Federated Press

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Communist-leaning news service

title: "Federated Press" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1920-establishments-in-the-united-states", "news-agencies-based-in-the-united-states", "communist-party-usa-publications"] description: "Communist-leaning news service" topic_path: "geography/united-states" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_Press" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Communist-leaning news service ::

This is not to be confused with the independent, research-based organization of Toronto, Canada, also called "Federated Press" that targets executives, lawyers, professionals. ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/240112-FederatedPressBulletin-cover.jpg" caption="In addition to providing weekly content to editors of the American labor press, the Federated press published a 12-page weekly newspaper available to subscribers and organized supporters."] ::

The Federated Press was a left wing news service, established in 1920, that provided daily content to the radical and labor press in America, characterized widely from a mere "labor wire service"{{Cite journal | first = D.D. | last = Guttenplan | title = Red Harvest: The KGB in America | journal = The Nation | publisher = The Nation Institute | url = https://www.thenation.com/article/red-harvest-kgb-america/ | date = 6 May 2009 | access-date = 23 December 2019 | first = Michael | last = Kazin | title = Sheryl Sandberg is No Betty Friedan | magazine = The New Republic | url = https://newrepublic.com/article/112527/why-sheryl-sandberg-no-betty-friedan | date = 26 February 2013 | access-date = 23 December 2019}} to widely known for having "employed many Communist editors and correspondents," | first = Robert | last = Stacy McCain | title = Fierce, Anti-Feminist, and In Your Face | journal = The American Spectator | url = https://spectator.org/fierce-anti-feminist-and-in-your-face/ | date = 4 April 2011 | access-date = 23 December 2019}} "so closely allied to the Communist party of America as to be regarded by the Communists as their official press association," | title = Reds In America | publisher = Beckwith Press | url = https://archive.org/details/1924RedsInAmerica | pages = 45 (Howe), 46 (press association), 78 (press service), 79 (league), 120-122 (Berlin), 180 (Strong, Moscow), 274 (Coyle) | date = 15 June 1925 | access-date = 23 December 2019}} or just "the Red's Federated Press." | first = Elizabeth | last = Dillingers | title = The Red Network | publisher = privately published | url = http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/documents/The_Red_Network_1934.pdf | pages = 134 (HQ), 150–151 (summary), 151 (WDC offices), 156 (Palmer), 165 (press agency), 240 (Strong, Moscow) | date = 1934 | access-date = 23 December 2019}}

History

Federated Press

The People's Council of America, established in New York City in May 1917 and headed by Scott Nearing and Louis P. Lochner, produced a monthly publication called People's Council Bulletin, which featured international news with an emphasis on the doings of the peace movement. The editor of this publication was William E. Williams, press spokesman of the People's Council. This bulletin proved the inspiration for the International Labor News Service, itself a news agency for the radical press, as octogenarian Scott Nearing recounted in his 1972 memoirs: One day... a big, sturdy chap just past middle age came into our New York People's Council office and showed credentials from the Western Metal Miners. He had been reading our Bulletin and liked the material, especially that dealing with international affairs. 'If you will put this material into a regular news service,' he told us, 'our organization will help pay for it and circulate it. Here is our first contribution' and he put a $20 bill on the desk. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a similar concept was being tested by Edward J. Costello, Managing Editor of Victor Berger's socialist daily, the Milwaukee Leader. This news service, called the Federated Press, was founded on January 3, 1920, and was intended to supply copy to labor and radical newspapers around the country. The two news agencies decided to join forces under the Federated Press banner, with Costello holding down the post of Managing Editor of the Service and Lochner acting as Business Manager. Nearing provided the service with regular installments of his writing. The service grew steadily and was ultimately mailing news releases and picture mats five days a week to some 150 labor and radical publications. | title = Early American Marxism (14-10) | publisher = H-Labor | url = https://networks.h-net.org/node/7753/discussions/14413/early-american-marxism-14-10 | date = 9 March 2014 | access-date = 24 December 2019}} William F. Dunne was another co-founder. | title = Guide to the William Francis Dunne Papers TAM 145 | publisher = New York University - Tamiment Library | url = http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_145/bioghist.html | date = 19 April 2018 | access-date = 24 December 2019}}

In August 1920, conscientious objector and university instructor Carl Haessler was released from federal penitentiary after serving a two-year sentence. He took over the job of managing editor from Costello, who left the employment of the service. Haessler remained at this position until the service was terminated in the 1940s.

Federated Press League

On February 4, 1922, a "Federated Press League" (FPL) formed in Chicago to collect funds for the news service. Members of the league's executive board included: Robert M. Buck, Jack Carney, Arul Swabeck, Editor Feinburg, William Z. Foster (later CPUSA head), Carl Haessler, Mabel Search, Clark H. Getts, Louis P. Lochner, and Maude McCreery.

In 1923 during the trial of communist leader C. E. Ruthenberg in St. Joseph, Michigan, the government prosecutor spent considerable effort while cross-examining Jay Lovestone in establishing links between the Communist Party and the Federated Press. The prosecutor attempted to prove that all funding for the Federated Press came only from "Communist sources." Lovestone held the position that the Communist Party had tried to influence the Federated Press but had never controlled it. | first = Caleb | last = Harrison | title = C.E.R.'s Trial | publisher = Workers Party of America News Service | url = https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/cpusa/1923/0430-harrison-certrialam.pdf | date = 30 April 1923 | access-date = 24 December 2019}} (In his 1952 memoir, Whittaker Chambers directly contradicts Lovestone by calling it the "communist-controlled news service of my Daily Worker days." | last = Chambers | first = Whittaker | author-link = Whittaker Chambers | title = Witness | publisher = Random House | url = https://archive.org/details/witnesscham00cham | url-access = registration | pages = 218–229, 252–259, 547 (controlled) | date = 1952 | access-date = 24 November 2018}})

Nearing continued to produce content for the Federated Press until 1943, when he was fired for his anti-war politics, which managing editor Haessler deemed to be "childish".

End of the Federated Press

Although it hit its peak just after the end of World War II, in 1949 the Congress of Industrial Organizations decided to purge more left wing unions and set up the Labor Press Association. Although short lived it attracted more conservative labor papers, who terminated their use of Federated Press's service.

The service was finally discontinued in 1956.

Locations

The Federated Press had its headquarters at 156 W. Washington Street in Chicago (where it shared offices with the ACLU, the Chicago Committee for Struggle Against War, the Acme News Syndicate, and the Institute for Mortuary Research). It had bureaus in New York, San Francisco, and Washington DC (where it shared offices with the Soviet official news agency TASS).

The Federated Press had foreign bureaus in Berlin and Moscow.

Clients

In 1922, newspapers that used Federated Press service included 23 in Illinois, 17 in New York, 7 in California, 5 in Minnesota, 4 in Washington, and some 2 dozen in the Midwest and New England.

Communist Influence

A major client of the Federated Press was the Communist Party USA, which subscribed to feed its newspaper the Daily Worker, | title = Leland Olds, 1890-1960 | publisher = Gale Group | url = https://dillonreadandco.com/wp-content/pdf/leland_olds.pdf | access-date = 8 September 2024}} and the Federated Press was seen as having "many Communist editors and correspondents".

The extent of the Communist influence on Federated Press became an issue during Leland Olds failed renomination to the Chairmanship of the Federal Power Commission in 1949.

Funding

  • Garland Fund (administered by trustees headed by Roger Nash Baldwin of the American Civil Liberties Union)
  • Robert Marshall Foundation, which also funded "Farm Research" by Harold Ware, founder of the Ware Group spy ring | title = Fourth Report - Un-American Activities in California - 1948: Communist Front Organizations | publisher = Senate of the California Legislature | url = https://archive.org/details/reportofsenatefa00calirich | pages = 98 (Lincoln Bridge), 113–114 (organization) | date = 1948 | access-date = 18 October 2018}} | title = Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications (And Appendixes) ... House Document No. 398 | publisher = US GPO | url = https://archive.org/details/guidetosubversiv1961unit | pages = 73 | date = 1962 | access-date = 18 October 2018}})

People

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Scott_Nearing_cph.3b29496.jpg" caption="[[Scott Nearing]] (here, 1915) was a co-founder of the Federated Press"] ::

Founders:

  • William Francis Dunne (CPUSA leader)
  • Carl Haessler (Chicago Workers School)
  • Louis Lochner (Milwaukee Leader)
  • Scott Nearing | title = Nearing, Scott (1883-1983) | publisher = Maine State Library | url = https://www.maine.gov/msl/maine/writdisplay.shtml?id=94917 | access-date = 23 December 2019}}

Editors:

Bureau Chiefs:

  • Louis P. Lochner (Berlin)
  • Anna Louise Strong | title = In the Book and Literary World: I Change Worlds, By Anna Louise Strong | publisher = Jewish Telegraph Agency | url = https://www.jta.org/1935/04/21/archive/in-the-book-and-literary-world-8 | date = 21 April 1935 | access-date = 24 December 2019}}

Correspondents:

  • Abner Carroll Binder
  • Carl Braden
  • Joe Carroll | first = Joe | last = Carroll | title = Foster Jury Given Radical Education | publisher = Federated Press Bulletin | url = http://www.marxisthistory.org/history/usa/parties/cpusa/1923/0331-carroll-fosterjury.pdf | date = 31 March 1923 | access-date = 23 December 2019}} | first = Joe | last = Carroll | title = Foster's Fate with Jury on Issue of Free Speech | publisher = Federated Press Bulletin | url = http://www.marxisthistory.org/history/usa/parties/cpusa/1923/0407-carroll-fostersfate.pdf | date = 7 April 1923 | access-date = 23 December 2019}}
  • Albert F. Coyle (also editor of the Locomotive Engineers Journal)
  • Horace B. Davis | title = Horace B. Davis | publisher = Chicago Tribune | url = https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1999-07-03-9907030191-story.html | date = 3 July 1999 | access-date = 23 December 2019}}
  • Len De Caux | title = Len and Caroline DeCaux Papers | publisher = Wayne State University - Walter P. Reuther Library | url = http://reuther.wayne.edu/node/2440 | access-date = 24 December 2019}}
  • Miriam Allen deFord | first = Alan M. | last = Wald | author-link = Alan M. Wald | title = Exiles From a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth Century Literary Left | publisher = University of North Carolina Press | url = https://archive.org/details/exilesfromfuture0000wald | url-access = registration | pages = 382 (fn71) | date = 2002 | access-date = 22 October 2018 | isbn = 9780807853498}}
  • Robert W. Dunn
  • William Z. Foster (later CPUSA head)
  • Conrad Friberg
  • Betty Friedan | title = Today in labor history: Birth and death of Betty Friedan | publisher = People's World | url = https://peoplesworld.org/article/today-in-labor-history-birth-and-death-of-betty-friedan/ | date = 4 February 2015 | access-date = 23 December 2019}}
  • Ida Glatt (mother of John McCarthy (computer scientist)) | title = John McCarthy obituary: US computer scientist who coined the term artificial intelligence | publisher = Guardian | url = https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/oct/25/john-mccarthy | date = 25 October 2015 | access-date = 23 December 2019}}
  • Travis K. Hedrick | title = Travis K. Hedrick, 73; A Former Newsman, Dies | work = New York Times | url = https://www.nytimes.com/1977/05/31/archives/travis-k-hedrick-73-a-former-newsman-dies.html | date = 31 May 1977 | access-date = 24 December 2019}}
  • Fred C. Howe
  • Grace Hutchins | title = Hutchins, Grace (1885-1969) | publisher = Dictionary of Women Worldwide: 25,000 Women Through the Ages | url = https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/hutchins-grace-1885-1969 | access-date = 24 December 2019}}
  • Stetson Kennedy ("Inside Out" column 1937-1950) | title = Southern Labor Archives: Stetson Kennedy: A guide to his papers: Stetson Kennedy - Biograph and Description of Papers | publisher = Oregon Encyclopedia | url = https://research.library.gsu.edu/StetsonKennedy | access-date = 23 December 2019}}
  • Eugene Lyons
  • Maud Leonard McCreery
  • Alfred Maund | first = Alfred | last = Maund | editor = Alan M. Wald | editor-link = Alan M. Wald | title = The Big Boxcar | publisher = University of Illinois Press | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=qhqObXH0ugMC | date = 1999 | isbn = 9780252067549 | access-date = 24 December 2019}}
  • Harvey O'Connor | first = Paul | last = Buhle | title = The Very Strange Story of Ludwig Lore: A Chapter from US Socialist History | journal = Portside | url = https://portside.org/2017-11-02/very-strange-story-ludwig-lore-chapter-us-socialist-history | date = 2 November 2017 | access-date = 23 December 2019}}
  • Jessie Lloyd O'Connor | title = Federated Press | journal = Smith College Libraries | url = https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/45265 | access-date = 23 December 2019}} | title = Jessie Lloyd O'Connor papers, 1909-1983 | journal = New York Public Library - Archives & Manuscripts | url = http://archives.nypl.org/mss/4803 | access-date = 24 December 2019}}
  • Frank L. Palmer
  • Julia Ruuttila | title = Julia Ruuttila (1907-1991) | publisher = Oregon Encyclopedia | url = https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/ruuttila_julia_1907_1991_/#.XgGKiC2ZN04 | access-date = 23 December 2019}}
  • James Peck (pacifist)
  • Marc Stone (brother of I.F. Stone
  • Laurence Todd

Legacy

Karla Kelling Sclater has stated: The Federated Press has also been ignored in the historiography. A news-gathering cooperative, the Federated Press, which began in 1920, was the first news service that provided affiliated papers with international reports of interest to the working class. Jon Bekken states that the Federated Press survived into the early 1950s as the only independent news service that supplied information to 150 papers including newspapers in Germany, Russia and Australia. Labor, socialist, and other newspapers utilized the Federated Press. To date, only one unpublished master's thesis discusses Carl Haessler, one of the founders of the Federated Press wire service, and the Federated Press. | first = Karla | last = Kelling Sclater | title = The Labor and Radical Press, 1820-the Present: An Overview and Bibliography | publisher = University of Washington - Labor Press Project | url = https://depts.washington.edu/labhist/laborpress/Kelling.htm | access-date = 24 December 2019}}

Works

Federated Press Bulletin

The Federated Press published an English-language weekly Federated Press Bulletin out of Chicago from 1921 to 1925, of which Haessler was associate editor.

Labor Letter

The Federated Press published an English-language weekly Federated Press Labor Letter out of Chicago from 1925 to 1929.

Labor's News

The Federated Press published an English-language weekly Labor's News, successor to its Labor Letter, out of New York from 1929 to 1931.

Supported publications

By 1922, the Federated Press had helped establish eight weekly newspapers, including the South Bend (IN) Free Press, Centralia (IL) Labor World, Iowa Farm and Labor News, Producers Review (IL), Tri-City Labor News (Christopher, IL), The Labor Advocate (Racine, WI), and Cahoka Valley (IL) News.

Bérmunkás (The Wage Worker), Hungarian language newspaper, was affiliated with the Federated Press.

References

References

  1. Scott Nearing,''The Making of a Radical: A Political Autobiography.'' New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1972; pg. 173.
  2. Nearing erroneously recalls this event as having happened in 1921, that is, a date after the merger of the International Labor News Service with the Federated Press. Nearing, ''The Making of a Radical'', pg. 173.
  3. "Federated Press - Organizational History". Marxist History.
  4. (December 24, 1956). "The Press: Federated's End".
  5. (April 4, 2011). "Fierce, Anti-Feminist, and in Your Face - the American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator | USA News and Politics".
  6. Wapshott, Nicholas. ''The Sphinx: Franklin Roosevelt, the Isolationists, and the Road to World War II'': Chapter Seventeen: "Over My Dead Body," [https://books.google.com/books?id=pEKAAwAAQBAJ&dq=%22Abner+Carroll+Binder%22&pg=PT361 footnote number 39] ("Abner Carroll Binder"). New York, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014.
  7. De Leon, Solon. (1925). "The American Labor Who's Who". Hanford Press.
  8. Gloria Garrett Samson, ''The American Fund for Public Service: Charles Garland and Radical Philanthropy, 1922-1941.'' Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996; pg. 167.
  9. Theodore Draper'', The Roots of American Communism'', pg. 316
  10. Eugene Lyons, ''Assignment in Utopia.'' New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1937; pg. 21.
  11. (April 11, 1938). "Maud McCreery, Widely Known as Labor Leader, Dies". The Journal Times.
  12. Harvey O'Connor, ''Revolution in Seattle: A Memoir.'' New York: Monthly Review Press, 1964; dust jacket biography.
  13. Solon DeLeon with Irma C. Hayssen and Grace Poole (eds.), ''The American Labor Who's Who.'' New York: Hanford Press, 1925; pg. 230.
  14. (11 February 1922). "Proceedings of the League Convention". Federated Press.
  15. "About The Federated Press bulletin. (Chicago) 1921-1925". Library of Congress.
  16. "The Federated Press Labor Letter (Chicago, Ill.) 1925-1929". Library of Congress.
  17. "Labor's News (New York, N.Y.) 1929-1931". Library of Congress.
  18. Solon DeLeon and Nathan Fine (eds.), ''American Labor Press Directory.'' New York: Rand School of Social Science, 1925; pg. 11.

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