Appeal to Reason (newspaper)

The Appeal to Reason was a weekly left-wing political newspaper published in the American Midwest from 1895 until 1922. The paper was known for its politics, lending support over the years to the Farmers' Alliance and People's Party before becoming a mainstay of the Socialist Party of America, following that organization's establishment in 1901. Making use of a network of highly motivated volunteers known as the "Appeal Army" to spur subscription sales, paid circulation of the Appeal climbed to more than a quarter million copies by 1906 and half a million by 1910, making it the largest-circulation socialist newspaper in American history.

The most direct ancestor of the Appeal was the The Coming Nation, a socialist communalist paper established by Julius Augustus Wayland in Greensburg, Indiana. It was moved to the utopian socialist Ruskin Colony in Tennessee as part of an effort to form a socialist colony there. When Wayland tired of the colony, he left his newspaper behind with the colonists, moving to Kansas City, Kansas, to publish his own independently weekly, Appeal to Reason, established on August 31, 1895.

Publication of the newspaper was briefly suspended in October 1896 when Wayland left Kansas City for the small town of Girard, Kansas, located in the southeastern corner of the state. Girard was the center of coal mining in Kansas and included many radical miners who had recently immigrated from Europe. Although originally just a one-week hiatus was planned, publication was actually suspended for more than three months.

Following the collapse of the Ruskin Colony, a second Coming Nation was published by Wayland at Girard but folded two years later. The run of the first two incarnations, which followed a continuous whole number scheme, was #1 April 29, 1893 to #512 December 26, 1903.

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