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Labor Defender

{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}

{{Infobox magazine

| title = Labor Defender

| logo =

| logo_size =

| image_file = N 98 9 180 Group photo of Gastonia Mill workers imprisoned for striking (8618237151).jpg

| image_size =

| image_alt =

| image_caption = Labor Defender (September 1929): workers imprisoned for Loray Mill strike

| editor =

| editor_title =

| previous_editor =

| staff_writer =

| photographer =

| category = Communist

| frequency = Monthly

| format =

| circulation =

| publisher = International Labor Defense

| paid_circulation = 5,500

| unpaid_circulation = 16,500 (bundle sales)

| circulation_year = 1928

| total_circulation = 22,000

| founder = International Labor Defense

| founded = January 1926

| firstdate = January 1926

| finaldate = December 1937

| finalnumber = Volume 13, No. 11

| company =

| country = United States of America

| based = New York City

| language = English

| website =

| issn =

| oclc =

}}

Labor Defender (1926–1937) was a magazine published by the International Labor Defense (ILD), 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 (which in 1926 was legally the Workers Party of America).

{{cite web

| title = Labor Defender: Journal of the International Labor Defense

| publisher = International Labor Defense

| url = https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/

| access-date = 15 June 2017}}

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."

{{cite book

| last = Abern

| first = Martin

| author-link = Martin Abern

| contribution = International Labor Defense Activities (1 January - 1 July 1928)

| year = 1992

| title = James P. Cannon and the Early Years of American Communism

| pages = 537

| place = New York

| publisher = Prometheus Research Library

}}

Outlook

File:LaborDefender-Debs-Dec1926.jpg of rival Socialist Party of America (December 1926)]]

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.Milton Cantor, "Labor Defender: Chicago and New York, 1926-1937; Equal Justice: New York, 1937-1942," in Joseph R. Conlin (ed.), The American Radical Press, 1880-1960: Volume 1. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974; pg. 250. 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.Cantor, "Labor Defender...Equal Justice," pg. 253.

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 (1928)
  • Smash the Frame up Against the Anthracite Miners—Free Boniat, Mendola and Moleski by B. F. Gebert (1928)
  • Sedition to Protest and Organize Against War Hunger Unemployment by J. L. Engdahl (1930)
  • The Story of the Imperial Valley by Frank Spector (introduction by John Dos Passos) (1931)
  • Tampa's Reign of Terror by Anita Brenner and S. S. Windthrop (1933)
  • Night Riders in Gallup by Louis Colman (1935)
  • You Cannot Kill the Working-Class by Angelo Herndon (1936)

See also

References

{{reflist}}

External sources

  • {{cite web

| title = Labor Defender: Journal of the International Labor Defense

| publisher = International Labor Defense

| url = https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/

| access-date = 15 June 2017}}

  • [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/18209294 WorldCat]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Labor Defender}}

Category:Communist periodicals published in the United States

Category:Communist magazines

Category:Defunct political magazines published in the United States

Category:Magazines established in 1926

Category:Magazines disestablished in 1937

Category:Magazines published in New York City

Category:Marxist magazines

Category:Monthly magazines published in the United States