The Iowa Socialist

1902-1904

The first socialist publication in the rural, agrarian state of Iowa was the short-lived tabloid, The Iowa Socialist. The paper was started in the fall of 1902, doubtlessly in conjunction with the November general election campaign of that year. The paper formally launched on October 4, 1902 and published continuously every Saturday until its termination on December 17, 1904. All issues have survived and are presented for free download in digital form here.

Strongly in the camp of the Socialist Party of America, the paper was owned and published by the Iowa Socialist Publishing Company, lead by two primary trustees — journalist and occasional cartoonist A.A. Triller and Secretary of Local Dubuque, Ernest Holtz. Triller seems to have handled the content aspect, while Holtz acted as business manager and self-described “all around man.”

The Iowa Socialist is important not only as a reflection of the early socialist movement in rural middle America but as an initial literary vehicle for John M. Work, an Iowa farm boy-turned lawyer-turned socialist activist who would go on to author one of the most reprinted pamphlets of the Debsian era, What’s So and What Isn’t (1905).

Invited to contribute content to the very first issue, the Des Moines activist Work contributed a two column piece entitled “The Tide at the Flood,” following this piece with a running series of short-takes entitled “X-Rays.” In his unpublished memoir, Glances at My Life (1947), Work recalled that this journalistic activity marked “the beginning of my long service as a writer for the socialist press.” Work would later serve as National Secretary of the Socialist Party and as a long-time editorialist for Victor L. Berger’s socialist daily, the Milwaukee Leader.

The Iowa Socialist is also interesting as perhaps the first Socialist Party publication edited by a woman, when Carrie L. Johnson assumed her place at the editor’s desk effective with the issue of November 10, 1903. Effective with this change A.A. Triller moved to one of two Associate Editor, joined by touring lecturer Fredrick G. Strickland. This trio seems to have remained in harmonious charge of the publication until its demise at the end of 1904.

The publication’s orientation throughout was electoral, reformist, and generally supportive of the actually-existing trade union movement — part of what is today characterized as the broad “Center-Right” of the Socialist Party.

The paper owned its own press and attempted to stave some of its costs doing work as a job printer. Despite these economies, the publication “never paid its way from the start,” according to an editorial in the publication’s last issue. “The deficit each month has been made by comrades at this end of the line. But there is a limit and it has been reached.”

The plug was pulled at a meeting of stockholders of the Iowa Socialist Publishing Co. held the evening of Wednesday, December 14, 1904. Only one issue was published following this fateful meeting; the printing press was immediately placed on the market following publication of this 116th and final issue as part of a final liquidation of assets.