This article is part of the People’s World 100th Anniversary Series.
People’s World traces its lineage directly to the Daily Worker newspaper, founded in Chicago in 1924 by communists, socialists, union members, and other activists. Here, for the first time since it rolled off the printing press, we republish in full the first article from that inaugural edition.
Written as an editorial, the language is brimming with revolutionary confidence and exudes the determination that the paper’s staff and supporters felt in those heady days. Labor was on the move, workers were organizing in several industries, capitalism appeared to be facing a stormy future, the decay and corruption of the existing political order was becoming apparent to all, and a new socialist society was under construction on the other side of the globe in the Soviet Union.
The article is a product of its time and reflects the mission of Marxist journalists as they saw it in 1924. Much has happened in a century, and the Daily Worker and its successor publications went on to broaden their horizons even further, becoming a tribune for the Black freedom struggle, an organ of the popular front in the fight against fascism, and an advocate in the effort to save “bourgeois” democracy (as limited as it may be) from right-wing threats, and more.
But some things have not changed. People’s World, like the Daily Worker before it, still aspires to instill fear among “big business interests, bankers, merchant princes, landlords, and other profiteers.” It still strives to “raise the standards of struggle against the few who rob and plunder the many.”
The publication has gone through a number of nameplates and mastheads over the years, but that same tradition of fighting, working-class journalism that motivated the founders in 1924 continues. Today, People’s World offers a daily news platform for the broad labor-led people’s movement—a voice for workers, the unemployed, people of color, immigrants, women, youth, seniors, LGBTQ people, cultural workers, students, and people with disabilities.
And it remains, as ever, a voice for a future beyond capitalism—a voice for socialism.
HERE IS “THE DAILY”!
January 13, 1924
In the first issue of the Weekly Worker, Feb 2, 1922, we wrote, “This, the first edition of The Worker, is the advance agent of The Daily Worker.”
Now, in this first issue of The Daily Worker, we join hands with the comrades of the Communist International in declaring that the Daily is but “the forerunner of more revolutionary dailies in other parts of the country.”
Thus, from one advance position, we move forward to another next ahead. The Daily is here, and we turn a new page in the world story of labor’s struggle. Another chapter begins for America’s working class. The first English-language Communist Daily in the world has been realized.
A giant is born! A new voice is raised, battling for the workers and farmers of America, carrying its promise of many more such voices; of many Communist Dailies to come!
Not only in Russia, in Germany, in Italy, in the Scandinavian countries, in Czechoslovakia, in France, in Mexico, and in a host of other lands, but in those countries where the English language dominates as well, the Communist message will now spread daily among the marching, militant hosts of the exploited in the cities and on the land.
The Daily is born! It comes to fight! It comes to inspire and call the many to struggle! The Daily Worker is the voice of the whole working class!
The Daily has already aroused its enemies. The labor lieutenants of the established order, joined with the big business interests, the bankers, the merchant princes, the landlords, and other profiteers, in a declaration of the National Civic Federation, seeking to prejudice the workers against it.
Secretary of State Hughes, at Washington, has translated and published in the subsidized press of this country an article appearing in Moscow, in the press of the Russian workers and farmers, voicing their joy that the English-language Communist Daily in the United States is to be. Thus Hughes seeks to prejudice American labor.
But we have no fears. The bosses have declared The Daily their enemy, even before its first issue appeared. They know they have cause to fear The Daily. They know it will raise the standards of a real struggle against the few who rob and plunder the many, and keep them in submission. They know The Daily is a challenge to the continuance of their ruthless and bandit rule.
We have no fears because we know that the workers and farmers of the United States will rapidly rally in support of The Daily in increased numbers.
The Daily appears in Chicago, but it is the expression of the oppressed workers and farmers of the whole nation. Its daily arrival in the shops, factories, mills, and mines will be cheered by the workers because they will recognize in it their champion. It will be hailed by agonizing tillers of the soil as their powerful weapon against bankers, landlords, and the profiteers in the wealth they produce but do not enjoy.
READ MORE: People’s World 100th Anniversary
The Daily fights for the new Communist order, where all classes will vanish for the first time in the history of civilization. But it also fights for the shorter workday, increased wages to meet the rising cost of living, better working conditions, against child labor, against injunctions and other judicial attacks on the workers, for free speech, free press, free assemblage, against the efforts to divide and crush the foreign and native-born workers, for the liberation of all class-war prisoners and the wiping-out of all anti-labor legislation. The Daily fights for the organization of all labor and the strengthening of its ranks everywhere. It is for the organization of the unorganized and for amalgamation as two powerful weapons to prepare for the coming industrial depression and unemployment immediately ahead.
The Daily raises the slogan, “The land for the users of the land.” Landlordism and tenantry must go. The Daily declares for a moratorium for all working farmers on their debts for a period of five years. It fights against the degradation of working farmers into peonage, against the creation of an American peasantry.
Tremendous struggles confront The Daily! It will not weaken before them! It will grow in the fight because, with each new struggle, new masses of workers and farmers will recognize The Daily as theirs, and they will rally behind it.
The Daily Worker belongs to all who labor.
It is the rich possession of all who toil. Workers! Farmers! Rally to the Daily! Make it strong with the strength of your numbers. Make it powerful through your will to struggle and conquer!
Long live The Daily Worker! Hail the triumph of American Workers and Farmers!
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