The People (1891)
| Type | Daily (1900-1914), Weekly (1914-?), Monthly (2003-2008) |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Socialist Labor Party |
| Editor | Lucien Sanal (1891), Daniel De Leon (1892-1914), Edmund Seidel (1914-1918), Olive M. Johnson (1918-1938), Emil Teichert (1938), Eric Hass (1938-1980) |
| Founded | 1891 |
| Political alignment | Socialist |
| Language | English |
| Ceased publication | 2008 (print) 2011 (online) |
| Relaunched | 2008 (online only) |
| Website | http://www.slp.org/ |
The People was an official organ of the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP), a weekly newspaper established in New York City in 1891. The paper is best remembered as a vehicle for the ideas of Daniel DeLeon (1852–1914), the dominant ideological leader of the SLP from the 1890s until the time of his death. The paper became a daily in 1900, reverting to weekly publication in 1914 for budgetary reasons. Publication of the paper was moved to Palo Alto, California during its later years, finally terminating publication in 2008. Its 117 years of continuous publication make The People the longest running socialist newspaper in the history of American political radicalism.
The Workingmen's Party of the United States was established in August 1876, changing its moniker to the more familiar Socialist Labor Party of America at its "National Congress" held in the last days of 1877 in Newark, New Jersey. The members of the organization were predominantly immigrants from Germany throughout its earliest years, although the SLP did maintain 7 English-speaking Sections by the end of 1877.
Bolting trade union-oriented Marxists established a newspaper called The Labor Standard in 1877, although no official English-language publication existed until the governing National Executive Committee established The National Socialist in Cincinnati, Ohio in May 1878. This publication was in existence only a short time before budgetary concerns forced its abrupt termination, with a Chicago newspaper called The Socialist emerging as the main English-language organ of the organization. The party's German-speaking majority were served by a privately owned daily, the New Yorker Volkszeitung (New York People's News), which first saw print in 1878.
The SLP's English-speaking membership atrophied during the first half of the 1880s and the organization had no official English paper for several years. Instead, the organization launched and briefly maintained an official organ in German, Der Sozialist (The Socialist), published in New York City from 1885 to 1887. It was not until a privately owned weekly, The Workmen's Advocate, debuted in New Haven, Connecticut by the Trades Council of New Haven on September 8, 1883 that the SLP's English-speaking members again had access to a party-oriented newspaper in their own language. It would be this publication from which The People would emerge.
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