20 Years of a Successful Labor Paper: The Working Man's Advocate, 1829–49

'No Weapon So Powerful': Working-Class Newspapers in the United States

“…In 1797 William Manning proposed founding a workers' society, the most important function of which would be to publish a monthly magazine and a weekly newspaper (McFarland and Thistlethwaite 1983). Though nothing came of Manning's plans, at least 68 workers' newspapers, many of them dailies, were established between 1828 and 1834.…”

“…The Free Press, which appeared weekly until either 1831 (Myers 1950) or 1835 (McFarland and Thistlethwaite 1983), circulated some 1500 copies (not insignificant for the time) and played a major role in winning thel0-hour day, abolishing imprisonment for debt, and bolstering the labor movement's efforts to elect 'friends of labor' to political office before the movement collapsed (Myers 1950). Among some 50 labor newspapers inspired by the Free Press between 1829 and 1832 was the New York City-based Working Mari s Advocate, which was published under various names (usually as a weekly, but for two and a half months as a daily) until 1849 (McFarland and Thistlethwaite 1983).…”

“…Myers (1950) provides the most comprehensive account, but offers little more than a series of titles and dates (together with brief descriptions of the labor climate of the day and occasional excerpts to give a sense of editorial perspective) for the hundreds of labor publications he mentions. While particular labor papers have been studied (see, for example, Beck 1970;Corbin 1971;Halverson and Ames 1969;Kolehmainen 1955;McFarland and Thistlethwaite 1983;O'ComeR 1964;Shore 1988;and Wagner and Buhle 1980), these studies have tended to focus on the papers' editorial perspectives or on biographical sketches of their publishers. Comparative studies such as Schofield's (1980Schofield's ( , 1983 research on AFL and IWW papers' stances on women's issues, and, more generally, their portrayal of women and women's domain, remain rare.…”