Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

Periodicals for a long time remained the only carriers of printed Yiddish. The intellectuals were quick to seize the opportunities of free speech and to make liberal use of them for the spread of radical doctrines. The Yiddische Gazetten, started as early as 1874, was typical of the inferior kind of Yiddish periodicals. A semi-rabbinical, vulgar makeshift, printed in a jargon abounding in Talmudical Hebrew and spurious German, it had no programme, no spiritual physiognomy, and ministered to the coarser tastes of the masses. The Arbeiter Zeitung was representative of the better class. It was a strictly socialist organ and stood unflinchingly by its ideals. Launched as a weekly in 1890 by a number of Jewish workmen socialists under the editorship of J. Rombro (Philip Krantz) and a year later taken under the direction of the gifted and versatile Abraham Cahan, it at once became the rallying point for the best intellectual forces the Jewish immigrants had in America. Names now illustrious in Yiddish literature-Abraham Cahan, Philip Krantz, David Pinski, Z. Libin, L. Kobrin, B. Gorin, Morris Rosenfeld, and others — are intimately connected with the history of the Arbeiter Zeitung and later with the daily Abend Blatt and the monthly Zukunft.

Financially these periodicals, and their editors, led a handto-mouth existence, but they carried their banner high.¹ Although the avowed purpose of such periodicals was to carry socialism to the masses, the necessity of a wider scope was soon recognized, and men like Abraham Cahan and Philip Krantz forced a widening of the field of interest and discussion. In the first issue of the Zukunft (January, 1892), the leading article avowed that ‘we can really express our programme in three words: we are Social Democrats.’ But . . . ‘we shall also give stories, poems, and art criticism; for we hold that art educates and refines the man, and we shall combine, so to speak, the pleasant with the useful.’ The issue contained A biography of Karl Marx by Morris Hillquit; God, Religion, and morality by Philip Krantz; The growth of the proletariat in America by Prof. Daniel De Leon; Elections in Germany by Herman Schluter; the first of a series of articles on Darwinism by Abraham