The Masses was founded in New York in 1911 by Piet Vlag. Another important financial backer was Amos Pinchot, a wealthy lawyer who supported a wide variety of progressive causes. He was the father of Mary Pinchot Meyer.

Organised like a co-operative, artists and writers who contributed to the journal shared in its management. Articles and poems were written by people such as John Reed, Sherwood Anderson, Max Eastman, Crystal Eastman, Hubert Harrison, Inez Milholland, Mary Heaton Vorse, Louis Untermeyer, Randolf Bourne, Dorothy Day, Helen Keller, William Walling, Carl Sandburg, Upton Sinclair, Amy Lowell, Mabel Dodge, Floyd Dell and Louise Bryant.

The Masses also published the work of important artists including John Sloan, Robert Henri, Alice Beach Winter, Mary Ellen Sigsbee, Cornelia Barns, Reginald Marsh, Rockwell Kent, Art Young, Boardman Robinson, Robert Minor, K. R. Chamberlain, Stuart Davis, Cornelia Barns, George Bellows and Maurice Becker.

This team of artists produced a series of masterpieces. This includes probably my favourite cartoon of all time. Produced by Robert Minor, it appeared in July, 1916. This cartoon was partly responsible for the magazine being closed down. It had claimed that cartoons and articles in the Masses had violated the Espionage Act. Under this act it was an offence to publish material that undermined the war effort. The legal action that followed forced The Masses to cease publication.



The caption of the cartoon reads: Army Medical Examiner: "At last a perfect soldier!"

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