Description: Previously available only in an out-of-print Swedish edition published in 1955, Henry Bengston's firsthand account deals with what historian Dag Blanck calls the "other Swedish America". Bengston tells his own story as well as that of a minority among Swedish immigrants actively involved in the radical left labor movement during the decades around the turn of the century.

Swedish immigrants in general were conservative, but Bengston and others -- most notably Joe Hill -- joined the working-class labor movement on the left, primarily as Debsian socialists, although their ranks included other socialists, communists, and anarchists. Involved in the radical labor movement on many fronts, Bengston was the editor of Svenska Socialisten from 1912 until he dropped out of the Scandinavian Socialist Federation in 1920. Even after 1920, however, his sympathies remained with the movement he had once strongly espoused.

The first author to deal with the Swedish-American labor movement, Bengston writes simply and with empathy, both as a committed participant and as an observer. He enhances his firsthand observations by conducting interviews with former participants in the socialist movement. He also offers valuable insights into the world of journalism and newspaper production, the difficulties faced by socialist newspapers in wartime, and the connection between the Socialist Party Swedes and the temperance cause. He provides, perhaps, the fullest account of the Rockford, Illinois, war resisters in 1917, and he examines the relationship between the Swedish Social Democratic Party and the Swedish-American workers.

Bengston deals, then, with the early period of the Scandinavian-American socialistmovement as well as with the 1920s and 1930s when the Communists became the strongest element of the radical movement. Blanck succinctly sums up his accomplishment: "Bengston lived through this era, and with a good eye and great sensitivity he gives us a lively and in-depth picture of what it meant to be a radical in Swedish America".

Michael Brook is the former special collections librarian at the University of Nottingham Library. He contributed to The Immigrant Labor Press in North America, 1840s-1870s: An Annotated Bibliography and has published articles and bibliographies in Labor History and The Swedish-American Historical Quarterly.

Kermit B. Westerberg is the major translator of From Sweden to America: A History of the Migration, edited by Harald Runblom and Hans Norman. He also translated Lars Ljungmark's Swedish Exodus, available in paperback from Southern Illinois University Press.

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