J. Louis Engdahl

John Louis Engdahl (1884–1932) was an American socialist journalist and newspaper editor. One of the leading journalists of the Socialist Party of America, Engdahl joined the Communist movement in 1921 and continued to employ his talents in that organization as the first editor of The Daily Worker. Engdahl was also a key leader of the International Red Aid (MOPR) organization based in Moscow, where he died while on official business in 1932.

The son of Swedish Lutheran immigrants, J. Louis Engdahl (who went by his middle name, "Louis") was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 11, 1884. Engdahl was intelligent and well educated, he graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1907, having paid his way through school by working as a telegraph operator and as City Editor of the Minneapolis Daily News.

Engdahl was a member of the Socialist Party from 1908. In 1909, he took a position as the Labor Editor of the Chicago Daily Socialist, assuming the mantle of Editor of that publication from 1910 until its termination in 1912.

Engdahl attended the Copenhagen Congress of the Socialist International in 1910 as a journalist on behalf of the Scandinavian Socialist Federation. He joined the Socialist Party of America in September 1912. Despite his traveling to Europe for the Scandinavian Federation, it does not seem that Engdahl ever directly participated in language federation politics in any way.

Louis Engdahl was a Socialist candidate for US Congress from Illinois in 1916; for the Chicago City Council in 1917; again for Congress in the Illinois 7th C.D. in 1918. He also was on the Organizing Committee of the Communist Propaganda League of Chicago from its origin in 1918 until its demise in 1919.

In 1914, Engdahl assumed the position of Editor of The American Socialist, the Chicago-based official organ of the SPA. He continued to edit this newspaper each week until it was suppressed by postal authorities in 1917. Thereafter, he moved to the successor weekly publication, The Eye Opener, which he continued to edit until 1919.

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