Louis E. Miller (1866–1927), born Efim Samuilovich Bandes, was a Russian-Jewish political activist who emigrated to the United States of America in 1884. Atrade union organizer and newspaper editor, Miller is best remembered as a founding editor ofDi Arbeiter Tsaytung (The Workers' Newspaper), the firstYiddish-language weekly published in America, and a co-founder withAbraham Cahan of theJewish Daily Forward, the country's first and foremost Yiddish-language daily.
After leaving theForward 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 ofWorld War I.
Efim Samuilovich Bandes was born to aJewish family in April 1866 inVilna (today's Vilnius, Lithuania), then part of thePale of Settlement of theRussian Empire. While barely a teenager, Efim (who later took the name Louis Miller) and his older brother joined a revolutionary circle headed byAaron Zundelevich, seeking the overthrow of theantisemiticTsarist regime in Russia.[1]
This revolutionary career in imperial Russia was quickly short-circuited by theTsarist secret police, however, with study circle leader Kundelevich arrested for his political offenses in 1879.[2] To avoid a similar fate, the Bandes brothers were forced to flee the country, briefly living in a series of European metropolises that includedZurich,Berlin, andParis.[3]
Efim Bandes arrived inNew York City in 1884 and soon took on a new Americanized name, Louis Miller. Miller worked for a time in one of the city'ssweatshops, an experience which would later move him towardstrade union activity.[3]
Miller immediately joined the fledgling Russian Workers Union (Russian:Russkii Rabochii Soiuz;Yiddish:Rusisher Arbayter Fareyn) that had emerged in the city around this time, thereby making contact with a number of leading Jewish left wing political activists of the day, including Nicholas Aleinikoff (founder of the group), writer and journalistAbraham Cahan,Gregory Weinstein, trade union activistLeon Malkiel, and future journalistVictor Jarros.[4] 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.[5]
Despite its name, the Russian Workers Union was a cloistered group of intellectuals with few contents to the actualworking class — a fact which led to dissatisfaction among some members of the group.[5] Late in 1884 the organization split, with Cahan an Miller taking the lead in organizing a new organization called the Russian Labor Lyceum, an entity which presented public speakers with the aim of improving the educational level and political understanding of Russian-speaking workers in New York.[3] Cahan and Miller both used their access to the rostrum of these political lectures to hone their oratorical skills, additionally making contact with prominent Socialist leaders of the day, including the German-speaking journalistAlexander Jonas and exiled noblemanSergei Schevitsch.[5] As was the case with the Russian Workers Union, membership of the Russian Labor Lyceum remained by and large limited to intellectuals and the group's activities ultimately proved largely ineffective.[6]
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.[6] Rather than conducting its meetings and discussions in Russian, this new organization made use of the common language of the Jewish working class,Yiddish.[6] For the first time, participants in this organization included not only radical intellectuals but also common workers from Russia and various nations ofCentral Europe, united across national boundaries by their common tongue.[7] Miller was active in this organization, as well as its direct successor formed through merger, the Jewish Workingmen's Association.[7]
The Jewish Workingmen's Association maintained close contact with the German language socialist movement, including the fledglingNew Yorker Volkszeitung (New York People's Newspaper) and the United German Trades labor federation.[7] In July 1886 the organization voted to join the host organization of the German movement, theSocialist Labor Party of America, thereby bringing together socialist German and Russian-Jewish activists in a unified organization.[7]
Miller was also involved in the launch of aRussian language newspaper,Znania (The Banner) in 1889, co-editing the paper for more than a year.[3] Miller was joined in his work at the paper by his brother, Lev Bandes, but the latter died soon after the launch of the publication, leaving Miller alone in the new world.[8]
In 1890, Miller joined withPhilip Krantz and Abraham Cahan in launchingDi Arbeiter Tsaytung (The Workers' Newspaper), the firstsocialist newspaper published in the United States in theYiddish language.[3] This turn to Yiddish journalism — the daily language of a great percentage of the Jewish immigrant working class — would be met with success and in 1897 he joined with Cahan in establishing a Yiddish socialist daily,Forverts (The Jewish Daily Forward).[3]
Miller was a popular writer and a talented public speaker, regarded as one of the best in New York's Jewish left wing milieu.[9] 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.[9]
Miller was a delegate to the June 1898 convention of theSocial Democracy of America and together withMorris Winchevsky,Meyer London was part of the minority group favoring political action rather than colonization that bolted the gathering to form theSocial Democratic Party of America (SDP). He was the SDP's candidate for the New York state legislature in the 4th Assembly District in November 1898.[10]
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.[3] He also worked as a translator, renderingThe Civil War in France byKarl Marx[9] and the poetry ofWalt Whitman into Yiddish.[11]
In 1905 Miller and Cahan developed political and philosophical differences and parted company, with Cahan assuming full editorial control of theForward while Miller resigned to launch his own daily Yiddish newspaper,Di Warheit (The Truth).[3] Miller and Cahan waged editorial war against one another, with Miller more than holding his own in the contest.[3]
Whereas Cahan's perspective expressed by theForward was socialist andinternationalist, Miller came to outspokenly support the ideas ofZionism — belief in the necessity of establishment in theMiddle East of a Jewish national homeland.[12] Towards this end in 1911 Miller made an extensive trip toPalestine, interviewing public figures and writing of his experiences for readers of his newspaper in America.[12]
During the years ofWorld War I, Miller took what was for his Jewish readership the controversial position of support of theEntente allies against Germany — the Allies including among them the hated Tsarist Russian regime.[13] This position dramatically impacted the circulation ofDi Warheit as his anti-Russian readers defected from the ranks of subscribers.[13]
Miller died of heart disease in New York City on May 22, 1927, following an illness lasting one week.[13] He was 61 years old at the time of his death.
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