Marxist educator Edwin Hoernle was a central figure in theorizing and organizing the Communist children’s movement. The full text of a serialized pamphlet below gives a sense of the revolutionary vistas of the time.

‘The Working Class and Their Children: An Appeal to Proletarian Parents’ by Edwin Hoernle from The Toiler (Chicago). Nos. 182-185. July 30-August 20, 1921.

I. The Capitalistic Child Slaughter.

With the alleged purpose to save thousands of proletarian children from starvation the German Bourgeoisie launched in the weeks before Xmas a “Relief Action for Children”. Posters depicting with heartrending reality a proletarian mother lifting appealingly towards the passers-by her crippled skeleton-like off-spring, had been fastened to the walls of every streetcorner and were seen in many shopwindows. And thus it came about that the bourgeoisie gave alms for the “poor hungry children” with one hand while with the other it threw at the same time hundreds of thousands of the parents of the very same children mercilessly upon the streets. While at the same time the bosses commenced cutting down wages, while at the same time “free exchange” (i.e. unlimited usury) was reestablished for almost all agricultural products. While society was making in heartmoving phrases and charity and their penpushers were kept busy getting off picturesque descriptions of the conditions prevailing in the slums, and statistical figures proving the wide-spread misery, of the institutions devoted to the welfare of the children and their mothers one after the other to be closed in the German states for lack of financial support by the instrument of the alm-spending bourgeoisie, the government, thus leaving mother and child to famine, misery and ruin.

Though nothing much has been heard of the subject since, it has had that one good effect: thousands of proletarian fathers and mothers have had their eyes opened to the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie and to the misery of the young proletarian generation as well. Previous to the action they had only seen their own children and those of their friends and neighbors. They had known that these children were very badly off, they had even suspected that others also were suffering, but they had not been aware of the formidable extension of the misery, nor had they known its general character. The statistical figures on children’s mortality and of consumptive children, the publishing of the reports of the school physicians have clearly shown that the misery is not of a merely transitory character, but is a result of the slowly decaying capitalism, threatening the future of the whole proletarian class.

The bourgeois Relief Action has proved the absolute impotence of the governing class which neither can nor intends to change the existing conditions. The proletariat must clearly recognise the connection between capitalism and children’s misery, between the decay of the capitalist system and the proletarian wholesale dying, and consequently put the question of relief to their children not as a problem of bourgeois reform and charity within the existing order of society, but as a task of the proletarian class struggle to do away with this disorder. The proletariat must recognize that only the proletarian revolution can bring relief to their children.

The following figures, though they cannot completely prove it, will give a fair intimation of the formidable extension of the misery proletarian children are suffering in the capitalistic society of today. In the years 1914-1918 the mortality of children at the age from 5-15 years has in Prussia gone from 25,730 up to 50,391. The Central Committee of the German Red Cross Associations, Department Mother and Child reports that amongst 485,000 children out of a total population of 3,5 millions in Berlin

29,000 are suffering with tuberculosis,
77,000 are ill and badly undernourished,
120,000 are badly undernourished.

According to exact reports there are in 43 great cities in Germany

200,633 children suffering with tuberculosis,
835 ill and heavily undernourished.

Just as catastrophic is our children’s lack of apparel and shoewear. It is stated for instance that in the city of Glatz of 1842 schoolchildren 121 had no shirt whatever, while 446 were possessed of but one. 7,703 children have one pair of socks, while 297 had none whatever. 171 had only clogs or shoes made of cloth with wooden soles, while 21 had nothing whatever to protect their feet with.

In the city of Kaiserslautern out of 8,214 children only 2,784 were sufficiently dressed while the clothing of 917 consisted of nothing but rags; 8 had no shirt whatever, 220 only one, 345 had no underwear, 438 no shoes.

The Statistics Bureau of France has published figures which go far to prove that France, like the rest of the European countries has to record an appalling mortality of children. Out of 10,000 children, according to these figures, the following number have died: in Rouen 294, in Lille 342, in Dunkirch 507, in Halluin 509. In Paris half the number of all children die before they are weaned, the cause of this tremendous percentage being lack of nurseries and other institutions devoted to the welfare of children.

The American Red Cross Mission in Budapest publishes the following figures on the misery prevailing amongst the children of that city: When 540 children of one school were asked what they had eaten during that day, it appeared that 10 had eaten but once. 200 had eaten twice, their meals consisting of a piece of bread and chicory broth. Of the 540 children only 18 had eaten meat while only 41 had a bit of milk added to their “coffee”.

To this the mission adds that in reality the undernourishment. is even worse, as many children were ashamed to confess to having eaten nothing.

The Brusselles newspaper “Le Peuple” reports that in Germany there are one million sick children, that in Austria 700,000 children have died of hunger, that in Poland 1,000,000 children are suffering hunger in the very sense of the word.

What is true of the European continent is also true for the rest of the “civilised” world.

In the face of this terrible misery the proletariat cannot remain inactive, cannot try to make good with its exhausted resources what has been sinned against their children by the bourgeoisie. All such attempts would be nothing but a drop of water in a bucket. To the contrary! The first task of the proletarian relief action for children is: to recognize the present capitalist system as the root of all evil and to take up the battle against this system.

This can best and most successfully be done by an untiring struggle for certain aims concerning our daily life. The relief action for proletarian children must therefore consist of our demanding of the bourgeois government and the bourgeois commune everything our children need, these demands not to be formulated according to what the governing class deigns to consider “justified” but according to what we consider necessary. As such demands can be named: The government to furnish all proletarian children with food and clothing, the erecting of Homes for the Day, Holiday Colonies, and kindergartens, etc., all these institutions to be controlled by proletarian Parent’s Councils and workers’ organizations.

We will know of course that the bourgeoisie, if at all, will only comply insufficiently with these demands, which knowledge, however, must not cause us to keep them back. If the capitalist system cannot comply with our demands, it is not our demands which are wrong, but the capitalist system, and the power must be taken from them who rob the proletariat of the means to sustain life.

Proletarian parents! Your children are in danger! Do no longer be satisfied with the promises, government and commune give you! Be no longer satisfied with their statements that they have no money! The capitalists have money! There are enough country homes and gardens for proletarian children’s homes. There is sufficient food in the houses and in the clubs of the rich who are getting fat on what would suffice to protect our children against hunger and misery. There is gold and precious metal in the safes of the banks and in the homes of the governing class. There is enough linen, cotton and woolens in the stores and magazines to cloth and keep warm our children. It is only a matter of making available for the proletariat all those things.

It is only a matter of the proletariat assuming control over all those riches and over the means of economic life, and over the government. It is only a matter of no longer being afraid of the howls and cries of rages and of the resistance of the bourgeoisie which would rather deliver up millions of our children to a lingering death than give up their secure and soft life.

II. THE BOURGEOISIE POISONS OUR CHILDREN.

The governing class does not only kill our children physically, it so poisons their young minds. Especially in revolutionary times he bourgeoisie redoubles its energy to estrange the children of he proletariat from their class, to get them in opposition to their own struggling parents, brothers and sisters. During such times all schools, all private and public institutions become strongholds of counterrevolutionary propaganda and training, and it must really be admitted that the governing class knows well how to infuse into the young and fresh minds the germs of nationalism and monarchism, of bourgeois morals and sentiments.

To prove this, let us skip over the pages of a reader in use in our public schools. They are filled with religious stories, are overflowing with false and lying petty bourgeois morality. Take for instance the headings of a reader being used in the Berlin district schools: The Lord is everywhere; the Lord knows everything; the Lord thinks of all things; praise the Lord at all times; the Lord and His angels are guarding you,

Does not such stuff nauseate every revolutionary proletarian? Really, the Lord has indeed thought of everything, especially of His proletarians out of work and His hungry consumptive children.

Proletarian parents! How much longer will you permit of these lies being dished out to your children? Will you inactively stand by and see your helpless children imbued with slave morals, sugar coated with the religious spirit of inactivity? Read for instance the following story taken at, random out of the reader mentioned above, headed: The County Fair. A rich woman gives money to a number of girls for which they are to buy what they like. When on their return they have to show the results of their shopping to the kindly spender it appears that only one of the girls has bought something “useful”: a prayer book and a distaff. At this the rich woman is very pleased. Taking the girl’s hands she addresses her as follows: I am very glad, my dear, that in your young years you think of work and prayer. By buying foolish things the others have shown plainly that they are concerned with nothing but pretty dresses and other vain things, that they think nothing whatever of piousness and industriousness.

Do we need to add a word of criticism? Note the typical petty bourgeois spirit: The rich woman as benefactress. The praise of frugality. The poor girl being patronised. The point: Work and pray, live on hay, you will eat by and by in the sky. Take note of the matter of course manner with which poor and rich are being confronted here, the rich being trusted with the role of guardian! Stories of that description we could repeat by the dozen out of any reader.

That is the spirit dominating in our primary schools, to which must be added that of nationalism and monarchism. All that in spite of the so-called republic and its “socialistic” ministers. A great part of the lectures on history is still devoted to the works of the dynasties, to the glorification of the imperial and royal deserters. The heroic Kaiser! The benevolent Mother of the Country! The whole world appears to be the handiwork of inspired princes, politicians and generals. The history of the development of mankind is but a chain of wars and wise legislative measures, stress being laid upon the necessity for obedience and loyalty, and, to crown the whole, chauvinism.

The singing lessons also consist of nothing but religion and patriotism. Here as elsewhere the minds of the children are being filled exclusively with thoughts of the Father in the glorious land above the sky and the substitutes on earth, the kaiser and the various kings! And the composition lessons! And the slurs of the teachers, male and female, against the revolution, against the communists, against the worker on strike, against Soviet Russia. Those out of work are being depicted as too lazy to work, the children of the better situated, the reactionaries are being favoured, anyone industrious and modest must surely get ahead, today as ever.

Proletarian parents! Have you ever thought of what it means to have all this advise put into practice? It is to make your children seek the favour of the bosses later on, they are to prepare proletarian children for the dirty calling of scabs and blacklegs, of the lackeys and stoolpigeons of the White Guards. The whole school system is permeated with bourgeois egoism, with that hateful spirit of greediness and avarice which forms the moral basis for the capitalistic order and which the bourgeoisie calls “the competitive system”. One look into the arithmetic book of your children will show you that the whole capitalistic ideology is hidden between its lines and numbers, for nothing else is to be learned there than how to buy and sell and how to figure out percentage for usury.

The school teaches the children nothing about the true situation of the present day society, of the conflict of interests between capitalism and proletariat, about the economic and social perspective of all wars and revolutions. Consciously overlooking the results of the social upheavals, the school is still teaching the time worn fairy tales of church and nationalism, thereby instilling dangerous illusions into the minds of the unsuspecting young. The school which is to prepare for life does not prepare the young proletarian for his life but for that of a servile subject of his exploiters.

The school, however, is but a part of the atmosphere the child is being brought up in. The proletarian child passes away a great part of his life in the yards and on the streets. The street of the capitalistic metropole is not only the great panorama of life passing ceaselessly before the child, it is also at the same time, and mainly so in the proletarian quarters, an evily smelling gutter through which all scum of the capitalistic society passes by. Only seldom does the child come to know here of proletarian solidarity and of the proletarian struggle; for the most part it is thrown into acquaintance with the naked viciousness practised by the victims of capitalism: the gangster, tipsters, confidence men and other criminals. In the streets of our great cities the proletarian child sees the orgies of the profiteering bourgeoisie.

In the person of vile comrades, friends and neighbours, and in the public houses and brothel districts the child is thrown into contact with vice in every shape and manner; the picture shows with their rudely executed posters that appeal to everything that is low in the children, rouse their bad instincts.

And although the child sees everywhere the contrast between poor and rich, hungry and appeased, slave and master, there is nobody to solve these problems for him, and the result is the quite natural desire of the simple mind: O, if I also would be well fed and warmly clothed. If I also could be riding in a car and took down upon the others! Thus the streets do not only not educate the proletarian child to class consciousness, but make him accept unquestionably the bourgeois theory of life.

The proletarian family is not capable of giving to the child all he needs. Capitalism has dissolved and torn apart the proletarian family rendering them in many instances incapable of methodically educating their children. In many families is not only the father working, but also the mother. Who looks after the children? Who teaches them to be methodic and keep themselves clean? Who transmits to them knowledge of any kind? Who pays attention to their inclinations and gifts? Who corrects their mistakes and teaches them to help each other? Who coaches them in endurance and trains them to gain mastery over themselves? Who plants into their young souls the seeds of class consciousness? Who instills into them the enthusiasm for the great ideas of socialism, for the great struggle of the proletariat for freedom? Who explains to the child all that which it is brought into contact with? Nobody! Nobody who would give answer to his questions and solve for him his mental problems. There is nobody to neutralise the damning influence of the bourgeois school. Nobody who would help the child to understand the impressions occasioned by the stormy political present, the strikes and demonstrations, the risings, the arrests, and the processions, nobody who would explain to him the revolutionary meaning of all these happenings.

We, the proletarian parents cannot console ourselves by simply saying: It is all the fault of the situation, bitter need will do much in enlightening our children later on. No, if the position of the class were of itself making revolutionaries, why are there millions of indifferents who belong to no political party? Why are there still millions organized in the Christian trade unions? How could it then be that the German and the English social-democratic parties are still strong in spite of the traitors who are still members and even leaders of them? Supposing the assumption to be true, where do the White Guards, the stool pigeons, the criminals and the prostitutes come from? Do not forget that one retains to the end of life the impressions and happenings of childhood! It is the influence, whether organized or not, of the existing bourgeois society, which does not allow millions of proletarians to become class conscious in order to retain its knife on the throat of the proletariat the governing class exploit the ignorance and the child-like obedience of the working masses against those very same masses.

The struggle for the soul of the proletarian child is therefore quite as important as the struggle for his physical wellbeing. The greatest duty that the revolutionary proletariat owes their children is to keep them within the class and educate them for the class, to imbue them with the spirit of proletarian solidarity and revolutionary energy. By their life upon the street our children loose their way and deteriorate morally and physically. They are being poisoned with the spirit of bourgeois lust of grab, of hypocrisy, greediness and corruption. The bourgeoisie incites our children against their own parents, brothers and sisters, while the proletarian parents are away from their children, slaving for the daily crust. As the proletarian parents are in many cases themselves in need of education and direction they are not capable of undertaking the revolutionary education of their children. Therefore the proletarian class as a unit must call into life organizations which are to realize new communes for education.

III. THE COMMUNIST CHILDREN’S GROUPS AND THEIR TASKS.

It is to the credit of the Communist Youth Organizations that they were the first to recognise the far reaching importance of revolutionary educational work for the proletarian struggle and for the future of the proletarian class. It is the duty of all proletarian parents and of all other adult proletarians as well to assist the communist youth in this, their most important work. We will no longer expose our children to the uncontrollable influences of the streets of the metropoles. We will no longer permit tutors and teachers of a christian government, serving the counter revolution, to teach proletarian children. We will no longer abstain from planting into the souls of our children the seeds of socialism, of the revolutionary conception of life. The more so. as we are in the midst of a bitter revolutionary struggle. The more so, as our children in the course of a few years will have to help us in this struggle. He is not struggling for the welfare of the class who is not conscious of the duty of the revolutionary proletariat towards the proletarian children.

In what manner shall we educate our children? How can we keep them away from the pernicious influence of the street, of the school, of the whole bourgeois society? Shall we create for our children communist islands in the midst of the stormy sea of bourgeois life?

No, that we cannot and will not do! Our children must be educated in the environments within which they are destined to struggle later on. If today the street is their home, we shall not take them from the street, but open their eyes, so that they will see the street with our eyes, with the eyes of revolutionary proletarians, with the eyes of the class conscious socialists. If the child is obliged to go to the bourgeois school, we shall not attempt to keep him away from that school, but shall try to counteract the influence of the bourgeois school, revolutionising it not only from without, but, with the help of the children themselves, also from within.

To this end we are organizing the proletarian children in Children’s Groups. Here we will talk to them and play with them, read and work and make excursions with them, and grow with them as well. The Communist Children’s Groups are to be our nursery from which the communist children will go forth to their schools, to their tenement houses and their playgrounds, in order to enlighten their comrades and take up in the schools the battle against the influences of the church and of nationalism, of every institution hostile to the workers.

We do not but doubt that, influenced by the spirit of the Communist Children’s Groups, many a proletarian child will prove instrumental in rousing and shaking up his parents. The object of the Communist Children’s Groups is therefore to make the proletarian children take their place in the work and in the struggle of their class, and to educate them to be revolutionaries.

At a time of the charlatan-like doings of the bourgeois relief action in the sign of the slogan “Children in Need!” at that very time, Xmas 1920, gathered at Berlin for the first time the leaders of the Communist Children’s Groups for a conference decided to begin and carry on in every district an energetic propaganda for the Communist Children’s Groups Movement. Quietly and surely, without any noise, without being advertised in any way, was called into life the proletarian relief action. Not with gold nor with money can the proletariat help their children, but it can demand of the bourgeois government, it can demand of the bourgeois community and it can furthermore struggle for the realization of these demands and, last not least, teach their children to participate in that struggle within the limits given by their feeble power of course.

We do not wish to hear anything of the so-called pedagogical objections maintaining that the children would not know enough to recognize the underlying ideas, that they should not be taught to recognize the underlying ideas, that they should not be taught the child understands why it is to sing in the school Deutschland Ueber Alles, My country ’tis of Thee, or God save the King? Does it, perhaps, know why bourgeois teachers and bourgeois kindergarten nurses exhort him to be brave, obedient, industrious, pious and thrifty? Why is it told that the Lord has done everything well? Does it understand why his father or mother or brother are being insulted, persecuted, fined, jailed or even shot? No pedagogical phrases, however nicely sounding, will keep the bourgeois class from educating the proletarian children in its morals and in its opinions. The proletariat possesses no means to protect their children against the bourgeois world, the contact with which always leaves a harsh impression upon the young and is often, very often, painful for them. So, what can we do? Shall we, the struggling class, abstain from explaining to our children why we must struggle, and why they themselves must struggle some day? Shall the proletarian mother not explain to her hungry child the reason for his being hungry? Shall we keep shamefacedly silent when we are being asked by our children: Father, why are you on strike? Mother, why do you go to demonstrations? Brother, why are you out of work? Shall we remain neutral and say nothing when our children repeat to us the lies and the inciting words of their bourgeois school fellows? When the children read in the papers lies and abuse and ask us about it, shall we say: You do not understand that? No, we say to our children: Be proud of the strikers, proud of those demonstrating, proud of the comrades languishing in jails, of the parents, brothers and acquaintances who have fallen in street battles for the cause of World Revolution.

And again we shall say to our children: be proud if you are called a communist! Do not be afraid of being called by that name! It does you honor!

Away with the commonplaces of nonpolitical education of the children! Away with them, in the face of the fact that our children have become political long ago through the influences of school and life. They do not grow up in the glass house of a remote educational institution, but in the very midst of the capitalistically tainted streets, schools and play grounds of the bourgeois cities. Therefore we have no use for neutral children’s groups, affiliated with no party, but need definitely socialist children’s groups under the guidance of the most decided part of the proletariat, that part of which is always ready for sacrifices: the Communists.

Where there exist no children’s groups so far, we shall immediately create Communist Children’s Groups, where there are proletarian or socialist children’s groups, we shall penetrate them as Communists in order to distill out of the sweetish colourless fluid of commonplace phrases and beautiful so-called human feelings the clear wholesome red wine of revolutionary determination to struggle.

But can children really struggle? Can we take upon ourselves the responsibility for making them do so? Do not be afraid, proletarian mothers, proletarian fathers! Your children themselves have already given you the answer. Our children’s groups are even now in the very midst of the struggle. We have not provoked the struggle. It has come of itself and it is of such a nature that your children are sure to win it. The bourgeois teachers have provoked the struggles. For our young comrades not being satisfied with merely hearing of socialism and of the great struggle for freedom of the working class, have as a matter of course propagated that which they have learned, Children have in them the nature of fighters. The adult is very often satisfied with the mere know ledge, remaining entirely passive, while children are spurned to action by the digestion of what they have heard. Without pressure being brought upon them, our children have everywhere in the bourgeois schools openly professed their socialism. They have stood up against the mental druggery of the church, against the nationalistic hatred, against the petty bourgeois morality and against the bourgeois desire to possess, by doing so causing conflicts in the schools of various towns and cities. Reactionary teachers have forbidden the children to distribute their papers within the precinct of the school, seizing the papers and even barbarously punishing the children for having been found in possession of them. These persecutions have, however, not prevented our valiant little comrades from doing what they consider their duty. Changing their tactics they have refused to sing the national anthems and to participate in the patriotic school celebrations. In Germany they have demanded that the pictures of the imperial run-away be removed from the walls of the class rooms. They have risen valiantly during the lessons in religion and history and frankly professed to be communist revolutionaries. Whenever a teacher found it necessary to insult their fathers, our children have contradicted him, never being afraid of abuse and punishment.

It is the task of the leaders of our Children’s Groups to induce the proletarian Parent’s Councils and other worker’s organizations to assist the children in their attempt to revolutionize the school, thus carrying on the struggle upon a wider basis.

A good method to rouse and fortify in the children proletarian class consciousness is to have them participate in the proletarian meetings and demonstrations. On the First of May our children have marched everywhere as the first in the processions of the adults. To them it was a gratifying event to feel themselves members of the struggling class, their child-like optimism inspiring many adults not to get tired in the struggle for freedom.

In our Children’s Groups, the children learn to practise as a matter of course proletarian solidarity and willingness for sacrifice. They learn to govern themselves and to settle their own affairs in their own way. They are also taught to subordinate themselves under the leaders elected by them. They learn consideration for the feeble, and how to teach and help each other. During the trips and excursions there often arises occasion to practise practical communism. The leaders of the Groups are not teachers or superiors, but comrades and elder friends of the children, the difference between them and the young being that they know more and have more experience to share which with the young is their duty. The Children’s Groups are not forcibly kept together.

They are united only by the free will of the members, their interest in each other and the joy in their own work.

Do not be afraid of the difficulty of this new task. There is of course, admittedly a severe lack of schooled personnel. Where could we take them from? But there are on the other hand many valiant and intelligent comrades who, not being gifted with the talent to speak in public or work within wider circles, would gladly be active in a small way. To these somewhat shy natures a great field has now been thrown open. But are not our working women and girls, our comrades pedagogically too little schooled? Will they have the real understanding for the needs of the children? Console yourselves, my friends. The true art of education is not learned out of books, it is taught by experience, by working for and together with the children. Our love for the proletarian children, our ardent wish to lead them to the free land of socialism, the knowledge that the education to liberty can be effected only where liberty reigns supreme–all that will teach us the right manner of and show us the right form for our work. It is really not difficult to handle children. All one has to do is to leave behind the domineering attitude of the adult mind and acquire the faculty to be able to become a child amongst children. What does it mean to be a child? It does not mean to be childish, ignorant and undisciplined. All that the adult must have left behind him long ago. For him to become a child means to be simple and direct, to throw his whole heart into the work. Look at the games of the children! Observe their seriousness, their devotion to their plays! Be as serious in your devotion to the children, your wish to domineer, and your showing off your superior knowledge and ability! Nothing but the remains of the old exploiting instinct that continue to live on secretly in a hidden corner of your soul and which must be exterminated! For that very reason our children will be in many proletarian families the pioneers of the revolutionary thinking and feeling. How often is the family, even that of an otherwise revolutionary comrade, the last hiding place of the evil practises of the petty bourgeoisie and of egoistic tyranny. How many a worker, while a slave in the factory, employs within the walls of his home the manners of a despot! Many, very many mothers can only be approached by means of their children. For the sake of the parents we must pay special attention to the parents and sisters and brothers of our children being invited to all excursions, story-telling evenings and other arrangements. We do not intend to tear the children away from their parents. But wish to win for the holy cause of Communism the parents together with their children.

Our comrades wo are leading the Children’s Groups are not merely to give and to teach. The questions and the criticism of the children will force them to learn more, to concentrate their minds upon the problems of the revolutionary struggle for socialism, upon the history of mankind and upon the sciences. The devotion which our children employ in the solving of their problems is to be the standard for the leaders of the Groups. Thus the children on their part will influence the adults. Thus even the youngest members of the proletarian class will, under the leadership of the Communists, take their place in the whole of the great battle front.

We, the Communists, do not intend to make the children in the Communist Children’s Groups serve our ends. We do not intend to lead them on ways the goal of which would not benefit them. On the contrary, we wish them to participate in the work and in the struggle, in the triumph and in the inspiring ideas of our class. Their self-consciousness and their character are to be strengthened, their horizon to be widened, and thus their life given a purpose and a future. In this manner we can best protect them against the rude and dangerous influences of the street and of the tenement houses.

With this our work, we cannot start early enough. Long before the proletarian child is to be able to understand the point at issue it can intuitively feel or be brought to feel that our intentions and our doings are in his interest, that we are his true friends.

Do not wait till the reactionary poison has done its deadly work upon our children, do not be scared by the warnings of would-be pedagogues. Reconquer the proletarian children for our class. Make sure of a vigorous reserve for the Proletarian Revolution. Work and do your utmost that the coming generation might be better fitted for its great task than we of today.

Proletarian parents, into your hands has been laid the decision over your fate and that of your children!

The Toiler was a significant regional, later national, newspaper of the early Communist movement published weekly between 1919 and 1921. It grew out of the Socialist Party’s ‘The Ohio Socialist’, leading paper of the Party’s left wing and northern Ohio’s militant IWW base and became the national voice of the forces that would become The Communist Labor Party. The Toiler was first published in Cleveland, Ohio, its volume number continuing on from The Ohio Socialist, in the fall of 1919 as the paper of the Communist Labor Party of Ohio. The Toiler moved to New York City in early 1920 and with its union focus served as the labor paper of the CLP and the legal Workers Party of America. Editors included Elmer Allison and James P Cannon. The original English language and/or US publication of key texts of the international revolutionary movement are prominent features of the Toiler. In January 1922, The Toiler merged with The Workers Council to form The Worker, becoming the Communist Party’s main paper continuing as The Daily Worker in January, 1924.