Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: ‘Workers of the World, Read!’
- 1 ‘The Workingman's Bible’ and the Making of American Socialism
- 2 Charles H. Kerr & Company and the Americanization of Marxian Socialism
- 3 Activist Readers and American Socialists' Print Culture of Dissent
- 4 How the Socialist Party Created a Print Culture of Dissent without a Party-Owned Press
- 5 Information Management and the Socialist Party's Information Department and Research Bureau
- 6 Annotations on the Failure of Socialism in America
- 7 Conclusion: What a Book Cannot Do
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
3 - Activist Readers and American Socialists' Print Culture of Dissent
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: ‘Workers of the World, Read!’
- 1 ‘The Workingman's Bible’ and the Making of American Socialism
- 2 Charles H. Kerr & Company and the Americanization of Marxian Socialism
- 3 Activist Readers and American Socialists' Print Culture of Dissent
- 4 How the Socialist Party Created a Print Culture of Dissent without a Party-Owned Press
- 5 Information Management and the Socialist Party's Information Department and Research Bureau
- 6 Annotations on the Failure of Socialism in America
- 7 Conclusion: What a Book Cannot Do
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
‘Men Wanted’, began a 1911 announcement in Charles H. Kerr & Company's periodical the International Socialist Review. ‘Five dollars will start any energetic Socialist with enough fast-selling literature to last him a day or two, and when it is gone he will have ten dollars in place of five.’ According to Kerr, selling socialist literature was a sure route to financial success. Simultaneously, it would help to spread the socialist message far and wide. In both cases, it would help Kerr & Company's bottom line. The creative ways in which socialists distributed and sold this literature were astounding. J. Harry Sager of Rochester, New York built a special ‘literature wagon’ to hawk Kerr & Company titles. Painted red and built by R. K. Smith Company, it had a false floor that could be thrown open ‘so that a man on the inside may walk on the ground while he propels the wagon’. The Rochester socialists believed so much in the idea that ‘Get a man to reading and you've got him’ that they spent over $125 to make the wagon a reality. The comrades of Grand Rapids, Michigan used Kerr & Company titles to create a circulating library. One of the comrades volunteered his drug store to house it. They charged ‘2 cents a day for the use of the books to cover expenses and pay for additional books to circulate’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Socialism and Print Culture in America, 1897–1920 , pp. 59 - 78Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014