March of Labor

MARCH OF LABOR. March of Labor, a leftwing monthly labor magazine published from June 1949 to September 1956, was described by associate editor Len De Caux as “a sort of postscript to the CIO story.” Closely linked to the Communist Party and the left-led unions expelled from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), the publication struggled for survival from its appearance onward. A trio of editors, Maurice Forge, John Ryan and Madeline Ryan, offered readers the first issue in May 1949, but suspended the magazine after two more. A new editor, John Steuben, long-time trade union and Communist Party organizer, made another try in August 1950, with more success. Others now closely associated with the project included Lee Steuben, the editor’s wife, also Walter Barry, Sidney Rosen, and Vincent Hallinan, soon to be the Progressive Party’s candidate for president.

The magazine’s launch coincided with the CIO’s purge of eleven “Communist-dominated” unions in the wake of the Taft-Hartley Act during 1949-1950. Providing a platform for the embattled leaders of these now independent unions, March of Labor included contributions by Harry Bridges (International Longshore and Warehouse Union), Hugh Bryson (Marine Cooks and Stewards), DeWitt Gilpin (Farm Equipment Workers), Donald Henderson (Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers), Maurice Travis (Mine-Mill and Smelter Workers) and more, as well as other notables on the left such as Anne Braden, Vito Marcantonio, Revels Cayton and W.E.B. Du Bois. Featuring guest artwork from United Electrical Workers Fred Wright, March of Labor covered a wide range of issues including strike activity, AFL and CIO convention reports, internal union politics and mergers, anti-labor legislation, tips for rank-and-file organizers, sports and culture, and international news. The magazine also focused considerable attention on racism, segregation and civil rights, highlighting unity between Black and white workers.

Lacking official subsidies or advertising revenue, March of Labor struggled throughout its short existence, surviving on volunteer labor and subscription drives by friendly unions. Despite a lack of resources and intense pressure from the FBI, March of Labor was in Len DeCaux’s memory “unusually slick and lively for a labor publication,” editor John Steuben “a natural to organize and run a magazine like March of Labor. He threw himself into it phenomenally, excessively.” Always organizing, Steuben sought “to make the magazine itself an organizer” and “a little movement in itself,” embracing “the residual glow of the old CIO idea and those who warmed to it.”

A machinist and talented organizer, Steuben was born Isaak Rijock in Brailov, Russia, in 1906. He immigrated with his family to the United States in 1923 and soon joined the Young Communist League. He served as staff director of the New York office of the Trade Union Unity League in the early 1930s, before moving on to become section organizer for the Party in Youngstown, Ohio. One of the original staff organizers for the Steel Workers Organizing Committee and a leader in the 1937 Little Steel Strike, Steubem was also a frequent contributor to the Daily Worker. He wrote two books now long forgotten but highly regarded at their publication: Labor in Wartime (1940) and Strike Strategy (1950). He served with the US Army in the Southwest Pacific before returning to his post as Secretary-Treasurer of the New York Hotel Front Service Employees Union Local 144. Disillusioned in the wake of Khrushchev’s revelations and the Hungarian Revolution, Stueben left the Communist movement in 1956. He died of heart failure on May 9, 1957.

De Caux, Len. Labor Radical: From the Wobblies to CIO. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971.

Steuben, John. Strike Strategy. New York: Gaer Associates, 1950.