Top of page

Notice
Monday, February 16, 2026: For the President's Day holiday, The Library will open under normal operating hours.
Chronicling America
National Endowment for the Humanities

Newspaper The Milwaukee Leader (Milwaukee, Wis.) 1911-1938

View All Front Pages

About The Milwaukee Leader (Milwaukee, Wis.) 1911-1938

The Milwaukee Leader was a daily newspaper with a Socialist and labor focus that ran from 1911-1938. The paper was established by longtime newspaper editor Victor Berger, who published German-language socialist newspapers such as Vorwärts and had recently been elected the first Socialist member of Congress. An English-language Socialist newspaper had been his dream for decades and was created at the height of the Socialists’ power in Milwaukee, when they held the mayoralty and several city offices. The party’s publishing arm, The Social Democratic Publishing Company, had already funded several Socialist papers and in the wake of its victories the English Leader was a natural next step. Unlike its predecessors, the paper functioned less as a party organ and more of a general daily that presented an alternative to capitalist papers. It had a women’s page, sports and comics sections, advertisements, but its Socialist leanings were clear in its editorials.

During WWI, the paper advocated for US non-intervention and called for peace, which its many German American readers approved of, but also angered President Woodrow Wilson. His postmaster general revoked the Leader’s mailing privileges in October 1917, banning it from the US Mail. The paper’s offices were raided, its subscriber rolls seized, and in 1919 Berger was sentenced to prison under the Espionage Act. But the paper kept running; carriers delivered it throughout Milwaukee County without skipping a single issue until the mailing privileges were restored in June 1921. Berger was still listed as editor, but Meta Berger, his wife, and associate editors E.H. Thomas, Oscar Ameringer, and John M. Work were responsible for the paper’s operations—roles they continued after Berger’s conviction was overturned and he returned to Congress.

After Berger lost re-election in 1928, he resumed hands-on editing of the Leader. By then, the paper was running a massive deficit: Berger convinced the Socialist Party to purchase most of his shares, securing funding for a few more years. He arranged to resign as editor-in-chief and was preparing to step down when in July 1929, he was struck by a streetcar, dying a few weeks later. A succession of editors took over the paper, including Work, but none for more than a few years.

The Leader struggled following Berger’s death, due as much to the general poverty of labor papers as to the Great Depression. In 1938, the newspaper was sold to Paul Holmes, who changed the title to the New Milwaukee Leader and gradually distanced it from its socialist roots. Holmes changed the title again in 1939 to the Milwaukee Evening Post, attempting to pick up readers from the recently ended Hearst paper of the same name, but sales continued to falter, and later that year he sold the Leader to the city’s largest union: the Milwaukee Federated Trades Council. The MFTC changed the name once more to the Milwaukee Post and funded it for a few more years, but even the paper’s dedicated employees could not save it from collapse. In 1942, Milwaukee’s first and last socialist daily ended.

Provided By: Wisconsin Historical Society

About this Newspaper

Title

  • The Milwaukee Leader (Milwaukee, Wis.) 1911-1938

Dates of Publication

  • 1911-1938

Created / Published

  • Milwaukee, Wis. : Milwaukee Social-Democratic Pub. Co., 1911-1938.

Headings

Genre

  • Newspapers

Notes

  • -  Daily (except Sunday)
  • -  Vol. 1, no. 1 (Dec. 7, 1911)-v. 27, no. 113 (Apr. 19, 1938).
  • -  Barred from the mails Oct. 3-5, 1917. Cf. Gregory, Amer. newspapers.
  • -  Also issued on microfilm from UMI.
  • -  New Milwaukee leader (Milwaukee, Wis. : 1938) (DLC)sn 86072091

Medium

  • 27 volumes ; 59 cm

Call Number/Physical Location

  • Newspaper

Library of Congress Control Number

  • sn83045293

OCLC Number

  • 2251739

Succeeding Titles

Additional Metadata Formats

Availability

Rights & Access

The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety. Any newspapers in Chronicling America that were published less than 95 years ago are also believed to be in the public domain, but may contain some copyrighted third party materials. Researchers using newspapers published less than 95 years ago should be alert for modern content (for example, registered and renewed for copyright and published with notice) that may be copyrighted. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

The NEH awardee responsible for producing each digital object is presented in the Chronicling America page display, below the page image – e.g. Image produced by the Library of Congress. For more information on current NDNP awardees, see https://aj.sunback.homes/ndnp/listawardees.html.

For more information on Library of Congress policies and disclaimers regarding rights and reproductions, see https://aj.sunback.homes/homepage/legal.html

Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

The Milwaukee Leader Milwaukee, Wis. -1938. (Milwaukee, WI), Jan. 1 1911. https://aj.sunback.homes/item/sn83045293/.

APA citation style:

(1911, January 1) The Milwaukee Leader Milwaukee, Wis. -1938. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://aj.sunback.homes/item/sn83045293/.

MLA citation style:

The Milwaukee Leader Milwaukee, Wis. -1938. (Milwaukee, WI) 1 Jan. 1911. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, aj.sunback.homes/item/sn83045293/.