‘Rochester’s Literature Wagon’ from The International Socialist Review. Vol. 13 No. 12. June, 1913.

Months ago our enthusiastic comrade, J. Harry Sager, happened to be in Indianapolis, when to his great astonishment he beheld a strange vehicle passing along the street. No horse, no gasoline. It was pushed along by a man on the inside. Sager stopped the combination of wagon, man and literature and asked it some questions. · The man turned out to be a comrade named Jackman, who for some months had been making his living by selling Socialist literature to the people of the Indiana city. Sager came home with an idea.

It’s nothing new, by the way, for Comrade Sager to get hold of an idea. He’s full of them. It is because he has so many that he troubles the minds of a good many people. He catches them on the Pullman cars and in the hotels, offices and everywhere else, and before they know it he has them trying to answer his flood of unanswerable questions regarding present conditions and the reason behind them. This comrade came home filled to the brim with the new idea. He let no grass grow under his feet before he had a subscription list going the rounds. He laid hold of another enthusiast by the name of Frank Bailey, who did a lot of work on the thing, and who is the man finally selected to sell literature from our wagon.

It was built by the R.J. Smith Company of this city, and is a beauty. It is, of course, red all over. The wheels are small and furnished with rubber tires. The floor of the vehicle, which is about a foot above the ground, is so arranged that it can be thrown open, so that a man on the inside may walk on the ground while he propels the wagon. When the wagon is at rest on a cold day, the floor can be closed and the occupant can stand a foot above the ground and be warm. The vehicle itself cost over a hundred and twenty-five dollars.

There’s a lot of good shelf room on.= the inside, and it will all be needed. In the warm days of the year the seller will generally remain outside. There is a removable tongue, so that the wagon may be drawn if desired. This will allow the man to be outside as much as possible. And he will want to be, for he must be fishing. He must attract customers. We have a new slogan here. It runs like this: “Get a man to reading and you’ve got him.” What do you think about it? We are acting on this principle. There is a whole section of our population who read on Socialism, but they read only what our enemies say about it. In other words, they read what it is not, instead of what it is. Let us get them, if possible, to read the truth.

Carry the capitalist papers, Yes, as many as may be needed to help pay expenses; for that is what we are seeking to do. We do not desire to make any revenue out of this thing. We want this wagon to serve for propaganda purposes only. We need to pay our seller. He earns every cent he gets, too, and more. When we find that we are making money on the wagon we shall put down the price of the literature. So, then, let the literature wagons increase. All power to the Socialist literature wagon! The Young People’s Socialist League, Rochester, N. Y., Kendrick P. Shedd, Manager.

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/v13n12-jun-1913-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf