Benjamin Stolberg (1891–1951) was an American journalist and labor activist.

Career

Stolberg worked as associate editor of '' The Bookman'', as well as a columnist for leading US newspapers, such as ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' and the ''

New York Herald Tribune The ''New York Herald Tribune'' was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the ''New-York Tribune'' acquired the ''New York Herald''. It was regarded as a "writer's newspaper" and competed ...

. Stolberg was a member of the

American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky The American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky was a pseudo-judicial process set up by :American Trotskyists, American Trotskyists as a front organization following the first of the Moscow Trials. It had no powers of subpoena, nor official i ...

and served on the

Dewey Commission The Dewey Commission (officially the "Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials") was initiated in March 1937 by the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky. It was named after its chairman, the ...

investigating the

Moscow Trials The Moscow trials were a series of show trials held by the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1938 at the instigation of Joseph Stalin. They were nominally directed against "Trotskyists" and members of "Right Opposition" of the Communist Party of th ...

Libel Suit

Stolberg wrote for the ''

Saturday Evening Post ''The Saturday Evening Post'' is an American magazine, currently published six times a year. It was issued weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, then every two weeks until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely c ...

'' – and from 1939 to 1945 he and its publisher, the

Curtis Publishing The Curtis Publishing Company, founded in 1891 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, became one of the largest and most influential publishers in the United States during the early 20th century. The company's publications included the ''Ladies' Home Jour ...

, defended themselves from a libel suit brought against them by Jerome Davis for the September 2, 1939, article "Communist Wreckers in American Labor." Stolberg had called Davis a "Communist and Stalinist." Davis brought on

ACLU The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

co-founder

Arthur Garfield Hays Arthur Garfield Hays (December 12, 1881 – December 14, 1954) was an American lawyer and champion of civil liberties issues, best known as a co-founder and general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union and for participating in notable ca ...

as his lawyer. Stolberg hired

Louis Waldman Louis Waldman (January 5, 1892 – September 12, 1982) was a leading figure in the Socialist Party of America from the late 1910s and through the middle 1930s, a founding member of the Social Democratic Federation, and a prominent New York labo ...

, an "Old Guard" Socialist and anti-communist labor lawyer. The case went before the

New York Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the State of New York is the trial-level court of general jurisdiction in the New York State Unified Court System. (Its Appellate Division is also the highest intermediate appellate court.) It is vested with unlimited civ ...

, with Justice

John F. Carew John Francis Carew (April 16, 1873 – April 10, 1951) was an American lawyer and politician who served eight terms as a U.S. Representative from New York from 1913 to 1929. He was a nephew of Thomas Francis Magner. Biography Born in Williams ...

presiding. On December 4, 1939, Davis brought a $150,000 libel suit in Manhattan against Curtis Publishing and Stolberg. The trial included testimony from

American Federation of Labor The American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States that continues today as the AFL-CIO. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions eager to provide mutu ...

president William Green, former

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by George Williams in London, originally ...

president

Sherwood Eddy George Sherwood Eddy (1871–1963) was a leading American Protestant missionary, administrator and educator. He was a prolific author and indefatigable traveler. His main achievement was to link and finance networks of intellectuals across the glo ...

, Reverend Dr.

Harry Emerson Fosdick Harry Emerson Fosdick (May 24, 1878 – October 5, 1969) was an American pastor. Fosdick became a central figure in the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy within American Protestantism in the 1920s and 1930s and was one of the most prominen ...

and Rabbi

Stephen Samuel Wise Stephen Samuel Wise (March 17, 1874 – April 19, 1949) was an early 20th-century American Reform rabbi and Zionist leader in the Progressive Era. Born in Budapest, he was an infant when his family immigrated to New York. He followed his father ...

of the

American Jewish Congress The American Jewish Congress (AJCongress or AJC) is an association of American Jews organized to defend Jewish interests at home and abroad through public policy advocacy, using diplomacy, legislation, and the courts. History The AJCongress was ...

, former

CPUSA The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...

head

Earl Browder Earl Russell Browder (May 20, 1891 – June 27, 1973) was an American politician, communist activist and leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Browder was the General Secretary of the CPUSA during the 1930s and first half of the 1940s. Duri ...

, former ''Saturday Evening Post'' editor William W. Stout and

American Federation of Teachers The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is the second largest teacher's labor union in America (the largest being the National Education Association). The union was founded in Chicago. John Dewey and Margaret Haley were founders. About 60 perc ...

vice president John D. Connors, AFL vice president

Matthew Woll Matthew Woll (January 25, 1880 – June 1, 1956) was president of the International Photo-Engravers Union of North America from 1906 to 1929, an American Federation of Labor (AFL) vice president from 1919 to 1955 and an AFL-CIO vice president ...

, ''

American Mercury ''The American Mercury'' was an American magazine published from 1924Staff (Dec. 31, 1923)"Bichloride of Mercury."''Time''. to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured wri ...

'' editor

Eugene Lyons Eugene Lyons (July 1, 1898 – January 7, 1985) was an American journalist and writer. A fellow traveler of Communism in his younger years, Lyons became highly critical of the Soviet Union after several years there as a correspondent of United ...

, and

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

president Dr.

Edmund A. Walsh Fr. Edmund Aloysius Walsh, S.J. (October 10, 1885 – October 31, 1956) was an American Jesuit Catholic priest, author, professor of geopolitics and founder of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, the first school for inter ...

. Davis' attorney Hays added $100,000 to the suit. On June 9, 1943, a New York Supreme Court discharged the jury for failing to reach a verdict, and Justice Carew ordered the jury not discuss their deliberations. On June 14, 1943, New York Supreme Court Justice Louis A. Valente denied a second motion for immediate retrial and set October 1, 1943, as date to assign retrial action. Finally, on January 18, 1945, Davis settled with Curtis Publishing and Stolberg in court for $11,000 of his $250,000 libel suit before Supreme Court Justice

Ferdinand Pecora Ferdinand Pecora (January 6, 1882 – December 7, 1971) was an American lawyer and New York State Supreme Court judge who became famous in the 1930s as Chief Counsel to the United States Senate Committee on Banking and Currency during its investi ...

Legacy

Benjamin Stolberg's papers are housed at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Works

Stolberg wrote histories of the labor movement, including: * ''The Economic Consequences of the New Deal'' (1935) * ''Preliminary Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials'' (1937) * ''The Story of the CIO'' (1938) * ''Tailor's Progress: The Story of a Famous Union and the Men Who Made It'' (a history of the

International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), whose members were employed in the women's clothing industry, was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, one of the first U.S. unions to have a primarily female membe ...

) (1944) ** ''Ṿi azoy Sṭolbergs bukh "Teylors progres" zeṭ oys in di oygn fun a ḳloḳmakher'' (

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...

translation) (1944)

References

External sources

Columbia University
* Christopher Phelps, "Heywood Broun, Benjamin Stolberg, and the Politics of American Labor Journalism in the 1920s and 1930s," ''Labor: Studies in Working-Class History,'' vol. 15, no. 1 (March 2018), pp. 25–51. * 1891 births 1951 deaths 20th-century American journalists American male journalists {{US-journalist-19thC-stub