Left-Wing Tragedy or Comic Opera?: A New Look at the Demise of 'The Masses'.

Although the suppression in 1917 of "The Masses," an influential Socialist magazine, has been depicted as an American tragedy, such a narrow interpretation ignores the bizarre, confused, often comic developments and episodes that attended the magazine's end. A reexamination of the demise of "The Masses" has been made to show the milieu in which the proceedings occurred. Using biographical materials and original, contemporary sources, this reanalysis has helped elucidate the federal government's wayward legal machinations, its position with regard to the magazine, the devil-may-care attitudes of the left-wing editors themselves, the hilarity of the first trial, and the war hysteria of the times. More than a tragic story of a small, powerless, left-wing publication silenced by the ruthless collusion of establishment forces, the premature end of "The Masses" is really a part of the larger history of a more youthful, less cynical America. (RL)