Solon De Leon Papers

Solon De Leon was born in New York City on September 2, 1883. He was the son of Daniel De Leon, Marxist theoretician and leader of the Socialist Labor Party (SLP). Although his parents were Jewish, he was unaware of this until he was an adult. He graduated from City College in 1902 and after working in Connecticut as a carpenter, house painter, and teacher, he returned to New York in 1905 to work on the SLP publications Daily People and Weekly People as a reporter, re-write man, and assistant editor. He translated "The Sword of Honor, or the Foundation of the French Revolution" by Eugene Sue and "Patriotism and the Worker" by Gustave Herve for publication by the SLP publishing house, New York Labor News Company. De Leon received an MA in economics from Columbia University in 1912 and a social work degree from the New School of Social Work (then the New York School of Philanthropy) in 1913. He was employed by the American Association for Labor Legislation as a field investigator, writer, and researcher, 1912-1920, while continuing to contribute to SLP publications under the pseudonym, Braset Marteau, but became politically and personally estranged from his father and from the SLP and was expelled from the Party in 1918.

He was briefly a member of the Socialist Party of America, joining the Workers' Council group that became part of the Communist party in 1920. De Leon contributed to and helped to edit the Advance, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America's newspaper, 1919-1922; was director of the labor research department, Rand School of Social Science, during the 1920s, and edited the American Labor Year Book published by the Rand School. During the 1930s, he taught science and shop at the Walden School, a private progressive school in New York; was a nature and shop counselor at children's summer camps, and, as Bert Grant, wrote a science and nature column for the New Pioneer. From 1943 to 1964 De Leon was assistant research director for the National Maritime Union. He was also active in the Labor Research Association during the 1960s, and was a regular contributor of articles and book reviews to its publication Economic Notes. De Leon was a librarian and French instructor at Kettrell Junior College, a Black college in North Carolina from 1965 to 1967, and died in Ellenville, N.Y., on December 3, 1975.