1890

From the Archives

William G. Sumner, “Why I Am a Free Trader” (1890)

June 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] WHY I AM A FREE TRADER. BY PROF. W. G. SUMNER. 1. As a student of political economy: By free trade I mean anti-protectionism. At the present time, in the United States, the policy of protection and the philosophy of protectionism are interlocked with each other. The protected interests make their struggle in the lobby and in Congress to get the privileges which they want, but as soon as they are forced to enter upon any justification of such special privileges, they have recourse to an economic philosophy by which they endeavor to show that […]
From the Archives

Van Buren Denslow, “Why I Am a Protectionist” (1890)

June 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] WHY I AM A PROTECTIONIST. BY VAN BUREN DENSLOW. I am asked to state: “Why I am a Protectionist.” It is a personal question. Whether any other person can be a Protectionist for the same reasons is aside from the form of the question. Its answer also must be purely egotistic, and need not therefore seek to be modest. The editor of the Twentieth Century has doubtless his reasons for putting the topic in this form. It is sufficient that I reply according to the fact. I. I am a Protectionist, because forty years of […]
Anarchist Beginnings

William Holmes, “Why I, an Anarchist, Work with Socialists” (1890)

June 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
I believe Anarchism to be inevitable But while I believe in Anarchism as the highest truth yet evolved, and until I have more evidence of greater, shall disseminate its doctrines, I am not ready to say it contains no error. Perhaps, in the ever pregnant womb of nature there struggles a higher and grander truth which shall some day come to the world, uniting and harmonizing apparently conflicting theories making possible the quick realization of that noble dream of philosophers, prophets, and sages-the millennium on earth.

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non-resistance

A. P. Brown, “Why I Am a Non-Resistant” (1890)

June 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] WHY I AM A NON-RESISTANT. BY A. P. BROWN. Well, first, because having been at the trouble to be born into this somewhat interesting world I feel inclined to linger in it as long as may be to learn more in regard to its workings, and I have noticed that those who are ready and prone to fight, who believe in fighting and practice it, are more likely not to die of old age than are those who follow after the things that make for peace. There is some risk, to be sure, whichever course […]
anarchist individualism

Victor Yarros, “Why I, as an Anarchist, Will Not Work with Socialists” (1890)

June 6, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] WHY I, AS AN ANARCHIST, WILL NOT WORK WITH THE SOCIALISTS. BY VICTOR YARROS. I find it exceedingly difficult to comply with the editor’s request for a comparatively brief statement of the reason “Why I, as an Anarchist, will not work with Nationalists, Socialists, and Single-taxers.” I doubt not that the editor realizes fully as well as I do the utter absurdity of the question; and if he has put it and has solicited an answer, it must be because the confusion in the mind of what we love to style “the public” is so […]
Featured articles

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Courting” (1890)

April 4, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third] COURTING Philadelphia, Pa., Sept. 15, ’90. A friend and myself undertook that serious affair the other day, and the results being peculiar I want to take the public into my confidence. People usually prefer privacy on such occasions, but we got into a roomful all intent on the same errand. Specified, the errand was this: The famous “Kreutzer Sonata” was to be tried. Tolstoi, voice by Robert Arundel, was to justify himself before Judge Arnold; the prosecuting attorney, over the heads of a few poor itinerant booksellers, was to tear the asceticism of Galilee in rags, and the public […]
The Sex Question

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Sex Slavery” (1890)

August 9, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third] Sex Slavery A Lecture Delivered by Voltairine de Cleyre before Unity Congregation, Philadelphia. Night in a prison cell! A chair, a bed, a small washstand, four blank walls, ghastly in the dim light from the corridor without, a narrow window, barred and sunken in the stone, a grated door! Beyond its hideous iron latticework, within the ghastly walls, — a man! An old man, gray-haired and wrinkled, lame and suffering. There he sits, in his great loneliness, shut in front all the earth. There he walks, to and fro, within his measured space, apart from all he loves! ‘There, […]
fiction

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

July 25, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Voltairine de Cleyre [main page] 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 […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Benjamin R. Tucker, “Why I Am an Anarchist” (1890)

August 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
Why am I an Anarchist? That is the question which the editor of the Twentieth Century has requested me to answer for his readers. I comply; but, to be frank, I find it a difficult task. If the editor or one of his contributors had only suggested a reason why I should be anything other than an Anarchist, I am sure I should have no difficulty in disputing the argument. And does not this very fact, after all, furnish in itself the best of all reasons why I should be an Anarchist – namely, the impossibility of discovering any good […]