A Rogue Gallery of 20th Century American Anarchists

Andrew Cornell. Unruly Equality: U.S. Anarchism in the 20th Century (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016).

_____. “For a World Without Oppressors:” U.S. Anarchism from the Palmer Raids to the Sixties. Diss. New York University, 2011. 

The planet may find a way to survive the terrible insults it receives and humans may yet learn to live in societies that are equitable and just. But the fight to save the planet and find a just society must continue. Change can often come unexpectedly and rapidly (Diva Agostinelli Wieck, 2006).

Ammon Hennesy and Dorothy Day, Catholic Workerr

These are my people. I appreciate the attention Andrew Cornell has devoted to a manifestly minor current on the US left in his new history Unruly Equality: U.S. Anarchism in the 20th Century. Cornell shows the significant influence anarchists had on the early civil rights movement, the antiwar and student New Left in the 60s, and the green left and social ecology inspired by Murray Bookchin in recent years. Anarchists were also first on the Left to criticize one-party Bolshevik rule after the Russian Revolution in the 20s.

Dave Dellinger, Liberation

The last time anarchism had mass numbers was before WWI when
the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) may have had 100,000 members. The IWW was never narrowly anarchist. It was ecumenical in an anarchist way, embracing agrarian populists, Christian socialists, syndicalists, freethinkers, social democrats, and anarchists. After WWI the IWW faded. The federal government imprisoned the top leadership of the IWW for opposing the war, and many members dropped out, or became communist in the wake of the Russian Revolution. The IWW was reborn in the late 60s with New Left converts and continues its mission to build "One Big Union" to this day. Cornell does not really cover the IWW. Either he feels its history has been well documented elsewhere, or considers it moribund after WWI.

Peter Maurin, Catholic Worker

Cornell identifies three distinct currents of anarchist activity in the 20s and 30s: (1) anarcho-syndicalism, characterized by the IWW and participation in various mainstream AFL unions; (2) insurrectionists, like the Italian partisans of anarchist Luigi Galleani; and (3) bohemians who formed rural colonies, housing cooperatives, libertarian schools, theaters, and other cultural ventures. There was overlap and conflict between these tendencies, but let me describe them separately.

Sam Dolgoff, IWW

(1) The labor movement working-class anarchists were largely first generation European immigrants who brought their political affiliations with them from the Old World. Some joined the IWW, some the vigorous Jewish textile unions, some the foreign language federations. Rose Pesotta began her anarchist career in the 20s as a shop delegate in the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), the secretary of the Road to Freedom Group, a member of the Anarchist Red Cross, and rose to Vice President of the ILGWU by 1934, which was disdained by doctrinaire anarchists. Italian immigrant Carlo Tresca was another ecumenical anarcho-syndicalist labor organizer during this period. He was an IWW organizer at the 1912 Lawrence MA textile strike, the 1913 Paterson NJ silk strike, and the 1916 Mesabi Range MN miners' strike.  He was editor or publisher of a string of Italian-language labor newspapers in the US. He was an outspoken anti-Fascist and anti-Stalinist in the 30s. He was assassinated in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue, NYC in 1943, perhaps by the Mafia.

Dwight and Nancy MacDonald, politics

During the 30s these class-struggle anarchists largely abstained from the popular/united front organizing during the Great Depression. The Immigration Act of 1924 had cut off the stream of Italian, Jewish, and East European radicals to the US that fed the anarchist unions and organizations. Those immigrant factory jobs were now filled by African American migrants from the South. Anarchists (also the Socialist Party) were slow to fight for civil rights and racial justice. The Communist Party (CPUSA) became the leading civil rights advocate on the Left. 

Juanita and Wally Nelson, Peacemakers

In 1932 various anarchists veterans- Sam Dolgoff, Abe and Selma Bluestein, Sidney and Clara Soloman, and others- launched an anarchist publication Vanguard: A Libertarian Communist Journal in NYC. It was a small group, but played an important role in reprinting anarchist classics and rethinking principles after the Russian Revolution. Andrew Cornell notes "the revolution in Russia fundamentally divided and reordered the American Left." The Vanguard Group gave voice to the Left critics of the Bolshevik rule. They organized study groups and forums in NYC, aided anarchist exiles and prisoners in Europe and Russia, and examined the New Deal in their journal. Soon the consuming issue for anarcho-syndicalists worldwide became the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Many of the same comrades published the Spanish Revolution newspaper during the Spanish Civil War reporting the confusing politics of the war to US readers. They also raised money for the CNT-FAI, the anarcho-syndicalist union in Spain. These groups disbanded after the defeat of Spanish Republic and the onset of WW2.

Judith Malina and Julian Beck,
Living Theatre

(2) After WW1 there remained a diehard group of revolutionary anarchists committed to the 19th century idea of propaganda of the deed, ie assassinations, bombings, insurrection, banditry, social revolution. Their inspiration was the Paris Commune in 1871. Anything short of libertarian communism was reformist and inadequate. The primary leader of this tendency was Luigi Galleani (1861-1931), an Italian immigrant and publisher. Galleani's followers (known as i Galleanisti) advocated the use of violence to eliminate tyrants and to overthrow the government. They also opposed formal political organizations and trade unions as hierarchical institutions of the old order. Among his disciples were Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were probably innocent of the crime they were hung for, but guilty of revolutionary violence on other occasions. Historian Paul Avrich investigated this history in Sacco and Vanzetti: the Anarchist Background (1990).

Murray Bookchin

The insurrectionary school of anarchism finally collapsed in the 30s. Many militants were deported, and new immigration laws restricted new migrants from southern and eastern Europe. These ideas were disastrous for anarchism. The anarchist bombings and assassinations from 1880-1920 in Europe and the US discredited all varieties of anarchism, and contributed to its decline after WW1. Anarchism has never recovered from its association with the bomb throwers in the popular mind. 

David Wieck and Diva Agostinelli

(3) Emma Goldman is an example of the bohemian or cultural strain of US anarchism. She was often criticized by trade unionists for her lecture tours of salon society on topics like theater and sexuality. But she was ahead of her time addressing birth control, homosexuality, popular culture, literature, and free speech. Her publication Mother Earth was a forerunner for many political and literary journals that followed later. She was deported to Russia in 1919 during the Red Scare following WW1. She was exiled the rest of her life, except for a brief lecture tour of the US in 1934.

Bill Sutherland, Peacemakers

Anarchists also founded alternative institutions, which Cornell calls prefigurative counterinstitutions. This has always been popular among anarchists. Cornell describes several ventures: the Ferrer Modern School at Stelton NJ (1915-1953), which was a free school and colony; the Mohegan Modern School, which was a spinoff from Stelton in upstate NY; and the Sunrise Co-operative Farm Community in Alecia MI (1933-1936) which was a short-lived American Kibbutz. Joseph Cohen wrote a history of Sunrise entitled In Quest of Heaven: The Story of the Sunrise Co-operative Farm Community (1957). They should have learned from their comrades in Palestine who were more successful cooperators. Anarchists were also active in the Housing Co-op Movement in the 1920s and 1930s in NYC which was initiated by unions, Workmen's Circle, CPUSA, and SP. These buildings were pioneers of racial integration and the nascent Civil Rights movement.

Carlo Tresca and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,
Paterson NJ Silkworkers Strike

The most enduring anarchist creation from this era was the Catholic Worker Movement. It was founded in 1933 by Dorothy Day, a 35 year old radical journalist and recent Catholic convert, and Peter Maurin, a 55 year old French personalist. He was inspired by French philosopher Emmanuel Mounier (1905- 1950) who advocated a communitarian alternative to liberalism and Marxism. The Catholic Workers were philosophically guided by the Christian Gospels and Peter Kropotkin's vision of a decentralized anarchist communist order. Their program was direct action: opening houses of hospitality to care for the destitute, establishing farms to encourage self-sufficiency, and promoting radical education through "roundtable discussions" and their Catholic Worker newspaper. At the height of the Depression their monthly newspaper had over 100,000 circulation. Cornell says "the Catholic Worker experiment generated more interest than all the traditional schools of anarchism combined, and it pointed the direction the movement would develop in the coming decades." The Catholic Worker Movement is still healthy today with 100 Houses of Hospitality worldwide and its lively monthly Catholic Worker newspaper (a penny a copy). I've been a reader and subscriber since the 1960s.

Russell Blackwell, IWW

With the arrival of WW2, Cornell describes the confluence of radical pacifism and anarchism. Some anarchists and Trotskyists opposed the war as imperialist, and were imprisoned. Some pacifists refused civilian service and were imprisoned as well. These political prisoners at Danbury Federal Penitentiary and others collaborated to oppose and ultimately defeat Jim Crow segregation in the Federal prisons in 1944. Outside prison pacifists and young anarchists collaborated in new literary and political journals, and new organizations. This was the birth of a new contemporary anarchism. Dwight and Nancy MacDonald's politics journal (1944-1949) published many of the future luminaries of the New Left to come, like Camus, C. Wright Mills, James Baldwin, Byard Rustin, and Paul Goodman. The Committee on Racial Equality was founded in 1942 by civil rights activists from the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). Later it was renamed Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). After WW2 war resisters Dave Dellinger, A. J. Muste,  David Wieck, and others formed the Committee for Nonviolent Revolution (CNVR) and later the Peacemakers in 1948 as militant direct action civil rights organizations. Fellowship for Reconciliation organized the first freedom ride in 1947 to challenge segregation on buses and trains in interstate travel. This was the beginning of the modern Civil Rights movement.

Rose Pesotta, ILGWU

The Peacemakers were my introduction to radical politics. I read Dave Dellinger's magazine Liberation (published 1956-1977) at college, and learned about a week-long workshop on nonviolence in the Missouri Ozark Mountains held by the Peacemakers in 1968. I attended and met war resisters from WW2 and the Vietnam war, as well as veteran civil rights activists. It was very inspiring, although ultimately I couldn't embrace pacifism. I did learn about the Catholic Worker Movement, Prince Peter Kropotkin, and the libertarian socialist tradition which was more to my taste. I volunteered at the CW St. Joseph House on East First Street whenever I visited friends in NYC and met other anarchist denizens of the neighborhood- the NYC IWW, the Living Theatre troupe, local Yippies and hippies. This counterpoised an appealing alternative for me to the stern Marxist-Leninist politics that was captivating the New Left in the late 60s.

Clara Solomon, Vanguard Group

There is lots of detail in Andrew Cornell's history which I enjoyed as a fellow traveler. Sometimes I am astounded by the massive literature on the history of the Left in the US. Oftentimes the subject of study are sects and groupscules of a few hundred or thousand people, or less. Nonetheless, some of these groups have had profound influence on US culture and history. Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker supported the Republic during the Spanish Civil War in opposition to Rome and help create the Catholic Left. The Harlem Ashram, a multiracial intentional community formed by Union Theological Seminarians in 1940, introduced Dave Dellinger, George Hauser (FOR), and James Farmer (CORE) to Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence, later adopted by modern Civil Rights movement. The San Francisco Bay area bohemians and anarchists were also central players in the counterculture that fomented the New Left in the 50s and 60s.

As to what is next, Cornell proposes a pluralist Left including many tendencies- Marxist, anarchist, revolutionary nationalist, feminist, pacifist. This sounds right to me. Unruly Equality: U.S. Anarchism in the 20th Century presents a faithful account of our anarchist forebears. It is a rich tradition that needs further development.

Scranton PA Radical Book Fair 2016

Last Saturday April 9 my wife Tess and I attended the Scranton Radical Book Fair at the student center of Marywood University in Scranton, PA. I noticed comrade John Dodds, Director of Philadelphia Unemployment Project, was presenting, and well as local activists. Also, I never need an excuse to book shop. There were about a dozen vendors, mostly anarchist or environmental. We attended three presentations.

The first was “Grassroots Environmental Activism on the Frontlines of Fracking” by the Shalefield Organizing Committee. Pennsylvania coal country was was the site of extractive mining for 75 years (now abandoned), and now the site of a new extractive industry--natural gas. Both industries have seriously damaged the ecosystem. Community organizers Casey Pegg and Sierra Shumer noted there are still 30 active mine fires in PA left over from the age of coal. Neither industry has uplifted local employment or produced a sustainable economy. The Shalefield Organizing Committee is opposing the proposed Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline that would connect the Marcellus Shale wells in northern PA to East Coast ports for gas export to international markets. It is all about profits for oil companies.

Second, we heard John Dodds talk about Raise the Wage PA coalition, the campaign to lift the minimum wage to $10.10/hour. His organization Philadelphia Unemployment Project was instrumental in the last successful effort to raise the minimum wage in PA ten years ago. Hard to believe- the last time the minimum wage was raised in PA was 2006! Given the weakness of labor unions in the US, the most effective way to raise the wage floor for low income workers is minimum wage legislation. One in four workers in northeast PA and 1.3 million workers statewide would get a raise with $10.10/ hour minimum wage. Of course, some cities and states have passed $15.00/hour minimums. Call Sen. Lisa Baker (R-NE PA) at 570-675-3931 and ask her to report the $10.10/hour minimum wage bill out of the Labor and Industry Committee.

Tess Gerould, John Dodds, Frank Gerould

Last, we heard Mitch Troutman's stories about the PA Anthracite Coal Region. He blogs with the byline Nixnootz at his website Coal, Corn, and Country. He has a great story about “bootleg mining” in the Depression 1930s. The coal operators closed most of the mines in the region. Most miners were out of work, so they reopened the mines themselves and set up contraband mines. They sold coal to local churches and businesses, contracted truckers, sized the coal. It was dangerous but supported the local economy, and persisted for many years. Like bootleg whiskey during Prohibition.

It was a cold day with snow showers Saturday morning. My wife and I wandered around the tidy redbrick Marywood University campus before the book fair opened. There is lots of Catholic iconography spread around the campus indoors and out. An incongruous message at the anarchist book fair.

The Two Gilded Ages in America

 Fraser, Steve, The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015.

Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner named the post-Civil War era of waste and excess “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873). The term derives from Shakespeare's King John: “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily… is wasteful and ridiculous excess.” It was Mark Twain's first best seller, but rarely read today. It's probably time for a revival.

Now we live in the second Gilded Age in America. Labor historian Steve Fraser compares the two gilded ages, the first 1865-1932 and the second 1970 to the present, in his recent The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power. The interlude in between saw FDR's New Deal and the golden age of capitalism post-WWII with the growth of labor unions and a modest welfare state (Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare, Keynesian economics). Evidently Thomas Piketty charts the same developments in his opus Capital in the Twenty-First Century.  Both gilded ages saw growing wealth and income inequality. Steve Fraser argues the marked difference between the two periods- the first engendered intense class warfare, socialist parties, and rising living standards, whereas in our present gilded age, the working class has acquiesced to austerity and insecurity. Most young people do not expect to do as well as their parents. Fraser paints a gloomy picture.

Steve Fraser

Fraser knows how to write. He was an editor at Basic Books and other publishing houses, and guest scholar at a bunch of universities. He studied labor history at Rutgers with my LeftBook comrade Murray Sklar in the mid 1970s. He also has a colorful Philadelphia connection. As a young student  revolutionary, he was sent to Temple University to found a chapter of Progressive Labor Party in Fall 1967. He subsequently broke with, or was expelled from PLP, for joining Lyndon LaRouche's (aka Lyn Marcus) faction then called the SDS Labor Committee, later known as the National Caucus of Labor Committees, and became its local leader in Philadelphia. Fraser had his moment in the spotlight in those turbulent years when Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo raided his apartment in April 1969, and charged him and his roommate with a bomb plot. Fraser and co-defendant Richard Borgmann were ably defended by Philadelphia legal luminaries Bernard Segal and David Rudovsky. Charges were dropped in 1971, the same year Rizzo was elected Mayor of Philadelphia. Fraser then left the Labor Committee in a split in 1971, which exonerates him from the LaRouche craziness that followed. Details of this episode can be found in How it all Began: The Origins and History of the National Caucus of Labor Committees in New York and Philadelphia (1966-1971), by Hylozoic Hedgehog, the nom de guerre of a former NCLC member on the LaRouche Planet website. These years surely gave Fraser a thorough Marxist education, for better or worse.

Fraser's account of the first gilded age highlights the working class resistance to waged labor, or “wage slavery” according to the nascent socialist movement. He observes that 80% of Americans were self-employed in 1820. By 1940, the self-employed constituted only 20% of workers. The disappearance of the artisan tradition and its replacement with waged labor during the long 19th century was tumultuous. Before the Civil War Harriet Beecher Stowe saw the emancipation of the slaves and the working classes as one: “the war for the rights of the working classes of mankind as against the usurpations of privileged aristocracies.” Workers fought over wages, the length of the workday, and union representation. Between 1886 and 1893 state governments would call out the National Guard more than 100 times to deal with labor turmoil. Fraser surmises the bloody labor confrontations at Homestead, Ludlow, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, et al threatened a second Civil War. It generated socialist politics and unions, and eventually social concessions from the bosses and the state during the Progressive Era pre-WW1 and the New Deal.

Today we live in the new gilded age, with equally extreme economic inequality. Fraser recounts the deindustrialization of US economy, the eclipse of the labor movement, growth of casual sweatshop labor, and the erosion of pensions and the social safety net since 1970. He says, “National politics over the last half century has polarized between efforts to defend and restore the New Deal order, and relentless attempts to repeal and replace it with something even older.” Whereas in the first gilded age capitalism was ascendant, now it is decaying. Capitalist assets are sold off, mortgaged, or moved to low wage countries. Marxist economist Paul Mattick Jr. sees in the years following the golden age of capitalism (1945-1970), the classic Marxian case of a declining rate of profit. The usual Keynesian nostrums for managing the economy and securing full employment have not worked. Wages and benefits have been cut steadily hollowing out the middle class. Rich conservatives have promoted laissez-faire economics, revanchist patriotism, religious fundamentalism, and nativism as the magic solution to every problem. In Tea Party patron saint Ayn Rand's immortal words, “Booty is truth.” Money rules.

Steve Fraser doesn't have any remedies to offer us. He is nostalgic about the class conscious workers in the 19th century America, the pre-WWI Socialist Party, and victories during the New Deal. Perhaps the  Fortress Walmart associates, retail and fast-food workers, adjunct university teachers, and immigrants will revolt against austerity and decline. Perhaps something unexpected will occur, like the civil rights revolution in the 50s and 60s, the LGBT and woman's movement, the CIO in the 30s, something unforeseen. Bernie Sanders unexpected success running as a socialist in the Democratic primaries could become such a movement. 

But the left also needs self-examination. Communism in the former Soviet Union and Social Democracy in Europe do not offer attractive models for socialism here. The left needs fresh creative thinking that may diverge from the master thinkers of the 19th century. We have a rich tradition, but shouldn't be captivated by it. We need to offer practical solutions for the world we live in today. For example, Finland is launching an experiment in guaranteed basic income, and eliminating much welfare state bureaucracy. This is not socialism, but merits attention. While we're waiting for the glorious non-violent social revolution, waiting for the Messiah, we could indulge in speculative thinking and experiments in democratic socialism, or libertarian communism if you like. Fraser notes the fervor of 19th century radicals produced innumerable utopian colonies and cooperatives, and a best selling utopian literature that converted many to labor's cause. Laurence Gronlund Cooperative Commonwealth, Edward Bellamy Looking Backward, and Henry George Progress and Poverty reached a mass audience in the 1890s. Socialist doctrine was not yet set in stone. There were many socialist schools of thought. We need to recover that sentiment.

Despite Steve Fraser's often gloomy history, as socialists we believe there is an alternative to capitalism. In Sidney Hillman's words in 1918, “[we] can hear the footsteps of the Deliverer… Labor will rule and the World will be free.” We will not be dismayed.

Urban Workers in Philadelphia 1815-1828

Egnal, Freda. The Urban Worker in Philadelphia: 1815-1828. Senior Thesis in American History, 1961. Madison: University of Wisconsin.

Freda Egnal

My comrade Freda Egnal from our monthly Philadelphia LeftBook discussion group kindly shared her unpublished Senior Thesis with me, which I enjoyed, and will recount. Her advisor/professor was a young historian Leon F. Litwack, who later won the Pulitzer Prize in History and National Book Award for Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery in 1979. His specialty is the history of African-Americans since slavery. Freda did remarkable detective work at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the University of Wisconsin unearthing the early days of organized labor in Philadelphia. Her thesis was written 20 years before Phillip Foner, William Heighton: Pioneer Labor Leader of Jacksonian Philadelphia, With Selections from Heighton's Writings, and Bruce Laurie, Working People of Philadelphia, 1800-1850 addressed the same subject at length. “Philadelphia has a strong claim to be the center of the early labor movement,” she says.

Philadelphia has always been regarded as a center for small manufacturing (now sadly much diminished), and it began during this period. The first American factory is generally considered Lowell's textile mill in Waltham MA in 1817. The period between 1815 and 1830 marked the introduction of machinery and the factory system in Philadelphia. Prior to mills and factories, manufacture was done in homes and small workshops. Sometimes the apprentice even lived in the master's home. Goods were made to order, or bespoke goods. Often half the wages were paid in groceries or credits. Ambitious apprentices would establish their own workshops, or acquire land and become freeholders.

Capitalism was being born. Manufacturers began to produce for market, on speculation. An expanded market was made possible by the revolution in transportation. New roads and canals suddenly made shipping possible and affordable. The state was investing in infrastructure big time. Merchant-capitalists borrowed money, and introduced mass production, creating a division of labor, and the devaluation of artisan labor. Urban workers were a mix of skilled and unskilled: artisans in the building trades and crafts; manual laborers building roads or canals, hauling; service workers, servants, shopkeepers; and, of course, child labor. Freda reports on wages and the cost of living during this period. She cites labor historian John R. Commons, “the American worker received higher wages than his counterpart in Europe and England, yet worked harder and longer hours.” Twelve hours a day, six days a week constituted the norm in 1820. In summer daylight hours often extended the workday to 15 hours.

There were early efforts at labor organizing in Philadelphia. The first recorded strike, or turn-out, was in 1786 by the printers for a minimum six dollars a week wage.  Carpenters and cordwainers (shoemakers) also conducted early organizing. The Philadelphia Typographical Union organized in 1802 may be the first identifiable trade union. They not only fought for better wages and working conditions, but also established benevolent features for sickness and funeral expenses, and a strike fund. It seems printers have always been labor aristocrats. Perhaps they were better educated, or more skilled, and felt they could make bolder demands on business owners. Unions were not legally protected, of course. They are hardly protected today, 200 years hence. Sometimes workers won their demands; other times they were prosecuted under English common law for conspiring to raise their wages.

In 1819 the US experienced it first depression creating widespread unemployment. This put an end to the early trade societies and trade unions. The labor movement had to recreate itself in the 1820s as the economy recovered. Workers at the Navy Yard, millwrights, and machine workers began to agitate for the ten hour day. The growing industrial activity ultimately led to the formation of the first trade union which transcended craft lines, the Mechanics Union of Trade Associations in fall 1827. Many historians mark this as the beginning of the labor movement in the US. Fifteen unions in Philadelphia, learning from their earlier failures, joined together. They declared, “We the Journeymen Mechanics of the City and County of Philadelphia, conscious that our condition in society is lower than justice demands it should be, and feeling our inability, individually, to ward off from ourselves and families those numerous evils which result from an unequal and excessive accumulation of wealth and power into the hands of a few, are desirous of forming an Association, which shall avert as much as possible those evils which poverty and incessant toil have already inflicted and which threaten ultimately to overwhelm and destroy us.” Sounds very contemporary. The language was influenced by William Heighton and Ricardian socialist ideas, recounted in Phillip Foner's later book William Heighton: Pioneer Labor in Jacksonian Philadelphia. The Mechanics Union published its own newspaper, organized a workingman's library, and ran its own independent candidates for elected office in 1828, which was unsuccessful. This was the high watermark for class consciousness in the early 19th century Philadelphia. Unions would again recede in the 1830s.

Philadelphia's Radical Heritage 1827

This is a talk I gave at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration in Philadelphia, when I was a member. Restoration was originally a Universalist Church founded in 1820 in Philadelphia.

Good morning. My name is Frank Gerould. I have been a member of this congregation since 1990, which qualifies me as one of the old heads. This morning we are going to do a little history of our radical forbears in Universalism in early 19^th century Philadelphia.

In April, I went on my annual pilgrimage to the Socialist Scholars Conference, now called the Left Forum, at Cooper Union in NYC with some of my socialist comrades, and found this book William Heighton: Pioneer Labor Leader of Jacksonian Philadelphia by Philip Foner in the bookstalls in the basement there. Foner was the dean of American labor history, who taught at Lincoln University and Rutgers-Camden until his death in 1994. The appendix has selections of William Heighton’s writings and speeches, including, remarkably, an address delivered to the Universalist Church in Callowhill Street on Wednesday evening, November 21, 1827. Heighton was a labor journalist and organizer of the first central labor body in American History, and a Universalist.

According to Bruce Laurie in Working People of Philadelphia 1800-1850, there were four Universalist congregations in Philadelphia in 1830: our congregation on Lombard Street, one in Northern Liberties, one in Kensington, and a fourth not identified. So this address happened at the Northern Liberties branch of the Universalists.

To begin, Sandy Fulton will talk about the early history of Universalism, then Paul Mack will read some excerpts form Heighton’s address to the “Mechanics and Working Classes” at the Universalist Church. When you are listening to Paul, notice the level of language delivered to a 19^th century audience from an artisan laborer with little formal education. The complete address is 20 pages, and must have taken two hours to deliver. Then I will talk about William Heighton and the social movement of the times. Then comments and questions as time permits.

William Heighton: Pioneer Labor Leader of Jacksonian Philadelphia

From 1818 to 1820, depression visited upon America. In 1820, 20,000 in a population of 100,000 were unemployed in Philadelphia. In addition, even those who managed to stay employed took severe wage cuts. Most of the few Philadelphia unions died in the mid-1820s. Shoes, clothing, furniture, carriages, bricks, rope, cigars, brushes, barrels, candy, and hats were produced in large but not mechanized factories. In Manayunk, the textile industry became fully established with water-powered spinning and weaving machines. In Kensington and Moyanmensing textile factories also emerged, although much of the work continued to be performed by outworkers.

Even when the economy improved, workingmen felt an increasing sense of injustice- long hours, overbearing employers, and constant fear of unemployment. For a growing number of workers, living conditions were declining at an alarming rate. Forced to live in crowded dwellings, in tenements and basement hovels, they were without the benefits of fresh air, sunlight or rudimentary sanitary facilities. The stagnant pools of sewage in the streets provided a natural home for the scourge of cholera, which swept the city leaving hundreds dead who could not escape to the countryside.

So this is what moved William Heighton to advocate for the cause of labor in Jacksonian Philadelphia. He noted there were “but few indeed who produce wealth that ever enjoy it; while those who produce nothing, enjoy it with all its attendant blessings and comforts.” William Heighton was a 28-year old cordwainer in 1827 (a leatherworker who made things of cordovan, esp. shoes) who played an important role in the creation and shaping of the early American labor movement. Heighton was born in Northampshire, England in 1800, and came to America as a young man. He went to work in the shoemakers’ trade in Southwark in present day South Philadelphia. He had little formal education, but had some biblical training and was familiar with a number of economic works of the time. Like many artisans and mechanics, Heighton was influenced by the ideas of the classical British economist David Ricardo. Ricardo argued that only labor adds value to natural resources, and the price of every product is determined by the work put into it. This is called the labor theory of value- a theory that prevailed among classical economists thought the mid 19^th century- most notably Marx. Ricardo, like Adam Smith, also believed in laissez-faire, free trade and free markets.

The labor theory of value had enormous influence in working class circles during the Jacksonian era, and some economic thinkers known as the Ricardian Socialists. They opposed the unequal distribution of wealth under capitalism, which resulted in the accumulation of large amounts of capital in the hands of the few. They were the intellectual precursors to Marxian socialism and social democracy which would come later in the 19^th century. Other influences on Heighton were John Gray’s A Lecture on Human Happiness, which Heighton reprinted in his labor newspaper, the Mechanics’ Free Press, and Robert Owen, the British industrialist and utopian socialist. Owen is considered the father of the cooperative movement, who pioneered reforms of the factory system in Europe. He proposed intentional cooperative communities with public kitchens, universal childcare and education for youth, and humane workplaces. He spoke before joint Houses of Congress in 1824, and in Philadelphia at the Franklin Institute in June 1827. He founded an experimental community in New Harmony, Indiana in 1825, which failed after two years.

Much to Heighton’s credit, he thought the solution to poverty was through a workingman’s movement in their own community, especially through the intelligent use of the vote (rather than retreating to some remote frontier). In the address Paul read, Heighton advocates nominating their own candidates who will serve the interests of working people. He led the creation of a powerful central association of Philadelphia journeymen’s societies to collect and administer strike funds, direct strikes, and organize new unions. The Mechanics Union of Trade Associations was officially established in January, 1828. The preamble, written by Heighton, read like the Declaration of Independence:

“We, the Journeymen Mechanics of the City and County of Philadelphia, conscious that our condition in society is lower than justice demands it should be, and feeling our inability, individually, to ward off from ourselves and families those numerous evils which result from an unequal and very excessive accumulation of wealth and power into the hands of a few, are desirous of forming an Association, which shall avert as much as possible those evils which poverty and increasing toil have already inflicted, and which threaten ultimately to overwhelm and destroy us.”

At its height, the Mechanics Union of Trade Associations had 18 member unions in 1830, representing 2000 dues paying members. It founded six new trade societies and beneficial societies. Trades included tobacconists, ladies cordainers, printers and compositors, blacksmiths and whitesmiths (a worker in whitemetals, esp. tinsmith), leather workers, saddlers and harness makers. The finance committee of the MUTA collected ten cents monthly dues from the membership to build a strike fund, which was a new development

in the labor market of Philadelphia. Workers could now endure a strike with strike benefits.

Another venture for Heighton was a workingman’s library and newspaper, which he mentions in his address. In September 1827, the Mechanics Library Company was opened in North Alley. It became a clearinghouse of ideas, forum for discussions, and a meetinghouse for all regardless of trade. A regular feature was a Wednesday evening debate designed to encourage the growth of the workingman’s movement. Membership was $1.00. Over 100 volumes and many periodicals could be read in its single room during the long hours the library was open.



Chestnut & Bank St., Philadelphia

The Library also edited and published the Mechanics’ Free Press, the first newspaper in America for workers and edited entirely by workingmen. The four-page, five-column weekly carried on the masthead “A Journal of Practical and Useful Knowledge” edited and published by a committee of the Mechanics Library Company of Philadelphia. It lasted from 1828 to 1835, and had average weekly circulation of 1500-2000, when the major Philadelphia paper claimed on 4000. I would like to read the old issues. Philip Foner reports that the paper reprinted some articles from the abolitionist press, and treatises like Gray’s Lecture on Human Happiness, poetry from its working class readers, as well as issues on educational and labor reforms.

The paper also championed the Philadelphia Workingman’s Party to run its own candidates for public office. The program for the party became a platform for labor parties throughout the US during the Jacksonian era: a call for a free, tax supported school system to replace the hated “pauper schools”; the abolition of imprisonment for debt; abolition of all licensed monopolies (meaning banks especially); abolition of the prevailing compulsory militia system; no regulation of religion; and direct election of officer by a vote of the people. The platform also addressed economic issues, protested unsanitary and overcrowded housing, the right to form trade unions, and proposed a ten-hour work day. It even demanded “sufficient hydrant water pressure for the accommodation of the poor.” Public education for the children of the poor as well as the rich was a key demand. At this time, Pennsylvania provided schools for the poor if a family could not afford tuition. In practice, these schools were woefully under funded, and there was a stigma attached to attending them. The Philadelphia workingmen demanded education for their children not as “a grace and bounty for charity, but as a matter of right and duty.”

The Workingman’s Party ran 39 candidates for state and national office in 1828, receiving less than 10% of Jackson’s Democratic Party vote, which is the story of third parties in America. In 1829 the Party ran candidates dually endorsed with the Democratic Party in Philadelphia, and became power brokers in many city districts. Sixteen Workingmen candidates were elected. Of course, this led to the eventual absorption of the Workingman’s Party and its issues into the Democratic Party. 1831 was the last campaign for the first labor party in the world.

Foner reports that Heighton left Philadelphia in 1830 after the collapse of the Philadelphia Workingman’s Party. I think he burned out. He achieved a secure (if neglected) place in the history of the American labor movement. He initiated the Mechanics Union of Trade Associations. He founded the first labor paper, the Mechanics Free Press, and the first labor party, the Philadelphia Workingman’s Party. He wrote and distributed many popular pamphlets advancing the cause of social and economic equality.

In June 1833, the Pennsylvania legislature abolished imprisonment for debt, and in 1834 it passed laws establishing comprehensive free public schools and taxes to support them. Labor won a victory.

Let me finish with some tidbits I found about Universalism in Philadelphia in Bruce Laurie’s Working People of Philadelphia 1800-1850. The minister of our congregation from 1818 to 1825 was a prominent freethinker named Abner Kneeland. He was friend and champion of Robert Owen, the British utopian socialist, and also Frances Wright, a famous feminist and abolitionist from Scotland. He introduced Owen at his Franklin Institute engagement in 1827, and shared the stage with Frances Wright on many occasions in Philadelphia. Among her controversial activities was founding an interracial community called the Nashoba Commune in a suburb of Memphis in 1825, and conducting 30 freed slaves to Haiti in 1830. Abner Kneeland was automatically disfellowshipped by the New England Universalist General Convention in 1830 when he renounced Christianity.

Bruce Laurie recounts in a chapter called “Radicals: Thomas Paine’s Progeny”, that Universalism and Free Thought were the most important rationalist currents, products of the liberal humanism of the Enlightenment. Taken together, there were about 2000 Universalists and Free Thinkers (or as they preferred, Free Enquirers) on the rolls of the churches and societies in 1830 in Philadelphia, about 4/5 of which were Universalists. He also tells this story about the cholera epidemic of 1832 that took a heavy toll in Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods. Thousands crowded into churches in search of solace and reassurance. Leading Protestant clergy called a meeting to consider remedial action, attracting 250 clergy of various sects. A resolution was passed with only two dissenters calling for a day of fasting and prayer “as means of averting the scourge and inducing the Lord to be gracious.” The lone dissenters, Zelotes Fuller and Abel Thomas, two Universalist ministers, argued large prayer meetings risked spreading the epidemic, and fasting would reduce one’s resistance. They were denounced as infidels.

Broadside, Philadelphia 1829

So we are the progeny of Thomas Paine and infidels.

Foner, Philip S. William Heighton: Pioneer Labor Leader of Jacksonian Philadelphia, With Selections from Heighton's Writings. New York: International Publishers, 1991.

Laurie, Bruce. Working People of Philadelphia, 1800-1850. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980.