Charles H. Kerr Company

Chicago labor and socialist publishing house founded in 1886 by Charles Hope Kerr.

The firm is best known for its editions of socialist classics, including the first American Enlish language edition of Karl Marx's Das Kapital, and its periodical, the International Socialist Review. Kerr authors included such well-known radicals as Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, Jack London, Mary E. Marcy, Joe Hill, Clarence Darrow, Sen Katayama, Antonio Labriola, V.I. Lenin, Frederich Engels, Leon Trotsky, Carl Sandburg, Ralph Chaplin, and Arturo M. Giovannitti. With the retirement of Charles Kerr in 1928, John Keracher, active in socialist, communist, and Marxist organizations and a founder of the Proletarian Party, took charge and combined the offices of the Kerr Company and Proletarian Party. The firm was later managed by Al Wysocki (1953-1971); Fred Thompson, Burton Rosen, Virgil Vogel, and Irving Abrams; and Franklin and Penelope Rosemont (1983-ongoing).