The Press: Social Leader

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The New Leader's spark is sad-eyed, 50-year-old Samuel M. Levitas, who came to the U.S. from Russia in 1923, after three years in & out of Bolshevik prisons. Slim, midwestish, white-haired William E. Bohn, onetime teacher and Socialist lecturer, writes most of the editorials and a chatty, personalized column—"so there'll be something the working man can understand." Daniel Bell, 24, who was a working Socialist on Manhattan's lower East Side at 13, is an associate editor. Another is tall, grey, ex-Communist Listen Oak, who was "disillusioned" by a trip to Russia and by experiences with Communists while helping the Loyalists in Spain.

New Leader's editors and staff (two girls), beaming over anniversary messages, recall amusedly one last year from a prominent anti-Communist whom the paper has often attacked. It read: "I find myself puzzled by its temperateness and very good humor—Westbrook Pegler."