The Masses / April, 1917

New York: The Masses Publishing Company, 1917. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Soft cover. Fair. 4to - over 9¾ - 12" tall. Arthur B. Davies; K.R. Chamberlain; Boardman Robinson; Arthur Young; Maurice Sterne; Cornelia Barns . New York: The Masses Publishing Company, 1917. The April, 1917 issue (Volume IX, Number 6, whole number 70). Quarto, illustrated stapled wraps, 42 pp.; this is a scarce survivor of the smaller-format issues (i.e., no longer folio size) which were issued late in the life The Masses. 1917 was the last year of publication, and by the time of this issue, there were only months left. Just Fair, due to the absence of the front cover and the separation of the first page from the remaining textblock with rear cover - all of which is itself in Very Good condition, by any periodical standard. As the very inexpensively-produced budget-of-the-heart icon The Masses was, it no doubt deserves its own grading standard, but there is none such. Some small scale chipping on page 3 and rear cover, modest toning to the remarkably healthy contents. See scans. Certainly one of the most seminal socio-political American publications of the last 200 years, The Masses was a collection of ideological art, opinion and reporting - usually contributed with little or no compensation - which strongly represented socialist / marxist values, but in a larger sense was representative of labor, women's rights, and radical left issues in general as those were at that time. Famous names of the era often contributed work, but the names of the regulars are themselves all now in history books. The now-timeless publication was officially shut down by the U.S. Government in 1918, ostensibly on the basis of postal regulations (though it had already suspended publication in late 1917), following two intense and ideologically-charged trials. Eastman and his sister, Crystal, then started The Liberator to carry on; after The Liberator closed its doors in 1926, The New Masses, under the primary leadership of Mike Gold, carried the radical flag. The Masses, as the first, is also the rarest. Text contributors to this issue of April, 1917 included Eastman, John Reed; Louise Bryant; Floyd Dell; Howard Brubaker; Robert Hillyer; Louis Untermeyer; Hutchins Hapgood; Ruza Wenclaw; Leslie Nelson Jennings; Robert H. Lowie; Charles W. Wood; Jane Whitaker; Anne Arnold; Henry Reich, Jr.; Dorothea Gay; Franklin Van Wert; David Rosenthal; Elizabeth Fox; and Nina Bull. Art was contributed by Arthur B. Davies; K.R. Chamberlain; Boardman Robinson; Arthur Young; Maurice Sterne; and Cornelia Barns. Check out all of these names. An extraordinarily rare piece of American publishing and political history. Please see scans. l-lng2