Julius Augustus Wayland (April 26, 1854 – November 10, 1912) was a Midwestern US socialist during the Progressive Era. He is most noted for publishing '' Appeal to Reason'', a socialist publication often deemed to be the most important socialist periodical of the time.Julius Wayland.
Spartacus Educational, May 12, 2007.

Early life

Julius Wayland was born in Versailles, Indiana, on April 26, 1854. As an infant, his father and four of his siblings died in a

cholera Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by some strains of the bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea that lasts a few days. Vomiting and ...

epidemic. His early years were spent in abject poverty and he was forced to find work after only two years of schooling. He then apprenticed to a printer in his home town.

Career

Wayland became owner of the ''Versailles Gazette'' in 1874. As a result of reading books such as Laurence Gronlund's ''The Cooperative Commonwealth'' and Edward Bellamy's '' Looking Backward'', Wayland became a socialist. His writings created tensions with home-town conservatives and he fled Versailles to avoid lynching. Moving to Pueblo, Colorado, before 1886
/ref>, Wayland started a radical periodical, after being radicalized by pamphlets given to him by a
Italian cobbler
''The Coming Nation'', which quickly became the most popular socialist newspaper in America. At this point, he helped found a utopian settlement, the

Ruskin Colony The Ruskin Colony (or Ruskin Commonwealth Association) was a utopian socialist colony which existed near Tennessee City in Dickson County, Tennessee from 1894 to 1896. The colony moved to a slightly more permanent second settlement on an old f ...

in Dickson County, Tennessee. In July 1895, he left Ruskin and moved to

Kansas City, Missouri Kansas City (abbreviated KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090 in 2020, making it the 36th most-populous city in the United States. It is the central ...

, where in August 1895, he started another socialist journal, ''Appeal to Reason''. Then, in 1897, he moved to Girard, Kansas. At first a mixture of articles and extracts from works by well-known socialists and radicals, ''Appeal to Reason'' began to publish writings by many of the prominent young socialists and reformers of the era, including Jack London, "Mother" Jones, Upton Sinclair, and Eugene Debs. Circulation soared, reaching 150,000 in 1902. In 1904, ''Appeal to Reason'' commissioned Upton Sinclair to write a

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

about immigrant workers in the Chicago meatpacking houses. Sinclair's novel, titled '' The Jungle'', appeared in 1905 as a serial in ''Appeal to Reason''.

Personal life and death

With his first wife Etta Bevan (1858–1898) and second wife Pearl Hunt (1871–1911), Wayland resided in a historic house in Girard. With Despite being a socialist, he became a millionaire. During the night of June 8, 1911, the 57-year old Wayland, his 39-year old wife Pearl Hunt Wayland, and a family friend and her child, were returning to the Wayland residence after an evening's drive."Terrible Automobile Accident: Mrs. J.A. Wayland Killed Last Thursday Night,"
''Girard Press,'' June 15, 1911, p. 1. With J.A. at the wheel, speed was increased to about 20 miles per hour as the car headed home. Tragically, due to mechanical failure the steering wheel became disengaged from the steering shaft and the car slammed into a telephone pole, ejecting Mrs. Wayland, who suffered severe injuries to her head and torso. Pearl Wayland was taken home and a doctor called, but she died of her injuries about five hours later. Wayland committed suicide by shooting himself with a gun on November 10, 1912 in his Girard home. He had been depressed by the recent death of his wife, his failure to convince a majority of Americans of the merits of socialism, and the

smear campaign A smear campaign, also referred to as a smear tactic or simply a smear, is an effort to damage or call into question someone's reputation, by propounding negative propaganda. It makes use of discrediting tactics. It can be applied to individual ...

mounted against him by the conservative press. Afterward, his children and the ''Appeal to Reason'' editor Fred Warren successfully sued for damages from newspapers that had published libelous material about Wayland.

Works

''Leaves of Life: A Story of Twenty Years of Socialist Agitation.''
Girard, KS: Appeal to Reason, 1912.

Early life

Career

Personal life and death

Works

References

Further reading