than 64 cities and towns spread across 20 states and the District of Columbia. While schools associated with the Socialist Party were established in such Midwestern cities as Chicago and Omaha, Nebraska, the center of greatest activity was New York City and the neighboring cities of southern New Jersey. According to one scholar, the impetus for these schools came from the Workmen's Circle (Arbeiter Ring), a Yiddish language socialist fraternal benefit society. The publishers of the Socialist New Yorker Volkszeitung were quick to follow, launching a periodical to aid the effort in December 1908 called The Little Socialist Magazine for Boys and Girls. The name of the publication was changed to Young Socialists' Magazine in June 1911. By 1911 some 14 Socialist Sunday Schools were in existence in the New York metropolitan area. The first Socialist Sunday School on the west coast was established in Oakland, California early in 1906. Coordinated by Socialist Party of California activist H.H. Lilienthal, more than 100 children were enrolled at the organization's January 28 launch, held at the headquarters facility of Local Oakland. While precise enrollment numbers are not available, one contemporary estimated in the spring of 1911 that some 2,000 children participated in English language Socialist Sunday Schools, supplanted by others in schools for children who spoke German, Latvian, Yiddish, and other languages of the immigrant community. Among the leaders of the Socialist Party's effort to develop Socialist Sunday Schools was Bertha Mailly, for a time Secretary of the New York State Committee, who encouraged prospective SSS teachers to read John Dewey's School and Society to provide a conceptual basis for their work. During the second decade of the 20th century the Socialist Party's "Young People's Department", headed by William Kruse, published an organizing manual for party locals seeking to establish Socialist Sunday Schools, including an extensive proposed list of books for SSS libraries. The Socialist education movement in America was closely connected with certain of the foreign language federations of the SPA, which taught children in their native tongue. Known to have organized Socialist Sunday Schools during this period were the Finnish Socialist Federation, the Ukrainian Socialist Federation, the Hungarian Socialist Federation, and the Lettish Socialist Federation. In tandem with the Socialist Party of America's network of Sunday Schools there existed a system of Sunday Schools conducted by the Workmen's Circle (Arbeiter Ring), a predominantly Yiddish language socialist mutual benefit organization. Founded