The other Carl Sandburg Book

My paternal grandfather, Einar Graff Sr., was a friend and associate of Carl Sandburg. Both were members of the Socialist Party, Sandburg holding office in the Socialist administration of Milwaukee, Einar running unsuccessfully for an aldermanic position in Chicago; both "belonged" to the Dill Pickle Club; both were newspaper men in Chicago and both lost their jobs during the Depression. Further, Einar was married to Lajla, my grandmother, whose parents and grandparents had built a summer cottage in Michigan walking distance from the home of Sandburg's wife at which location he wrote his Lincoln biography. Our "next door" neighbor in the woods of Lake Charter Township just happened to be a pediatrician and Sandburg's three daughters were his patients. Thus Sandburg was around a lot when my dad, Einar Jr., was growing up, Dad reporting that he would try out his children's stories on the local kids before submitting them for publication. Sandburg's death was a big deal in our family. I recall driving to Stevensville, Michigan from our cottage for Dad to purchase all available papers covering his demise.

This book primarily deals with Sandburg as a leftist, he having been associated, variously, with the Socialist Party of America, the Industrial Workers of the World and the Finish Communists as well as with Eugene Victor Debs, the Charles Kerr Publishing House and numerous left-wing publications. While in later years, after the post-war Red Scare and some persecution by the Feds, Sandburg concentrated more on literature than on political writing, he continued on as a liberal Democrat, "selling out", just as my grandfather did, to Roosevelt and his successors.

Many of Sandburg's political writings were done under various pseudonyms and often for ephemeral publications. Yannella is to be credited for tracking them down and for crafting a plausible chronological account of Sandburg's political evolution coordinated with the poetry he was composing during the same period.