The New Leader

The New Leader was a socialist magazine which ran from 1924 until 2010 (2006 to 2010 were online only). It was the first to publish Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr.

Speech Relevance[edit]

From Encroaching Control:

A socialist clergyman, writing in 1927, in The New Leader, the socialist magazine of that day, called for a new strategy of the American socialist party. He said they must infiltrate government and put men in government jobs and then he said we must work for government ownership of power, government control of railroads and banking and key industries. And he said we'll call our program, Encroaching Control.

The New Leader's website only contains archives of the online issues, nothing back as far as 1927. In 2006, Columbia University acquired the full archives of the newspaper.

In Ronald Reagan: The Notes, a book compiling many of the notecards Reagan wrote over his career, we find the following:

1927, Rev. Rauschenbusch "New Leader," Official Soc. Paper

The [American] people will never knowingly stage a revolution to bring about socialism. So we should promote the idea of increased [government] control of business & having Socialists get [government] jobs. One man in [government] with his eyes and ears open can do more than a hundred men on the outside. They must work to promote more [government] control of banks, [rail roads] and other businesses; to start a program of [government] control of [electric] power and work for [political] control and management of all key industries. (It didn't bother the [Reverend] that people who wouldn't knowingly vote for [Socialism] should have it forced on them).
(page 45)

Another Reagan speech, 'Business, Ballots and Bureaus' from May 1959, confirms this:

In 1927 the Socialist Raushenbush, writing in the official socialist paper, the "New Leader," urged his fellow socialists to recognize they could not hope for revolution in America. He therefore offered a new program for promoting socialism by increasing government control of business. He called his program "encroaching control."

The Raushenbush in question is H. Stephen Raushenbush, though Reagan appears to have confused him with his father, Reverend Walter Rauschenbusch, who was also Socialist and a proponent of the Social Gospel. Walter Rauschenbusch passed away in 1918 and could not have written the 1927 article.

Stephen Raushenbush, however, was alive. The July 27, 1950 edition of the Lawrence Journal-World of Lawrence Kansas contains an article entitled "Jaycees President Preparing Program to Present in City" which discusses Raushenbush and his feeling that "One good man with his eyes, ears and wits about him inside the Department of Interior or Treasury Department (of the U.S.) can do more to perfect the technique of control over industry (one of the basic communist tenets) than 100 men on the outside."

Raushenbush indeed wrote articles in consecutive March 1927 issues of The New Leader entitled "Cataclysmic Socialism or Encroaching Control?" and "Program of Gradual Socialisation of Industry" however, the quotes presented by Reagan and by the Kansas article are not present in either.