The Rubin Levin Papers document the personal and professional life of a noted labor journalist and editor. Most, but not all, of the material dates from 1929 to 1953 and records Levin's early career, his association with leftist politics in Milwaukee, and his contributions to the labor press. Levin was a perceptive journalist and his observations as well as examples of his writings are the center of the collection. Documentation concerning his professional and political associations and activities, however, are relatively scarce.
The papers are organized as biographical material, writings, subject files, and Bertha Greenberg Levin's papers.
The BIOGRAPHICAL FILES consist of general information about Levin's life and awards. Of particular note is a file of short autobiographies he wrote in the late 1930's and in 1973. Other folders contain a eulogy given at his funeral, copies of his awards, letters of congratulations, and personal memorabilia.
CORRESPONDENCE, which is arranged alphabetically by name, primarily consists of letters to and from friends and family. While the majority of the correspondence consists of letters received by Levin, several files contain letters that he wrote. These include his correspondence with Harry Koveneck, who later returned the long, journal-like letters Levin wrote during his wanderings of the 1920's, and letters Levin sent to his wife. While the majority of this correspondence to Mrs. Levin is fragmentary, dating from his brief absences from home to attend professional conferences and meetings, the correspondence from their lengthy separation when Levin first went to Washington, D.C., in 1938 is extensive. The file for this year also contains many letters from Bertha Levin concerning her pregnancy, professional activities, and their friends and associates in Milwaukee. Also of note among the family correspondence are the letters from his brother, Max Levin, concerning his association with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin in 1937. Other family files mention Max's tragic disappearance and death. The miscellaneous files contain letters from political figures such as Lyndon Johnson and George Norris. The file on fellow Capital Times reporter Ernie Meyer contains his critical article about Glenn Frank, former president of the University of Wisconsin.
Levin's WRITINGS are arranged into published and unpublished categories. The unpublished files contain student papers, poems, short stories, and articles written in the 1930's. Of special interest is an essay, “Life in My Town,” about ethnic groups in Milwaukee; dispatches Levin wrote while in Paris working for the New York Herald Tribune; articles about Milwaukee socialists, European fascism, and Levin's travels; and material for a projected book on faked newspaper stories. The largest segment of this series is typewritten literary journals Levin kept between 1927 and 1930 while he was a roving reporter. Included are impressions and observations of Winnipeg, Alaska, several West Coast cities, and a trip as a hand on a freighter bound for Hawaii. There are also handwritten notes for later trips to Israel, Europe, and a second trip to Hawaii.
The published articles cover Levin's entire career and include freelance pieces for the New Republic, the Nation, American Mercury, and various railroad magazines. A large collection of scrapbooks and loose clippings, which are available only on microfilm, documents his newspaper writing, 1935-1928 and 1935-1938. Often the author of these news stories is not credited, but because Levin dated and compiled them into scrapbooks, it is assumed that Levin is the author. Levin's freelance articles written before 1939 deal mostly with Milwaukee and socialism. Of note is a piece Levin wrote in 1933 for Plain Speaking on Milwaukee for which he won his first journalism award. Later works, more editorial in nature, address labor and legislative topics. Levin occasionally used the pseudonyms of Robert Lavelle and Richard Lloyd, and works under those bylines are included. Among other works included in this section of the papers are two pamphlets Levin wrote in the 1920's, The Revolt of Modern Youth and Milwaukee - the Bier of Beer, and a recorded commentary Levin made in 1949 on a variety of labor issues.
The SUBJECT FILES feature several of the organizations with which Levin was involved, although none of the files possess a complete, organic character. The largest number of the files document the Labor Press Association and include its bylaws; financial records; minutes; some memoranda and correspondence; newsletters; a transcript of a 1950 oral history interview about the LPA; and clippings related to its founding, activities, dissolution, and the 1952 strike of the Washington Newspaper Guild. Other folders contain news stories and campaign materials prepared for Daniel Hoan and the Farmer-Labor Progressive Federation, playbills and narrative reports for the Federal Theater in Milwaukee, and articles and an interview with Levin about workers in Israel. The Milwaukee Leader files contain a history, copies of the Milwaukee Guild News and the Mouth Organ, a satiric house publication, and correspondence from Milwaukee journalists dealing with a strike of news writers in 1939. The labor press folder contains a copy of Chester Wright's Labor Letter and information on a conference on the labor press at the University of Wisconsin. Also of note is a transcript of Levin's 1981 oral history interview for the Meany Center on the AFL-CIO merger.
The Labor files contain correspondence and clippings about the paper. It is disappointingly incomplete. So, too, is the file on Frank Lloyd Wright, about whom Levin wrote. In the miscellaneous file are articles by Levin on anti-Semitism, examples of anti-Communist literature from the 1960's, two broadsides printed in German, a handbill (Hoover and the Race Question) from a Democratic rally in Texas in 1932, and an uncredited article on the Ku Klux Klan.
The last section is a small collection of the papers of BERTHA LEVIN. It contains correspondence, most of it with her sister Mootsie, personal effects, and copies of student papers while at Lawrence University in the 1920's and later in the 1960's when she apparently returned to school in Milwaukee. Available only on microfilm are scrapbooks concerning her freelance public relations work for clients during the 1930's such as the Milwaukee Jewish Center and various Milwaukee recreational and cultural programs. Also here is a folder on their daughter, Hilda Levin Tanenholtz, who died in 1979, and her family.
