RADICALS
By the time of his death in 1917 Harrison Gray Otis' paper had undeniably
earned a reputation as one of the most outspoken anti-union, anti-socialist
dailies in the country. Long before the 1910 bombing of the Times Los Angeles
radicals considered Otis to be the enemy. His attitude in the 1890s, when he
stood alone in opposition to unionized printers, and the consistent anti-union
philosophy that filled his editorial columns won for him the enmity of both
organized labor and the socialist movement. When the fledgling Los Angeles
Socialist began publication in late 1901 an early editorial suggested
facetiously that "If Otis pays us enough we will show....when the bomb under
the Times' office is timed to explode."
In the late 1880s, however, Otis and the Times exhibited an occasional
tolerance toward radicals and their efforts that is surprising in light of the
later bitterness the paper displayed toward anything that smacked of socialism.
Three clearly radical issues drew several letters, and editorial replies, in
that decade. In the first instance, involving Chicago's Haymarket anarchists,
Otis ran letters defending the accused radicals but his opposition was clear
from the beginning. Regarding the other two, the Times initially ran not only
letters from radicals in support of their position but also ran favorable news
articles. By the time the letters had run their course, however, the policy of
the paper was clearly in opposition to the radicals.
A) THE HAYMARKET ANARCHISTS
The 1886 Haymarket Riot and the subsequent trial and execution of the
Chicago anarchists drew limited but significant response from the paper's
readers. Times editorials denounced the anarchists and the paper carried
regular reports of the legal proceedings in Illinois that culminated in the
execution of Albert Parsons, August Spies and two other anarchists in Nov.,
1887. Following the executions, several readers expressed their opinion of the
anarchists and of the judicial system that took their lives. Two writers
related the treatment of the martyred anarchists to the way the justice system
treated abolitionists before the Civil War and ex-Confederates and Klansmen
afterward. Note the title that Otis placed on the letter by L. P. Daups. It
was surely due more to Otis' participation as a Union officer in the Civil War,
which guided his political position in the decades after the conflict, than to
any sympathy for the anarchists whom Daups defended. Neither Daubs nor J. P.
Shnied are listed in city directories of the 1880s.
{Times, Nov. 14, 1887, p. 5}
A Shnied Opinion.
Los Angeles, Nov. 13.--[To the Editor of The Times.] I
saw in the Saturday Telegram certain opinions of certain
great men of this city.
At Harper's Ferry the law was there vindicated by the
hanging of John Brown, and order triumphed. The South was
right in hanging him and his companions, for they attacked
law and order in armed bodies. If in that time any newspaper
made a collection of personal opinions, nearly all nations
were ready to sign the death warrant of all Abolitionists.
Now, for those poor future heroes, the church, the press and
the reactions are more savage than to the preceding ones. I
am sorry that Jesus Christ lives not again, because, to be
sure, you would be ready to make another hero of him.
Yours, truly,
J. P. SHNIED.
{Times, Nov. 17, 1887, p. 5}
Able Argument by Mr. Daups.
Los Angeles, Nov. 14.--[To the Editor of The Times.]
For expressing their opinions and free thoughts those poor
young men were murdered and then cruelly insulted; their
wives, mothers, daughters and sisters cowardly and
ignominiously jeered by those vile adorers of the press and
the church.
Vindicators of the law and order, why did you not make
it triumph with the rebellious Jeff Davis? with the klux-
klux clan, murdering negroes and whites? Why? I will tell
you. Because they belonged to the same class as yourself,
and consequently wolves; for wolves do not tear one another.
But if, for the sake of the unfortunate class of proletariat,
anyone should raise his voice in favor of their emancipation,
and declare the truth against their master, immediately the
bulldogs and bloodhounds of the capitalists and the church
set up the howling, bellowing cry, "Law and order must reign!
Hang, hang them all, right or wrong!" "It does not make any
difference; he is a negro." Here it is the Mexican; in the
East the plebeian. Woe to the vanquished.
Yours respectfully,
L. P. DAUPS.
Even when "A Sympathizer" penned an exceedingly long defense of the
anarchists, far in excess of the space normally devoted to a single letter,
Otis refrained from attacking the argument. Instead, the title placed above
the letter implied neither support nor opposition to the writer's position.
The author of the letter is unknown, though the name was apparently known to
Otis since he required that the true name be supplied to the editor before a
letter could be printed with a pseudonym. Whether or not Otis knew the writer
to be an anarchist is also unclear; he may simply have assumed that to be the
case although the content of the letter does not declare the writer to have
been one. Captain Bonfield was in charge of the Chicago police unit at
Haymarket on the day of the bombing. Julius Grinnell was the prosecuting
attorney.
{Times, Nov. 28, 1887, p. 3}
An Anarchist's Defense of the Chicago Anarchists.
Los Angeles, Nov. 27.--[To the Editor of The Times.]
The recent judicial murder of these four brave men leaves the
darkest stains on the history of our country ever known,
though public sentiment, at present, is strongly against
them--and for this reason: Every avenue of information has
been perverted by falsehood and prejudice to bias public
opinion, and the impression has been created and fostered
that they were fiends incarnate, devoid of human feelings or
sympathy. Their trial was a farce as far as justice is
concerned, and their conviction was decided before it begun.
Now, what were these men, and what was their offense? They
were men of dreams, of ideas, of clear insight, and hearts
warm with sympathy for the oppressed of every station, and as
labor agitators and reformers Spies and Parsons had few if
any equals. Their offense was working for the abolition of
wage slavery, a condition of society once characterized by
Horace Greeley in these words: "The wage system is
commendable only when compared with absolute slavery." For
this offense, and the attempt to establish the eight-hour
system, they were marked as enemies to society and branded as
disturbing elements. Previous to the Haymarket meeting, at
which those bombs were thrown by an unknown hand, six
workingman had been shot down in cold blood, without the
authorities taking any notice of it; and at this meeting,
which was called to discuss this unjustifiable outrage, the
people there gathered were confronted by 150 police whose
object was to break up the meeting, though their presence was
contrary to the orders of Mayor Harrison, who afterward swore
that he was at the meeting and heard nothing out of the way.
The police accomplished their object, but with a very
unexpected result; and what occurred at that time is well-
known history. Who threw that bomb is yet a mystery, but
none of the eight convicted men did; and that they knew
nothing of it, or that it was to be thrown, is shown by the
fact that some of them had their families there, while two of
the condemned were not present at all; and the most ever
proven against these men was that they used incendiary
language at the time those six men were shot at McCormick's,
and nine men and one woman in St. Louis; and nowhere was it
ever proven that they used dynamite, or advised its use only
as a self-protection. And these men were hung because they
had brains and evolved ideas not relished by the capitalistic
class, who want to make serfs out of the workingmen. Only
this and nothing more, and unbiased minds that are familiar
with the speeches of Spies and Parsons will say they were
lofty, grand, sublime. Parsons, a men who was denominated by
the Rev. Dr. Thomas as "the worst of the lot, and a man who
should be hung," said in his Haymarket speech, when someone
interrupted him to say "Hang Jay Gould," "This is not a
conflict between individuals, but for a change of system, and
until the system is abolished, if we hang one Jay Gould a
dozen will rise in his place." This was what the man said
who has been characterized as a brutal fiend, longing for
blood and gore. He also said it was "almost impossible for a
poor man to get justice in a court of law; that law was for
sale just like bread; if you had no money you could get no
bread, and without money you could get no justice." Look at
our corrupt judicial system all over; note the San Francisco
scandals and those in our own city; reflect on the pardoning
power of money as lately disclosed, and then deny his charges
if possible. Said August Spies at the time of his trial,
while waiting the sentence: "It is not likely that Bonfield
and Grinnell can conceive of a condition of social order not
held in tact by a policeman's club or pistol, nor of a free
society without prisons, gallows and State's attorneys. Is
this the reason why anarchy is such a pernicious, damnable
doctrine? Grinnell has informed me that anarchy is on trial,
yet the theory of anarchism belongs to the realm of
speculative philosophy. There was not a syllable said about
anarchy at the Haymarket meeting, the very popular theme of
reducing the hours of toil being discussed. But anarchism is
on trial. If this is the case, Your Honor, very well; you
may sentence me, for I am an Anarchist. I believe with
Buckle, with Paine, with Jefferson, with {illegible}, with
Spencer and many other great thinkers of this century, that
the state of caste and classes, the state where one class
dominates and lives upon another class, and calls it order,
should be abolished. Yes, I believe that this barbarous
'order' is doomed to die, and make room for free societies,
volunteer associations, universal brotherhood. You may
pronounce your sentence upon me, but let the world know that
A. D. 1886, in the State of Illinois, eight men were
sentenced to death because they had not lost faith in the
ultimate victory of liberty and justice."
For holding these views and working for this end he was
hung like a dog, and his name added to the long list of
martyrs that have suffered death for principle and the
betterment of social systems. Yet he has been so maligned
one unfamiliar with his speeches or writings would suppose he
had a heart of stone, and delighted in shedding human blood
and listening to the wails of agony; and so little is the
doctrine of anarchy understood that intelligent editors
inform their readers that it is opposed to voluntary
associations--exactly what it is aiming at. Fear and force
have ruled the world thus far, and these brave men died for a
doctrine that advocates something different and better. I
wish their speeches, theories and doctrines could be spread
broadcast to refute the lies and falsifications given to the
world through the Associated Press, but alas! justice does
not prevail in this world, and the opposition presents but
one side, on which the public is expected to form a correct
conclusion or judgment. When I think how these brave and
valiant men went unflinching to their doom, and how they met
that fearful fate, my admiration is aroused; but when I
reflect on the terrible torture that followed the drop of the
death trap, feelings of horror surge over me, and I am led to
ask, does civilization civilize, and are we less brutal than
our remote ancestors? There is little room to doubt that the
drop was purposely arranged to protract their physical
sufferings by slow strangulation, and here we see revenge and
fiendishness added to injustice. The awful agony that Spies
underwent is terrible to contemplate, and that such horrors
can be enacted in the name of "law and order" in this
nineteenth century seems almost incredible. Every pulse of
agony was felt and noted for publication by a man, who,
unless devoid of sympathy and sensitiveness could never have
stood unmoved in the presence of such exquisite agony. If
lives must be destroyed in the name of law and order, why not
let mercy accompany the act, and make it painless, either by
the guillotine or electricity? But why in this so-called
Christian Nation do professed Christians disobey their God,
who said: "Thou shalt not kill?" who sent a new doctrine to
replace the barbarous one that claimed an eye for an eye, and
a tooth for a tooth. Why is the doctrine of Jesus preached
but not practiced wherein he counseled love, charity and
forbearance? Is not Christianity a doctrine of love instead
of hate, as taught from the pulpit? If so, how could the
clergy consistently clamor for the blood and agony of these
men? If so, why did one of them, more humane that the rest,
come near being deposed for expressions of sympathy with the
murdered four? Will some one who can, give an answer, and
when will the world cease to make martyrs for opinion's sake,
and stop killing the benefactors of the race?
A SYMPATHIZER.
"Sympathizer's" discourse elicited a single dissent, and that,
surprisingly, from one whose stand on social issues as expressed in other
letters would have led a reader to expect him to defend the anarchists. Ralph
Hoyt, founder of the Clearwater cooperative colony and author of a stirring
defense of minority rights under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, left
no doubt about his position on the anarchists' guilt or innocence.
{Times, Nov. 29, 1887, p. 3}
Anarchist Parsons.
Los Angeles, Nov. 28.--[To the Editor of The Times.] A
communication appeared in The Times today, signed "A
Sympathizer," in defense of the recently executed Chicago
Anarchists. The writer is undoubtedly sincere in his
statements, and what he says concerning the barbarity of the
gallows is pertinent and worthy of everybody's attention.
But I think he places too high an estimate on the characters
and motives of the Anarchists, particularly in the case of
Parsons. I knew Parsons a few years ago, when he was
prominently before the public in Chicago as a champion of
workingmen's rights. He was a smart fellow, a keen writer
and an effective public speaker. He might have been a useful
citizen, but he fell in with a gang of out-and-out
Anarchists, and ere long he become one of the most blatant
and radical of the lot. As an indication of the spirit which
moved him to talk and write as he did, I will here mention an
incident which occurred only a few months prior to the
Haymarket massacre:
Parsons was in the law office of L. K. de Wolf, where
was present also Joseph S. Whitcomb. Both De Wolf and
Whitcomb were well known citizens of Chicago, and men of
unquestioned veracity. They were remonstrating with Parsons
on the violent language used in some of his speeches. At
last Whitcomb said; "See here, Parsons, if you keep on like
this you will get a rope around your neck, some day. Why
don't you workingmen vote for your own interests? The place
to right your wrongs is at the ballot box." To this warning
Parsons replied by picking up a large inkstand and
exclaiming: "What's the use of a laboring man voting when a
piece of dynamite no bigger than this inkstand is sufficient
to blow up this building?" I should add that Mr. De Wolf's
office was in a four-story brick block on Washington street.
Such was a sample of the atrocious sentiments held and
uttered by Anarchist Parsons. Unfortunately he did not heed
the wholesome warning given him by Mr. Whitcomb, but went on,
from bad to worse, until at last he did, indeed, "get a rope
around his neck?" Of all the eight convicted Anarchists,
Parsons was perhaps the most dangerous and the least
excusable.
RALPH E. HOYT.
By early February, 1888, when the last letter regarding the Haymarket
Affair appeared in the Times, Otis had had enough. The paper had become
increasingly anti-anarchist, and in response to a short letter by carpenter
Channing Severance, attacking Otis for his anti-anarchist editorials, Otis
wrote an unusually long editorial reply, exceeding a column in length. The
response, for the most part, contained quotations from several pro-anarchist
sources that Otis apparently believed were so outrageous that no reasonable
person could accept them. Those quotations have been omitted from the
editorial reply printed below. There is no indication that Severance was
related to social reformer Caroline Severance. For the crimes of Anschlag,
see the chapter on law and order.
{Times, Feb. 5, 1888, p. 10}
Letter from a Crank and an Anarchist.
Los Angeles, Feb. 1.--[To the Editor of The Times.] At
frequent intervals you burst out with a blast against
anarchy, and knowing so little about it you confound such a
devilish fiend as Anschlag with thoughtful students and
philosophical investigators, who are trying to discover some
better social system than the one which makes millionaires
and paupers, which breeds crime and criminals. And for your
benefit I enclose these clippings, which your sensational
reporter would also do well to read. There is something in
the theory of anarchism besides brute force, blood and
violence; and I have yet to learn of an Anarchist who
advocates force and destruction only for self-protection.
Unless the world has reached its ultimate of knowledge and
progress, there must be a better condition attainable than
our present; and as no reform ever originated with those
possessed with power and profit, it is useless to expect
millionaires or their subsidized press to advocate or approve
of any change that will make tyranny and oppression
impossible. From the masses, from the common people, will
reformers spring, and the discussion of anarchy will never be
ended by ridicule, misrepresentation or brute force
scientifically applied. Charles J. Guiteau was a Christian,
but it remained for your bright reporter to discover that
Anschlag was an Anarchist.
C. SEVERANCE.
[The following more or less incoherent utterances
contain specimen sentiments of the brutal and bloody gang
whom C. Severance lauds as "thoughtful students and
philosophical investigators" (God save the mark!) who are
laboriously "trying to discover some better social system"
through the favorite agency of the bomb--or by destroying
existing society, defying the laws of the land, forming
conspiracies, committing cowardly murders, and attempting to
lay violent hands upon property created by the labor,
frugality and economy, not of themselves, but of others!
This is the gang that, according to the doctrine of this
wild-eyed correspondent, we are to consider as composed of
saints, patriots and reformers! How much worse is the wretch
Anschlag than the alien scoundrels and murderers who enacted
the Haymarket horror, and for it paid the penalty?--Ed.
Times.]
{Lengthy quotations from or about anarchists followed
this editorial postscript.- Ed.}
B) THE TOPOLOBAMPO COOPERATIVE COLONY
In November, 1886, a group of American colonists led by Albert Owen, of
Chester, Pa., settled on the Gulf of California at an empty spot called
Topolobampo in Sinaloa, Mexico. While surveying railroad routes for the
Mexican government Owen had come across this undeveloped bay, near Guaymas,
with a well-protected, deep water inner harbor that he foresaw as a future
port. With plans for an aqueduct to bring water from a distant river and the
intent to connect the colony site by rail with transcontinental lines, Owen had
organized a company, chartered under Colorado law as the Credit Foncier of
Sinaloa. Marie and Edward Howland edited the colony's promotional newspaper,
first in New Jersey and then, after colonists began to settle at Topolobampo,
at the colony.
Primarily an agricultural community, Topolobampo was but one of several
socialistic cooperative colonies that sprang up in the West in the hard times
of the 1880s and 1890s. "Equality," in Washington state, and "Kaweah,"
adjacent to what became Sequoia National Park, were better known examples of
such socialist utopias.
The first of several hundred American colonists who eventually traveled to
Topolobampo were 27 pioneers from California and Oregon. Other Californians
followed, particularly from the San Francisco area. Because of the large
California contingent among the settlers the state's newspapers gave a great
deal of publicity to Topolobampo's founding and progress.
Initial reports were favorable, even in the Times, which reprinted letters
and news reports that had appeared in other papers. The Jan. 20, 1887, issue
reprinted from the San Francisco Chronicle "An Enthusiastic Letter from a
Communistic Colonist." On Feb. 1 Otis devoted a column and a half to another
letter, reprinted from the New York Sun, about "enthusiastic colonists."
By late March, however, the attitude of the Times had changed and instead
of favorable letters reprinted from other journals the paper was printing its
own letters, almost entirely of an unfavorable nature. The first was from
Alvan D. Brock, who, upon his return to Los Angeles in early 1887, became a
real estate salesman in the great land boom of that year.
{Times, Mar. 28, 1887, p. 7}
TOPOLOBAMPO.
PROJECTOR OWEN DENOUNCED AS AN UNSPEAKABLE FRAUD.
The Modern Colonel Sellers Guilty of Misrepresentation Which
Has Led to Beggary and Death--Open Letter From a Fellow
Director.
Los Angeles, Mar. 27, 1887.--[To the Editor of The
Times.] The following letter was written after perusal of an
extra number of the Credit Foncier, just received here, which
is filled with attacks of the most dastardly description upon
Directors Eaton and Hawkins, who recently came from
Topolobampo with their families, and also upon those
"deserters," as they are styled, who turned back at Guaymas
upon hearing their recital, and upon witnessing Mr. Owen's
cowardly behavior and robbery of their private property.
I have long felt that I had failed in my duty to advise
the stockholders of that ill-starred enterprise of the facts
in my possession, and I urge you to help me make this tardy
reparation that no more money or valuable lives be sacrificed
by this latest Colonel Sellers, without any of his redeeming
qualities. I assure you that I have private information from
those wretched people now there, which shows that in a few
weeks famine will add its horrors to the pestilence that
still walks at noonday there, and we shall shortly appeal to
a generous public to help away those, at least, who besought
with agonizing entreaties Messrs. Hawkins and Eaton and their
party to take them away:
AN OPEN LETTER
To Albert K. Owen, chairman Credit Foncier of Sinaloa,
president and director Mexican-American Construction Company,
chief engineer Texas, Topolobampo and Pacific Railway and
Telegraph Company--Sir: As a late director of the Credit
Foncier Company, and as having had excellent opportunities
for personal knowledge of your devious and disreputable
methods of misleading its stockholders, I now denounce you as
the grossest falsifier and most monumental confidence
operator of this or any other age.
I charge, and can prove, that you have:
1. Subscribed for 5000 shares of stock in the aforesaid
company, on which you announced, through your newspaper
organ, you would pay 50 per cent. cash (or $25,000), not one
cent of which have you paid, or could you pay, even if you
ever intended to do so.
2. You announced that the Texas, Topolobampo, Railway
Company, etc., had subscribed for 2000 of said shares, and
you did this without the authority or knowledge of any of its
officers, as they have personally assured me.
3. You made a contract in secret with said railroad
company; which you privately and publicly declared would give
the Credit Foncier Company control of its franchises and
concessions from Mexico.
4. This contract (never legally and duly executed) does
not and cannot give or enable the acquirement of such alleged
contract.
5. You executed this fraudulent contract with closed
doors, while two of the directors (of whom I was one, and
your chosen attorney and director, S.{L.?} H. Hawkins, was
another) were in an adjoining room, and the third, Treasurer
John W. Lovell, your bosom friend, was within ten minutes'
call.
6. You do not now, and never did, legally, own one foot
of the arid sand-waste, slimy mud flats and barren, rocky
mountains styled the city-site of Topolobampo.
7. You willfully and illegally sent $500 of the $5000
paid by your confiding and duped stockholders to Mexico City
to the government officials, who, you admitted to me, had to
be "conciliated" by this and other valuable concessions, to
obtain the railroad grants.
8. You have again and again asserted that an irrigating
ditch could be constructed from the Fuerte River to the
Mochis tract, to water 15,000 acres, for $40,000, when you
had in your possession two surveys of Col. Fitch, made at
your request, the lowest of which estimated that the cost
would be $400,000, or more than ten times as much as you
asserted.
9. You have illegally and willfully drawn from the
treasury (John W. Lovell's weekly consenting) more than
$12,000 of the company's money, and three weeks ago there was
not $500 remaining.
10. You allowed scores of pioneers to go to Topolobampo
via Nogales and Guaymas, knowing that smallpox in violent
form existed in all three of the places, with never a hint
when you met them on the way at Nogales, that the pestilence
existed, knowing that these pioneers had neither vaccine
matter, medicines, hospital stores or proper shelter from the
enormous dews of that inhospitable bay.
11. In consequence, some of these poor victims
unwittingly contracted the dread disease on their way, and
died in Topolobampo in the most wretched misery, their only
shelter being miserable Mexican mats, hung upon the limbs of
cactus trees--while "Alberton Hall," your private property,
the lumber for which was paid for by a loan from a poor
baker, was locked up by your order till your return--not
allowed to be profaned by the presence of sick or well,
except by your tool, Dr. Schellhous.
12. You are, actually and truly, the murderer of these
unfortunates, and the record of this portion of the colony
forms the blackest and most repulsive page in the history of
similar enterprises, and will doom you to eternal infamy when
the full truth shall be published, as it will be very
shortly.
13. You have, in the last document from Topolobampo,
just received here uttered the most outrageous falsehoods and
malicious insinuations against Directors Eaton and Hawkins
(especially the latter) who thank God every waking hour, and
unconsciously in their still-feverish sleep, that they have
escaped with their lives from that hell prison, (rendered
doubly torturesome by the presence of scores of ill-mannered
and foul-tongued brutes in human form)--an abode which Dante
or Milton must have seen with prophetic eye.
14. These directors whom you malign, with all their
faults, are gentlemen, the latchets of whose shoes you are
unworthy to unloose, and instead of appropriating company
funds, as you wickedly and falsely state, many of the
penniless escaped victims owe the means of their escape to
their generous help.
15. You, like the dastardly coward that you have proved
yourself, refused to meet these sick and despairing, helpless
victims at Guaymas, though repeatedly urged to do so by even
the friends who still cling to you, and declared with oaths,
that you did not care how much they suffered; that the
enterprise would be carried through by you single-handed, in
spite of disease, pestilence and death.
16. You robbed those who had intended to go to
Topolobampo, but turned back at Guaymas upon hearing the
facts of provisions and stores that were their private
property, without so much as an offer of compensation, and
many of them are in this city today, stranded because of your
deliberate theft.
I might go on and fill up pages with facts showing the
damning character of your operations, but I refrain for the
present, with the assurance that, as an old newspaper man, I
mean to appeal to that noble fraternity all over this broad
land to help unmask your Machiavellian schemes, until the
name of Albert K. Owen shall be execrated and spit upon by
every honest man and woman therein.
As to your eager and too-willing dupe and co-worker in
this gigantic swindle, Mrs. Marie Howland, who masquerades
under the guise of "Love," and as the promoter of "a higher
civilization," I say to her publicly what I have said to her
privately, under her own roof, repeatedly, she will yet weep
tears of blood for her gross and willful perversion of the
real facts in this terrible business, and the deliberate
suppression of the harrowing tales of many of these
unfortunates, sent to her, as I know, from that prison-house
of horrors--Topolobampo, the natural home of malaria,
measles, smallpox, where, even if plenty of good water
existed, as it does not, life can never be made unendurable,
except to savages, peons, and the dregs of civilization.
May God forgive me for my silence so long. I can only
plead in excuse that I was mentally and physically prostrated
by disease, which this glorious climate has, in three months,
removed; and I promise to make up now, in some degree, for my
criminal neglect, which, even now, haunts my sleep and has
retarded my restoration to health.
I beg you to believe, Mr. Owen, that I will, in the near
future, pay my further respects to you as the promoter of the
most gigantic and baseless swindles which it was ever my
misfortune to read or know of.
ALVAN D. BROCK
Late Director of Credit Foncier Co.
John Smith, writing to the Times from Hammonton, N.J., continued the
assault on Owen's colony. Since the Howland's were from New Jersey, it is
possible Smith knew them there.
{Times, Mar. 30, 1887, p. 6}
Marie and Edward Howland, and Other Cranks.
Hammonton, (N. J.), March 22.--[To the Editor of The
Times.] A copy of your paper reached me today bearing date
of March 8, 1887, with an expose of the "Topolobampo Bay
Credit Foncier Company," etc., etc. I also send you a copy
or two of their "official organ," edited (?) by Marie--mark
you!--"Marie and Edward Howland." You will perceive it is
not an immense sheet. "Marie and Edward" are certainly "two
souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as
one"--i.e., on the Sinaloa paradise (?) scheme. Edward
Howland is a "Communist" of the oddest type. He can--and
does--tell others how to live, farm, etc., etc. But ah!
there's the rub. He practically can't tell whether
vegetables--say beets--are raised in the ground, on trees, or
elsewhere. A. K. Owen certainly ought to be "raised" on the
limb of a tree for his heartless deception of many well-
meaning people in this accursed scheme of his. This Owen is
not, I think, a deep-dyed schemer, but he is a crank of the
first order; and, as such, he should be shown up. He has his
place in the world, evidently, but it is certainly not as a
leader in a colonization scheme. In all localities there are
several who can be spared for the locality's good, and
without detracting one iota from those who are honest in
their views on this matter, the masses of those who indorse
this "Credit Foncier" humbug in this locality are composed of
free-lovers, spiritualists, cranks and all sorts of failures
in general.
"Marie and Edward" are sincere in this movement. I give
them credit for that, but if you will go to any institution
for the insane you will find that every soul of them is also
dead in earnest, too. To "Marie and Edward" the world is all
wrong, and they are bound to set it right. Let us give them
credit (?) for it. But are they safe leaders to follow? I
calmly say no; they are not.
"Never take advice from an unsuccessful man," is an old
proverb. And yet many well-meaning people stand ready to
"fall in" with any craze, no matter how Utopian it may be.
"Marie and Edward" are failures, have always been
failures. And it is probable they always will remain
failures. They belong to a class to whom the world "owes a
living"--a class not fit to tie to.
JOHN SMITH.
In March, 1887, while the Times heaped scorn on the Topolobampo experiment,
a group of Southern Californians committed to the idea of a cooperative
society, organized a local, alternative colony. Under the leadership of former
Chicago journalist Ralph Hoyt, they incorporated the Clearwater Cooperative
Colony, located in what, years later, became the city of Paramount. Despite
the antagonistic position the Times had taken toward Topolobampo, Otis
maintained a positive position regarding Clearwater.
The final letter on Topolobampo was written by Louis Hobart Hawkins,
secretary-treasurer of the California Land and Investment Association and one
of the two former directors who had "deserted" the colony. Despite his dire
predictions and sharp criticism of Owen's management, the colony survived for
several years. As late as 1892 over 400 colonists resided at Topolobampo.
{Times, June 17, 1887, p. 6}
Topolobampo.
Los Angeles, June 16.--[To the Editor of the Times.] I
have just received from Capt. Brock a letter written him by
John Clendening, now of that bubble colony at Topolobampo.
As you are aware, I was one of the unfortunates, who, with my
family, suffered by the specious promises and lying
statements of that arch-fiend, A. K. Owen, and was thereby
induced to remove to that land of pestilence and famine, of
death and disaster.
The first to meet us upon our arrival at Los Angeles was
Capt. Brock and a representative of your paper, and the
result of that interview was published by you, and spread
broadcast. To say that I was reviled because I stated the
truth in regard to the country, climate and the gross
mismanagement of the half-crazed, enthusiastic dolts in
charge of affairs, is putting it lightly. But I told the
truth then, as well as all of those who came with me. I feel
sure that your many readers are satisfied on that point.
Immediately after our different letters and interviews
were published, Owen Schellhouse and others sent a dispatch
as follows from Topolobampo: "Four hundred and ten colonists
here, contented and happy. No trouble since the deserters
(meaning myself and party) left." Now the facts are that
over one hundred have left since then, and more would get
away if they could. Are we going to leave them there to
suffer and to die? Will not the kindly people of Los Angeles
and vicinity contribute something to aid them in getting away
from that pestilential and famine-stricken country? Remember
there are a large number of women and children living in
tents among the rocks and cactus suffering for want of proper
food and the ordinary necessaries of life.
Capt. Brock has already donated $50 to aid them. Those
desiring to contribute to aid these poor and innocent
sufferers, the dupes of a scheming villain, can send their
money to the First National Bank of Los Angeles.
Those desiring full information on the subject can
receive the same by calling on me at room 12, No. 28 South
Spring street, or at No. 29 Main street, or on W. F. Eaton,
at 135 Johnson street, East Los Angeles.
Carefully read this letter, also look over late copies
of The Times, and read the letter of Mr. Cody, of Seattle,
Wash., and be convinced of the terrible condition and abject
wretchedness of those now existing without food or proper
shelter, under the scorching sun of noonday and soaking night
fogs, in that abode of misery, and aid them if you can.
I desire here to thank The Times for the interest it has
taken in exposing this, the greatest fraud of the century.
With its pen it has punctured the bubble which will soon be
naught but bitter memory. Yours for charity and justice.
L. H. HAWKINS.
C) EDWARD BELLAMY'S "NATIONALIST" MOVEMENT
Publication in 1888 of Edward Bellamy's novel, Looking Backward, a tale of
life in America in the year 2000, had more effect in converting Americans to
socialism than any other single piece of literature. Based on the concept that
the nation should own the basic means of production, and that production must
be for use and not for profit, "Nationalist" clubs designed to promote
Bellamy's ideas were organized across the country, drawing a great many
adherents from those discouraged with the economic conditions of the time. Of
the 165 clubs nationwide, 17 were in California, where they sprang up in both
rural and urban areas. Many members, both leaders and followers, were active
in farmers' organizations or the labor union movement and would become
Populists and/or socialists in the 1890s. Among them was H. Gaylord Wilshire,
wealthy Southern Californian who, among his other activities, would be the
first socialist candidate for congress {1890} in the United States, running in
a district that included Los Angeles County on the slogan "Let the nation own
the trusts."
The Times printed news of Nationalist meetings in Los Angeles, and the
letters column reflected the debate that raged around Bellamy's Nationalism.
Jesse Butler, a frequent contributor to the letters column throughout the
1880s, flirted with various fringe causes, including the Greenback Party. Note
Butler's praise for the Times' willingness to voice new {radical?} ideas.
"Millennium," though not a frequently used word in the 1880s, was often
misspelled when it did appear.
{Times, Oct. 7, 1889, p. 3}
The Nationalist Club
AS A MILLENIUM MAKER.
Los Angeles, Oct. 1.--[To the Editor of The Times.] As
there is one daily paper in Los Angeles that is fearless and
independent enough, regardless of party leading-strings, to
present to the people of our advancing city the new ideas
that are being discussed among us by our best minds, and as I
want to give a vote of thanks to the president of the
National Club, for his idea of concentration of the demands
of the reformers for one prominent specific object, to the
representatives of our Government, having its authority in
the people, what can I do better than to request The Times to
give my grateful acknowledgments through its wide columns to
the Nationalist president, Dr. Peebles?
The Doctor's idea is for the Government to have absolute
control of the railroads of the country; this is good, just,
necessary and popular today, and with one grand concentration
of the popular mind, by the active talent of the enlightened
minds of the Nation, might become a reality in two years from
this date provided, always, that the other issues for that
length of time be held in silent abeyance; but this clamoring
of Uncle Sam's boys for a farm apiece, a sawmill, a grafted
apple orchard, a vineyard, an orange orchard, a nut grove, a
market garden, an irrigating system, a from ocean-to-ocean
canal, a no-land tax and all-land tax, and a Socialist Oneida
community, all at once, and immediately, as we reformers have
been doing, just makes the good old uncle throw his long arms
back, flap up his fashionable swallowed-tailed skirts, and
exclaim: "What next, boys?" and we from year to year, from
generation to generation, get--nothing.
And now three cheers for the Nationalist Club and the
clubs all over the Union as soon as they conclude to act on
the one-idea principle, that is to say, one at a time!
There is an immense power in this one idea. I remember,
when a boy in New York, it was the fashion to sneer at the
one idea of Garrison, and to rotten egg him at the meetings;
but he and his four friends kept on, talking, writing and
printing, and the one idea just took possession of the
Nation, and there is not a scurvy politician today, belonging
to either party, that dares to sneer at that one idea, for it
has become a fact, a sentiment, and a law.
I would like to suggest to our good brother Peebles,
however, that it is feasible with our present finances for
the Government to build a double-track road from the Atlantic
to the Pacific, a much better one than any company now owns,
and much cheaper than you could buy out their old wheel-
barrow routes, worn out at that, and still more superlatively
cheaper, than you could regulate or control them, their lobby
gentry, and their watered stock, and their paid lawyers and
judges, and when the Government shall be running its own
road, one year in working order, at $10 a head from New York
to San Francisco via Los Angeles, the blessed Uncle Sam can
buy out the other fellows at a fair market price. And now,
brother, I go for it in any shape; but if you could shape it
in that way it would go with the people, and in Congress,
much faster, and be of more direct and prospective benefit
than in any other way.
And, Mr. Editor, as I believe in just words enough to
express that one idea, I will thank you for the insertion,
and ask the thinking people to inwardly digest the few words
written. Respectfully,
JESSE H. BUTLER.
Although the Times did not attack the Nationalists in the late 1880s, some
readers had serious doubts about the socialistic, anti-competition position
taken by the organization, as indicated in this note from machinist S. Byron
Welcome. While Welcome's letter is critical of Nationalism, his disagreement
is not a defense of big business. Note that he supports the concept of
government ownership in public utilities but free and open competition in "all
ordinary business."
{Times, Nov. 11, 1889, p. 6}
Socialistic Sophism -- They Bluffed Him.
Los Angeles, Oct. 31.--[To the Editor of The Times.]
Ever since the time that spontaneous upshot of the Karl Marx
school, lately revived and under a new name, planted itself
before the public as the Los Angeles Nationalists, with the
object of dividing up all existing property of the world and
keeping it so equally divided in the future, all for the
avowed purpose of abolishing and preventing the natural law
of competition from producing all the evil effects to which
the human being is heir, there has been one protracted howl
from their battery of authorized mouthpieces, directed with
all their energy against "competition."
Some weeks past these organized philanthropists devised
a scheme which made the appearance of fair dealing. It was
the adoption of a question box, to which they openly
solicited any question the audience might want to ask,
providing it be a question in their line. Seizing the golden
opportunity at once, I put the following question, in
writing, in their box:
"Can it be shown that the principle of competition ever
produced evil effects, when said principle has not been
directly or indirectly interfered with by legislation?"
At the next meeting, instead of officially answering the
question, I was told by an officer of the club that they had
no time, but would tend to it the next time. At the next
meeting I was again told my question would be answered the
next time. At the third meeting no mention was made of it,
so it seems the question box was bluffed out of existence.
Since that time it occurred to me that these people had
better judgment than is generally supposed, for knowing that
such a question cannot be answered to their advantage it was
good policy to ignore it. When we look over the field of
industry throughout the world, all the monstrous trusts and
overgrown fortunes which so amaze the Socialist are due to
some legitimate monopoly, either an exclusive franchise, a
patent right, or the exclusive ownership of some natural
resource, a rich mine, fine timber land, or land on which
cities have been built, in all cases monopolies where
competition has no chance to play: true, there are some large
concerns doing business making handsome profits where
competition does partly exist, but in all such cases the
excessive profits are either due to superior skill in
manipulating business or to the partly abolished competition,
as, for instance, in a country where there are no natural
resources open to the people to employ themselves on; that is
to say, where all the land is appropriated and laborers must
as a consequence bid against each other for a chance to work,
wages drop to a bare living, and all the product above that
goes to those who enjoy the special privileges and partly to
the large established business man, who can hire labor at low
wages. Thus it will be seen upon a little reflection that
competition, instead of being the cause of these economic
evils, would if allowed free play, destroy them, and that
whenever such evils are found, it is not owing to, but for
want of, competition; and in all cases, where fair
competition cannot be applied, as in the case with the
telegraph, gas and water supply, street cars and the road-bed
of our great railroads, where the nature of the business is a
monopoly, the respective governments should hold the
monopoly, but all ordinary business can be safely left to the
individual, and competition will prevent any excessive
profit. Capital and labor are at all times ready to engage
in any business open to all, which will give greater net
returns than the average.
S. BYRON WELCOME.
Foreshadowing his unsuccessful 1890 congressional campaign, Gaylord
Wilshire expressed the Nationalist position on trusts and monopolies as the
1880s came to a close.
{Times, Dec. 27, 1889, p. 3}
The Courts and the Combines.
Los Angeles, Dec. 26.--[To the Editor of The Times.] I
notice in today's Tribune the very glaring misstatement that
trusts and monopolies are "fast disappearing under the
holdings of the courts." Now, while admitting that the sugar
trust has disappeared into the Commonwealth Manufacturing
Company and that the cotton seed trust has changed into the
American Cotton Seed Oil Company, I can not see that a mere
change of name from "trust" to "company" helps the public as
long as monopoly does not disappear. I challenge the Tribune
to exhibit the name of even one monopoly that the courts have
broken up. I challenge the Tribune to give some plan whereby
the trust that is metamorphosed into a corporation can be
disintegrated. I accept the law of the survival of the
fittest--that the largest combination possible is the fittest
to survive, and that that combination is of the Nation's
capital.
H. G. WILSHIRE.