DISSIDENT VOICES/COMMON THREADS II

The genres of the dissident press that emerged during the final years of the nineteenth century suggest several more overarching characteristics that apply to many of the publications that were “voices of revolution.” Some of the traits evolved from themes that originated in dissident voices that were published earlier in the century, and others had been at least hinted at by that first generation—and then came into full bloom during the second.

THE FINANCIAL STRUGGLE THAT IS ENDEMIC IN THE DISSIDENT PRESS SOMETIMES LEADS TO DECISIONS THAT ARE MORALLY OR IDEOLOGICALLY QUESTIONABLE

Because the radical nature of the causes that dissident publications champion often denies them the advertising and circulation revenue that sustains mainstream media, editors sometimes experiment with creative ways to achieve financial solvency.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton defended her decision to accept capital from a millionaire who also was perceived to be a racist, saying she would “accept aid from the devil himself” as long as he did not influence The Revolution’s editorial content. Stanton’s unyielding position was strengthened by her decision to stake out the high ground on other financial issues, refusing to accept ads for patent medicines because she believed they were dangerous.

Victoria Woodhull had no such high ground on which to defend her eagerness to accept money from millionaire industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt, who financed Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly in exchange for sexual favors from her voluptuous sister Tennessee Claflin.

Numerous of the fiscal decisions that socialist publisher J. A. Wayland made were questionable not on moral grounds, but ideological ones. Appeal to Reason published ads from companies that produced a variety of manufactured items and from promoters of various get-rich-quick schemes—hardly consistent with the Appeal’s anti-capitalist philosophy. Wayland’s circulation-building techniques, although they succeeded in creating the largest newspaper in the history of the dissident press, also were incongruous with the paper’s ideology, with readers being encouraged to bring in new subscribers by being offered incentives such as gold watches, motorcycles, and a yacht. Finally, Wayland’s decision to diversify his business operation by manufacturing items ranging from salad dressing to airplanes flew directly in the face of his campaign to eradicate capitalism.

THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT IS NO FRIEND OF THE DISSIDENT PRESS

Although encouraging a free press and celebrating diverse opinions are purported to be hallmarks of a democratic society, the U.S. government used its myriad powers, with unyielding impunity, to silence the voices of journalistic dissent that emerged during the final decades of the nineteenth century.

The sexual reform press so offended the puritanical mores of the Victorian Age that the federal government engineered a comprehensive attack on sexual expression, led by “St. Anthony” Comstock and the eponymous obscenity acts that he propelled into law.

The federal government’s campaign to shut down the Appeal to Reason was even more relentless, beginning in 1901 with postal officials in Washington threatening to cancel the socialist weekly’s second-class mailing permit and continuing for the next fifteen years with ongoing harassment of publisher W. A. Wayland. The government’s assault on the leading voice of socialism climaxed after the country entered World War I and Congress passed the Espionage Act that made it illegal to publish material that encouraged disloyalty. Postal authorities then finally succeeded in preventing the Appeal from being mailed—until Wayland’s son, in complete betrayal of his dead father’s legacy, agreed to support the war.

The federal government’s offensive against the anarchist press was absolutely ruthless. The U.S. Post Office suppressed various issues of Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth and then, in 1917, Goldman and editor Alexander Berkman were found guilty, under the Espionage Act, of conspiring against the draft and were sentenced to the maximum penalty of two years in prison. The Justice Department was called in to strike the fatal blow against the beleaguered dissidents by deporting two of American history’s most cacophonous editorial voices.

DISSIDENT JOURNALISTS PAY A HIGH PRICE FOR THEIR EFFORTS TO PROVOKE SOCIAL CHANGE

Although the first generation of editors suffered public humiliation ranging from William Lloyd Garrison being pelted with rotten eggs to Susan Brownell Anthony being verbally attacked more harshly than any other woman of her time, the level of punishment meted out to dissident journalists escalated as the nineteenth century moved toward its end.

After daring to challenge the myth that lustful black men in the South were raping white women by the thousand, anti-lynching editor Ida B. Wells was physically threatened to the point that she was forced into exile in the North, not daring to set foot in her native South for three decades.

Sexual reform editors Moses Harman of Lucifer, the Light-Bearer and Ezra Heywood of The Word were convicted on multiple obscenity charges, under the Comstock laws, and then served many years in prison, several of them at hard labor that ultimately destroyed the two aged men’s health and undoubtedly hastened their deaths.

Pioneering anarchist editor Albert R. Parsons was hanged and his later counterparts Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were first jailed and then deported. All three of these editors clearly possessed a variety of qualities as journalists, provocateurs, and visionaries that could have guaranteed them all the benefits of conventional success—had they not been determined to effect social change.

Socialist editor J. A. Wayland, like Parsons, paid the supreme price for his journalistic dissidence, becoming so depressed because of the various forms of persecution he suffered—legal, physical, and emotional attacks by law enforcement officials combined with attacks on his morals by the mainstream press—that he took his own life.

SOME DISSIDENT PRESS TOPICS ARE SO INIMICAL TO SOCIETAL VALUES THAT THEY ARE NEVER EMBRACED BY THE AMERICAN PUBLIC

Although many dissident publications champion unpopular concepts that eventually filter into the mainstream of American thought, others are so contrary to the nation’s mores and core principles that they fail utterly in gaining the support of more than a small minority of the population.

Some of the beliefs promulgated by the sexual reform press—that the institution of marriage should be eliminated and that babies born to unwed mothers are superior to babies born to married women—are seen today, as they were during the Victorian Age, as the ravings of a lunatic fringe; the handful of publications that advanced such ideas never even succeeded, in fact, in building a social movement in support of its ideas.

Dissident newspapers such as the Appeal to Reason helped the Socialist Movement become a political force to be reckoned with at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, but capitalism ultimately proved to be so entrenched in the U.S. economy that socialist precepts remain beyond the pale of most citizens of this country—indeed, are seen as patently un-American.

Anarchism, to an even greater extent and despite the support of such determined publications as The Alarm and Mother Earth, also failed to have any significant influence on the national consciousness; today very few Americans have even a rudimentary understanding of—much less any support for—the anarchist philosophy.

THE DISSIDENT PRESS PROVIDES A PUBLISHING VENUE FOR WOMEN JOURNALISTS

Throughout most of the history of mainstream American journalism, the vast majority of the men who have traditionally dominated the field have opposed women either entering or advancing in this bastion of testosterone. Until the late twentieth century, therefore, the number of women who succeeded in editing establishment newspapers was minuscule. From the earliest years of dissident journalism, by contrast, women have played prominent roles.

After Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brownell Anthony, and their legendary newspaper The Revolution took their place among the pioneers in the field, the second generation witnessed a veritable explosion of female dissident journalists.

Victoria Woodhull and her Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly were the leading forces in creating the sexual reform press, paving the way for Angela Heywood and her groundbreaking work in The Word.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, during a time when women of color were largely barred from public life, became synonymous with the anti-lynching press, as well as the social movement surrounding it, through her singular work in the Memphis Free Speech, the New York Age, the Chicago Conservator, and the series of pamphlets she published.

Emma Goldman created an indelible mark, through her work as founder and editor of the leading voice of the Anarchist Movement, as one of the quintessential—as well as most memorable—figures in the history of the American dissident press.