sasha Small, Gavin Arthur, and communist poet Langston Hughes served as editors.
The magazine made a constant plea for additional funds for jailed labor activists across the country. A regular column called "Voices from Prison" highlighted the plight of those behind bars and reinforced the message that good work was being done on the behalf of the so-called "class war prisoners" of America.

Masthead

The magazine's masthead included:

1926

January–August 1926
September–December 1926

1927

1928

January–November 1928
December 1928

1929

January–April 1929
May–June 1929
July–August 1929
September–December 1929

1930

January–February 1930
March–June 1930
July–December 1930

1931

1932

January–September 1932
October–December 1932

1933

1934

January 1934
February–December 1934

1935

January–June 1935
July–December 1935

1936

January–March 1936
April–May 1936
June–December 1936

1937

January–September 1937
October–December 1937

Pamphlet series

The magazine also published occasional pamphlets:Under Arrest! Worker's Self-Defense in the Courts Smash the Frame up Against the Anthracite Miners—Free Boniat, Mendola and Moleski by B. F. Gebert Sedition to Protest and Organize Against War Hunger Unemployment by J. L. Engdahl The Story of the Imperial Valley by Frank Spector Tampa's Reign of Terror by Anita Brenner and S. S. Windthrop Night Riders in Gallup by Louis Colman You Cannot Kill the Working-Class by Angelo Herndon

External sources