The Masses / June 1915

New York: The Masses Publishing Company, 1915. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Soft cover. Very Good. Folio - over 12 - 15" tall. Frank Walts, John Sloan, Art Young, Glenn O. Coleman, Stuart Davis, Cornelia Barns, Randall Davey, George Bellows, Maurice Becker, A. Londoner, Elias Goldberg, Eugene Higgins . New York: The Masses Publishing Company, 1915. The June, 1915 issue (Volume VI, Number 9, whole number 49). Large Folio, illustrated stapled wraps, 27 pp. Very Good by any periodical standard; as the very inexpensively-produced budget-of-the-heart icon The Masses was, this example is certainly better than very good, by its own standard. Light crease the vertical length of cover; small nicks at front cover perimeter; larger chip at rear cover, lower left; 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 shut down by the U.S. Government in 1918 on the basis of postal regulations, after 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 June, 1915 included Eastman, Carl Sandburg, Howard Brubaker, Harris Merton Lyon, Louis Untermeyer, Edmond McKenna, Elsie Clews Parsons, Frank Tanenbaum, Robert Carlton Brown, W.J. Robinson, Charles Grey, and Florence Kiper Frank. Art was contributed by Frank Walts, John Sloan, Art Young, Glenn O. Coleman, Stuart Davis, Cornelia Barns, Randall Davey, George Bellows, Maurice Becker, A. Londoner, Elias Goldberg, and Eugene Higgins, with Walts executing the front cover, and Davis the rear cover. Check out all of those names. An extraordinarily rare piece of American publishing and political history. l-lng2