The Producers News (Plentywood, Mont.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
961 issues from 1918 to 1937, published in Plentywood, Montana, digitised for Chronicling America.
The Nonpartisan League (NPL), an organization of farmers founded in North Dakota in 1915 with Socialist roots, sent a newspaper editor, Charles “Red Flag” Taylor, to Plentywood, Montana, to establish the Producers News. On April 19, 1918, the first issue rolled off the presses, and within two years the newspaper claimed a circulation of 2,500 in a county totaling 12,000 residents. The Producers News promoted the NPL creed of regulated rail rates and state-run banks and grain elevators. Taylor has been credited with building a substantial political movement in Sheridan County during the 1920s—the county electing a Communist sheriff, a full slate of county officials, and a state senator (Taylor).
Taylor’s credo appeared under the masthead: “A Paper of the People, by the People, for the People.” The rather rotund newspaper editor never missed a chance to skewer his opponents, referring to them regularly as “small town Kaisers, crop grabbers, and paytriotic [sic] profiteers.” By 1926, the Producers News had absorbed six area weeklies including its Plentywood rival, the Pioneer Press, known by Taylor as the “Pie Near” Press, that “nauseous rag that emits itself once a week from its stye down the street.” One of the early editions of the Producers News ran the headline: “Miles City Has Gone Stark Mad,” in reference to an incident in the southeastern cattle town where a Nonpartisan organizer, Mickey McGlynn, was forced to sign a loyalty oath and was beaten by a mob before local…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Plentywood, Montana, United States
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress