IWW Newspapers

Click image for informative essay about the early history of the IWW's most enduring newspaper

Like other radical organizations, the Industrial Workers of the World saw journalism as an essential part of their organizing strategy. More than ninety different newspapers and periodicals affiliated with the IWW during its prime decades, publishing in nineteen languages. The Industrial Worker is the most enduring. It was the title given to the first official organ of the IWW, a monthly founded in 1906 that ceased publication a year later in one of the splits that fractured the organization. A new Industrial Worker, a weekly based in Spokane, began in 1909 and lasted four years. It was resurrected in Seattle in 1916, suppressed for a time during World War I, then remained active in Seattle until 1931, when it was relocated to the Chicago headquarters. It remains the official publication of the Industrial Workers of the World.

One of Ralph Chaplin's memorable images (Solidarity, May 19, 1917 )

Solidarity was the largest circulation English language IWW publication. Founded in 1909 and edited for most of a decade by Ralph Chaplin, Solidarity demonstrated the best of the IWW's propaganda skills. Songs and art that have become emblematic of the IWW, many of them written and drawn by Chaplin, appeared first on its pages.

But most IWW periodicals were not for English speakers. That included the only daily newspaper, Industrialisti, based in Duluth and published in Finnish, with a circulation that reached 10,000 in 1919. Other newspapers appeared in Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Flemish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Yiddish.

See our interactive maps and lists of 90 IWW newspapers. Sort by language, by city, and by founding period. Click image above.

Most IWW periodicals were short-lived, lasting no more than two years, although sometimes the publication continued under a new name. Durability was especially a problem for the large number of newspapers that began during the IWW's surging membership years (1916-1919). Many were suppressed or soon collapsed. But it is instructive that eighteen newspapers were founded in the 1920s and 1930s and that as late as the 1940s four survived: Il Proletario (Italian, New York), Bérmunkás (Hungarian, Chicago), Industrialisti (Finnish, Duluth), and The Industrial Worker (English, Chicago).

Chicago, where the Industrial Workers of the World maintained its headquarters, was home to the largest number of periodicals. That city hosted at one time or another thirty-eight IWW newspapers publishing in fifteen languages. New York followed with sixteen newspapers. Click on the map above to see where the newspapers were published and learn more about them.

Below is a list of IWW periodicals compiled and shared with this project by Kenyon Zimmer. He developed the list in connection with his book, Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America (University of Illinois, 2015).

Key: Newspapers that changed name are marked with a letter sequence (a,b,c). Newspapers that reused a name are marked by roman numerals as in Industrial Worker (III).

IWW newspapers by city