Month: October 2019

W. H. Van Ornum

William Henry Van Ornum

October 30, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
Chronological Bibliography – William Henry Van Ornum Works Co-Operation W. H. Van Ornum. Inter Ocean, (Chicago, IL) Wednesday, September 08, 1875; pg. 2; Issue 143; Conservators’ League An Address to Business Men. The Daily Inter Ocean, (Chicago, IL) Sunday, June 27, 1886; pg. 7; Issue 95 “Call a Halt,” The Daily Inter Ocean, (Chicago, IL) Tuesday, April 03, 1888; pg. 4; Issue 10 William Henry Van Ornum, “Wheelbarrow and Land Values,” The Open Court 3, no. 80 (March 7, 1889): 1506. The Australian Ballot (Letter to the editor) W. H. Van Ornum. The Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago, IL) Tuesday, May […]
From the Archives

William Henry Van Ornum, “Mating or Marrying, Which?” (1898)

October 30, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
The distinctions of sex seem to extend throughout all nature, certainly through all animate nature; and there is reason to believe that it does not stop at the limits of what is termed the inanimate. In fact, who can say that nature is anywhere inanimate? Every atom of the universe seems to possess the power of selection, by which it is able, under favorable conditions, to attract to itself certain other atoms widely diverse from itself in physical properties, which, together form new substances and manifest new attractions. Along with these attractions and their correlative repulsions goes the active interplay of natural forces, which, throughout every part of the universe, is working evolutionary changes not unlike a progressive growth. Even deep below the ocean’s bed, or far beneath the foundations of the everlasting hills, under pressures so great that they cannot be estimated, heat, electricity and magnetism, combined with chemical reactions are changing old forms into new ones in a manner strangely suggestive of vital action. Even there, the separate atoms are moving freely among each other and arranging themselves in definite order, building up crystals always according to certain patterns, each after its own kind.

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From the Archives

Peter Kropotkin, “The New Era” and “The Crisis of Socialism” (1895)

October 30, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
  Peter Kropotkin, “The New Era,” The Rebel 1, no. 1 (September 20, 1895): 3. Peter Kropotkin, “The New Era,” The Rebel 1, no. 2 (October 20, 1895): 10-11. Peter Kropotkin, “The Crisis of Socialism,” The Rebel 1, no. 3 (November, 1895): 24-25. Peter Kropotkin, “The New Era,” The Rebel 1, no. 3 (November, 1895): 28-29. Peter Kropotkin, “The New Era,” The Rebel 1, no. 4 (January, 1896): 34. Peter Kropotkin, “The New Era,” The Rebel 1, no. 6 (March-April, 1896): 59-60.   The New Era The following address is one with which Kropotkine opened a series of meetings in […]
From the Archives

Samuel M. Jones, “A Plea for Simpler Living” (1903)

October 27, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
The Arena 29 no. 4 (April 1903): 345. A PLEA FOR SIMPLER LIVING. Samuel Milton “Golden Rule” Jones The following words from a flaming advertisement recently I caught my eye: “Why don’t you marry the girl? We’ll help you.” They were from the advertisement of an instalment house—that is, a business house that sells furniture on the instalment plan, generally asking a very large price in the first place, only to take it back in many instances after those who have purchased have partly paid for it, and after months and perhaps years of agony in trying to extricate themselves […]
From the Archives

Ernest Crosby, “Golden Rule Jones: Mayor of Toledo” (1906)

October 27, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
Golden Rule Jones: Mayor of Toledo By ERNEST CROSBY (1906) Publishers’ Note This sketch of Golden Rule Jones appeared originally in The Craftsman of Syracuse, New York, and is now reprinted, after revision, with the consent of the Editor of that magazine. I IN BUSINESS It was in Chicago in the winter of 1895-1896 that I made the acquaintance of Samuel Milton Jones. We had both been invited to some kind of a conference and were entertained at one of the “settlements” of the city. His fame had not reached me at that time, for he had not yet entered […]
Max Nettlau Project

Max Nettlau, “The Menace of ‘National Socialism’” (1933)

October 26, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
WHAT is called “national socialism” in present Germany is in fact the ugliest type of anti-socialism. Authority and Monopoly at bay do their worst and are helped in this by the degeneration of authoritarian socialism; under such conditions, the particularly hopeless position of Germany since 1918 and the worldwide crisis setting in three years ago, aided by the callousness which countenanced Italian fascism—this morbid secretion, the by-product of a decaying and dying system originated, and similar secretions will originate everywhere when an old, rotten system is seriously hurt.

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Featured articles

Distributaries: “Modern Anarchism”

October 22, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
Our fast-moving mountain current has spread out across the a decade’s worth of terrain, splitting off into various distributary currents. We know—or at least the driving metaphor of this work suggests—that the various currents will never unite as fully as perhaps they were mingled before Proudhon’s death. We can certainly point to instances where some form of direct influence seems to carry forward from the earliest period examined through to the anarchism of the 1880s—but we have also inherited narratives that at least flirt with the notion of a rather complete reinvention of anarchist thought in what Kropotkin called “modern anarchism.”

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Featured articles

Distributaries: The Reform Leagues and Anarchist Individualism

October 21, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
There are important individual stories to be told. We’ll track the journey of Dyer D. Lum to anarchism and the post-war exploits of William Batchelder Greene. Ezra and Angela Heywood will feature prominently, as we account for the relationship between The Word and the emerging anarchist movement in the 1870s. There will be a lot of apparent diversions into the spiritualist press, adventures among the free religionists and free lovers, as well as plenty of exploration of the “Yankee International” and the associated organizations. We’ll say goodbye to figures like Calvin Blanchard.

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From the Archives

Declaration of Sentiments and Constitution of the New-England Labor-Reform League (1869)

October 21, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
Having met to promote associative effort for the emancipation of labor, it is proper to indicate reasons which inspire this action, and the objects we aim to accomplish. Believing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, inalienable privileges, we affirm the right of every human being to the means necessary to secure and maintain them. Land, mines, air, water, vegetables, animals, all material and spiritual objects, unmodified by human skill are natural wealth, to be held free and common;

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Featured articles

Distributaries: Atercracy

October 21, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
Some of our distributary channels really diverged early, as anarchist ideas spread through the export of the European press and through the exile of European revolutionaries. So, for example, there are individuals and incidents to be explored in the context of the French exile communities in North America.

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