International Publishers

Establishment

International Publishers Company, Inc., was founded in 1924 with funds given the project by Abraham A. Heller.^[1] Heller was the radical son of a wealthy jeweler doing business in Paris.^[2] He expanded his fortune as head of the International Oxygen Company, a welding supply company that operated a trade concession in Soviet Russia during the time of the New Economic Policy in the early 1920s.^[3] A lifelong socialist, Heller had previously been a heavy financial donor to the New York Call, the Socialist Party's New York daily newspaper. He had been instrumental in funding the purchase of the headquarters building for the Rand School of Social Science.^[4]

The company began with a capital stock of $50,000, paid in by Heller, with the stock subsequently split with Trachtenberg as compensation.^[5] Alexander Trachtenberg, a left wing member of the Socialist Party of America associated with the Rand School of Social Science and its publishing house, who joined the Communist movement at the end of 1921, served as manager of International Publishers from its inception through the 1940s.^[5]

The law firm for incorporating International Publishers was Hays, St. John & Buckley of 43 Exchange Place, whose partners included Arthur Garfield Hays.^[6][7] According to testimony before the U.S. Congress by Trachtenberg, in addition to his initial $50,000 investment, Heller continually made up losses incurred by International Publishers during its first 15 years. Over that period, his investment climbed to a total of some $115,000.^[2]

The idea of forming International Publishers seems to have come from Heller and Trachtenberg. Initial assistance came from the Communist Party (then the Workers Party of America), limited to supplying advice and addresses of radical bookstores around America.^[8] In a letter dated June 1924 from the party's head Literature Department, Nicholas Dozenberg cautioned Trachtenberg that Charles H. Kerr & Co. of Chicago had already published many standard titles by Karl Marx, thus limiting the prospects of successful new editions of the same works.^[8] Instead, Dozenberg encouraged Trachtenberg to concentrate on "books not yet published in English written by popular Russian writers like Lenin, Zinoviev, Radek, and others."^[8]

Development

In the fall of 1935, International Publishers launched a new program called the "Book Union". This was a radical book-buying circle, modeled on the Book of the Month Club.^[9] The Book Union first offered an anthology entitled Proletarian Literature in the United States, nearly 400 pages long and edited by current or future editors of The New Masses: Michael Gold, Granville Hicks, Joseph North,^[10] and others.^[9] The Book Union collected a $1 annual fee from its members, who then received a discounted volume in the mail each month. The Book Union obliged members to buy 2 of 12 selections during the year.^[9] Purchase of four books in a year entitled members to a bonus premium.^[9] Despite its aggressively low pricing, the Book Union proved less successful than the Left Book Club operated by Victor Gollancz Ltd in England and seems to have been terminated after just a few years.

1939 Dies Committee

On September 13, 1939, International Publishers Secretary and Treasurer Alexander Trachtenberg was called before the so-called Dies Committee of the US House of Representatives, the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities. Committee members grilled Tractenberg on his own history, the sources of funding behind International Publishers, and the company's relationship to the Communist Party. Trachtenberg characterized the relationship of International Publishers to the Communist Party as merely one of "buyer and seller."^[11]

Trachtenberg indicated that International Publishers did not own presses but used the services of a company called Van Rees Press on a contract basis.^[12] The firm also exchanged printed sheets for publication with its British sister organization, Lawrence & Wishart, and bought sheets for binding from the forerunner of the official Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow.^[13] He estimated that some 10% of International Publishers' books had made use of such sources but that a lowering of duty rates on bound books had largely eliminated the economy of importing unbound sheets.^[14]

Trachtenberg estimated annual sales by International Publishers at $75,000 to $80,000. He noted that the company had a staff of four.^[15]

Recent years

During the 1960s and 1970s, International expanded its publication of inexpensive trade paperback books under the title "New World Paperbacks". A number of titles bore this as an alternative company logo.