Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company

American publishing house

The Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company is an American publishing company. The company was established in Chicago, Illinois, in 1886 as Charles H. Kerr & Co. by Charles Hope Kerr, originally to promote his Unitarian views. As Kerr's personal interests moved from religion to populism to Marxism and he became interested in the labor movement, the company's publications took a similar turn. During the 1920s Kerr ceded control of the firm to the Proletarian Party of America, which continued the imprint as its official publishing house throughout its four decades of organized existence. Control moved again during the decade of the 1960s, this time to a circle of Chicago radicals with close affinity to the ideas of the Industrial Workers of the World, who gave the company its current operating moniker. The Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company remains in operation in the second decade of the 21st century, making it the oldest radical book publisher in America. The Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company continues to publish books. Its most recent is Make Love, Not War: Surrealism 1968!, with essays by Penelope Rosemont, Don LaCoss and Michael Lowy.

In March 1878 a magazine called Unity had been launched by liberal supporter of the Western Unitarian Conference. The wing of the Unitarian movement represented by the new semi monthly magazine argued that personal character rather than literal belief in a body of written dogma marked the true "test and essence of religion." A monthly magazine called Unitarian was established in January 1886 in an attempt to combat the ideas of the "Unity men" — who were seen as undermining Christianity in favor of what was characterized as a new "Ethical Culture." As the controversy between the dissident "ethical" Unitarians and the more conservative "doctrinal" church mainstream heated up, the former felt the need for centralized and expeditious publication of books and other materials reflecting their views. The Georgia born Charles Hope Kerr, a young man born in 1860 who had joined the staff at Unity magazine in the middle 1880s, obliged by establishing in Chicago in 1886 a publishing house for the "Unity men" called "Charles H. Kerr & Co." The Unity men aspired to promote a sound relationship between the emerging evolutionary science of the day and enlightened religious belief — or, as Kerr himself put it, "a religion that is rational and a rationalism that is religious." The flagship of the fledgling Kerr & Co. was production of the magazine Unity itself although a literary journal called The University was also briefly issued before being subsumed. In addition to books and magazines, the early Charles H. Kerr & Co. produced an array of pamphlets and hymnals for use of a network of "Unity Clubs" established around the country. Topics explored included comparative religion, advanced biblical criticism, evolutionary science, and history. The company maintained this orientation for approximately seven years before making a turn to more temporal themes of economics, politics, and sociology. Stockholders were not paid dividends and were offered no promise of increased valuation, but rather were allowed to purchase Kerr publications at a deep discount off cover price. While not a lucrative business model, this promise of cheap socialist literature made the purchase of Kerr stock extremely attractive to locals of the Social Democratic Party of America and its immediate successor, the Socialist Party of America. Kerr was noted for his translation from the French of the radical workers' movement anthem, "The Internationale;" his version became the English words sung in the United States (although a different, anonymous English translation is sung in Britain and Ireland). Kerr's version was widely circulated in the IWW's Little Red Songbook. In 1906 Kerr published the first volume of Karl Marx's Das Kapital. Kerr & Co. followed this effort with the publication of volumes 2 and 3 of Capital, making use of original translations made by ISR editorial staff member Ernest Untermann and thus becoming the first publisher of this material in the world in the English language. In addition to the first English edition of Marx's Das Kapital, Kerr also published the first English edition of Friedrich Nietzsche's 'Human All Too Human' in 1908, translated by Alexander Harvey, a Belgian born American journalist.

in 1908, publisher Charles H. Kerr, unhappy with what he perceived the scholastic and overly theoretical bent of International Socialist Review, dismissed editor Simons and himself took over the publication's editorial role, assisted by the capable radical Mary Marcy. Reflecting Kerr's own increasingly radical politics, the magazine's political line moved further to the left wing of the socialist movement, with new emphasis given to current events in the strike movement and the activity of the Industrial Workers of the World. The magazine also soon changed in form, making increased use of graphics for the illustration of rather shorter articles printed on glossier paper stock. Although a somewhat polarizing decision, alienating the moderate wing of the Socialist Party, ISR's circulation and influence grew significantly in the years following these changes. During World War I, the US government denied mailing privileges to all Kerr publications, alleging them to be seditious violations of the Espionage Act of 1917. The ban dealt a fatal blow to the ISR, never a profitable publication in the best of times. In Canada a 1918 Order in Council of the Canadian government made it illegal for any Canadian to possess any literature published by Charles H. Kerr & Co., under penalty of a $5,000 fine or five years' imprisonment.

Immediately after the war, Charles Kerr came into close contact with the Scottish born Detroit radical John Keracher through the latter's "Proletarian University" movement and its need for Marxist literature. In 1920, Keracher took a faction out of the underground Communist Party of America and established a small rival organization, the Proletarian Party of America (PPA). Keracher became a member of the Kerr Board of the Directors in 1924 and in 1928 Charles Kerr sold him the bulk of his controlling shares in the firm. Thereafter, the Proletarian Party controlled the operations of Kerr & Co., publishing a number of Keracher's works, including How the Gods Were Made (1929), Producers and Parasites (1935), The Head Fixing Industry (1935), Crime: Its Causes and Consequences (1937), and Frederick Engels (1946). Owing to poor finances and the small size of the organization, comparatively few additional Kerr titles were ever published by the PPA, although the backlist of the company was no doubt invaluable in maintaining the tiny organization's solvency.

Following the departure of the Proletarian Party from the scene in the 1960s, Charles H. Kerr & Co. was kept alive by a group of midwestern radicals close to the IWW under its new moniker, Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co. Among this group was Fred W. Thompson, Joseph Giganti, Virgil J. Vogel, and Burt Rosen. Among their major publications were the “Haymarket Scrapbook” Edited by David Roediger and Franklin Rosemont” and the “Big Red Songbook” an anthology of essays and songs of the Wobblies edited by folklorist Archie Green, et al. Today, the Company advertises "Subversive literature for the whole family since 1886."

Unity magazine. The New Time magazine. (1897–1899). International Socialist Review.

The International Library of Social Science, started at the beginning of 1906 was a collection of volumes described as "positively indispensable to the student of socialism." Each volume cost +NumberTitleAuthor1The Changing OrderOscar Lovell Triggs2Better World PhilosophyJ. Howard Moore3The Universal KinshipJ. Howard Moore4Principles of Scientific SocialismCharles H. Vail5Some of the Philosophical Essays of Joseph DietzgenJoseph Dietzgen6Essays on the Materialist Conception of HistoryAntonio Labriola7Love's Coming of AgeEdward Carpenter8Looking Forward: A Treatise on the Status of Woman, etc. Philip Rappaport9The Positive Outcome of PhilosophyJoseph Dietzgen10Socialism and PhilosophyAntonio Labriola11The Physical Basis of Man and MoralsM. H. Fitch12Revolutionary Essays in Socialist Faith and FancyPeter E. Burrowes13Marxian EconomicsErnest Untermann14The Rise of the American ProletariatAustin Lewis15The Theoretical System of Karl MarxLouis B. Boudin16Landmarks of Scientific Socialism: Anti DuehringFriedrich Engels17The Republic, a Modern DialogN. P. Andresen18God and My NeighborRobert Blatchford19The Common Sense of SocialismJohn Spargo20Socialism and Modern ScienceEnrico Ferri21Industrial ProblemsN. A. Richardson22The Poverty of PhilosophyKarl Marx