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.
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IN BRIEF MARCH 28-APRIL7
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Easter egg hunts are scheduled at Elk's Lodge at 11 a.m. and
Delight Valley Church at 10:30 a.m. on Easter.
C ottage G rove
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The Earth Day event, Latham school spring bazaar, Bohemia
Mining Days and the W.O.E. Fair are looking for vendors and
volunteers.
A free movie, "Risen" will be shown on Friday, April 30 at
the Cottage Grove Community Center beginning at 7 p.m.
An Earth Day celebration will be held at Coiner Park on April
21 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Have an event, announcement, fundraiser or class you want
people to know about? Send the details to cmay@cgsentinel.
com to be featured here.