John L. Spivak
Encyclopedia
John Louis Spivak an American socialist and later communist reporter and author, wrote about the problems of the working class, racism, and the spread of fascism and anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States. Most of his writings date from the 1920s and 1930s. He lived under a pseudonym during the 1950s and 1960s, emerging again to publish his autobiography in 1967 and work as a journalist in the 1970s.
.
He was attracted to leftist ideas in his teenage years and later wrote that writing was "more to me than just a trade I liked; it was a weapon." He claimed he never joined the Communist Party. In his 1967 autobiography, he described how the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact temporarily shook his faith in the Soviet Union as the guardian of radical ideals until he decided that the Soviet Union's survival justified it.
Along with many of his contemporaries, Spivak experimented with new forms of reporting in which the reporter appeared in his stories as an investigator and witness, drawing the reader into his experience. He used the "exposé quotation" technique to underscore differences between his subject's words and actions and presented himself as a confrontational interviewer. He dramatized his own research efforts and search for facts on the reader's behalf. He also admitted his political prejudices so as to disarm the reader's objections to his lack of objectivity. The foremost student of 1930s journalism recognized his achievement: "A large share of the period's exposé s were his."
Though he cited opposition to fascism as his primary motivation as a journalist, Spivak cooperated with the Soviet KGB
in the 1930s, perhaps from as early as 1932. KGB reports indicated that the Soviets particularly valued information he obtained from sources at U.S. Congressional committees. He obtained material that included details about the German government's financing and sponsorship of Nazi activity in the U.S. as well as documents related to munitions and chemical weapons research. The KGB also used Spivak as a source of information about Trotskyites
, its ideological enemies on the left. The KGB appears to have changed its mind about his usefulness more than once, so Spivak's relationship to the KGB was intermittent for more than a decade.
, and The Call
, the paper of the American Socialist Party. His first major story came when he covered the Battle of Matewan
in West Virginia. He then served briefly as a reporter and bureau chief in Berlin
and Moscow
for the International News Service
. Upon his return to the United States, he became a feature writer for leftist newspapers and magazines such as the Communist Party USA's Daily Worker
, Ken, and the New Masses.
In 1930, in a case known as the "Whalen Papers," Spivak used his position as a journalist on behalf of the Soviet Union. When documents detailing Soviet propaganada efforts came into the possession of the New York City Police Department, Spivak quickly demonstrated they were forgeries. Only years later did it transpire that the documents were supplied by the Soviets so that Spivak, alert to the scheme, could discredit them and thereby undermine Congressional efforts to investigate Communist propaganda in the United States.
Spivak traveled throughout the South in the early 1930s interviewing prison camp officials and photographing camp practices and punishment records. His novel, Georgia Nigger, depicting the brutality of peonage labor and chain gangs, was serialized several newspapers, including the Daily Worker
and the Des Moines Tribune
. Soon after it appeared in 1932, an academic study called it "a second Uncle Tom's Cabin, an indictment of peonage and convict-labor in Georgia, powerful enough to put to shame all the rhapsodists of the folk Negro's happy state." Another reviewer thought it posed "a moral challenge" but disliked its exaggerations and the author's "superciliousness." The book carried an appendix with photographs and documents designed to document the novel's descriptions of torture. "Thus his novel," wrote one reviewer, "in addition to the dramatic force of an interesting and well-told story, has the weight and authority of a sociological investigation." Just a few weeks after the book appeared, Spivak testified with other experts on the Georgia penal system in a successful attempt to persuade New Jersey Governor A. Harry Moore
to refuse to extradite a fugitive from a Georgia chain gang.
In 1934, some of Spivak's New Masses articles on anti-Semitism in the U.S. were reprinted as a 93-page pamphlet called Plotting America's Pogroms.
His 1935 exposé in the communist party's New Masses charged a congressional committee with deliberately suppressing evidence of an offer made to retired Marine General Smedley D. Butler by Wall Street Jewish financiers (in cooperation with Nazi Germany) to lead a military coup against the U.S. government and replace it with a fascist regime. Butler was supposedly, "offered $3,000,000 to organize a fascist army with a promise of $300,000,000 more if it became necessary."
Most of Spivak's work, however, was dedicated to supporting communism, exposing capitalism, fascism and underground Nazi spy groups in Central America, Europe, and the U.S. In March 1935, the last issue of the American Spectator
gave its award for "best reporting" to Spivak for his articles in New Masses on Nazi and anti-Semitic activity in the U.S.
Spivak announced the thesis of America Faces the Barricades (1935) in the preface: "I think that the capitalist system in this country still has some distance to go before it falls....We are in for a period of great unrest, organized and unorganized revolts and bloodshed; a period, I think, which will continue until the present economic system has been completely changed." Time provided its readers with a brief description of : "Misleadingly titled collection of sober reports on conditions and states of mind among the unemployed, California migratory workers, Southern sharecroppers and other distressed groups, written by one of the ablest of U.S. radical journalists." Another review said Spivak "used to be a first-class reporter," and while granting that "One does not doubt Mr. Spivak's facts," said that "It is the pattern that seems overdrawn." A more appreciative reviewer found Spivak "natively fair-minded and realistic," but doubted his conclusions, especially his assessment of the threat of domestic Nazism and anti-Semitism: "[He] seems to take fools too seriously. Mr. Spivak is in danger of being as credulous of the claims of counter-revolution as some of our eminent citizens are of the claims of revolution."
Spivak toured parts of Europe and produced a portrait of the continent in Europe under the Terror (1936). Time found it interesting enough to summarize at length, country by country: "Italy's tyrants, suggests Spivak, are clowns, its people poltroons."; "Germany's tyrants Spivak describes as super-efficient grafting gangsters, its people dolts."; "Poland's tyrants, according to Spivak, are amiable, intelligent playboys, its people hopeless serfs." In sum:
British diplomat turned academic E.H. Carr found it "ambitious" and partly interesting, and wished Spivak had covered some harder to study regions. Columbia University
Soviet specialist Michael T. Florinsky dissected Spivak's reporting. He noted that Spivak's style appealed to both the New Masses and William Randolph Hearst
's New York Journal
because his worked lacked the attributes of "high-class journalism": "objectivity, accuracy, comprehensiveness, and a sense of proportion." He found nothing new about the rulers except "fantastic stories about the German and Italian spy system," yet was moved by Spivak's "real feeling for the underdog." He cited statements "in flagrant contradiction with easily ascertainable facts," a complete misunderstanding of German agricultural policy, and a tale of Nazi officials trying to smuggling German marks abroad that would not be convertible into any other currency. He summarized:
Another New York Times reviewer described it as "a clever attempt to pick out the threads of fear, misery and venality in the texture of Central Europe today, not with a scholar's fine point but with the blunt stub of a partisan." "Mr. Spivak is an artist in black and white and can't be bothered with intermediary shades of color....If, in your opinion, striking contrasts and brilliant writing can compensate for oversimplification and ingenuousness, Mr. Spivak is the man for your money."
Under the sponsorship of New Masses, Spivak toured the United States in 1936 delivering a lecture on the dangers of fascism called "I Saw."
In October 1937, Spivak testified before a Massachusetts legislative commission investigating Communist, fascist, and Nazi activities, describing a nationwide Nazi propaganda network and accusing two employees of Henry Ford
, among others, of distributing Nazi propaganda. He identified another witness as a distributor of Nazi propaganda, who in turn said Spivak was being paid by the Communist Party.
In a sort of sequel to Secret Armies, Honorable Spy (1939) described smuggling and war preparations on the part of West Coast Japanese in collusion with Nazis, hiding weapons in Mexico, and spying on American defense installations with telescopic lenses. One review followed a summation of its charges with an evaluation: "How much of what Mr. Spivak sees and hears is true, we do not know. But we trust that Mr. Hoover's F.B.I. officials. as well as the Mexican government, will look sharply into these activities."
In 1940, he was arrested for criminal libel because of charges he made in Secret Armies that an investigator for the House Un-American Activities Committee
and a German instructor at Wichita State University
were Nazi agents.
Spivak also investigated the financial activities of Charles E. Coughlin, the Catholic radio priest who founded the National Shrine of the Little Flower
in Royal Oak, Michigan
. One author described Spivak's combination of documentation and advocacy in Shrine of the Silver Dollar (1940) as "in the nature of investigative reporting." A review of the historical literature on Coughlin places a sympathetic biography at one end of the scale and Spivak's "rabid" study at the other, calling Shrine "a primary document of the brown scare," that is, an unwarranted and hysterical fear of a right-wing overthrow of the federal government.
With the rise of McCarthyism
, Spivak spent much of the 1950s and 1960s writing under several pen names for men's magazines including Cavalier, Esquire
, Fury, Male, and Man to Man. He lived for 2 decades under the pseudonym Monroe Fry. Esquire published a collection of his short fiction, "lurid stories about easy women, prostitutes, and other 'favors' routinely enjoyed by the middle-class dad on a sales trip," as Sex, Vice and Business by Monroe Fry. One review described its treatment of the subject as "slightly sensationalized."
He and his wife, Mabel, retired to their farm in Easton, Pennsylvania
. Assuming the name John L. Spivak once more, in 1967 he published his autobiography, A Man in His Time, which covered his life up to 1939. Reviewing it for the New York Times, veteran liberal journalist Gerald W. Johnson
wrote that Spivak's style of journalism, committed to "the exposure of villains" and "dramatic intensity," produces in the end "a distinct aura of mythology." Citing Spivak's account of the Liberty League's conspiracy to depose Roosevelt, Johnson acknowledged a certain basis in reality but called Spivak's account "pretty farfetched." Johnson praised Spivak's enduring optimism and skills as a writer: "As a pictorial writer, he is deft, evoking with a line or two a picture that a less competent hand would take a page to limn." He described the work's content, however, as "a series of impressions of an observer, highly skillful, but highly unscientific....It needs to be balanced and corrected by the work of historians trained in a more rigorous professional discipline."
From 1968 to 1973 he wrote a consumer affairs column called "Action! Express" for the Easton Express
, a newspaper based in Easton, Pennsylvania
. His work led to a federal investigation of sales tactics used by magazine circulation companies.
Spivak died in Philadelphia in 1981, six months after his wife died. They had been married for 64 years and were survived by a daughter and grandson.
Most of Spivak's papers are held at Syracuse University
, while some related to Georgia Nigger are at the University of Texas at Austin
Lincoln Steffens
described Spivak as "the best of us."
Early life and overview
As a boy Spivak worked in a number of industrial factories in his hometown of New Haven, ConnecticutNew Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
.
He was attracted to leftist ideas in his teenage years and later wrote that writing was "more to me than just a trade I liked; it was a weapon." He claimed he never joined the Communist Party. In his 1967 autobiography, he described how the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact temporarily shook his faith in the Soviet Union as the guardian of radical ideals until he decided that the Soviet Union's survival justified it.
Along with many of his contemporaries, Spivak experimented with new forms of reporting in which the reporter appeared in his stories as an investigator and witness, drawing the reader into his experience. He used the "exposé quotation" technique to underscore differences between his subject's words and actions and presented himself as a confrontational interviewer. He dramatized his own research efforts and search for facts on the reader's behalf. He also admitted his political prejudices so as to disarm the reader's objections to his lack of objectivity. The foremost student of 1930s journalism recognized his achievement: "A large share of the period's exposé s were his."
Though he cited opposition to fascism as his primary motivation as a journalist, Spivak cooperated with the Soviet KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
in the 1930s, perhaps from as early as 1932. KGB reports indicated that the Soviets particularly valued information he obtained from sources at U.S. Congressional committees. He obtained material that included details about the German government's financing and sponsorship of Nazi activity in the U.S. as well as documents related to munitions and chemical weapons research. The KGB also used Spivak as a source of information about Trotskyites
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
, its ideological enemies on the left. The KGB appears to have changed its mind about his usefulness more than once, so Spivak's relationship to the KGB was intermittent for more than a decade.
Career
Spivak landed his first job as a reporter for the New Haven Union. He moved to New York where he worked at the Morning Sun, Evening GraphicNew York Graphic
The New York Evening Graphic was a tabloid newspaper published from 1924 to 1932 by Bernarr "Bodylove" Macfadden...
, and The Call
New York Call
The New York Call was a socialist daily newspaper published in New York City from 1908 through 1923. The Call was the second of three English-language dailies affiliated with the Socialist Party of America to be established, following the Chicago Daily Socialist while preceding the long running...
, the paper of the American Socialist Party. His first major story came when he covered the Battle of Matewan
Battle of Matewan
The Battle of Matewan was a shootout in the town of Matewan, West Virginia in Mingo County on May 19, 1920 between local miners and the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency....
in West Virginia. He then served briefly as a reporter and bureau chief in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
for the International News Service
International News Service
International News Service was a U.S.-based news agency founded by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst in 1909.Established two years after the Scripps family founded the United Press Association, INS scrapped among the newswires...
. Upon his return to the United States, he became a feature writer for leftist newspapers and magazines such as the Communist Party USA's Daily Worker
Daily Worker
The Daily Worker was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, some attempts were made to make it appear that the paper reflected a...
, Ken, and the New Masses.
In 1930, in a case known as the "Whalen Papers," Spivak used his position as a journalist on behalf of the Soviet Union. When documents detailing Soviet propaganada efforts came into the possession of the New York City Police Department, Spivak quickly demonstrated they were forgeries. Only years later did it transpire that the documents were supplied by the Soviets so that Spivak, alert to the scheme, could discredit them and thereby undermine Congressional efforts to investigate Communist propaganda in the United States.
Spivak traveled throughout the South in the early 1930s interviewing prison camp officials and photographing camp practices and punishment records. His novel, Georgia Nigger, depicting the brutality of peonage labor and chain gangs, was serialized several newspapers, including the Daily Worker
Daily Worker
The Daily Worker was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, some attempts were made to make it appear that the paper reflected a...
and the Des Moines Tribune
Des Moines Tribune
The Des Moines Tribune was a daily afternoon newspaper published in Des Moines, Iowa. It was founded in 1906 and purchased in 1908 by the Cowles family, which owned the Des Moines Register. The newspapers shared production and business operations, but maintained separate editorial staffs which...
. Soon after it appeared in 1932, an academic study called it "a second Uncle Tom's Cabin, an indictment of peonage and convict-labor in Georgia, powerful enough to put to shame all the rhapsodists of the folk Negro's happy state." Another reviewer thought it posed "a moral challenge" but disliked its exaggerations and the author's "superciliousness." The book carried an appendix with photographs and documents designed to document the novel's descriptions of torture. "Thus his novel," wrote one reviewer, "in addition to the dramatic force of an interesting and well-told story, has the weight and authority of a sociological investigation." Just a few weeks after the book appeared, Spivak testified with other experts on the Georgia penal system in a successful attempt to persuade New Jersey Governor A. Harry Moore
A. Harry Moore
Arthur Harry Moore was a Democrat who was the 39th Governors of New Jersey, serving three terms between 1926 and 1941. He was the longest-serving New Jersey Governor in the 20th century and the only New Jersey Governor elected to serve three separate non-consecutive terms...
to refuse to extradite a fugitive from a Georgia chain gang.
In 1934, some of Spivak's New Masses articles on anti-Semitism in the U.S. were reprinted as a 93-page pamphlet called Plotting America's Pogroms.
His 1935 exposé in the communist party's New Masses charged a congressional committee with deliberately suppressing evidence of an offer made to retired Marine General Smedley D. Butler by Wall Street Jewish financiers (in cooperation with Nazi Germany) to lead a military coup against the U.S. government and replace it with a fascist regime. Butler was supposedly, "offered $3,000,000 to organize a fascist army with a promise of $300,000,000 more if it became necessary."
Most of Spivak's work, however, was dedicated to supporting communism, exposing capitalism, fascism and underground Nazi spy groups in Central America, Europe, and the U.S. In March 1935, the last issue of the American Spectator
American Spectator (literary magazine)
The American Spectator was a monthly literary magazine which made its first monthly appearance in November 1932. It was edited by George Jean Nathan, though Eugene O'Neill, Ernest Boyd, Theodore Dreiser, and James Branch Cabell were also listed as joint editors...
gave its award for "best reporting" to Spivak for his articles in New Masses on Nazi and anti-Semitic activity in the U.S.
Spivak announced the thesis of America Faces the Barricades (1935) in the preface: "I think that the capitalist system in this country still has some distance to go before it falls....We are in for a period of great unrest, organized and unorganized revolts and bloodshed; a period, I think, which will continue until the present economic system has been completely changed." Time provided its readers with a brief description of : "Misleadingly titled collection of sober reports on conditions and states of mind among the unemployed, California migratory workers, Southern sharecroppers and other distressed groups, written by one of the ablest of U.S. radical journalists." Another review said Spivak "used to be a first-class reporter," and while granting that "One does not doubt Mr. Spivak's facts," said that "It is the pattern that seems overdrawn." A more appreciative reviewer found Spivak "natively fair-minded and realistic," but doubted his conclusions, especially his assessment of the threat of domestic Nazism and anti-Semitism: "[He] seems to take fools too seriously. Mr. Spivak is in danger of being as credulous of the claims of counter-revolution as some of our eminent citizens are of the claims of revolution."
Spivak toured parts of Europe and produced a portrait of the continent in Europe under the Terror (1936). Time found it interesting enough to summarize at length, country by country: "Italy's tyrants, suggests Spivak, are clowns, its people poltroons."; "Germany's tyrants Spivak describes as super-efficient grafting gangsters, its people dolts."; "Poland's tyrants, according to Spivak, are amiable, intelligent playboys, its people hopeless serfs." In sum:
Europe Under the Terror, like the peasants' potatoes, must be taken with a little salt. Readers will be considerably baffled to know how this U.S. investigator, who speaks only English and German, managed to evoke such dangerous confidences from the most illiterate classes in Italy, Poland and Czechoslovakia through interpreters. Author Spivak is a shade too ready to forecast the collapse of tyrannies, to overestimate the potency of the rebellious spirit. His book is valuable as a document of a kind that rarely emerges from the censored murk of dictatorship.
British diplomat turned academic E.H. Carr found it "ambitious" and partly interesting, and wished Spivak had covered some harder to study regions. Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
Soviet specialist Michael T. Florinsky dissected Spivak's reporting. He noted that Spivak's style appealed to both the New Masses and William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...
's New York Journal
New York Journal American
The New York Journal American was a newspaper published from 1937 to 1966. The Journal American was the product of a merger between two New York newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst: The New York American , a morning paper, and the New York Evening Journal, an afternoon paper...
because his worked lacked the attributes of "high-class journalism": "objectivity, accuracy, comprehensiveness, and a sense of proportion." He found nothing new about the rulers except "fantastic stories about the German and Italian spy system," yet was moved by Spivak's "real feeling for the underdog." He cited statements "in flagrant contradiction with easily ascertainable facts," a complete misunderstanding of German agricultural policy, and a tale of Nazi officials trying to smuggling German marks abroad that would not be convertible into any other currency. He summarized:
These and other gross distortions of facts are particularly regrettable because they make it difficult to accept on its face value Mr. Spivak's evidence on the development of the revolutionary movement in the countries he visited, evidence that cannot be checked from their sources. It was obtained by him in Germany, Poland and Austria under conditions so romantic and melodramatic that they put Hollywood completely to shame. According to Mr. Spivak, the leaders of secret anti-Fascist organizations sought to meet him, although not only their personal freedom and perhaps even their lives, but also, to a certain extent, the success of the movement itself, were at stake. With all respect for Mr. Spivak's abilities, the risks taken by these German, Polish and Austrian revolutionaries seems to be utterly unreasonable and the destinies of the anti-Fascist movement put in rather reckless hands. One should not, however, overestimate their Fascist opponents. Under the fire of the fairly innocuous and sometimes rather naive questions of the impetuous and fearless American journalist, the high Fascist officials in Rome turned white, green, gray and red, and then finally collapsed in utter confusion and helplessness. No wonder Mr. Spivak foresees momentous changes in the near future.
Another New York Times reviewer described it as "a clever attempt to pick out the threads of fear, misery and venality in the texture of Central Europe today, not with a scholar's fine point but with the blunt stub of a partisan." "Mr. Spivak is an artist in black and white and can't be bothered with intermediary shades of color....If, in your opinion, striking contrasts and brilliant writing can compensate for oversimplification and ingenuousness, Mr. Spivak is the man for your money."
Under the sponsorship of New Masses, Spivak toured the United States in 1936 delivering a lecture on the dangers of fascism called "I Saw."
In October 1937, Spivak testified before a Massachusetts legislative commission investigating Communist, fascist, and Nazi activities, describing a nationwide Nazi propaganda network and accusing two employees of Henry Ford
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
, among others, of distributing Nazi propaganda. He identified another witness as a distributor of Nazi propaganda, who in turn said Spivak was being paid by the Communist Party.
In a sort of sequel to Secret Armies, Honorable Spy (1939) described smuggling and war preparations on the part of West Coast Japanese in collusion with Nazis, hiding weapons in Mexico, and spying on American defense installations with telescopic lenses. One review followed a summation of its charges with an evaluation: "How much of what Mr. Spivak sees and hears is true, we do not know. But we trust that Mr. Hoover's F.B.I. officials. as well as the Mexican government, will look sharply into these activities."
In 1940, he was arrested for criminal libel because of charges he made in Secret Armies that an investigator for the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
and a German instructor at Wichita State University
Wichita State University
Wichita State University is a NCAA Division I public university in Wichita, Kansas with selective admissions. WSU is one of six state universities governed by the Kansas Board of Regents. The current president is Dr. Donald Beggs....
were Nazi agents.
Spivak also investigated the financial activities of Charles E. Coughlin, the Catholic radio priest who founded the National Shrine of the Little Flower
National Shrine of the Little Flower
National Shrine of the Little Flower Catholic Church in Royal Oak, Michigan is a well known Catholic Church and National Shrine executed in the lavish zig-zag Art Deco style. It was completed in two stages, from 1931 to 1936, and funded by the proceeds of the radio ministry of the controversial...
in Royal Oak, Michigan
Royal Oak, Michigan
Royal Oak is a city in Oakland County of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is a suburb of Detroit. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 57,236. It should not be confused with Royal Oak Charter Township, a separate community located nearby....
. One author described Spivak's combination of documentation and advocacy in Shrine of the Silver Dollar (1940) as "in the nature of investigative reporting." A review of the historical literature on Coughlin places a sympathetic biography at one end of the scale and Spivak's "rabid" study at the other, calling Shrine "a primary document of the brown scare," that is, an unwarranted and hysterical fear of a right-wing overthrow of the federal government.
Later years
New Century, a Communist publishing house, issued two pamphlets of Spivak's work that attacked America's political right wing for its role in creating the Cold War: Pattern for Domestic Fascism (1947) and The "Save the Country" Racket (1948).With the rise of McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
, Spivak spent much of the 1950s and 1960s writing under several pen names for men's magazines including Cavalier, Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
, Fury, Male, and Man to Man. He lived for 2 decades under the pseudonym Monroe Fry. Esquire published a collection of his short fiction, "lurid stories about easy women, prostitutes, and other 'favors' routinely enjoyed by the middle-class dad on a sales trip," as Sex, Vice and Business by Monroe Fry. One review described its treatment of the subject as "slightly sensationalized."
He and his wife, Mabel, retired to their farm in Easton, Pennsylvania
Easton, Pennsylvania
Easton is a city in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 26,800 as of the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Northampton County....
. Assuming the name John L. Spivak once more, in 1967 he published his autobiography, A Man in His Time, which covered his life up to 1939. Reviewing it for the New York Times, veteran liberal journalist Gerald W. Johnson
Gerald W. Johnson
Gerald White Johnson was a journalist, editor, essayist, historian, biographer, and novelist. Over his nearly 75 year career he was known for being "one of the most eloquent spokespersons for America’s adversary culture."...
wrote that Spivak's style of journalism, committed to "the exposure of villains" and "dramatic intensity," produces in the end "a distinct aura of mythology." Citing Spivak's account of the Liberty League's conspiracy to depose Roosevelt, Johnson acknowledged a certain basis in reality but called Spivak's account "pretty farfetched." Johnson praised Spivak's enduring optimism and skills as a writer: "As a pictorial writer, he is deft, evoking with a line or two a picture that a less competent hand would take a page to limn." He described the work's content, however, as "a series of impressions of an observer, highly skillful, but highly unscientific....It needs to be balanced and corrected by the work of historians trained in a more rigorous professional discipline."
From 1968 to 1973 he wrote a consumer affairs column called "Action! Express" for the Easton Express
The Express-Times
The Express-Times is a daily newspaper published in Easton, Pennsylvania, with an emphasis on local news. It has won awards in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania.-Ownership:...
, a newspaper based in Easton, Pennsylvania
Easton, Pennsylvania
Easton is a city in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 26,800 as of the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Northampton County....
. His work led to a federal investigation of sales tactics used by magazine circulation companies.
Spivak died in Philadelphia in 1981, six months after his wife died. They had been married for 64 years and were survived by a daughter and grandson.
Most of Spivak's papers are held at Syracuse University
Syracuse University
Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
, while some related to Georgia Nigger are at the University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
Assessments
Sometime before 1937, MuckrakerMuckraker
The term muckraker is closely associated with reform-oriented journalists who wrote largely for popular magazines, continued a tradition of investigative journalism reporting, and emerged in the United States after 1900 and continued to be influential until World War I, when through a combination...
Lincoln Steffens
Lincoln Steffens
-Biography:Steffens was born April 6, 1866, in San Francisco. He grew up in a wealthy family and attended a military academy. He studied in France and Germany after graduating from the University of California....
described Spivak as "the best of us."
Works
- Devil's Brigade (Brewer and Warren, Inc., 1930)
- Georgia Nigger (NY: Brewer, Warren & Putnam, 1932)
- Plotting America's Pogroms: A Documental Exposé of Organized Anti-Semitism in the United States (New Masses, 1934)
- America Faces the Barricades (Covici FriedePascal CoviciPascal Avram "Pat" Covici was a Romanian Jewish-American book publisher and editor.- Early life :Pascal Avram Covici, known to his friends as "Pat," was born November 4, 1885 in Botoşani, Romania. He was the son of vintner Wolf Covici and Schfra Barish...
Inc., 1935), available online - Europe Under the Terror (Simon & SchusterSimon & SchusterSimon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
, 1936) - Secret Armies: The New Technique of Nazi Warfare (Modern Age Books, 1939), available online
- Honorable Spy: Exposing Japanese Military Intrigue in the United States (Modern Age Books, 1939), available online
- Shrine of the Silver Dollar: A Documented Story of Father Coughlin (Modern Age Books, 1940), available online
- Pattern for Domestic Fascism (NY: New Century, 1947)
- The "Save the Country" Racket (NY: New Century, 1948)
- Sex, Vice and Business (writing as Monroe Fry) (Ballantine BooksBallantine BooksBallantine Books is a major book publisher located in the United States, founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine with his wife, Betty Ballantine. It was acquired by Random House in 1973, which in turn was acquired by Bertelsmann AG in 1998 and remains part of that company today. Ballantine's logo is a...
, 1959) - A Man In His Time (Horizon Press, 1967)