Louis E. Miller, one of the pioneers of the Yiddish press in this country, leading editorial writer, and latterly member of the editorial staff of the “Day” died Sunday afternoon of heart disease at St. Vincent’s Hospital, New York, after an illness of one week. He was sixty-one years old.
Louis Miller was born in Vilna, April 1866, and came to the United States in 1882. He was a member of the AmOlam group of the first wave of Jewish immigration to the United States from Russia which came to the new world with ideas of establishing new forms of social life. He soon became an important factor in the socialist movement. In 1887 he started publication of a Russian weekly under the name of “Znamya.” In 1890 he, with Philip Kranz and Abe Cahan, established the first Yiddish Socialist weekly in American under the name of “Arbeiter Zeitung.” He then took a leading part in the fight of the Jewish Social Democrats against the anarchist. In 1893 he was graduated from law school.
In 1894 he established the Yiddish daily, “Abendblatt.” In 1898 he established, with others, the “Jewish Daily Forward” of which he was the editor for several years until he was succeeded by Abe Cahan. He established the Yiddish daily “Wahrheit” in 1905. In this paper he conducted a fiery fight against the “Forward” and fiery fight against the “Forward” and its editor.
At the outbreak of the war he immediately took a pro-allies stand, causing great opposition in many circles on the East side, because of the fact that Russia was among the Allies. This stand affected the circulation of his newpaper among the former Russian emigrants who could not wish success to Russia.
He soon left the “Wahrheit” and establshed another daily, “Der Fuehre”, which met with no success and was stopped after several months. He then embarked on the publication of Miller’s Weekly, which also was discontinued.
His last journalistic enterprises was the “Neue Wahrheit”, a tabloid Yiddish daily started in 1925. Last year he was geatly affected by the suicide of his twenty-six year old son.
The funeral, which will take place today, is being arranged by the Jewish Writers’ Club in conjunction with the “Day”.
Dr. S. Margoshes, editor of “The Day” in a statement issued to the “Jewish Daily Bulletin”, gave the following appreciation of the late Louis E. Miller:
“Louis E. Miller’s chief characteristic was his passionate insistence on justice and on fair play. This insistence made him not only the greatest editor that the American Yiddish press ever had but also one of the best Americans. A union leader who tolerated no class tyranny, a journalist who did not truckle to the mob, and orator who did not appeal to the gallery, he was conscience personified and glorified.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
