Year: 2017

fiction

Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Gilded Edge of Hell” (1890)

July 25, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE GILDED EDGE OF HELL Mr. Editor:–The broad roll of the Delaware flashed back a white water-glisten at the full moon. Fifteen or twenty vessels spread their white wings to the slow breeze, or sent the black vomit from their whistling throats upward to the night sky. Splash, splash! fell the water from the sides of the “John A. Warner” as she cut the flowing current, that ran like long, waving hair, away from the white line in her wake. Upon her decks two thoughtful women gazed at the dark banks, lifted their eyes to the soft sky and occasionally […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre and Benjamin R. Tucker, “Some Questions and Criticisms” (1890)

July 25, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Some Questions and Criticisms. To the Editor of Liberty: What is a nuisance? A nuisance. What is an encyclopædia? An encyclopædia. Will the Encyclopædia please inform the Nuisance by what peculiar system of contradictions he viciously prods believers in “duty,” yet labels the very column whence said prods proceed, “On Picket Duty”? (1) I like your definition of socialism. I have but one objection,-too scholarly. Can’t you simplify it as to language? When I quote Spencer, Andrews, Tucker, Lum, or Walker, and lastly, not leastly, Yarros, I am frequently called upon to translate it. Intensely “average,” of the common common, […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre and Benjamin R. Tucker, “Some Questions and Criticisms” (1890)

July 25, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Some Questions and Criticisms. To the Editor of Liberty: What is a nuisance? A nuisance. What is an encyclopædia? An encyclopædia. Will the Encyclopædia please inform the Nuisance by what peculiar system of contradictions he viciously prods believers in “duty,” yet labels the very column whence said prods proceed, “On Picket Duty”? (1) I like your definition of socialism. I have but one objection,-too scholarly. Can’t you simplify it as to language? When I quote Spencer, Andrews, Tucker, Lum, or Walker, and lastly, not leastly, Yarros, I am frequently called upon to translate it. Intensely “average,” of the common common, […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Economic Tendency of Freethought” (1890)

July 25, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE ECONOMIC TENDENCY OF FREETHOUGHT BY VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE FRIENDS,–On page 286, Belford-Clarke edition, of the “Rights of Man,” the words which I propose as a text for this discourse may be found. Alluding to the change in the condition of France brought about by the Revolution of ‘93, Thomas Paine says: “The mind of the nation had changed beforehand, and a new order of things had naturally followed a new order of thoughts.” Two hundred and eighty-nine years ago, a man, a student, a scholar, a thinker, a philosopher, was roasted alive for the love of God and the […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Economic Tendency of Freethought” (1890)

July 25, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE ECONOMIC TENDENCY OF FREETHOUGHT BY VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE FRIENDS,–On page 286, Belford-Clarke edition, of the “Rights of Man,” the words which I propose as a text for this discourse may be found. Alluding to the change in the condition of France brought about by the Revolution of ‘93, Thomas Paine says: “The mind of the nation had changed beforehand, and a new order of things had naturally followed a new order of thoughts.” Two hundred and eighty-nine years ago, a man, a student, a scholar, a thinker, a philosopher, was roasted alive for the love of God and the […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre & Emma Goldman, “Tour Impressions” and “A Rejoinder” (1910-11)

July 25, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
TOUR IMPRESSIONS LEAVING Philadelphia on Friday, the 7th of October, I began my meeting with comrades and their work on that evening in New York, and from that day till the present writing (I date at Buffalo, the 18th of October) I have addressed nine meetings,—two in New York, one in Albany, one in Schenectady, one in Rochester, and four in Buffalo. In all these places I have to thank all comrades for kindly courtesy and fraternal service. But these, while most grateful to me personally, are of course not of public interest. What the readers of Mother Earth will […]
fiction

Lizzie M. Holmes, “The Evolution of an Agitator” (1904)

July 24, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
The Evolution of an Agitator. Some years ago, a young minister of the gospel was given charge of a good sized church in the southwestern part of Chicago. He had shown such marked ability, such earnestness and enthusiasm in the care of a small village pastorate that his superiors thought he must have a larger field on which to expend his power, and resolved to promote him. So they placed him over this church situated in one of the most populous districts in the city, where the people were nearly all poor. If plenty of work was promotion, young DeWitt […]
fiction

Lizzie M. Holmes, “A Rural Romance”(1902)

July 24, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
A Rural Romance. In a quiet, pleasant neighborhood in Kansas lives a good woman with whom I sometimes spend a few restful weeks in midsummer. Just up a little slope and on the opposite side of the road from her home stands a beautiful cottage with the grounds about it so well and tastefully kept that one is surprised to learn that only an ordinary farmer and his family live there; usually western farmers are too busy to keep ornamental grounds in order, or to cultivate the desire for them. It was pre-eminently a happy-looking place, from the father and […]
fiction

Lizzie M. Holmes, “The ‘Slummers’” (1902)

July 24, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
The “Slummers.” Three charming young ladies sat together chatting and eating bonbons and fruit in the pretty, cosy boudoir belonging to one of them, one afternoon in early spring. Some one had quoted the saying “One-half the world does not know how the other half lives,” and pretty Miss Daisy Erwin exclaimed: “Why can’t we learn? I want to know if there are people who live in so opposite a manner from ourselves—let us go and sec them.” Beautiful Miss Kate Durham, the hostess, thought favorably of the idea. The third young lady, older somewhat than her companions, sat at […]
fiction

Lizzie M. Holmes, “A Type” (1902)

July 24, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
“A Type.” The slaves of slaves—can there be any greater depths of misery? The story I have to tell to-day is of a commonplace little woman who would attract no one’s attention for beauty, accomplishment or ability, who is merely a type of her class, and whose sorrows illustrate a principle. Martha Westcott had once been a simple country girl, pretty in a fresh, youthful way, and was married when but sixteen to a neighboring country boy who had learned the carpenter’s trade, preferring it to his father’s occupation—farming. He had cherished some ambitions which he believed could be carried […]