| Labor Defender | |
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| Category: | Communist |
| Frequency: | Monthly |
| Publisher: | International Labor Defense |
| Paid Circulation: | 5,500 |
| Unpaid Circulation: | 16,500 (bundle sales) |
| Circulation Year: | 1928 |
| Total Circulation: | 22,000 |
| Founder: | International Labor Defense |
| Founded: | January 1926 |
| Firstdate: | January 1926 |
| Finaldate: | December 1937 |
| Finalnumber: | Volume 13, No. 11 |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Based: | New York City |
| Language: | English |
Labor Defender (1926–1937) was a magazine published by the International Labor Defense (ILD), itself a legal advocacy organization established in 1925 as the American section of the Comintern's International Red Aid network and thus as support to the Communist Party (which in 1926 was legally the Workers Party of America).[1]
In January 1926, the ILD began publishing Labor Defender, as a monthly, profusely illustrated magazine with a low cover price of 10 cents. Magazine circulation boomed. It rose from some 1,500 paid subscriptions and 8,500 copies in bulk bundle sales in 1927, to some 5,500 paid subscriptions with a bundle sale of 16,500 by mid-1928. This mid-1928 circulation figure was said by Assistant Secretary Marty Abern to be "greater than the combined circulation of The Daily Worker, Labor Unity, and The Communist combined."[2]
Labor Defender depicted a black-and-white world of heroic trade unionists and dastardly factory owners, of oppressed African Americans struggling for freedom against the Ku Klux Klan and the use of state terror to stifle and divide and destroy all opposition.[3] Writers included prominent Communists such as trade union leader William Z. Foster, cartoonist Robert Minor, and Benjamin Gitlow, a former political prisoner in New York., as well as non-party voices like novelist Upton Sinclair, former Wobbly Ralph Chaplin, Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs, and Gavin Arthur, grandson of U.S. President Chester A. Arthur. Between April 1936 and December 1937, Sasha Small, Gavin Arthur, and communist poet Langston Hughes served as editors.
The magazine made a constant plea for additional funds for jailed labor activists across the country. A regular column called "Voices from Prison" highlighted the plight of those behind bars and reinforced the message that good work was being done on the behalf of the so-called "class war prisoners" of America.[4]
The magazine's masthead included:[1]
January–August 1926
September–December 1926
January–November 1928
December 1928
January–April 1929
May–June 1929
July–August 1929
September–December 1929
January–February 1930
March–June 1930
July–December 1930
January–September 1932
October–December 1932
January 1934
February–December 1934
January–June 1935
July–December 1935
January–March 1936
April–May 1936
June–December 1936
January–September 1937
October–December 1937
The magazine also published occasional pamphlets: