syndicalist

petey

for a while i subscribed to this
(not in 1899 tho ...)

I had a longish sub to this paper.

And I was there when they started rolling the presses in 1899!

I was there when they started rolling the presses in 1891!

But seriously, if anyone can help get the alternate Hillquit-Rochester version online, I would be very interested.

With permission I share the contact info and message I received below

On 8 July 2018 at 21:45, Tim Davenport wrote:

Hi:

I've been acutely aware of this extremely difficult problem of locating the "other" version of the People for quite a while. I found six consecutive full issues of the "William Street" People on the Debs papers microfilm and then managed to locate a master negative microfilm at New York Public Library (Master Negative *ZZAN-2244).

The NYPL film contains 26 full issues by my count, starting with the first William Street issue (v. 9 no. 16, July 10, 1899) and running through v. 9 no. 44, but missing #36, 37, 40, 41, and 43 from that run. It also includes one random later issue, v. 10, no. 1 (April 1, 1900).

The last issue of the paper was probably v. 11, no. 3 (April 21, 1901) — so there is basically a full year still missing and I am fairly urgently interested in figuring out if film exists of that.

Effective with v. 11, no. 4 (April 28, 1901) the paper renamed as The Worker, which is available on two excellent reels of NYPL film (Master Negative *ZZAN-1597). Then the paper was succeeded by the daily New York Call, which is available from NYPL on, geez, I don't know, 50 reels of film or something (Master Negative *ZZAN-37). I've got about 17 more reels to buy of this, which I'm currently picking up as funds allow.

The paper renamed once again as the New York Leader at the very end, which became the namesake of the long-running New Leader — which was a privately-held paper started by others when the Call went down.

The New Leader was pretty closely SPA/SDF affiliated until 1940 or so, and unaffiliated liberal/social democratic/trade unionist after that. They are still going as a website, I think.

So the New Leader is the first cousin of the SLP's The People, sort of. Fun fact.

Now, where is there a run of the William Street People for 1900 to April 1901? That I still don't know. It does NOT seem to be on the "Papers of the Socialist Labor Party" microfilm collection, at least according to the guidebook. There is some chance that it doesn't exist at all.

best regards,

tim