Milwaukee Leader

Stock was owned jointly by unions, branches of the Socialist Party, and individual participants in the labor and radical movement.

[1] Critical additional funding was provided by Elizabeth H. Thomas, a wealthy Milwaukee resident of radical political views.

Other important editorialists over the paper's history included James R. "Jim" Howe (who died in the spring of 1917), his successor John M. Work, and international affairs commentator Ernest Untermann.

During World War I, the paper's consistent antimilitarist stand brought it into conflict with the administration of President Woodrow Wilson and his Postmaster General Albert Burleson.

[7] In the spring of 1939, new owner Paul Holmes and his associates sold their interest in the Wisconsin Guardian Publishing Company to representatives of the Milwaukee Federated Trades Council, and the unions took over the paper.