Looking backward at Edward Bellamy's influence in Oregon, 1888-1936

Oregon Historical Quarterly

Volumn 104, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 63-95

  Kopp, James J ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950569102     PISSN: 00304727     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (155)

1. Heywood Broun, "Back to Bellamy," World-Telegram, July 19, 1933,
2. reprinted in Broun, It Seems to Me, 1925-1935 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935), 207-10.
3. See also James J. Kopp, "Edward Bellamy and the New Deal: The Revival of Bellamyism in the 1930s," Utopian Studies IV, ed. Lise Leibacher-Ouvrard and Nicholas D. Smith (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1991), 10-16.
4. See, for example, "Mrs. Bellamy Heard on the Radio," Los Angeles Times, May 23, 1934;
5. "They Stand Out from the Crowd," Literary Digest 117 (June 23, 1934): 11.
6. The text of Marion Bellamy's lecture was published as Edward Bellamy Today: A Lecture by Marion Bellamy (Kansas City, Mo.: Peerage Press, 1936). Edward T. Sandrow (1906-1975) served as rabbi at Ahavai Shalom, located at 1436 S.W. Park Avenue in Portland, from 1933 until 1937 and subsequently became rabbi of Temple Beth El in Cedarhurst, New York.
7. See Pamela S. Nadell, Conservative Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 219-21;
8. Scott Cline, "The Jews of Portland, Oregon: A Statistical Dimension, 1860-1880," Oregon Historical Quarterly 88:2 (Spring 1987):5-25;
9. and Gary Miranda, Following a River: Portland's Congregation Neveh Shalom, 1869-1989 (Portland, Ore.: Congregation Neveh Shalom, 1989), 88-91.
10. Also see Steve Lowenstein, The Jews of Oregon, 1850-1950 (Portland: Jewish Historical Society of Oregon, 1987);
11. and William Toll, The Making of an Ethnic Middle Class: Portland Jewry over Four Generations (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982).
12. "Economic Seer's Kin Will Address Ahavai Shalom," Oregon Journal, November 1, 1936.
13. See Everett W. MacNair, Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement, 1889 to 1894 (Milwaukee, Wisc.: Fitzgerald Company, 1957);
14. John Hope Franklin, "Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement," New England Quarterly 11:4 (December 1938): 739-72;
15. and Arthur Lipow, Authoritarian Socialism in America: Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
16. See also F.J. Vassault, "Nationalism in California," Overland Monthly 15 (June 1890): 659-61.
17. Charles McArthur Destler, "Western Radicalism, 1865-1901: Concepts and Origins," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 31:3 (December 1944): 351.
18. Monica St. Romain, "County Saw Another Try at Religious Colony Plan," Newport News-Times, June 26, 1969.
19. See Edward A. Weeks, "Fifty Influential Books: Edward Weeks, John Dewey and Charles A. Beard Each Select the Twenty-five Most Influential Books since 1885," Publishers Weekly 127 (March 23, 1935): 1227-9.
20. Also see Weeks, This Trade of Writing (Boston: Little, Brown, 1935), 278-81.
21. Robert B. Downs, Books That Changed America (London: Macmillan, 1970), 100.
22. Included among Downs's selections are Thomas Paine's Common Sense, Lewis and Clark's History of the Expedition, Joseph Smith's The Book of Mormon, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Earlier, Downs had included Looking Backward in his Molders of the Modern Mind: 111 Books That Shaped Western Civilization (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1961), where he described the novel as "Socialism without Marx - A Dream of Utopia" (323-6).
23. John L. Thomas, Alternative America: Henry George, Edward Bellamy, Henry Demarest Lloyd and the Adversary Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 356.
24. For an examination of the international impact of Bellamy's work, see Sylvia E. Bowman et al., Edward Bellamy Abroad: An American Prophet's Influence (New York: Twayne, 1962). Included in this thorough study are discussions of Bellamy's influence in Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia.
25. See Arthur E. Morgan, Edward Bellamy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944);
26. Sylvia E. Bowman, The Year 2000: A Critical Biography of Edward Bellamy (New York: Bookman Associates, 1958);
27. Nancy Snell Griffith, Edward Bellamy: A Bibliography (Methuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1986);
28. and Richard Toby Widdicombe, Edward Bellamy: An Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Criticism (New York: Garland, 1988).
29. Also see Toby Widdicombe and Herman S. Preiser, eds., Revisiting the Legacy of Edward Bellamy (1850-1898), American Author and Social Reformer: Uncollected and Unpublished Writings, Scholarly Perspectives for a New Millennium (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002).
30. William Dean Howells, "The Romantic Imagination," Atlantic Monthly 82 (August 1898): 256.
31. Edward Bellamy, "How I Wrote 'Looking Backward,' " Ladies Home Journal, April 1894, 2.
32. Bellamy was accused of plagiarizing from early Utopian works, including August Bebel's Woman in the Past, Present and Future (1885),
33. John Macnie's The Diothas (1883),
34. and Laurence Grönlund's The Co-operative Commonwealth (1884).
35. Marie A. Shipley was the principal accuser in a brief article titled "Bebel's Bricks or Bellamy's?" that appeared in Liberty 7:4 (June 21, 1890): 3,
36. and subsequently in a forty-five-page pamphlet titled "The True Author of 'Looking Backward'" (1890).
37. Arthur E. Morgan addresses these accusations in Plagiarism in Utopia: A Study of the Continuity of the Utopian Tradition with Special Reference to Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (Yellow Springs, Ohio: Author, 1944). As Bellamy's biographer, Morgan takes a sympathetic view toward the writer, but he presents sound arguments that the "continuity" of this type of literature allows for similarities in style and content.
38. Joseph Schiffman, introduction to Edward Bellamy, Selected Writings on Religion and Society (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1955), ix. The military itself plays no major role in the society described in Looking Backward.
39. Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art 65 (March 24, 1888): 356;
40. New York Tribune, February 5, 1888, 10.
41. Cyrus Field Willard, "The Nationalist Club of Boston (A Chapter of History)," The Nationalist 1 (May 1889): 16, 17.
42. The Nationalist 1 (July 1889): 94, (September 1889): 174.
43. The Nationalist 1 (October 1889): 219.
44. See also MacNair, Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement, 202.
45. Vassault, "Nationalism in California," 659-61.
46. Gilman (who published in the Nationalist under the name of Stetson) was the niece of Edward Everett Hale. Through his prompting, her poem, "Similar Cases," was first published in the April 1890 The Nationalist. She contributed three other poems to the magazine and ten poems to the New Nation. Several other items appeared in California Nationalist publications. See Gary Scharnhorst, "Making Her Fame: Charlotte Perkins Gilman in California," California History 64 (1985): 192-201, 242-3.
47. Also see Carol Farley Kessler, Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Her Progress toward Utopia with Selected Writings (Syracuse., N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 23, 53;
48. and James Robert Biggs, "Justice, Love and Liberty: The Nationalist Movement in Los Angeles" (M.A. thesis, California State University, Fullerton, 1990).
49. John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers' Alliance and the People's Party (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1931), 131.
50. Also see Clinton Keeler, "The Grass Roots of Utopia: A Study of the Literature of the Agrarian Revolt in America, 1880-1902," (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1953), 26-7.
51. Carlton Beals, The Great Revolt and Its Leaders: The History of Popular American Uprisings in the 1890's (London: Abelard-Schuman, 1968), 100.
52. N.B. Ashby, The Riddle of the Sphinx (Des Moines, Iowa: Industrial Publishing Co., 1890), 237.
53. The Nationalist 2 (February 1890): 120. The list of club secretaries in the February 1890 issue includes an entry for "Corvallis, Benton Co.," with F.J. DeNeven as the secretary (121).
54. See Emil R. Peterson and Alfred Powers, A Century of Coos and Curry: History of Southwest Oregon (Portland, Ore.: Binford & Mort, 1952), 248-9.
55. George Bennett, "A History of Bandon and the Coquille River," Oregon Historical Quarterly 29:2 (March 1928): 45.
56. See also Orvil Dodge, Pioneer History of Coos and Curry Counties, Or.: Heroic Deeds and Thrilling Adventures of the Early Settlers (Salem, Ore.: Capital Printing Co., 1898), 235.
57. Coquille City Herald, November 26, 1889.
58. Coquille City Herald, December 24, 1889.
59. Ibid.
60. Sylvia Strauss, "Gender, Race, and Class in Utopia," in Looking Backward, 1988-1888: Essays on Edward Bellamy, ed. Daphne Patai (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 86;
61. "What to Read," American Fabian 3:6 (June 1897): 12.
62. Sylvia Strauss, "Traitors to the Masculine Cause": The Men's Campaign for Women's Rights (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982): 126-7.
63. th Century: The Role of 'The Fairer Sex' in American Utopian Fiction, 1888-1900," presented at the nineteenth annual Lewis & Clark College Gender Studies Symposium, Portland, Oregon, March 9, 2000.
64. Dolores Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), 135;
65. Strauss, "Gender, Race, and Class," 85-6.
66. Strauss, "Gender, Race, and Class," 86-7;
67. Daniel T. Rodgers, The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 192.
68. Such articles as "Woman in the Year 2000," which appeared in the February 1891 Ladies Home Journal, emphasized the positive aspects of improvements in the status of women as outlined in Looking Backward. Edward Bellamy's final effort to write about this matter was in Equality, the sequel to Looking Backward, which was published in 1897. In Equality, he addressed many of the deficiencies related to the status of women in his earlier novel, from the role of women in the Industrial Army to dress reform.
69. For more on Nosler, see Peterson and Powers, A Century of Coos and Curry, 561;
70. and "From the Newspapers," Oregon Historical Quarterly 42:4 (December 1941): 346.
71. Coquille City Herald, February 4, 1890. The Nationalist never included a report on the Coos Bay club.
72. Peterson and Powers, A Century of Coos and Curry, 248-9. McEwen sold his interests to D.F. Dean in 1901, and Dean continued to produce the Herald until 1912, when it was taken over by P.C. Levar. The paper changed hands several times between 1912 and 1917, when it was consolidated with the Sentinel.
73. J.A. Dean, "Nationalism in Oregon," New Nation 1 (April 4, 1891): 162.
74. See William G. Robbins, Hard Times in Paradise: Coos Bay, Oregon, 1850-1986 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988).
75. See also Robbins, Landscapes of Promise: The Oregon Story, 1800-1940 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997).
76. The Nationalist 2 (March 1890): 149.
77. C.C. Hogue's essay, "The Southern Question," appeared in The Nationalist 2 (June 1890): 228-9. He addressed what he believed was the major impediment to the adoption of Nationalism in the southern states, the "race problem." The best known of the Corvallis club officers was E.R. Lake, a professor of botany and a horticulturist at the Oregon Agricultural College (present-day Oregon State University).
78. The Nationalist 3 (August 1890): 44. The Daily Astorian includes only passing references to Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement.
79. Egbert S. Oliver, Homes in the Oregon Forest: Settling Columbia County 1870-1920 (Brownsville, Ore.: Calapooia Publications, 1983). 9, 51, 68-9.
80. A J.H. White served in the Oregon House of Representatives in 1872 from Polk County, but it is unclear if he and "Bro. J.H. White" are the same individual.
81. Oliver, Homes in the Forest, 83, 85, 123.
82. The Nationalist 3 (August 1890): 44.
83. For an example, see "News of the Movement," The Nationalist, August 1889. The report of a new club in Cleveland, Ohio, reads: "The Free Land Club has become a Nationalist Club. It was first a Henry George Club, then a Single-Tax Club, then a Free Land Club, and it has now made its final change, so the members think."
84. The Nationalist 3 (February 1891): 503.
85. The Nationalist 3 (September 1890): 112.
86. New Nation 1 (February 28, 1891): 73.
87. New Nation 2 (March 19, 1892): 183.
88. See Fred E. Haynes, Social Politics in the United States (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924), 147-9.
89. Franklin, "Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement," 201.
90. William F. Zornow, "Bellamy Nationalism in Ohio 1891 to 1896," Ohio State Archaeologist and Historical Quarterly 58 (1949): 159.
91. Christine McHugh, "Edward Bellamy and the Populists: The Agrarian Response to Utopia, 1888-1898" (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1977), 112.
92. Maude Davis Chapman, "Sylvester Pennoyer, Governor of Oregon, 1887-1896" (M.A. thesis, University of Oregon, 1943), 21.
93. See also Life and Political History of Sylvester Pennoyer, Governor of Oregon (Portland, Ore.: History Publishing Company, 1891).
94. New Nation 1 (August 1, 1891): 429-30.
95. The original article appeared as "The New Political Party," North American Review 153 (August 1891): 220-6.
96. New Nation 2 (May 28, 1892): 344, (June 4, 1892): 360. A similar reference appeared in the July 2, 1892, issue in a report "On the Eve of the Omaha Convention."
97. New Nation 2 (October 1, 1892): 608.
98. New Nation 2 (July 23, 1892): 470.
99. Peterson and Powers, A Century of Coos and Curry, 248.
100. Also see Marion Harrington, "The Populist Movement in Oregon, 1889-1896" (M.A. thesis, University of Oregon, 1935), 23. In the election of 1894, the other coeditor of the Coquille Herald, D.F. Dean, was elected Coos County clerk as a Populist.
101. See Donald L. McMurry, Coxey's Army: A Study of the Industrial Army Movement of 1894 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1929);
102. and Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey's Army: An American Odyssey (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985).
103. Also see Herman C. Voeltz, "Coxey's Army in Oregon, 1894," Oregon Historical Quarterly 65:3 (September 1964): 263-95.
104. There is some evidence that Bellamy had cancer of the throat. See Morgan, Edward Bellamy, 71.
105. See Charles P. LeWarne, "Equality Colony: The Plan to Socialize Washington," Pacific Northwest Quarterly 59 (July 1968): 140.
106. Also see Charles P. LeWarne, "Equality Colony," in Utopias on Puget Sound (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975), 55-113. The first building erected at the colony was named Fort Bellamy.
107. See, for example, Weekly Nationalist 1 (May 17, 1890). The paper also included advertisements for Kaweah Colony, which had adopted Nationalist ideals and was frequently mentioned in The Nationalist.
108. Paul M. Gaston, Man and Mission: E.B. Gaston and the Origins of the Fairhope Single Tax Colony (Montgomery, Ala.: Black Belt Press, 1993). 5;
109. Robert V. Hine, California's Utopian Colonies (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1953), 86;
110. Lipow, Authoritarian Socialism in America, 88n.
111. LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 7.
112. Hine, California's Utopian Colonies, 85-6, 142, 162-3;
113. Lipow, Authoritarian Socialism in America, 87-8;
114. Gaston, Man and Mission, 24-7, 55;
115. LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 131-2.
116. For information on the Bellamy Colony, see Rosa Claridge, "Lincoln County's Bellamy Colony," prepared for the Lincoln County Historical Society and the Sons of Norway, 1965-1966. To Rosa Claridge goes much of the credit for reviving the history of this colony. Continuing Mrs. Claridge's work, Carol Romtvedt Ginter, a granddaughter of an original settler, wrote "Looking Backward ... at the Bellamy Colony," Bayfront 9 (June 1999).
117. Also see St. Romain, "County Saw Another Try at Religious Colony Plan," mentioned in the "News Notes" section of the Oregon Historical Quarterly 71:3 (September 1970): 289.
118. Rosa Claridge notes: "The records of the Post Office Department in the National Archives show that the site was located in the Northwest quarter of Section 32, Township 10 South, Range 10 West, 3 1/2 miles north of Toledo, 10 1/2 miles south of Siletz and 8 1/2 miles northwest of Yaquina. Originally the land was the homestead of Si Copeland and later owned by Al Waugh who sold it to John Allen in 1896 or 1897." See Claridge, "Lincoln County's Bellamy Colony," 2. The roles of John Allen and how the property was obtained are reported differently in various accounts of the colony. Claridge writes: "The colonists had leased the property" (2). In his autobiography, Fred Romtvedt (son of Sondre Romtvedt and seven years old when his family moved to Bellamy) remembered: "John Allen . . . had bought a 160 acre farm . . . and organized a cooperative colony called Bellamy."
119. See Fred Romtvedt, "Fred Romtvedt: His Life & Loves, 1890-[1983]," June 1981, typescript prepared by Carol Ginter, 2, copy at Oregon Historical Society Research Library, Portland, Oregon.
120. Berne S. Jacobsen, Romtvedt's cousin, writes in the story of his family "that a Swede named John Allen out on the Oregon Coast was organizing a cooperative colony. . . ." Bernhardt Selvig Jacobsen, "Viking Roots: The Story of the Family of Roy and Sophia [Romtvedt] Jacobsen . . . ," typescript, 1983, 13, author's collection.
121. See Lincoln County Leader, June 17, 1898;
122. Lewis A. McArthur, "Oregon Geographic Names: X; Additions since 1944," Oregon Historical Quarterly 49:1 (March 1948): 64.
123. This post office, not to mention the connection with Bellamy, was initially missed in the first two editions of Oregon Geographic Names. McArthur's first mention of it was in the March 1948 Oregon Historical Quarterly, where he wrote that the name "may have been intended to compliment a local resident or even someone living at a distance." Thanks to the efforts of Carol Ginter, information on the Bellamy Colony will appear in the seventh edition of Oregon Geographic Names (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, forthcoming 2003).
124. See Lars Ahnebrink, "A Contribution to Scandinavian Socialism" in Bowman et al., Edward Bellamy Abroad, 261-4. Equality, in whole or in part, was translated into Danish and Swedish, and a Finnish translation was published in 1905 in Hancock, Michigan.
125. See Jacobsen, "Viking Roots," 13;
126. Kristina Veirs, ed., Nordic Heritage Northwest (Seattle: Writing Works, 1982), 17.
127. This same issue of Industrial Freedom includes an item titled "Bellamy Communistic Colony Falls Completely," which reports that a cooperative colony near Hastings, British Columbia, collapsed after three years. Thanks to Charles LeWarne for bringing these items to my attention. Industrial Freedom is available in microfilm and hard copy at the University of Washington Libraries.
128. Ginter, ""Looking Backward . . ."
129. See also Claridge, "Lincoln County's Bellamy Colony," 4-6. Appended to this report are a number of clippings tracking Tveitmoe's activities after he left the Bellamy Colony. Tveitmoe moved to California, where he ran unsuccessfully for mayor of San Francisco and became a labor leader and president of the Asiatic Exclusion League. Eventually, he was embroiled in some sinister dealings in the Los Angeles area, which ultimately led to his imprisonment in Leavenworth.
130. U'Ren did acknowledge the influence that Henry George's Progress and Poverty had on him, and George's views on the single tax may have made him wary of Bellamy's work. See Lincoln Steffens, Upbuilders (1909; reprint, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968), 297;
131. Leonie N. Brooke, "W.S. U'Ren, Father of Popular Government," Oregonian, June 5, 1938;
132. Esther G. Weinstein, "William Simon U'Ren: A Study of Persistence in Political Reform," (Ph.D. diss., Syracuse University, 1967), 11-12;
133. and Robert C. Woodward, "William Simon U'Ren: in an Age of Protest" (M.A. thesis, University of Oregon, 1956), 1.
134. On the lasting impact of George's influence in Oregon, see James H. Gilbert, "Single-Tax Movement in Oregon," Political Science Quarterly 31 (1916): 25-52.
135. Thomas C. McClintock, "Seth Lewelling, William S. U'Ren and the Birth of the Oregon Progressive Movement," Oregon Historical Quarterly 68:3 (September 1967): 201, 206;
136. Weinstein, "William Simon U'Ren," 11-12.
137. See, for example, Peter H. Curtis, "Bellamy Nationalism and Later Reform Movements, 1888-1940" (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1973);
138. and Henry Elsner, Jr., The Technocrats: Prophets of Automation (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1967). Elsner devotes an appendix to "Edward Bellamy and Technocracy."
139. Morgan, Edward Bellamy, 297, 298.
140. See also John Clark Ridpath, "Is the Prophet Dead?" Arena (August 1898): 284.
141. The most extensive compilation of literature on Utopias in English remains Lyman Tower Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985: An Annotated, Chronological Bibliography (New York: Garland Publishing, 1988).
142. On American Utopias, see Vernon Louis Parrington, Jr., American Dreams: A Study of American Utopias (Providence, R.I.: Brown University, 1947);
143. Kenneth M. Roemer, The Obsolete Necessity: America in Utopian Writings, 1888-1900 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1976),
144. and Charles J. Rooney, Jr., Dreams and Visions: A Study of American Utopias, 1865-1917 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985).
145. This work was also published as Paradise on Earth (Portland, Ore.: F.W. Balte Co., 1913).
146. One of Hayes's earlier works of reminiscences about Portland is, coincidentally, Looking Backward at Portland (Portland, Ore.: Kilham Stationery & Printing Co., 1911), but there is nothing beyond the title that bears a likeness to Bellamy's work.
147. See also Howard P. Segal, "Jeff W. Hayes: Reform Boosterism and Urban Utopianism," Oregon Historical Quarterly 79:4 (Winter 1978): 345-57.
148. Charles Cole, Visitors from Mars: A Narrative (Portland, Ore.: Beattie & Hofmann, 1901);
149. Ira S. Bunker, A Thousand Years Hence; or, Startling Events in the Year A.D. 3000. A Trip to Mars. Incidents by the Way (Portland, Ore.: Author, 1903);
150. Francis H. Clarke, Morgan Rockefeller's Will: A Romance of 1991-2 (Portland, Ore.: Clarke-Cree Publishing, 1909).
151. Heywood Broun, introduction to Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1888; reprint, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, [1931]), i;
152. Broun, "Back to Bellamy," 292-3.
153. In author's collection.
154. Carlos A. Schwantes, "Free Love and Free Speech on the Pacific Northwest Frontier," Oregon Historical Quarterly 82:3 (Fall 1981): 273.
155. Also see Carlos A. Schwantes, Radical Heritage: Labor, Socialism, and Reform in Washington and British Columbia, 1885-1917 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979).