Josephine Conger-Kaneko

Josephine Conger-Kaneko (5 May 1875 – 28 July 1934) was an American journalist and writer. She is best remembered as the editor of the magazines The Socialist Woman and Home Life.

Josephine Conger-Kaneko, 1909
The Socialist Woman magazine cover featuring playwright Marion Craig Wentworth, April 1908

Biography

Josephine Conger was born in Centralia, Missouri. She learned about the publishing trade at an early age, setting type for the Linneus Bulletin, a newspaper established by her brother.[1] She also delved in the writing of poetry, gaining some degree of local notoriety for her work.[1]

After attending the radical Ruskin College at Trenton, Missouri, she became a socialist[2] and joined the staff of Appeal to Reason, a newspaper in Girard, Kansas. In 1907 she began publishing a separate woman's periodical, The Socialist Woman. Two years later the name changed to The Progressive Woman (1909-1913) and was renamed again as The Coming Nation (1913-1914).[3][4] Conger-Kaneko believed that men and women were equal and that sexual differences were imposed by society.[5] In 1905 she married Kiichi Kaneko, a Japanese socialist.

After 1914 Conger-Kaneko moved to Chicago, where she continued to publish The Coming Nation. She continued this for another year or two. She was a candidate for Trustee of the University of Illinois in 1914, appearing on the ballot on the Socialist Party ticket.[6]

In May 1916, Conger-Kaneko was tapped as the new editor of Home Life, a magazine published in Chicago.[1]

The most extensive collection of Conger's writings, as published in The Appeal to Reason, are housed in the special collections department of Leonard H. Axe Library at Pittsburg State University, Pittsburg, Kansas.[7] After World War I she retired from politics.[8]

She was a niece of J.A. Wayland.

See also

Works
  • (1909). A Little Sister of the Poor. Progressive Woman Publishing Company.
  • (1911). Woman's Slavery: Her Road to Freedom. Progressive Woman Publishing Company.
  • (1918). Woman's Voice: An Anthology (editor). Boston: The Stratford Company.

Selected articles

References
  1. "Josephine Conger-Kaneko," Centralia [MO] Fireside Guard, May 12, 1916, p. 8.
  2. Buhle, Mari Jo (1970). "Women and the Socialist Party, 1901-1914," Radical America 4 (2), pp. 36-47, 50-54.
  3. Wayne, Tiffany K. (2011). Feminist Writings from Ancient Times to the Modern World: A Global Sourcebook and History. ABC-CLIO, p. 400.
  4. "Publisher's Preface". The Coming Nation: viii. November 1913. This magazine was formerly The Progressive Woman. This is its first appearance under the new name, The Coming Nation.
  5. Wayne (2011), p. 401.
  6. "Specimen Ballot," Beau County Tribune, Oct. 30, 1914, p. 11.
  7. "Re: Query: Josephine Conger Kaneko". H-Net Discussion Networks. 1999-04-26. Archived from the original on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2015-11-05.
  8. Jones, Margaret C. (1993). Heretics & Hellraisers: Women Contributors to The Masses, 1911-1917. University of Texas Press, p. 173.

Further reading
  • Buhle, Mari Jo (1983). Women and American Socialism, 1870-1920. University of Illinois Press.
  • Endres, Kathleen L. (1996). "The Progressive Woman," in Women's Periodicals in the United States: Social and Political Issues. Greenwood Publishing Group.
  • Japp, Debra K. (1989). Forging Bond of Unity and Sympathy among Women: A Cultural-Rhetorical Analysis of 'The Progressive Woman', 1907-1914. PhD dissertation, University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
  • Shore, Elliott (1988). Talkin' Socialism: J.A. Wayland and the Role of the Press in American Radicalism, 1890-1912. University Press of Kansas.
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