Elmer Axel Beck, an author, journalist and socialist, was born May 23, 1906 in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He attended Bay View High School in the 1920s and joined the
Socialist Party while studying journalism at the University of Wisconsin in 1932; he
graduated in 1935. Afterwards he worked as a journalist for labor publications in
Milwaukee and Sheboygan such as the Wisconsin Leader,
the Sheboygan Times and the Milwaukee Leader. In 1942 he became the editor of the Kenosha Labor newspaper. He resigned in 1949, moved his
family to Paris, France, to serve as a Labor Information Specialist with the US
Economic Cooperation Administration in Europe. From 1953-1971 he was a Press
Representative for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace
workers. Meanwhile he earned a Master’s Degree from the University of Wisconsin
finishing in 1968.
Beck retired in 1971 but continued to write. He wrote two books, The Sewer Socialists: A History of the Socialist Party of
Wisconsin, 1897-1940 (1982) and Autopsy of a
Labor Daily: The Milwaukee Leader (1970). The name “sewer socialists”
was a pejorative used among socialists. The context was that Milwaukee socialists
were more interested in cleaning up the city, including building new sewers, then
socialist ideology. Elmer Beck passed away on January 8, 1990 in Kenosha,
Wisconsin.
