Labor Age

Labor Age magazine, launched in 1921, was closely connected with the personality of A. J. Muste of Brookwood Labor College.

Labor Age was a left-labor monthly magazine published by the Labor Publication Society from 1921-1933. It succeeded the Socialist Review, journal of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. Labor Age advocated industrial unionism, economic planning, and workers' education (especially the activities of Brookwood Labor College). It reported extensively on innovative tactics for organizing nonunion workers in mass production industries, identifying tactics that would become standard procedure for union organizers in the 1930s and 1940s. Important figures associated with Labor Age were A. J. Muste, James Maurer, Harry W. Laidler, Fannia Cohn, and Louis Budenz.

In May 1929, the editors of Labor Age helped to form the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) in order to counter what they considered growing pro-business tendencies in the American Federation of Labor. In 1932, the CPLA voted to supplement the monthly Labor Age with a daily newspaper called Labor Action, however Labor Age ceased publication after the February-March 1933 issue.

Further reading

• Jon Bloom and Paul Buhle, "Intercollegiate Socialist Society and Successors," in Encyclopedia of the American Left. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990; pp. 362-363.