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4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL MARCH 28, 2018 O PINION Offbeat Oregon History: Newspaper editors jailed By Finn JD John For The Sentinel The editors and writers of Anarchist-Commu- nist newspaper The Firebrand, published in Port- land and distributed nationwide from 1895 to 1897, surely expected to get some resistance from the establishment. They may even have expected to be arrested, possibly even charged with sedi- tion or treason. But they surely didn’t expect that when their publication was shut down, it would be for criti- cizing the institution of matrimony. That’s what happened, though. The wide-open town of Portland reacted to their strident advoca- cy of revolution and regime change with a collec- tive yawn; but when they started advocating ig- noring the laws of marriage, well, that was going just a little too far. The Firebrand was a product of what may have been the worst depression in American history, as measured in per-capita human misery. This depression, usually referred to by the misleading moniker “Panic of 1893,” got its start in February of that year when a revolution broke out in Ar- gentina, the most prosperous and stable country in South America at the time. Spooked, European investors pulled their money out and, seeking a safe place to park it while they awaited further developments, started buying up dollars. The U.S. Dollar was at the time rigidly pegged to gold. So the more dollars the Europeans bought up, the more scarce dollars became ... and the more valuable they got, and the more attractive they became to foreign investors. At the same time, the rising dollar value made everyone who had a dollar less inclined to spend it, and debtors more likely to default on their mortgages. One thing led to another, and by the end of that year, the U.S. was plunged into depression. Very few people today realize how bad it was, that depression; the Great Depression of the 1930s absorbs most of the attention. But, the mid- 1890s were the last time large numbers of Amer- ican women living in urban areas were forced to choose between prostitution and starvation. Among other unemployed Americans, the lucky ones were able to trade their dignity for a mea- ger meal at a soup kitchen once or twice a day or poach animals and fi sh; the unlucky ones died of illnesses their hunger-weakened bodies couldn’t fi ght off. To make matters worse, the unemployed and starving had to watch wealthy upper-class citizens strutting callously by as they suffered; situations of the worst and most grueling privation coexisted side by side with wealth and privilege. It was like the fi rst few scenes from “Charlie and the Choc- olate Factory,” the book by Roald Dahl. Many well-off citizens tried to pretend the problem was one of morals rather than economics — that the unemployed were jobless because they were lazy — and the “robber barons” made no secret of the fact that they didn’t care who lived or died. Nat- urally, these attitudes inspired some resentment. By 1895, it had been so bad for so long that the American working class was a demographic powderkeg. Forces of reform grew stronger as the economy grew weaker: the free-silver move- ment sought to bolster the gold stocks, to stop the dollar’s climbing value; Populist politicians sought to claw power away from the smoke-fi lled room with projects like the Oregon Initiative and Referendum System; and support for journalis- tic “muckrakers” exposing the corruption of the powerful was strong and growing. But to the small group of dedicated journalists producing The Firebrand in Portland, all of that was useless — like performing cosmetic surgery on a patient dying of cancer. Henry Addis and his tiny group of colleagues — lapsed Mennonite Abraham Isaak and his fam- ily, and the elderly ex-Quaker Abner J. Pope — called themselves “Anarchist-Communists,” but the meaning of that term at the time was closer to what we know today as libertarian. The Firebrand was an interesting publication, because although Addis and his crew really didn’t know what they were doing, they had been inter- ested observers of previous anarchist movements and they’d learned a great deal from their mis- takes. So although freelance articles poured in from radical writers across the country, those that advocated covert operations and sabotage, or au- thoritarian devotion to some charismatic leader, or the use of bombings and assassinations, were slipped quietly into the trash. The Firebrand’s political and editorial po- sitions were fairly well defi ned by its masthead motto — “For the Burning Away of the Cobwebs of Ignorance and Superstition,” superimposed on a graphic of the state capitol building and a church steeple connected by a spiderweb occupied by a fat spider holding a bag of money — and by the sarcastic defi nitions of pillars of Gilded Age so- ciety which it published: “CLERGY: The paid tools of the rich to keep the poor divided on reli- gion and unanimous in their respect for the state. FRAUD: Shrewdness in business. MARRIAGE: Legalized prostitution and enslavement of the sexes. ARMY: Licensed murderers. CONGRESS: A body of men organized to break laws and make debts.” All of this probably resonated pretty well with working-class Portlanders, and it seemed also to play well in the crews of bachelors in the mining and logging camps across the state. But none of those people had much money to spare, and the “Firebrand Family” always had great diffi culty getting enough to eat. They moved their opera- tions into the country outside of town where they could do some subsistence farming, keeping a cow and some chickens; they spent days in the Portland hills picking wild blackberries to can, to get them through the winter; they picked hops for a little seasonal side income; and they tried, and failed, to start a dairy farm. Toward the end the plan was to acquire a small farm on the lower Columbia and set up a com- mune there. But before that could be done, the cops moved in. It wasn’t the Firebrand’s political position that brought on the trouble, though. It was the pub- lishers’ advocacy of what was then called “Free Love.” Free Love was an idea that covered a wide range, from “get the state out of the marriage business” to total sexual freedom. What all these positions had in common was, they violated the (patently unconstitutional) Comstock Laws, vio- lations of which were punished with jail time. The Firebrand had freely published articles arguing that marriage should be abolished, along with articles like “Plain Talks about the Sexual Organs” and “Teaching Sexual Truths to the Chil- dren.” One particular article, by writer Oscar Rot- ter, advocated “variety” in personal relations. This sparked a lively debate among advocates of monogamistic free love (basically, common-law marriage) and those who — like the editors of The Firebrand — felt that other people’s choices to be slutty or not were nobody’s business but their own and certainly not the state’s. The debate went on for several months. This may be what caught the attention of the postal authorities. In any event, something did, and one day in 1897 as Abner Pope was preparing the last issue for mailing, a deputy U.S. marshal arrived and arrested all three of them. The ensuing trial was rather a disaster, primar- ily because the defendants’ attorney was extraor- dinarily incompetent. Judge C.B. Bellinger was so exasperated that, after the jury brought in a verdict of “guilty,” he made a point of telling the defendants that he would support a request for a new trial. Pope seemed determined to take as much of the “blame” as he could, and Addis and Isaak were happy to oblige. This, as historian Schwantes points out, probably had a lot to do with the fact that the city jail was very comfortable compared with the accommodations the “Firebrand Family” had been making do with before his arrest. Re- member, he was very old; and he had just gone from a winter of subsisting on grubbed-up roots, canned blackberries, and the occasional pot-shot squirrel, to three square meals a day in a building with steam heat and indoor plumbing. In the end, Pope was sentenced to four months, and charges against the other two were dropped. But the paper was never restarted. In the end, the “Firebrand family” must have been a little nonplussed to fi nd that one could shout all day about revolution and regime change, but suggesting that the state should stop prosecut- ing people for unauthorized sexual activity got them sent straight to jail. Well, in 1897, that was Portland. Dr. Joel Fuhrman: Top health tips from the Dr. Fuhrman archives The following is a compilation of tips given by Dr. Fuhrman in his column, as collected by Sentinel staff. On coffee: In summary, coffee is most like a drug, not a food. Like most drugs it may have some minor benefi ts, but its toxic effects and resultant risks overwhelm those minor advantages. Caffeine is a stimulant and a long and healthy life is most consistently achieved when we avoid stimulants and drugs and meet our nutritional needs with as little ex- posure to toxicity as possible. On osteoporosis: The best protection against osteoporosis is to tip the balance back toward bone building with a combination of exercise and excellent nutrition, which can prevent bone loss. On cholesterol: Limit your intake of animal protein to at most six ounces per week. If you have heart disease or signifi cantly high cholesterol, avoid ani- mal products altogether. On exercise: Regular physical activity reduces the risk of coronary heart dis- ease and diabetes by 30-50 percent. Exercise is a natural mood el- evator – regular exercise has been shown to be just as effective as (and of course much safer than) anti-depressant drugs. Exercise is associated with decreased risk of colon, breast and prostate cancers. Exercise builds up the body’s antioxidant defenses. Exercise en- hances sleep; adequate sleep is crucial for overall health. Letters to the Editor policy IN BRIEF MARCH 28-APRIL7 In order to ensure that your letter will be printed, letters must be under 300 words and submitted by Friday at 5 p.m. Letters must be signed and must include an address, city and phone number or e-mail address for verifi cation purposes. No anonymous letters will be printed. Letters must be of interest to local readers. Personal attacks and name calling in response to letters are uncalled for and unnecessary. To avoid transcription errors, the Sentinel would prefer editorial and news content be sent electronically via email or electronic media. Hand written submissions will be accepted, but we may need to call to verify spelling, which could delay the publishing of the submission. The Sentinel reserves the right not to print letters that may contain libelous content. Easter egg hunts are scheduled at Elk's Lodge at 11 a.m. and Delight Valley Church at 10:30 a.m. on Easter. 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