The Anarchist Periodical Press in the United States

272 Pages·2016·7.99 MB·English

The Anarchist Periodical Press in the United States:
An Intertextual Study of Prison Blossoms, Free Society, and The Demonstrator
A Thesis Submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in the Faculty of Arts and Science
TRENT UNIVERSITY
Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
(c) Copyright by Laura Greenwood 2016
Cultural Studies PhD Graduate Program
September 2016
ABSTRACT
The Anarchist Periodical Press in the United States:
An Intertextual Study of Prison Blossoms, Free Society, and The Demonstrator
Laura Greenwood
This dissertation focuses on the English-language anarchist periodical press in the
United States in the 1890s and early 1900s. Each of the three chapters of this dissertation
examines one anarchist paper and its coverage of a specific issue. The first chapter
focuses on Prison Blossoms, which was started by Alexander Berkman, Carl Nold, and
Henry Bauer and written and circulated in the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, and
its engagement with Alexander Berkman's attempt to assassinate Henry Clay Frick. The
second chapter examines Free Society, a weekly edited primarily by Abraham Isaak, and
its contributors' writings on the assassination of President William McKinley by self-
described anarchist Leon Czolgosz. Finally, the third chapter focuses on The
Demonstrator, specifically its first volume which was edited by James F. Morton Jr. from
the intentional community of Home, Washington, and the paper's work in supporting John
Turner, the first anarchist targeted for deportation under the Immigration Act of 1903.
Drawing upon critical discourse analysis, this dissertation incorporates
examination of the context in which these papers were written (particularly the immediate
concerns to which the papers' authors responded), the form and generic conventions of the
anarchist press, including the approaches of the papers' respective editors, and the
arguments advanced by their authors. It pays particular attention to the intertextuality of
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the anarchist press -- the ways in which those writing in anarchist papers addressed one
another both within and across periodicals, generating anarchist thought through
conversation and debate and enacting their anarchist ideals in the practice of publishing.
This dissertation demonstrates that the anarchist periodical press, an element of anarchist
history that has received little attention, offers important insights: it details how anarchists
immediately responded to important issues of their time, and reveals the ways in which
the emergence of anarchism was itself a collective effort, emerging from conversation,
debate, and disagreement about how best to create radical change and what that change
should look like.
Keywords: anarchism, periodicals, intertextuality, critical discourse analysis, propaganda
by deed, free speech movement, Alexander Berkman, Leon Czolgosz, John Turner
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As this dissertation elaborates with respect to the anarchist periodical press, texts
draw on past words, respond to contemporaneous words, and anticipate future words;
texts are dialogic, dynamic, engaged in conversation. In writing this dissertation, I have
benefited tremendously from the support, friendship, and feedback of many people,
whose questions, ideas, suggestions have enhanced my work and my thinking. While I
am wholly responsible for any of my dissertation's shortcomings, its strengths certainly
reflect the feedback I've received from colleagues and friends who have generously
engaged with my writing and offered their insights.
My advisor, Alan O'Connor, has from the beginning encouraged and supported my
interest in writing on the anarchist press; his feedback on my writing from the earliest
proposal stages to the dissertation's culmination in defence has made me a better scholar
and has tremendously enhanced this work. His support has been invaluable over the
many years that we have worked together, and I am grateful for the input he has given me
on my work. My committee members Elaine Stavro and Jonathan Bordo have both been
exceedingly generous with their time and their willingness to meet with me, to read my
work at its various stages of completion, and to ask thought-provoking questions and
offer their feedback on my writing. My dissertation is stronger for their insights, and their
support has been crucial to my completing this work. Bryan Palmer, who served as the
internal examiner for my defence, pressed me to think about a number of important issues
related to my work which had, prior to our conversations, not received adequate focus in
my writing – I am very grateful for his generous engagement with my work, and know
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that his questions and his suggestions have enhanced my dissertation; they will also
significantly enrich the book I hope to develop from the work herein. Jesse Cohn at
Purdue University Northwest, who served as external examiner for my defence, has given
me much to think about, as his insights have made me think of my work in new ways; I
am very grateful for his participation in my defence and his generous feedback on my
writing, which will strengthen both my dissertation and my future work. I have long read
and appreciated his writings on anarchism, and feel very grateful to have had the
opportunity to discuss my work with him.
I am thankful to David Holdsworth, who served as the chair for my thesis defence,
and to Nancy Legate and Catherine O'Brien who, as the administrative assistants of the
Cultural Studies PhD program, have helped me many times over the years. I am also
grateful to Julie Herrada, the curator of the Labadie Collection, and to everyone at the
Special Collections Reading Room and at the Serials & Microforms Room at the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor – their guidance was absolutely crucial to my ability
to navigate the archive and to conduct the research at the heart of this project. I am
thankful to the communities of the Theory, Culture, and Politics MA Program and the
Cultural Studies PhD Program at Trent University, programs which have been my
academic home for the duration of my graduate student life. The Cultural Studies faculty
have taught me much, and my graduate student colleagues have been very supportive and
encouraging throughout the writing of this dissertation. The graduate programs I've been
a part of have served as positive environments in which I could pursue interdisciplinary
work – I could not imagine having completed this dissertation anywhere else.
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Finally, I offer a deeply heartfelt thanks to my friends and family. They have been
generous, patient, and encouraging of my work, and have offered me their constant and
unconditional support. My family has always encouraged me to pursue my interests and
have supported me throughout my time as a graduate student. My friends have listened to
my frustrations, celebrated my successes, encouraged me, and kept me smiling. My cat
companions, Darryl and Bandit, have kept me company, even making the trip to Ann
Arbor for three months, and are always generous with love and cuddles. I am very lucky
to have such a strong support network, and without them this dissertation would never
have come to fruition; I extend all my gratitude to them.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ii
Acknowledgements iv
Table of Contents vii
List of Figures viii
Introduction 1
Henry Bauer, Alexander Berkman, and Carl Nold's Prison Blossoms:
Writing Resistance to Isolation, Writing into The Anarchist Movement
I. Prison Blossoms: An Introduction 13
II. The Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania 18
III. “Prison Literature” 31
IV. Prison Blossoms, Genre, Addressivity, and Intertextuality 45
V. Radical Communities & The Anarchist Press 57
VI. Propaganda by Deed and The Debate on Berkman's Act 65
VII. Textual Solidarity: Periodical Press Prison Support 84
Book-Anarchists on Bomb-Anarchists: Free Society, the McKinley Assassination,
and the Anarchists' Debate on (Propaganda) Tactics
VIII. The Assassination, Press Vilification, and the Stamping Out Craze 91
IX. The Responses of the Anarchist Press 108
X. Free Society: Background and Significance 113
XI. The First Issue Post-Assassination 125
XII. Claiming & Reframing Czolgosz 131
XIII. Violent Tactics: Causes and Impacts 141
XIV. Revolutionary Anarchists vs. Philosophical Anarchists 148
XV. Methods of Propaganda: A Paper "Broad Enough to Include Both" 159
The Defense of John Turner: The Demonstrator's Anarchist Case for Free Speech
XVI. The Immigration Act of 1903 and the Arrest of John Turner 170
XVII. Free Speech Law: The Context 179
XVIII. United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams 184
XIX. Responses to Turner's Case 196
XX. The Demonstrator: A Newspaper from Home 202
XXI. Turner as a Civil Disobedient: “He Has Committed No Crime” 217
XXII. Freedom as an American Tradition 225
XXIII. The Demonstrator in Conversation: An Intertexual Struggle 232
Conclusion 243
Bibliography 248
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure I Heading of leaflet distributed by anarchists at Homestead 14
Figure II Political cartoon entitled "Uncle Sam's Next Contract" 96
published in the Denver Post on 16 September 1901
Figure III Free Society's original flag 116
Figure IV First appearance of Free Society's later flag art, published 116
16 February 1902
Figure V The Demonstrator's original flag 209
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1
Introduction
Many anarchists participated in the publication and circulation of radical
periodicals at the turn of the century in the United States; they were editors, printers,
authors, or agents, selling the papers at events or organizing socials to help with
fundraising to keep the papers running, and helping to spread anarchist ideas by passing
copies of the papers they subscribed to along to their friends and neighbours. Hundreds
of anarchist newspapers and journals circulated alongside pamphlets, books, circulars and
other printed materials. Anarchist papers played many roles in the movement, and
anarchists considered them tremendously important; as Kathy Ferguson writes, “anarchist
publications were the heart of anarchist communities.”1 These periodicals were sites of
the vigorous debate out of which anarchist thought and practice emerged – authors
conversed with each other both within and across periodicals, developing ideas
collectively. Writing in 1901 about the importance of leaving space for debate and
disagreement in radical papers, James F. Morton, Jr. described this tendency as fitting to
anarchism, arguing that such lively discussion “naturally results from the fact that
Anarchy is the embodiment of a vital principle, and not a set creed or an arbitrary system
of social relationships.”2 In the pages of their periodicals, anarchists of diverse views on
a massive range of subjects advanced their arguments, responded to their critics, and, in
conversation with one another, elaborated their rich and varied frameworks of political
thought while putting their ideals into practice in the very practice of publication.
1 Kathy Ferguson, “Anarchist Printers and Presses: Material Circuits of Politics,” Political Theory 42, no.
4 (2014): 395.
2 James F. Morton, Jr., “Off and On,” Discontent (Home, WA), 11 September 1901.
2
This dissertation is about the relationship between words and actions, and the
work that words can do; the anarchists who produced the papers I examine certainly
thought that the printed word could have real effects, and in anarchists' work in periodical
publishing the distinction between words and actions is ever shifting. As Ferguson writes,
"the first thing that an emergent anarchist group did was usually to launch its own journal,
rather than join an existing publication."3 This was not because they considered all of the
other papers in circulation insufficient, but because they felt the need to make one
themselves; the activity of printing a paper was important to anarchists, even if the paper
would last for only a single issue. These papers varied widely in terms of editorial
approach, tone, topics of focus, length, longevity, and theoretical perspective. With
respect to organization, anarchists of the period held diverse views: while some accepted
a need to work within tightly organized hierarchical organizational structures, others
sought to organize themselves according to the anarchist principles of equality and
voluntary association they hoped to bring about. As Goyens notes:
[the] tension between efficiency and autonomy spawned many intragroup
disputes and is still relevant today. Rivalries are ... not always a tedious
footnote in the historical record but often reveal serious attempts by
political dissenters to live a principled and meaningful life outside the
capitalist sphere.4
These differences were reflected in anarchists' wide range of views on tactics: while some
argued that means and ends must be consistent and that a peaceful, equitable, harmonious
anarchist world could never come about through violence, others embraced the idea that
3 Ferguson, "Anarchist Printers and Presses," 406.
4 Tom Goyens, Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880-1914
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007): 123.