Il Proletario [The Worker]. Chicago: Industrial Workers of the World, 1923-1924.
Title
Il Proletario [The Worker]. Chicago: Industrial Workers of the World, 1923-1924.
Description
The I.W.W. Italian language newspaper, Il Proletario, has a glorious and lengthy history of many decades and almost unique importance in the Italian American non-anarchist left.
It was started by Italian socialists in 1896 in Pittburgh, and soon moved to Paterson, NJ, and was directed, edited or published at various times and in various other locations - Chicago, New York, Boston, Brooklyn - by Camillo Cianfara, Giacinto Menotti Serrati, Carlo Tresca, Mario De Ciampis, Arturo Giovannitti, Angelo Faggi, Giuseppe Cannata, Arturo Caroti and Edmondo Rossoni, virtually all of whom are important authors in the collection.
Durante provides a detailed and entertaining (though dizzying) discussion of the travails, moves, internal battles, and alliances made and alliances broken (between the I.W.W. and the Federazione Socialista Italiana, for example, but not only) in the newspaper during its half-century of existence from 1896 to 1947. Marcella Bencivenni, as well, discusses this newspaper at some length in Italian Immigrant Radical Culture.
As can be seen in the photo of the May Day issue reproduced here, the masthead is signed “391,” which seems curious until one realizes that this was the name of the French Dada-ist and Surrealist artist Francis Picabia’s magazine published at times in Paris and New York until 1924, and whose design colors were also black, red and white.
The potential connection with this important French artist is further suggested by a famous article by then-editor Rossoni in Il Proletario entitled “liberty and blood,” in which he wrote, “liberty is not just a pretty woman rather, she is a strong woman with strong breasts and a rough voice, with fire in her eyes.” This passage in the Francophile Rossoni’s article was based on a 19th-century French poem by Auguste Barbier, which lauded a symbolic Woman liberty.
The motto of the paper, evident on this page, is “Educazione – organizzazione – emancipazione. Conquistando la fabbrica, conquisteremo il mondo [Education – organization – emancipation. Subduing the factory, we will conquer the world]."
Collection includes:
Il Proletario, Anno 27 - 1923
Il Proletario, Anno 28 - 1924
It was started by Italian socialists in 1896 in Pittburgh, and soon moved to Paterson, NJ, and was directed, edited or published at various times and in various other locations - Chicago, New York, Boston, Brooklyn - by Camillo Cianfara, Giacinto Menotti Serrati, Carlo Tresca, Mario De Ciampis, Arturo Giovannitti, Angelo Faggi, Giuseppe Cannata, Arturo Caroti and Edmondo Rossoni, virtually all of whom are important authors in the collection.
Durante provides a detailed and entertaining (though dizzying) discussion of the travails, moves, internal battles, and alliances made and alliances broken (between the I.W.W. and the Federazione Socialista Italiana, for example, but not only) in the newspaper during its half-century of existence from 1896 to 1947. Marcella Bencivenni, as well, discusses this newspaper at some length in Italian Immigrant Radical Culture.
As can be seen in the photo of the May Day issue reproduced here, the masthead is signed “391,” which seems curious until one realizes that this was the name of the French Dada-ist and Surrealist artist Francis Picabia’s magazine published at times in Paris and New York until 1924, and whose design colors were also black, red and white.
The potential connection with this important French artist is further suggested by a famous article by then-editor Rossoni in Il Proletario entitled “liberty and blood,” in which he wrote, “liberty is not just a pretty woman rather, she is a strong woman with strong breasts and a rough voice, with fire in her eyes.” This passage in the Francophile Rossoni’s article was based on a 19th-century French poem by Auguste Barbier, which lauded a symbolic Woman liberty.
The motto of the paper, evident on this page, is “Educazione – organizzazione – emancipazione. Conquistando la fabbrica, conquisteremo il mondo [Education – organization – emancipation. Subduing the factory, we will conquer the world]."
Collection includes:
Il Proletario, Anno 27 - 1923
Il Proletario, Anno 28 - 1924
Creator
Mario De Ciampis
Publisher
Industrial Workers of the World
Date
1923-1924
Language
Italian
Collection
Citation
Mario De Ciampis, “Il Proletario [The Worker]. Chicago: Industrial Workers of the World, 1923-1924.,” Italian-Language American Imprints: The Periconi Collection, accessed December 12, 2025, https://italianamericanimprints.omeka.net/items/show/468.
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