[1] Edelstadt immigrated to Cincinnati and worked as a buttonhole maker, while publishing Yiddish labor poems in Varhayt and Der Morgenshtern.

He was editor of the Yiddish anarchist newspaper Fraye Arbeter Shtime in 1891 but left the post after contracting tuberculosis, moving west to seek a cure.

[1] Following his hospitalization, Edelstadt and his brother joined a cell of the Am-Olam organization, leaving Russia for a Jewish agricultural commune in the US.

Edelstadt participated in the Pioneers of Freedom, the first Jewish anarchist group in New York which was formed following the arrest of the Haymarket martyrs.

In January 1889, Edelstadt's first poem written in America appeared in the Russian Social Democratic newspaper Znamya in New York.