The most direct ancestor of the Appeal was The Coming Nation, a socialist communalist paper established by Julius Augustus Wayland in Greensburg, Indiana.

When Wayland tired of the colony, he left his newspaper behind with the colonists, moving to Kansas City, Missouri, to publish his own independently weekly, Appeal to Reason, established on August 31, 1895.

[6] By 1910, the newspaper employed about 60 workers and boasted a "three-deck, straight-line Goss machine that prints four hundred twelve-page papers, in colors, folded, per minute, when desired.

[7] The paper's popularity was powered by a folksy style of writing and the participation of many leading literary luminaries of the Socialist movement, including Upton Sinclair,[8] Jack London, Mary "Mother" Jones, Eugene Debs, and Helen Keller.

After a series of editorials attacking American militarism and conscription policies during the First World War, the federal government rescinded the paper's second-class mailing rights.

This, combined with the post–Russian Revolution “Red Scare” and the restrictions of the Espionage Act (as well as infighting among American socialists), led to a drastic reduction in subscriptions.