Columbia University has the archives of the Vanguard Press which was established with money from the American Fund for Public Service (Garland Fund) in 1926. The Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, Center for the Humanities, of The New York Public Library has the Garland Fund records (1922-1941). In the fall of 1988 Vanguard Press was sold to Random House. The New Masses was also initiated with Garland Fund money. While in operation, the Garland Fund gave nearly two million dollars to many left-wing organizations, including civil liberties and minority rights groups, plus labor organizations and legal defense funds. Nearly every progressive group active between 1922 and 1941 is represented in the archives, including the NAACP, ACLU, American Birth Control League, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
Vanguard press published both Nelson Algren (papers at Ohio State) and James T. Farrell, Chicago writers who wrote of the working classes. Today gwbush launched another attack on the New Deal with his 2006 budget that rewards the rich and endangers the most vulnerable.
Libraries, archives and manuscript collections are the last redoubt of these ideas.
Book:
Richard Magat
Unlikely Partners: Philanthropic Foundations and the Labor Movement
Cornell University Press, 1999.
