"I am sorry I haven't more time to sell The Masses, but I am working hard for a living. Sold out your last bundle in an hour."

Fred'k Morisse, Kewanee, Ill. (The Masses, July 1911)

"The first issue of The Masses just reached me and I congratulate you upon its splendid appearence. The initial issue gives promise of a powerful illustrated monthly magazine. (. . .)The Masses is gotten up on form and style to meet this demand and the excellence and variety of its contents will command it at a glance to all, who are interested in a first class magazine dealing with the vital questions of the day."
Eugene Debs (The Masses, Feb. 1911)

"Your paper is a typographical and artistic triumph"

Wm. G.Leightbowr, Hackensack, N.J. (The Masses, July 1911)

An early manifesto from The Masses states that
" This magazine is owned and Published Co-operatively by Its Editors. It has no Dividends to Pay, and nobody is trying to make Money out of it. A Revolutionary and not a Reform Magazine; a Magazine with a Sense of Humor and no Respect or the Respectable; Frank, Arrogant, Impertinent, searching for the True Causes; a Magazine directed against Rigidity and Dogma wherever it is found; Printing what is too Naked or True for a Money-making Press; a Magazine whose final Policy is to do as it Pleases and Conciliate Nobody, not even its Readers -- There is a field for this Publication in America. Help us to find it." According to Eastman, "This freedom enabled us to join independently in the struggle for racial equality, for women's rights, for intelligent sex relations, above all (and beneath all) for birth and population control."

- Rebecca Zurier, Art for "The Masses," , p. xvi.