‘Socialist Schools in Pittsburgh’ from International Socialist Review. Vol. 18 No. 5-6. November-December, 1917.

Comrade Reinhold Werner writes us that they have two real Socialist schools in Pittsburgh. The East Liberty School was organized three years ago and one on the north side a year later. The comrades train the children to be genuine rebels so that when they grow up they will be well informed agitators.

Comrade Werner says, “We teach them that the working class and the employing class have nothing in common and that there will be no peace between these two classes until the capitalist system is abolished, and that it will be up to them, when they grow up to be men and women, to do their duty in helping to educate and organize the workers for the purpose of establishing a system whereby the people who produce all wealth shall receive all that they produce. We give them a good understanding of things around and about them. The wonders of nature, evolution, philosophy and science.

“We encourage them to read good books of which we have quite a few in our own library. The boys and girls manage this library them selves. We have very good teachers. One of them, Rudolph Blum, is now serving eighteen months in Allegheny County jail for having been active in the Westinghouse strike. He is well liked by the children and they are anxiously waiting until he is thru with his ‘bit’.

“Every month the children receive a copy of “The Little Comrade,” which is published by Maude Ball, 6802 Yale Ave., Chicago, Ill. The children all like this little paper and we hope that the Review will give it a little boost.”

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v18n05-n06-nov-dec-1917-ISR-Harv-gog-ocr.pdf