{{Short description|American publisher and politician}} {{Infobox person | name = J. A. Wayland | image = Julius Wayland.jpg | caption = | birth_name = Julius Augustus Wayland | birth_date = {{Birth date|1854|04|26}} | birth_place = Versailles, Indiana, U.S. | death_date = {{Death date and age|1912|11|10|1854|04|26}} | death_place = Girard, Kansas, U.S. | death_cause = | resting_place = | resting_place_coordinates = | nationality = | other_names = | known_for = | education = | employer = | occupation = Publisher | title = | term = | predecessor = | successor = | party = | boards = | spouse = {{Plainlist| * {{Marriage|Etta Bevan|end=d.}} * {{Marriage|Pearl Hunt||1911|end=d.}} }} | children = | parents = | relatives = }} '''Julius Augustus Wayland''' (April 26, 1854 – November 10, 1912) was a Midwestern US socialist during the Progressive Era. He is most noted for publishing ''Appeal to Reason'', a socialist publication often deemed to be the most important socialist periodical of the time.<ref name="Spartacus">[https://spartacus-educational.com/USAwaylandJ.htm Julius Wayland.] Spartacus Educational, May 12, 2007.</ref><ref>Murrin, John M. & Johnson, Paul E. & McPherson, James M. & Gerstle, Gary & Rosenberg, Emily S. & Rosenberg, Norman L. ''Liberty Equality Power: A History of the American People'' Fourth Edition Wadsworth: Thomson Learning. 2005.</ref>

==Early life== Julius Wayland was born in Versailles, Indiana, on April 26, 1854. As an infant, his father and four of his siblings died in a cholera epidemic. His early years were spent in abject poverty and he was forced to find work after only two years of schooling. He then apprenticed to a printer in his home town.<ref>Wayland, Julius A. Leaves of Life: A Story of Twenty Years of Socialist Agitation. Appeal to Reason, 1909, www.hist-analytic.com/Wayland,%20J.%20A.%20Pt1.pdf. pp. 7-9</ref>

==Career==

Wayland became owner of the ''Versailles Gazette'' in 1874. As a result of reading books such as Laurence Gronlund's ''The Cooperative Commonwealth'' and Edward Bellamy's ''Looking Backward'', Wayland became a socialist. His writings created tensions with home-town conservatives and he fled Versailles to avoid lynching.<ref name=Spartacus/>

Moving to Pueblo, Colorado, before,<ref>[https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/330-Colorado-Ave-Pueblo-CO-81004/14029644_zpid/ 1886]</ref> Wayland started a radical periodical, after being radicalized by pamphlets given to him by an [https://books.google.com/books?id=A75sDwAAQBAJ&dq=%22julius%20wayland%22%20%22pueblo%22&pg=PT80 Italian cobbler].''The Coming Nation'', which quickly became the most popular socialist newspaper in America. At this point, he helped found a utopian settlement, the Ruskin Colony in Dickson County, Tennessee. In July 1895, he left Ruskin and moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where in August 1895, he started another socialist journal, ''Appeal to Reason''.

In 1897, Wayland moved to Girard, Kansas. At first a mixture of articles and extracts from works by well-known socialists and radicals, ''Appeal to Reason'' began to publish writings by many of the prominent young socialists and reformers of the era, including Jack London, "Mother" Jones, Upton Sinclair, and Eugene Debs. Circulation soared, reaching 150,000 in 1902. In 1904, ''Appeal to Reason'' commissioned Upton Sinclair to write a novel about immigrant workers in the Chicago meatpacking houses. Sinclair's novel, titled ''The Jungle'', appeared in 1905 as a serial in ''Appeal to Reason''.<ref name=Spartacus/>

==Personal life and death==

With his first wife Etta Bevan (1858–1898) and second wife Pearl Hunt (1871–1911), Wayland resided in a historic house in Girard.<ref name="nrhpdoc">{{cite web|url={{NRHP url|id=76000819}}|title=National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Julius A. Wayland House |publisher=National Park Service|author= |date= |accessdate=December 29, 2018}} With {{NRHP url|id=76000819|photos=y|title=accompanying pictures}}</ref> Despite being a socialist, he became a millionaire.<ref name="thesunwasted">{{cite news |title=A Wasted Opportunity |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/417766264/?terms=%22Julius%2BWayland%22 |accessdate=December 30, 2018 |work=The Sun |location=Coffeyville, Kansas |date=November 13, 1912|page=2|via=Newspapers.com|url-access=registration }}</ref>

During the night of June 8, 1911, the 57-year old Wayland, his 39-year old wife Pearl Hunt Wayland, and a family friend and her child, were returning to the Wayland residence after an evening's drive.<ref name=Crash>[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/92903769/death-of-pearl-hunt-wayland-wife-of/ "Terrible Automobile Accident: Mrs. J.A. Wayland Killed Last Thursday Night,"] ''Girard Press,'' June 15, 1911, p. 1.</ref> With J.A. at the wheel, speed was increased to about 20 miles per hour as the car headed home.<ref name=Crash /> Tragically, due to mechanical failure the steering wheel became disengaged from the steering shaft and the car slammed into a telephone pole, ejecting Mrs. Wayland, who suffered severe injuries to her head and torso.<ref name=Crash /> Pearl Wayland was taken home and a doctor called, but she died of her injuries about five hours later.<ref name=Crash />

Wayland committed suicide by shooting himself with a gun on November 10, 1912, in his Girard home.<ref name="albanydemocratobit">{{cite news |title=Appeal to Reason Owner Ends Life With Revolver |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/94977701/?terms=%22Julius%2BWayland%22 |accessdate=December 30, 2018 |work=Albany Democrat |location=Albany, Oregon |date=November 15, 1912|page=1|via=Newspapers.com|url-access=registration }}</ref> He had been depressed by the recent death of his wife, his failure to convince a majority of Americans of the merits of socialism, and the smear campaign mounted against him by the conservative press. Afterward, his children and the ''Appeal to Reason'' editor Fred Warren successfully sued for damages from newspapers that had published libelous material about Wayland.<ref name=Spartacus/>

==Works==

* [https://archive.org/details/leaveslife00unkngoog ''Leaves of Life: A Story of Twenty Years of Socialist Agitation.''] Girard, KS: Appeal to Reason, 1912.

==References== {{Reflist}}

==Further reading== * Tim Davenport, [http://www.haldeman-julius.org/historical-notes/the-appeal-to-reason.html "The Appeal to Reason: Forerunner of Haldeman-Julius Publications"], Corvallis, OR: ''Big Blue Newsletter,'' No. 3 (2004 Q-III). * George Allen England, ''The Story of the Appeal.'' Girard, KS: Appeal to Reason, 1913. * Howard H. Quint, "Julius A. Wayland, Pioneer Socialist Propagandist," ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review'', vol. 35, no. 4 (March 1949), pp.&nbsp;585–606. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1892667 In JSTOR] * A.M. Simons, [https://archive.org/details/130100-simons-waylandstory "J.A. Wayland, Propagandist,"] ''The Metropolitan,'' vol. 27, no. 3 (Jan. 1913), pp. 25–26, 62.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Wayland, Julius}} Category:1854 births Category:1912 suicides Category:1912 deaths Category:People from Versailles, Indiana Category:American socialists Category:American newspaper publishers (people) Category:Suicides by firearm in Kansas Category:19th-century American businesspeople