The Federated Press, an invaluable record of labor activity and working class struggles, was a weekly left-wing wire news service begun in 1920. Started as a fusion of Scott Nearing’s International Labor News Service with Edward J. Costello Milwaukee-based project, its aim was to provide copy from a working class perspective to the radical and labor press. At first based in Chicago and soon to be led by Carl Haessler, the FP grew, establishing itself in Washington D.C. with bureaus in Moscow and Berlin. From the mid-1920s the FP was closely associated with the Daily Worker for which it supplied many articles., but provided articles to well over 100 other publications. Nearing continued to work for the service until his anti-war position made it untenable in 1943. Haessler continue leading the FP until it was closed down in the first years of the Cold War.

‘News Gathering for Labor’ by Carl Haessler from Labor Age. Vol. 11 No. 7. August, 1922.

Present Work of the Federated Press and Its Hope for the Future

ENTERING the second half of its third year, The Federated Press stands out both as a pride and disappointment to its friends and as an increasing anxiety to its enemies. Eight papers constituted the membership, January 1, 1920. They received mimeographed news sheets two or three times a week. At present there are almost 100 papers, daily.weekly and monthly, receiving the service, which is linotyped and mailed to them daily. In addition, wire service is supplied at request and a weekly cartoon and photo service is maintained.

The roster of papers includes 17 dailies. Publications’ subscribers are as far apart in policy as The Nation or The New Republic and the One Big Union Monthly, the Advance (Amalgamated Clothing Workers), and the South Bend Free Press (strictly A. F. of L.), The Liberator and the Minnesota Star or The Milwaukee Leader.

There are Liberal, Farmer-Labor, Socialist, I.W.W., Communist, Anarchist, A.F. of L. and independent labor papers on the daily mailing list. The chairman of the Executive Board is an orthodox A.F. of L. man, while the vice chairman is a leader in the largest unaffiliated union. As an impartial labor news service, The Federated Press has succeeded in steering carefully enough to retain its diverse membership.

The Gathering of News

News is gathered by its organized bureaus, staff correspondents, occasional correspondents, the member papers and the central Chicago central office distributes the news every day through its printed service sheet, which contains about 6,500 words, and goes to all papers and individuals subscribing. Daily papers receive, in addition, news direct from the bureaus by mimeograph and by wire on request. Special services are maintained for papers paying special assessments. The European bureau, directed by Louis P. Lochner in Berlin, sends a special service. The A. F. of L. convention at Cincinnati was covered by Laurence Todd as a special service for papers paying the special assessment therefor. During the armed clash between strikers and the anti-labor government of South Africa, The Federated Press received cable news from The London Daily Herald. When the anti-labor forces of Chicago united to exploit the murder of two policemen by unknown men as a pretext for an onslaught on organized labor, The Federated Press sent cable news of the actual situation to The London Daily Herald, as well as telegrams to papers in the United States that were suspicious of the highly colored dispatches carried by the ordinary press associations.

Bureaus are maintained in Washington, New York, Berlin and Sydney, Australia. Steps have been taken for bureaus in Mexico, South America and India. There are staff correspondents in many of the principal cities of the United States and Canada, and traveling correspondents in Hawaii, Japan, China, India, Russia and Western Europe. Much valuable exclusive news comes from trade union officials and other friends who write as occasional correspondents.

“Scoops”— Chain Papers

The news enterprise of The Federated Press is best attested by the fact that the Chicago Tribune, which admits to being “the world’s greatest newspaper,” does not scorn to pick up scoops from the labor news service. An. example was The Federated Press scoop on the strike ballots authorized by the biennial convention of the Railway Employes Department, A. F. of L. The most famous scoop was the news that Big Bill Haywood had jumped bail and escaped to Russia. The most recent one was the announcement of the arbitrator’s award in the Chicago Typographical Union case.

A growing department of The Federated Press is the publication of chain papers, of which The Federated Press Bulletin is the most widely known. The daily news dispatches are utilized for the news matter of these weekly chain papers, with headlines and illustrations and cartoons to make a 12-page paper of three wide columns per page. One to four pages are reserved for local news and advertising for each chain paper. One page each week is devoted to Upton Sinclair’s serial, “King Coal.” are eight of these weeklies now published, serving communities in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. Others are about to be organized.

All these matters are sources of pride to the friends of The Federated Press.

The Sad Financial Story!

But there is a sad financial story. The Federated Press is still dependent, for a considerable proportion of its income, on donations from individuals and from trade unions. There is no sinking fund for the $50,000 in bonds which mature in 1924. News development is hampered on every hand by lack of operating capital. The organization has, however, survived the unprecedentedly lean labor years following the war-time boom — which critics sometimes forget. Many labor papers during that period went under, and many of those who struggled through did so in part by postponing payments of their assessments to The Federated Press.

A criticism also frequently made is that news matter contains too much opinion instead of straight news. The criticism arises from two misapprehensions. Opinion is admitted to the news columns as a rule, only if the article in question is signed. A signature shifts responsibility for the opinion from The Federated Press to the writer. Liberals who criticize the presence of opinion frequently overlook the fact that opinion in a signed article is not only permissible, but valuable. The second misapprehension concerns the function and resources of The Federated Press. People who read the dispatches of the Associated Press, the United Press and the Hearst International News Service, as they must if they read ordinary papers at all, tend to take the large doses of opinion as matter of course, because that is the newspaper diet they are used to. The familiar is the accepted. But even a small flavor of opinion in a less familiar news service is quickly scented and pounced upon. The Federated Press is unable, with its present equipment, to furnish an all-round service. As an impartial labor news service: it must concentrate on the most vital news demanded by its member papers. It supplements and corrects the other services. One of its most pleasant duties, for example, is keeping watch over the devious course of its neighbor, The Chicago Tribune. A triumph in this department was the reprinting in mat form of an alleged famine picture published by The Tribune as a photograph of the Soviet bullets, supposedly showered upon the hungry in Moscow in 1921, together with The Tribune’s recantation the next day with the confession that the photograph actually pictured a street scene in Petrograd during the war, and had previously appeared before in The Tribune in the issue of November 4, 1917, before the Bolsheviki came into power.

Enemies and Friends

The enemies of The Federated Press, who first disdained to notice us, are now active and — far-reaching in their hostility. The inner circle of the A. F. of L. have launched heavy attacks, culminating at the 1922 convention. The accusations are in large measure a tribute to the success of The Federated Press in maintaining a news service that caters to all factions in the labor movement.

It has reported, for example, the bitter attacks made by Gompers on William Z. Foster; and it has printed Foster’s reply. It has presented both sides of the John L. Lewis-Alexander Howat controversy among the United Mine Workers. It has kept abreast of the fight between Andrew Furuseth’s International Seamen’s Union and the Marine Transport Workers (I.W.W.) It has carried the charges of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman regarding bad treatment of political prisoners in Russia, and the plea of Anatole France that they be given better treatment, as well as the favorable reports of visitors to the Soviet Republic. Serving no one group exclusively, it has drawn down the wrath of the faction at present dominant in the A. F. of L.

Friends and enemies seem to be confident that The Federated Press will live. The A. F. of L. inner circle would not waste ammunition on a dying institution.

Its friends see in it the first successful cooperative enterprise on a national and international scale undertaken by the joint efforts of dissenters of all shades from the existing order. Its friends see The Federated Press of the future. as the dominant news service, with resources to report all happenings of importance on an impartial basis to its member papers, the dominant labor press of the dominant labor republics of the world. The same picture, seen by its enemies, provokes their attacks. Its future power, more than its present strength, is what they fear.

Labor Age was a left-labor monthly magazine with origins in Socialist Review, journal of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. Published by the Labor Publication Society from 1921-1933 aligned with the League for Industrial Democracy of left-wing trade unionists across industries. During 1929-33 the magazine was affiliated with the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) led by A. J. Muste. James Maurer, Harry W. Laidler, and Louis Budenz were also writers. The orientation of the magazine was industrial unionism, planning, nationalization, and was illustrated with photos and cartoons. With its stress on worker education, social unionism and rank and file activism, it is one of the essential journals of the radical US labor socialist movement of its time.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/laborage/v11n07-aug-1922-LA.pdf