You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Monday February 1, 1915
From the Appeal to Reason: Greetings and Articles from Thousandth Edition
The January 30th edition of the "little old
Appeal" is the thousandth edition of that hearty messenger of Socialism, and we are happy to share with our readers a few of the greetings and articles contained therein. Eugene Debs and Upton Sinclair send out their heartiest wishes for the continued prosperity of the
Appeal along with their sincere congratulations on twenty years of publication.
Of course J. A. Wayland is not forgotten. His memory is honored by poetry and by a short history of the Appeal. Wayland, truly, will always be the spirit of the Appeal.
Once again the Appeal Army is called upon in time of crisis, the cause of the current crisis being the U. S. Post Office Department. No doubt the Army will respond to the call for action.
An article by Allan L. Benson takes up most of the front page. Benson advices readers of the Appeal to prepare for peace even as war rages in Europe. We have included the beginning of that article along with a peace petition to President Wilson.
From the Appeal to Reason of January 30, 1915:
More from the Thousandth Edition of the Appeal:
LET US PREPARE FOR PEACE WHILE
THERE IS WAR
BY ALLAN L. BENSON
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Written for Appeal to Reason.
Allan Benson
WELL-MEANING, but thoughtless, men speak of the present conflict in Europe as "the last war." Men who can see beneath the surface of things speak of it as "the first great war." Men of this sort see in the present conflict in Europe the first of a series of colossal struggles that will shake civilization to its foundations and perhaps place Europe under the domination of the yellow races.
A Frenchman, Urban Gohier, writes most interestingly upon the prospect of a series of great wars following this one.
[He says:]
Remember the two Balkan wars...The first one was terrible; the second was still more cruel. the allies who had crushed Turkey rent each other in the struggle to divide the booty. After the collapse of the German empire and the Austro-Hungarian empire, the booty will be richer, the participants therein more numerous, the difficulties more inextricable.
Within each country, formidable disorders will arise. Several millions of men will return home to their hearths with new souls. Their sufferings and perils will have given them other desires, other ideas, other manners. They will not dread violence as yesterday they dreaded it and they will not have the same respect for human life; they will have seen death from too near by, and will have marched over the corpses of friends and enemies.
On the morrow of the peace, England will find herself face to face with Russia, and the Socialists face to face with the conservative parties, the anti-clericals face to face with the Catholics and political coteries face to face with their rivals. To sum up, I foresee a long battle between the Germanic bloc and the allies, followed by arduous difficulties among the allies themselves, before the territorial, economic and dynastic reorganization of Europe and its dependencies; thereafter, social disorders of great violence.
[photograph added]
P. O. Department Outwitted
The Appeal Army has again come to the rescue.
Again it has demonstrated that the Appeal cannot be downed or weakened by any onslaughts of the enemy.
Telegrams are being received from the old warriors pledging their support in this unexpected fight with the postoffice department. We have received also some good advice from friends of ours in high places which will undoubtedly help us finally secure the right to circulate copies of the Appeal as first advertised in issue No. 998.
The ruling of the postoffice department THAT WE CONNOT MAIL, SINGLE COPIES OF THE APPEAL TO NAMES OF PERSONS FURNISHED AND PAID FOR BY READERS OF THIS PAPER, MUST BE REVERSED.
It is unbelievable that the American public will stand for such horse-play once they learn the truth of this controversy. The Appeal is not attempting to send out papers that are NOT paid for. All it asks is the right to fill a paid order of a subscriber to send single copies of any issue to names and addresses furnished by the subscriber. That we will secure this right ultimately there is no question. It may take time and hard fighting, but we will get this right. Mark these words!
However, the postoffice department has succeeded in putting an obstacle to our plans regarding the circulation of Special Edition No. 1,000, which you are now reading. The ruling, coming at the eleventh hour, has made it impossible for us to do anything but comply for the present with the department's orders.
Only one way has been left the Appeal Army providing for the distribution of issue No. 1,000. This way is the old accepted method OF BUYING BUNDLES AND DISTRIBUTING THEM BY THE PURCHASER.
We, therefore, ask you to offset the damage done by the postoffice department by ordering a bundle at once of this eight-page issue, which you will admit, is loaded with Socialist dynamite enough to explode the dome of any Henry Dubb. Use this blank-fire it in before the extra copies we have printed are exhausted. Help in the first skirmish with the postoffice department by circulating the edition that was its first victim.
[photograph added]
Tabloid History of Appeal
From the Appeal Almanac and Arsenal of Facts for 1915
J A Wayland
THE story of the APPEAL TO REASON properly begins with the founding of the Coming Nation by J. A. Wayland. Indeed, it begins before that, in the boyhood struggles of Wayland, in which he learned from experience how to manage and make money, and how speak and write in the language the common people understood and used.
The Coming Nation was founded at Greensburg, Ind., in February, 1898. Although it was a Socialist paper, Wayland learned his Socialism for himself rather than from European books, and for a long time his Socialism bore marked resemblance to populism. However, this was at the time good tactical policy, giving the paper circulation, and Wayland speedily became the most notable exponent of the new rebellion in America. Because he was learning Socialism from "leaves of life" rather than from books, Wayland soon tried the colony plan for forwarding the cause. He turned the Coming Nation into a colony he had promoted at Ruskin, Tenn. The move was fatal to the paper. There were dissensions, and the founder abandoned to the colony his publication and the fine equipment he had gathered, going to Kansas City, and there, a little later, launching the APPEAL TO REASON. The Coming Nation struggled on and the colony fought and wrought until both went down in death.
When the APPEAL TO REASON was started in August, 1895, the populist movement had begun to decline, and there was no ready response, as there had been to the Coming Nation. But this fact, coupled with Wayland's acquired experience, drove him to advocacy of scientific Socialism, though because of his former attitude and the European expression of American Socialism at the time, Socialists were slow in accepting him as an exponent of the movement. Because they were thus slow, he was driven to Girard to reduce expenses. The move proved a wise one.
The growth of the APPEAL was slow, and Wayland did prodigious work on it. He gave what he had, that is, an understandable, American expression to Socialism. He wrote and secured a literature written by Americans. He was essentially a propagandist, and one who could attract attention and be understood. In the days when he was in active charge of the paper he placed it on a good financial basis, besides setting the style which other Socialist writers and papers followed.
Fred Warren
In the meantime, Fred D. Warren of Rich Hill, Mo., had secured possession of the subscription list of the defunct Coming Nation of Ruskin, Tenn. The Warren brothers, Lincoln Phifer and E. N. Richardson conducted the revived Coming Nation there for 18 months. Then it was purchased by J. A. Wayland, returning to its founder, and became one with the APPEAL, while Warren, in 1903, was made managing editor of the combined paper.
Warren's work with the APPEAL was agitational rather than propagandist in nature. He attacked. He exposed. He set the fashion of "muckraking" that became general throughout magazine circles. He fostered the writing of Sinclair's "Jungle." Workers and refugees who were imprisoned by arrogant capitalism were freed because of exposure; unjust judges were forced from the bench; foul prisons were cleansed; official tyranny in the army was rebuked; and there was a general upturning of things that made the APPEAL electric, especially as Debs joined the staff and added his fire to the APPEAL broadsides. But the master class retaliated. It brought prosecution after prosecution in the courts, and for seven years the circulation, responding to battle slogans, boomed.
Yet with all its success in fighting the enemy its attacks brought disaster. Warren's health failed. Wayland, weary of seven years of prosecution, sought relief in death.
Then the European war came, throwing on the American Socialist movement a responsibility it had never known before. Events had brought the APPEAL again to Wayland's propaganda program. Events had again given a Wayland-Walter H.-son of the "One Hoss." who has worked on the APPEAL ever since he was a mere boy-control of the little old APPEAL. Eighteen months before he resigned, Warren himself had chosen a successor as managing editor in Louis Kopelin, former editor of the New York Call and National Socialist. Warren had selected on the staff of the APPEAL shortly after he came to Girard his old associates on the Coming Nation, Phifer and Richardson. Allan L. Benson, the greatest living Socialist propagandist in America, was added to the staff shortly after Warren's resignation.
Under the new management the APPEAL is entering a new field of propaganda. Its special crusade will be the bringing of Socialism to the farmers and the farmers to Socialism. The policy of the APPEAL will be to continue the best that experience has taught the publishers of the paper and to strike out along new lines that will bring results for the toilers of field and factory, mine and railroad. Of course, its principal aim and idea will always be the final abolition of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism.
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[photographs added]
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SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
-1000th Edition, Jan 30, 1915
(Girard, Kansas)
(this is also source for images of text)
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Eugene Debs
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Allan Benson
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Mailing the Appeal from Girard
http://www.kshs.org/...
J A Wayland
http://spartacus-educational.com/...
Fred Warren
http://en.wikipedia.org/..._(newspaper)
(For source of images of text, see link for source above.)
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Workers of the World Awaken
Workers of the world, awaken!
Break your chains. Demand your rights.
All the wealth you make is taken
By exploiting parasites.
Shall you kneel in deep submission
From your cradles to your graves?
ls the height of your ambition
To be good and willing slaves?
-Joe Hill (words and music)
https://www.youtube.com/...
http://www.folkarchive.de/...
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