The Alarm (newspaper)

The Alarm was an anarchist newspaper published in the American city of Chicago during the 1880s. The weekly was the most prominent English-language anarchist periodical of its day. The paper was famously edited by Albert Parsons, who was executed in response to the Haymarket affair of 1886.

The first issue of The Alarm appeared on October 4, 1884 in Chicago, Illinois as the weekly voice of the International Working People's Association (IWPA). At the time of its launch The Alarm was one of eight newspapers in the United States to declare their allegiance to the anarchist IWPA — and the only paper published in English.

Editor of the paper was the Southern-born Albert R. Parsons, formerly the assistant editor of the English-language weekly of the Socialist Labor Party of America, The Socialist. Parsons had first come north from Texas in 1873 to take a job as a printer for the Chicago Inter-Ocean before moving to a more steady job in a similar capacity working for the Chicago Times.

A pioneer member of the American Typographical Union as well as the Knights of Labor, the gifted orator Parsons soon emerged as among the leading English-speaking radical trade unionist in the city of Chicago, a position even more firmly established with the launch of The Alarm.

Of the eight newspapers affiliated nationwide with the IWPA, five were published in Chicago alone. Joining The Alarm as Chicago-based IWPA publications were the German-language daily Arbeiter-Zeitung (Workers' Newspaper) and weeklies Der Vorbote (The Harbinger) and Der Fackel (The Torch), as well as the Czech-language weekly Budoucnost (The Future). The paper claimed a circulation of 3,000 during the first part of 1886 — a figure well exceeded by its non-English compatriots. By way of comparison, the Arbeiter-Zeitung maintained a circulation of between 5,000 and 6,000 in the same period, while the Vorbote ranged between 7,000 and 8,000.Der Fackel was the largest publication yet, with an 1886 circulation topping the 12,000 mark.

...
Wikipedia