"Muckracker" John Spargo

John Spargo 

The Progressive Era marked a change  in many different aspects of American Society that had become normalized since the industrial revolution. John Spargo was born on January 31, 1876 in Cornwal England. Spargo was self-taught and was enrolled in two courses provided by the Oxford Extension Program from 1894 to 1895. In 1895 he worked with his father: Thomas Spargo, on the Barry Docks South in Wales as a Stonemason (person who creates buildings or structures from stones). 

By 1896 he had created the first local Hyndman’s Social Democratic Federation (SDF) assuming membership role of the National Executive Committee , he was part of the Barry Trades and Labor Council  while becoming editor of the Barry Herald. John Spargo and his wife Prudence Spargo arrived in America in 1901.  He joined the Socialist labor party (SLP) and took on the roe of editor in the Socialist Magazine the Comrade. The New York SLP joined with the Social Democratic Party of American in order to create the Socialist Party of America (SPA). He helped create the Rand School of Social Science and was the co-founder of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS). 

Spargo was an advocate for Children's Rights, in his works The Bitter Cry of the Children (1905), Underfed School Children (1906), and The Common Sense of the Milk Question (1908) he stressed his opinions that children need to be fed through state-funded programs. But more importantly that children should not be forced to work in horrible and unsanitary conditions.

Some of John Spargo's Works

John Spargo, The Bitter Cry of Children (New York: Macmillan, 1906), 163-165.John Spargo Excerpt: The Bitter Cry of Chidren

 John Spargo, Karl Marx (1910). Biography on Karl Marx

John Spargo, Applied Socialism (1912). Applied Soicalism

John Spargo, The Psychology of Bolshevism (1919). The Psychology of Bolhevism