Doing the Radical Rag
by Bob Guilis

The Masses appeared first in January 1911 at 150 Nassau Street, edited, somewhat casually by a Dutch born socialist by name of Piet Vlag. Moving in 1913 to 91 Greenwich Avenue, The Masses was a tent cent monthly that advocated workmen's compensation, safe working conditions for miners, the right of women to vote and receipt of birth control information, as well as the formation of a world peace organization.

In 1918 the United States Government accused the Masses of being a center of a conspiracy against the government. There was no truth to the charge. The Masses was simply an editorial force of socially aware artists and writers. Seldom was there any compensation for their work. Among these contributors were, Carl Sandburg, Upton Sinclair, Sherwood Anderson, Jo Davidson and even Pablo Picasso.

In 1913 Vlag let finances go to ruin and left The Masses. Max Eastman was drafted as the new editor and the magazine developed it's final and permanent look. Eastman published John "Jack" Reed's "The War in Paterson" essay, forcing other papers to cover the bloody strike in that New Jersey city, birthplace of Allen Ginsburg. Reed is the subject of Warren Beatty's 1982 classic film, "Reds".It also published lists of birth control clinics to get through the post Office ban on mailing birth control information. They once had a cartoon that showed skunks donating money to find out what made their neighborhood stink. Radical, witty and slick was The Masses.

Even Greenwich Village got into the war fever that preceded America's entry into World War I. The Masses was against the war, and in the July 1916 issue, Jack Reed named America's real enemy, and it wasn't Germany, according to him. Reed said it was, "that 2 percent of the United States that owns 60 percent of the national wealth." Like all Reed's essays. it closed with this benediction: "This is not our war!"

For all their trouble they were accused of being pro-German and a lot worse. After the August 1917 issue was banned by the Post Office under the Espionage Act, the government claimed The Masses was no longer a monthly and revoked its mailing permit. It pressured newstand to keep it off their shelves, and these tactics ended the The Masses life in December 1917. Four months later the government charged Eastman, Reed and others with " conspiracy against the government for interfering with enlistment." Their trials in April and September of 1918 resulted in hung juries. The charges were dropped eventually. Reed left America and died in Soviet Russia. He is the only American buried within the Kremlin walls.