HARDMAN (Salutski), JACOB BENJAMIN

HARDMAN (Salutski ), JACOB BENJAMIN (1882–1968), U.S. labor leader and writer. Hardman, born Jacob Benjamin Salutski in Vilna, joined the Marxist Social Democratic Party as a young man, working as an organizer in Vilna in 1906 and in Kiev in 1907. After several arrests, he was exiled in 1908 by the czarist government for illegal political activities. Arriving in the United States in 1909, Hardman was elected secretary of the Jewish Language Federation of the Socialist Party at its founding in 1912. From 1914 to 1920 he edited Naye Welt, the federation's Yiddish weekly. Hardman joined the national executive of the Communist Worker's Party in 1921, but was expelled in 1923 for his criticism of the Jewish left's pro-Bolshevik line and its nihilistic approach to Jewish problems. From 1925 to 1944 he edited The Advance, organ of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, and was a member of the executive of the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (1927–34). During World War ii Hardman helped organize the American Labor Press Association, of which he became president, and from 1945 to 1953 he was editor of the periodical Labor and Nation. He was also editor of American Labor Dynamics in the Light of Post-War Developments (1928), Clothing Workers in Philadelphia (1940), and House of Labor (1951), and during the 1950s was director of research of the Columbia University project "Trends in Union Leadership."

bibliography:

M. Epstein, Jews and Communism (1959), passim; New York Times (Jan. 31, 1968), 38.