Early years William Mailly was born November 22, 1871, in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Mailly's parents emigrated to
Liverpool, England when the boy was 2, and so the American-born Mailly was raised in English schools — an extremely rare pattern of emigration for an American radical activist. He worked in Liverpool from a very early age as an errand boy. Mailly returned to the United States in July 1889, working briefly in a brickyard and on a railway before moving to
Alabama in 1890 to take up work as a
coal miner. Mailly took part in a coal strike in 1894, activity which resulted in his blacklisting from the Alabama coal mines.
Political career Following his blacklisting from the mines, Mailly began to work as an organizer on behalf of the UMWA and the
Socialist Party of America. Mailly turned his hand to labor journalism, taking a job as Associate Editor of the
Birmingham Labor Advocate in May 1895, and serving at that post for about a year. The January 1903 meeting of the governing National Committee of the SPA elected Mailly as the new Nati Secretary of the party and he assumed these duties the following month. The same meeting moved the headquarters of the party to
Omaha, Nebraska, and so Mailly moved there forthwith. Mailly was reelected as National Secretary of the Socialist Party in 1904 and continued in that position until 1905. Mailly also served as a member of the National Executive Committee of the SPA from 1905 to 1906. Mailly finished up his life back in New York City, first as Associate Editor of the socialist weekly
The Worker (1906–1907) before becoming Managing Editor of its successor the
New York Call (1908–1909). He then moved to the mass-circulation monthly
The Metropolitan Magazine where he was to contribute an article each month on the topic of socialism.
Death and legacy Shortly after his move to
The Metropolitan Magazine, Mailly's health began to fail. Mailly died September 4, 1912, at the age of 40. He was survived by his wife, Bertha Howell Mailly, whom he married in 1898. ==Footnotes==