Louis Miller

Louis E. Miller (born Efim Samuilovich Bandes; April 1866 – May 22, 1927) was a Lithuanian-born Jewish-American newspaper publisher, writer, and political activist who emigrated to the United States of America in 1884. A trade union organizer and newspaper editor, Miller is best remembered as a founding editor of Di Arbeiter Tsaytung (The Workers' Newspaper), the first Yiddish-language weekly published in America, and a co-founder with Abraham Cahan of the Jewish Daily Forward, the country's first and foremost Yiddish-language daily.

After leaving the Forward in 1905 due to editorial differences with Cahan, Miller established a Yiddish daily newspaper of his own, Di Warheit (The Truth), which attained a measure of success until its readership was shattered with the coming of World War I.

Biography

Early years

Efim Samuilovich Bandes was born to a Jewish family in April 1866 in Vilna (today's Vilnius, Lithuania), then part of the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire. While barely a teenager, Efim (who later took the name Louis Miller) and his older brother joined a revolutionary circle headed by Aaron Zundelevich, seeking the overthrow of the antisemitic Tsarist regime in Russia.

This revolutionary career in imperial Russia was quickly short-circuited by the Tsarist secret police, however, with study circle leader Kundelevich arrested for his political offenses in 1879. To avoid a similar fate, the Bandes brothers were forced to flee the country, briefly living in a series of European metropolises that included Zurich, Berlin, and Paris.

Emigration to America

Efim Bandes arrived in New York City in 1884 and soon took on a new Americanized name, Louis Miller. Miller worked for a time in one of the city's sweatshops, an experience which would later move him towards trade union activity. The Workers Union maintained a significant library of political reading material and conducted meetings which delved into Russian current events and various social questions of the day.

Despite its name, the Russian Workers Union was a cloistered group of intellectuals with few contents to the actual working class — a fact which led to dissatisfaction among some members of the group.

Another organization quickly followed, the Russian-Jewish Workingmen's Association, the name of which made explicit the ethnic composition of the Russian émigré community in America. Miller was active in this organization, as well as its direct successor formed through merger, the Jewish Workingmen's Association.

In 1890, Miller joined with Philip Krantz and Abraham Cahan in launching Di Arbeiter Tsaytung (The Workers' Newspaper), the first socialist newspaper published in the United States in the Yiddish language. He demonstrated a firm and unshakable commitment to the ideas of socialism and could move a crowd to loud applause with his aggressive rhetoric allayed against capitalist exploiters and other enemies of the socialist cause.

Artistic writing

Miller did not limit himself to political journalism, venturing into the writing of Yiddish language plays and poetry, and venturing into the field of theatrical criticism.

Split with Cahan

In 1905 Miller and Cahan developed political and philosophical differences and parted company, with Cahan assuming full editorial control of the Forward while Miller resigned to launch his own daily Yiddish newspaper, Di Warheit (The Truth). Towards this end in 1911 Miller made an extensive trip to Palestine, interviewing public figures and writing of his experiences for readers of his newspaper in America. This position dramatically impacted the circulation of Di Warheit as his anti-Russian readers defected from the ranks of subscribers.

Death and legacy

Miller died of heart disease in New York City on May 22, 1927, following an illness lasting one week. He was 61 years old at the time of his death.

Footnotes