Samuel Albert Rosa was a socialist and journalist. He was probably born in Sydney and grew up in London. Between 1886 and 1888 he worked as a journalist in the United States, and in 1888 he arrived in Melbourne. In 1889 he helped form the Social Democratic League, for which he was a leading open-air orator. He was known in Melbourne in 1890 as a leader of the unemployed.
In 1890 he moved to Sydney. He became secretary of theAustralian Socialist League, holding this position for just over a year, married, successfully sued the Truth for libel, and was imprisoned for three months for selling Arthur Desmond's Hard Cash. He was defeated as a Labor candidate in the elections of 1894 and 1895, and in 1901 he stood unsuccessfully for the Senate. Also in 1901 he became leader-writer and editor of the Truth, and worked for this paper until 1923.
During World War I Rosa was chairman of the Industrial Vigilance Council. In 1919 he was expelled from the Labor Party. In 1923 he became managing editor of the Australian Coal and Shale Employees' Federation's Common Cause, and in 1925 he became leader-writer and literary editor of the Labor Daily when the two papers merged. In the 1920s he was 'grandmaster' of I Felici Litterati, a group of artists and writers that met in cafes. In 1937 he was president of the Society of Australian Composers and Authors.
Rosa published a number of pamphlets during his career, mostly on political issues. The earliest was Social Democracy (1890) and the last was The Troubles of an Editor (1936).
Major source : Australian Dictionary of Biography (Online)
