MIA: History: USA: Publications: Studies in Socialism
Studies in Socialism
"Studies in Socialism" was published by J.A. Wayland and his potent Appeal to Reason operation. It began as a monthly series of pamphlets of varying page counts in approximately 1898. Owing to a loophole in American postal regulations, so-called "periodicals" were afforded a heavily discounted mailing rate versus the fees charged for comparable items sent individually. A number of publishers of the era -- including among them radical publishers Charles H. Kerr, Eugene V. Debs, and the New York Labor News Co. -- merely declared their pamphlets to be monthly installments of a periodical publication, which was so noted on the cover, thereby allowing them the subsidized postal rate.
This rate loophole seems to have been terminated circa 1907. This change spelled the permanent death of two of Wayland's so-called periodical series of pamphlets -- the moribund "One-Hoss Philosophy" and the active "Wayland's Monthly." The "Studies in Socialism" title was repurposed for a new format, however, and a new four-page quarterly broadsheet was launched under that title. This propaganda paper was intended to attract newcomers to the socialist movement, but seems to have left virtually no mark.
Very few issues of the "Studies in Socialism" newspaper seem to have survived. The copies appearing here were collected by socialist orator and writer Eugene V. Debs and preserved via microfilming of his papers. No information is available as to the first and last issues of the newsprint quarterly, although it is known from available copies that no fewer than eight issues were produced between 1907 and 1909.
Tim Davenport
Corvallis, OR
May 2019
No. 47, January, 1909 [missprint for the year on the masthead]
Last updated on 21 May 2019