Biography
Max Kagan was a Milwaukee Communist activist jailed following the March 6, 1930 demonstration for unemployment insurance. He received a six-month sentence in the Milwaukee House of Correction and was still serving it that August. The International Labor Defense campaigned for his release alongside Leo Fisher and John Perlich and arranged a November 16 welcome for the three. Kagan was also the Communist candidate for Wisconsin's seventh State Senate district in the 1930 election.
The Milwaukee report names this defendant among five convicted of riot and unlawful assembly arising from the March 6 unemployment demonstration. This article supplies no individual sentence and does not alter the independently recorded later outcome. Daily Worker, May 12, 1930, page 1. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1930/v06-n368-NY-may-12-1930-DW-LOC.pdf
The September 8, 1930 Laisve, page 5, reproduces an International Labor Defense political-prisoner directory. Its row prints M. Kagan, a term of 6 months, the year 1930 in the sentencing-year column, and confinement or correspondence location Station F, Box G, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This is an attributed historical directory entry; printed years and nominal terms are not exact intake dates or measured time served, and mailing boxes do not independently identify a prison. The directory contains stale or conflicting chronology, so this row does not override independently established conviction, death or release facts. Source: https://www.spauda2.org/laisve/archive/1930/1930-09-08-LAISVE.pdf#page=5
The October 26 Milwaukee dispatch advertises a November 16 ILD welcome for Leo Fisher, Max Kagan and John Perlich, describing six-month terms after the March 6 unemployment demonstration. Its wording mixes released with will have served and supplies no individual physical discharge day; the future banquet date is not used as a release date or a completed-service counter. It also identifies Fred Bassett as still the imprisoned Communist gubernatorial candidate under a one-year sentence.
