night

And I followed her to the station
With a suitcase in my hand
And I followed her to the station
With a suitcase in my hand
Well, it's hard to tell, it's hard to tell
When all your love's in vain
All my love's in vain

When the train rolled up to the station
I looked her in the eye
When the train rolled up to the station
And I looked her in the eye
Well, I was lonesome, I felt so lonesome
And I could not help but cry
All my love's in vain

When the train, it left the station
With two lights on behind
When the train, it left the station
With two lights on behind
Well, the blue light was my blues
And the red light was my mind
All my love's in vain

Let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more time
Let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more time
You can waste your time on the other rides
This is the nearest to being alive
Oh let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death

You can go with the crazy people in the Crooked House
You can fly away on the Rocket or spin in the Mouse
The Tunnel Of Love might amuse you
Noah's Ark might confuse you
But let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death

On the Wall Of Death all the world is far from me
On the Wall Of Death it's the nearest to being free

Well you're going nowhere when you ride on the carousel
And maybe you're strong but what's the good of ringing a bell
The switchback will make you crazy.
Beware of the bearded lady
Oh let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death

Let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more time
Oh let me ride on the Wall Of Death one more time
You can waste your time on the other rides
This is the nearest to being alive
Oh let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death
Let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death
Oh let me take my chances on the Wall Of Death

He's five foot-two and he's six feet-four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of thirty-one and he's only seventeen
He's been a soldier for a thousand years

He's a Christian a Hindu an Atheist a Jain
A Buddhist and a Muslim and a Jew
And he knows he shouldn't kill
And he knows he always will
Kill you for me my friend and me for you

And he's fighting for Palestine
He's fighting for Israel
He's fighting for the USA
And he's fighting for the Russians
And he's fighting for Iran
And he thinks we'll put an end to war this way

And he's fighting for Democracy
He's fighting for his soil
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
Who's to live and who's to die
And he never sees the writing on the wall

But without him how would Hitler have condemned them at ...
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body as a weapon for war
And without him all this killing can't go on
No

He's the universal soldier and he really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from here and there and you and me and brothers can't you see
This is not the way we put the end to war
No

I knew Virginia once
She was a pretty girl
She walked in the wild fields
And swam the wild streams
I took her out one day to the
Civil War battlefield
Way down in Manassas
Where I told her my dreams

[Chorus]
But now it's Disney's America
A long way from anywhere
You get what you pay for there
Man, you get it in spades
Just Disney's America
Virginia she chose to stay
And we drifted apart like runoff
Into the Chesapeake Bay

Then I had a family 
Virginia, I guess she forgot about me
She lives near the concrete sea
Or so people say
I don't remember much
About her gentle touch
My skin just turned so hard
And my feet turned to clay

[Chorus]

You can[’t] get too excited

You can[’t] get too enthused

From Dismal Land to the Tragic Mountain

We are not amused

I knew Virginia once
She was a pretty thing....

Old—and insane (—and when eugenics was in the air)

Young Frieda Flueckinger, c. 1893

     Here's another post on the historical blog I'm doing for a friend. You might find it interesting. And scary!

     You'll recall that Emma, wife of Fred Jenni (Sr.), died tragically at age 33 in 1906. That left her husband, Fred, a hard-working farmer, to deal also with a house full of children, including an infant [at his isolated farm in Fergus County, Montana].
     According to newspaper accounts, Emma's sister, Frieda White (née Flueckinger), then 26 years old, came to the assistance of Fred and his family. I recall reporting previously that, by that time, she had married Charles White—a much older man—and that she had a child with him in 1899. As far as I knew, she was still married to White in 1906.
     I am intrigued by Frieda, in part because we have a good photo of her, and, well, there you go. My perusal of Ancestry.com made clear that Frieda married again in 1907 but also that Charles L. White, her husband, was still alive (until 1915).
     But I could find no record of a divorce decree.
     Frieda's marriage to White was common in the era. She was eighteen years old when she married; White was forty-seven. Pretty creepy, but that's a matter for another day.
     I examined Frieda's marriage license/certificate of 1907, when she married Hubby #2, Frederick Huppi, and it appears that she made no secret of her having been married previously, to White.
     So did she get a divorce? Wouldn't that have been unusual in 1906 Montana? Just what is the story here?
     I took another tack. I searched "Charles White" in local newspapers in the period between 1890 and 1920.
     Voila!
     It turns out that Charles White had mental health problems that involved violence, or at least threats of violence.
     I'll let the newspaper articles tell the story (though one wonders what they didn't tell).

2-2-98 Fergus Co. Argus

     Anything's possible, I suppose, but it's hard not to wonder if Frieda, at age 18, felt tremendous pressures to marry someone, even if he was more than twice her age. Pretty sad.

2-15-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     —A week after White's self-surrender:

2-22-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     He didn't stay there long, as we'll see. I suspect that Frieda and her son had at some point moved in with Fred Jenni to get away from Charles.
     Four months later:

6-21-05 Fergus Co. Argus 

     Three weeks later:

 7-14-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     Subsequently, the authorities check in on White, who claims to have taken poison....

7-14-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     White requests being sent to the asylum, where he'd been housed months earlier. But he was released.

8-8-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     Request granted:

8-29-05 Fergus Co. Argus

     I have found nothing else about White's institutionalization and death. The records at Ancestry.com, such as they are, indicate that White died in 1915. I can find no newspaper articles reporting his death.
     As I said, Frieda married in 1907, two years after winning a divorce from White. (See below.)
     Here's a collection of relevant documents:

1900 Census. Charles White family included. (Frida and son Clarence are part of the household).

Frieda and Charles' wedding papers, 1898

1907 wedding documents

     But where did Frieda and her new family go? When did she die?

     I'll have to get back to you.

Re Warm Springs State Hospital
From Archives West.

Prior to 1869, Montana Territory made no special provisions for mental patients, their care generally being left to regular hospitals. The Helena Weekly Herald in a September 19, 1867, article on the county hospital commented on the need for a territorial insane asylum, stating that the county hospital was not the proper place for a "lunatic." 

Two years later the 6th Territorial Legislative Assembly passed a law authorizing an official territorial insane asylum to be owned and managed on a contract basis by private parties. A board of commissioners was established with one representative from each judicial district to oversee the asylum, establish rules for its operation, and perform periodic inspections. 

Until 1877 St. John's Hospital in Helena served as the territorial asylum. By 1874 it was accepting sufficient numbers of patients committed by Governor Benjamin Potts to require the construction of a separate building behind the main hospital. In 1877 Drs. Armistead H. Mitchell (1831-1898) and Charles F. Mussigbrod (d.1893), owners of a hotel and spa at Warm Springs, Montana, were awarded the contract for the care of the territory's mental patients. By 1886 the partners had expanded their operation from 160 acres to 1640 acres and from two buildings to thirty-two buildings, including a larger hotel, a house for convalescents, a separate building for violent patients, a large plunge pool, a laundry, storehouses, icehouses, and many other outbuildings. From 1891 to 1907 the hospital was run by Dr. O.Y. Warren, who was in turn succeeded by Dr. J.M. Scanland, son-in-law of Dr. Mitchell. Under private operation, the asylum continued to operate the hotel and run a large farm, specializing in pedigreed cattle. 

In 1910 a constitutional amendment was passed allowing the state to acquire the asylum. Negotiations were begun and on December 1, 1912, the Warm Springs hospital became a state institution. Dr. Scanland continued as superintendent. In 1917 the governor appointed a special commission to investigate charges of gross mismanagement and corruption at the hospital. The hospital management was exonerated of all charges. Gradually under state operation the emphasis changed from a custodial asylum to a hospital, as more modern procedures were adopted, but efforts were hampered by low funding. Care costs in 1938 of $.60 per day per patient were the lowest in the nation. As concepts of treatment of mental patients changed, the average patient load dropped dramatically from a high of over 1900 in the early 1950s to 1112 in 1972. Numbers of admissions per year were higher, but average length of stay was much shorter. Over the years the hospital operated under a variety of names including Mitchell and Mussigbrod, Insane Asylum of the State of Montana, Montana State Hospital for the Insane, Montana State Insane Asylum, Montana State Hospital, and Warm Springs State Hospital.

The Right to Procreate: The Montana State Board of Eugenics and Body Politics
From Women's History Matters

In 1924, headlines across the state decried the “butchery of the helpless” at the Montana State Hospital for the Insane at Warm Springs, where eleven inmates were forcibly sterilized. Hospital staff responded that all sterilizations had received the required approval and that eugenics was “necessary to the future welfare of Montana.” Eugenics—the idea that “human perfection could be developed through selective breeding”—grew in popularity in the early twentieth century, including support for forced sterilization. The movement reached its zenith in Montana in the early 1930s, and, despite growing concerns, the practice of forced sterilizations continued into the 1970s. 

 

Montanans’ support for forced sterilization was part of a national trend. Eugenics proponent Albert E. Wiggam, a national lecturer and trained psychologist, helped spread the eugenics gospel in Montana through a column in the Missoulian. “Already we are taxing ourselves for asylums and hospitals and jails to take care of millions who ought never to have been born,” Wiggam wrote. Many Montanans agreed, including the Helena mother who wrote the state hospital in 1924 in support of sterilization polices. “I am a tax payer. That means I wish there was no insane, no feeble minded, and no criminals to support and to fear. . . . The very fact that these people are inmates of state institutions proves that they are morally or mentally unfit to propagate their kind.” 

Montana institutions began sterilizing selected inmates in the 1910s, but it was not until 1923 that the state legislature created the Board of Eugenics to regulate the practice….

Of brothels, and cheerleaders and our country as a casino

Dennis Hof, center, and Heidi Fleiss, right, react after receiving election results June 12 in Pahrump, Nev.
David Montero / Los Angeles Times

If it’s not all juxtaposition, she asked, what is the binding agent? - Forrest Gander

It's beginning to feel like summer.  Rebel Girl has begun to read the morning newspapers (two!) and linger over them. She has even begun to write. The time and the newspapers have given her lots to think about. Her goals? A draft of a story or essay or poem - one per week.  We'll see if she can keep up the pace and her promise to herself. Still, she already feels mildly successful.

This week she was inspired by election results last week which included the the victory of Dennis Hof, the self-proclaimed "Trump from Pahrump," who may very well be headed to the Nevada statehouse.  David Montero's article "Dennis Hof: A pimp, a brothel owner, a businessman and now GOP nominee in Nevada" in the Los Angeles Times tells the story which evoked a great deal in Rebel Girl.  She could have gone in the direction of her own time in Pahrump in the 80s and 90s, but instead she went to her childhood and her fascination with the word "brothel."  

The moody result was picked by by the Los Angeles Review of Books and published online today. (That's pretty big," remarked her son who is not easily impressed. Most sixteen-year-old are not impressed by their parents.) Check it out below and click to read it in its entirety. It's all of two tight paragraphs. A meditation, an excavation. She hopes LARB might be interested in some of her other work.  She's got a few things started: one about the death of Ronald Reagan, the other about an educator who, all in good fun (ha ha ha) disseminates links to photos of a rival college's misbehaving cheerleader squad. We'll see. 

Jean Honore Fragonard, The Stolen Kiss

"Brothel"

Brothel owner and reality TV star Dennis Hof advances in Nevada election. “Call him a pimp. A brothel owner. A businessman. Now call him the Republican nominee for a Nevada State Assembly seat…Hof, who has billed himself as the “Trump from Pahrump,” nabbed the endorsement of Nye County’s Republicans.” –David Montero, Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2018

The “Trump from Pahrump.” A brothel owner.

As a child, “brothel” was one of the words that fascinated me. I found it in the books my mother stuffed under her bed, the ones I was not supposed to read but did anyway when she was at work. She was at work a lot. I found it in the paperback books I bought at the corner liquor stores, the ones I found on the spinning racks by the magazines. (Remember when liquor stores sold books? The corner liquor store was my first bookstore. This was in the early 1970s.) I favored Tudor romances, Henry the VIII and his doomed wives. I especially liked the court intrigue, the young women on the margins, the virtuous servant girls and meek attendants who caught the eyes of courtiers (another romantic word!), the ones who had fine ankles and slim necks and who could, despite their humble origins, sing a light air, play a lute, or embroider a fine stitch.

To read the rest, click here.

We at Dissent hope your summer is going well, where ever you are.

Do let us know if there is something we should know.

*

Pioneer Emma Flueckiger—and, in general, women having many children

     I’ve been doing lots of research concerning the saga of the Jenni family of Central Montana. Here's a little bit of it. It’s pretty eye-opening.
     Feminists will be interested, I think.
     From

Emma Flueckiger—and, in general, women having many children 

     on the Jenni Family Blog:

Fred Jenni (1856-1944)

     FIRST, some (brief) background: Fred Jenni (aka Friedrich) immigrated with his family to the US from Switzerland in 1869, when he was 13 years old. The family settled in Amazonia, Missouri, where they farmed.

     By 1881, Fred—aged 25—struck out on his own, soon settling in central Montana, where he established his Beaver Creek homestead. His younger brother John (b. 1863) soon joined him. The two “Jenni boys” worked hard and gradually became highly regarded ranchers/farmers in central Montana.
     When their father, Samuel Jenni, died of yellow fever in 1884, their mother, Anna Segesseman (b. 1820) came out; they built her a big house (shared with Fred), but she soon died of pneumonia (in 1885 or 1886). Still, the Jenni Bros persevered and prospered, their brother Gottlieb (b. 1859) joining them.
     In 1890, John married Swiss immigrant Albertena Dieziger; the two eventually had five children. In 1891, Fred met another Swiss immigrant—Emma, also from a family in Amazonia. They married—Charlie Russell was among their wedding guests—and commenced building a large family.

* * *

Frieda Flueckiger

     OK, here’s the thing. Emma’s folks were Fredrich “Fritz” Flueckiger (1845-1924) and Anna Maria Scheidegger (1856–1886). They lived in a small town outside of Bern, Switzerland (about 20 miles from the Jennis' hometown).
     They had lots of kids. Friedrich (“Fritz”) came in 1870; Emma: 1873; Bertha: 1875 (she died in ’83); Alfred: 1876; Frieda: 1879; Johannes: 1881 (he died in 1897).
     In 1883, the family emigrated. They ended up in Amazonia, Missouri.
     In 1885, Carl (aka “Charlie”), child No. 7, arrived. Anna died soon thereafter, in 1886.
     She died in Missouri, though she seemed to be buried in Ohio (Navarre, Stark County). There’s a family portrait, c. 1893, evidently taken in Cleveland, Ohio, so maybe their base was Ohio. Not sure.
     Near as I can tell, after Anna’s death, the Flueckigers continued to live in Missouri (or Ohio?), but, in 1891, Emma, then 18, traveled to the wilds of central Montana, and soon married 35-year-old Fred(erick) Jenni—most of whose family were also living in Amazonia. I suspect the two families knew each other.

John Jenni (1863-1939)

      Meanwhile, in 1890, procreation-wise, Herr Flueckiger wasn’t done yet; he now married Rosina Heck (1846-1940), a German woman who already had at least one child, Louis (b. 1884), from her marriage with Christopher Grossman, who died in 1884. So Fritz Flueckiger added two more to his herd of seven: Rosa (1891) and Walter (1893). That's a total of nine, not even including the step-son, Louis.
     Not to be outdone, Emma—and Fred, of course—took up where Anna had left off. They produced Anna Friedalena (’93), Louise Margaret (’94), Maria Emma (’95), Frederick John (’97), Hulda C (’98), Clara Elizabeth (’00), Lena Lillian (’03), and finally Samuel Gottlieb in ’06. That’s eight.

Charlie Russell

     Emma died two months after Samuel’s birth—during minor surgery, which was somehow accompanied by an epileptic fit. She was thirty-three years old. Naturally, Fred was overwhelmed. He gave the infant, Samuel, to a local couple (who eventually adopted him). Emma’s younger sister, Frieda (b. 1879; by then married to a Mr. Charles White, b. 1855!), came to help out. All the kids took up the slack created by mom’s death....

See also

• 1906: the sudden and tragic death of Mrs. Fred Jenni (Emma Fleuckeger)—a "good and true woman"
• 1899: The killing of "Panhandle Bob" Thornton at Gilt Edge: putting stop to a "carnival of crime"

     Here’s a picture of Fred and Emma's family. Assuming that the young boy is Samuel, and given that he's about ten years old here, I figure the picture was taken in about 1916—ten years after Emma's death.

The Fred Jenni family - 1916?

     Here's a contemporary photo of John and Albertena's family:

     Here are some other photos, mostly of the Flueckingers.

Friedrich J. Flueckinger (b. 1845), wife Rosina (b. 1846), daughter,
Rosa (b. 1891) on his lap; step-son Louis Grossman standing;
daughter Frieda (b. 1879) standing with arm on Rosina; baby
Walter Eugene Flueckinger (b. 1893) on Rosina's lap. I'm guessing
this photo was taken in 1893 or 1894.

C. 1898: Herr Flueckiger and sons.
Left to right: Fred Jr. (b. 1870), Frederick (b. 1845),
Alfred (b. 1876)—and Charlie (b. 1885) in front.

1918?
Carl (Charlie) Flueckinger, b. 1885 (d. 1956)
I believe Charlie married and became a minister.

Walter Eugene Flueckinger (b. 1893), 10 Sept 1919, Rushville, Nebraska.
Wedding photo of Walter and Esther Marie Jungck (b. 1899)

1929: Alfred Flueckinger (1876-1942), wife Helen Tonn (1880-1966), and Louis Grossman (b. 1884).
Grossman was Frederick Flueckinger's stepson.

Elsie Marie Flueckinger (1916–2011), daughter of Alfred and Helen

1902: Alfred Flueckinger & Helen Tonn, Rushville, Nebraska

I think that's Frederick Flueckinger at right.
Not sure about the cat.

From Ancestry.com

Good grief. Again.

OC Supervisors Move to Take Away Independent Oversight
(Voice of OC)

     Orange County supervisors moved Tuesday to remove independent oversight of their actions, county finances, and the practices of the Sheriff’s Department and District Attorney’s Office.
     The most significant of the supervisors’ actions came at the suggestion of Supervisor Shawn Nelson. He and three other supervisors voted to prepare actions taking away the auditing and financial control functions of the office of elected county Auditor-Controller Eric Woolery, and to instead have those staff report to the supervisors and county CEO Frank Kim, who also reports to the supervisors.
     The move is scheduled for another vote by supervisors June 26 to implement it. Supervisor Todd Spitzer abstained.
     Woolery’s office is in charge of auditing county departments and controlling when payments of county funds are made or not made.

     The auditor-controller is independently elected by county voters, and Woolery won re-election last week with about 75 percent of the vote. But he has repeatedly drawn the ire of Nelson and other county supervisors since he took office in early 2015, including his questioning of the legality of supervisors’ taxpayer funded mailers to voters that prominently feature the supervisors.
     A second action by supervisors eliminates all funding for the county’s Office of Independent Review, which is tasked with monitoring liability issues from any potentially problematic practices within the Sheriff’s Department, DA’s office and other county law enforcement agencies.
     That action came weeks after the supervisors hired a new head of the office, Kevin Rogan, who started work in April after supervisors left the office vacant for two years….

     SEE 

Beauteous OC, Land o' Abiding Corruption, DtB

Why Did More Than 85,000 People Vote to Hand Over the County Clerk-Recorder Job to a Convicted Ketchup-Bottle Thief?
(OC Weekly)

     On June 5, the voters of Orange County collectively voted to give another four years in office to incumbent OC Clerk-Recorder Hugh Nguyen. In 2014, after winning his first race, Nguyen became the nation’s first Vietnamese-American clerk-recorder in U.S. history. A moderate Republican, he extended his department’s operating hours to include one Saturday per month—thus making it easier for working people to access the agency’s services—and also supervised the department’s successful digitization of records, thus vastly speeding up the agency’s recording process.
     Clearly, Nguyen, who took in 79.3 percent of the votes, was the best man for the job, and he won in a landslide. But sadly, that’s not the big headline coming out of the 2018 Orange County Clerk-Recorder’s race. Instead, it’s this: For some reason, 20.7 percent of voters chose a rival candidate, Steve Rocco, a man whose chief mission in life is spewing conspiracy theories involving global domination, a grocery-store chain, a brand of breakfast sausages, and the Kodak Film Co.
. . .
     In the chaotic wake of numerous OUSD meetings during which Rocco refused to vote on any matters and used his time to harangue fellow board members, a group of concerned parents rallied to recall Rocco. But this effort sadly failed to garner enough public support. So the school board voted to censure Rocco, causing him to sue the school district, thus wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars. After he failed to win a Santa Ana City Council seat, Rocco went dark for a while.
     Then, on Sept. 29, 2008, campus security at Chapman University arrested Rocco for stealing a half-empty bottle of ketchup from a cafeteria.
. . .
     Nguyen, who beat Rocco handily this year, says he was mystified as to how Rocco won so many votes. He said he considered challenging Rocco’s ballot statement, but he ultimately decided against it. “I didn’t want to make a big stink and give him media time,” he explained. “It’s kind of sad that so many people voted for him because people always complain about folks who are elected and don’t do their job. I love what I do and will continue to work harder. That’s why I got 250,000 votes.”….

     SEE 

OC: land of corruption (even without Tom's help), DtB
Rocco v. Williams; instant carnival!, DtB

"Conflict within the ranks": the emergence and disappearance of Socialism in early Twentieth-Century Montana

     Anyone who skims or peruses old Central Montanan newspapers from around the turn of the (19th) century cannot avoid noticing that the denizens of that region were (they still are!) mighty conservative—as in "classical liberal" or "libertarian." True, the conservative and dominant Fergus County Argus had competition, for a time, from the Fergus County Democrat, but these Democrats were not socialists.
     But, as its turns out, socialism did emerge—and soon fade—in Montana during the first two or three decades of the Twentieth Century, and it turns out that Lewistown was the locus of the state's first socialist newspaper!
     That's hard to imagine now, but it's true.
     In the course of my investigations—amounting mostly to rummaging turn-of-the century newspaper articles about Fergus County, MT—I've come upon at least two interesting items from something called the "Montana News":

Montana News, November 8, 1905

Montana News, May 14, 1908

     Wow. Such sentiments stand in crisp contrast to the stodgy and staunch Libertarian notions of the partisanly Republican Fergus County Argus (which, as I said, competed, for a time, with the Fergus County Democrat).

* * *

     First, just who was this "Benjamin Fay Mills"?
     From a site called Biblical Training:

Benjamin Fay Mills

Mills

1857-1916. Evangelist and Christian Socialist. ...[H]e received Congregational ordination in 1878. He served Minnesota, New York, and Vermont pastorates before entering itinerant evangelism in 1886. Using his District Combination Plan, he conducted the most highly organized citywide revivals of the nineteenth century, perfecting many presently used methods. Believing social and economic problems could be solved only by effecting God's kingdom on earth, Mills became the only major evangelist attempting to unite revivalism with the Social Gospel. Finding this impossible, he terminated his itinerancy in 1895 to preach Christian Socialism* in New York and Boston. In 1899, despairing of an evangelical awakening, he became minister to First Unitarian Church, Oakland, California. He founded and led the Los Angeles Fellowship (1904-11) and Chicago Fellowship (1911-14). Repenting of his heterodoxy, he returned to itinerant evangelism in 1915.

     OK, but what was "Christian Socialism"?
     From the same site:

     By definition [?] the term applies to the activities of a group of Anglicans between 1848 and 1854, but their ideas inspired subsequent generations. The group, which formed as a response to the Chartist fiasco of 1848, consisted of F.D. Maurice,* J.M.F. Ludlow,* and Charles Kingsley,* though later they were joined by Tom Hughes, Archie Campbell, Vansittart Neale, and others. They reacted against the dominant utilitarianism of the age, laissez-faire economics, and the indifference of the Anglican Church to social issues. Though not united politically, they were united in believing that Christianity stood for a structure of society which would enable men to live and work as brethren, and that competition is not a universal law. Ludlow was the founder of the movement, but Maurice was its prophet and thinker. Maurice had a dread of societies and hated the prospect of Christian Socialism's becoming a party. He aimed to “Christianise Socialism and to Socialise Christendom, not to Christian-Socialise the universe.”
     The day following the failure of the Charter, the group brought out a poster introducing the Christian element into socialism. This was followed by the short-lived, much-criticized journal Politics for the People. Workers suspected this journal as a middle-class trap, but in 1849 the group began regular meetings with workingmen, which improved relations. Kingsley, meanwhile, wrote his novels Yeast and Alton Locke in defense of working-class aspirations, and Ludlow produced a program of founding workers' cooperatives. In 1850 associations of tailors, bakers, needlewomen, builders, bootmakers, and printers were formed, together with a Society for the Promotion of Working Men's Associations. Through lack of money, some of the associations foundered, but the group did make a direct contribution to the Industrial and Providential Societies Act (1852), which gave cooperatives their charter. In 1850 a new journal Christian Socialist appeared and met with much hostility. The driving force of the group was its Monday evening Bible study, though on Fridays it met to discuss social problems and the action to be taken. There were, however, clashes in the group, and from associations Maurice began to turn his attention to education, founding in 1854 the first workingmen's college, soon to be followed by others throughout the country.
     The failure of several associations, the rising prosperity of England, and the indifference of the church at large ended the Christian Socialists, but the movement marked the beginning of modern social concern in the Anglican Church....

     Interesting. During my (now substantial) lifetime, the combining of Christianity and politics has always yielded a decidedly conservative product. Not so during the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. Christians in those days actually made the kinds of moves one might expect, given the humane core of the Christian religion, not the oddly unChristian spasms and assaults of today's usual suspects (Tea Partiers, Trumpists, Christian Right, et al.).

* * *

     Let's turn now to this curious socialist newspaper, the Montana News. Here's what I've found:

     From Library of Congress: About Montana News. (Lewistown, Mont.) 1904-191? [1912]

Montana News (Lewistown, Mont. [actually, Helena, MT]) 

     The Socialist newspaper, the Montana News, has its roots in Lewistown, Montana, as the Judith Basin News published by J. H. Walsh, from April to June 1904. 

     On July 6, 1904 [both articles above are from this period] Walsh resumed publication of the newspaper in Helena [the state capitol] under a new name, the Montana News. The origins of the American Socialist movement are linked to the first national convention of the Social Democratic Party in Indianapolis in the summer of 1901. The Socialist upwelling in Montana can be tied to deadly working conditions in the state’s forests, smelters, and industrial copper mines. The Judith Basin News constituted the first Socialist newspaper in Montana, and its influence was reflected in the mushrooming [ha!] of the party’s membership from 25 in 1901 to 400 in 1904. The Montana News, a four-page, six-column weekly continued operating until January 4, 1912, following the decline of Socialist electoral fortunes in Montana. 

     After moving the Montana News from Lewistown to Helena [in 1904], the owner and editor Walsh located the newspaper at 22 Park Avenue [in Helena], the Socialist Party headquarters. Beginning in 1905, James D. Graham, state secretary of the Socialist Party and Montana’s first Socialist candidate for alderman, assumed the role of business manager. ... In December of 1905 a prominent Colorado suffragist and friend of the labor movement, Ida Crouch-Hazlett, assumed the position of editor. Crouch-Hazlett had played a key role in women winning the vote in Colorado and ran for the U.S. Congress several times as a Socialist. 

     Over the years, the Montana News covered the activities of the U.S. Socialist Party and its the state and local organizations and editorialized about the difficulties women faced in the workplace and community. The paper published front-page cartoons satirizing its political opponents and “capitalistic interests.” Crouch-Hazlett applauded the Socialists for accepting women into their fold without hesitation and affirmed party efforts to promote universal suffrage. 

     Beginning in 1908, a major schism appeared between the officers of the Montana Socialist Party [in Helena, the state capitol] and the management of the Montana News [run from the party offices]. Lewis Duncan—a Unitarian minister, party leader, and Socialist mayor of Butte (1911-14)—accused Crouch-Hazlett and Graham of misappropriating funds. In 1910, the Montana Socialist Party brought suit against the two newspaper managers [i.e., Crouch-Hazlett and Graham], and that same year Duncan accused Crouch-Hazlett of “living openly in an adulterous and licentious relationship with a former member of the Lewistown local.” [Garsh, I wonder who that guy was?]

     Conflict within the ranks of the Socialist Party both in Montana and nationally contributed to its decline by the early 1920s. Despite its relatively short run, the Montana News provides insight into the rise and fall of a third party in Montana and offers a unique perspective on U.S. politics during the turbulent era framed by rapid industrialization, labor unrest, and the beginning of World War I. (Provided by: Montana Historical Society; Helena, MT)

     Here's part of the Wikipedia article on Crouch-Hazlett:

Big Bill

     Graham and Crouch-Hazlett were accused of the misappropriation of party funds ..., and the matter ended up in the courts. The Unitarian minister Duncan also made morals allegations against Crouch-Hazlett....
     Back of these factional fisticuffs in addition to financial and personal disagreements there lay a policy difference. [The] Local Butte [organization] was at this time warmly supportive of Big Bill Haywood, industrial unionism, and the syndicalist  Industrial Workers of the World, going so far as to endorse Haywood as a potential candidate for President of the United States, while Crouch-Hazlett in Montana News stressed the historic refusal of the Socialist Party to directly intervene in trade union matters.
     In 1910, with Montana News, broken by the factional warfare and party membership down by 45 percent, Crouch-Hazlett again resumed her role as a professional organizer for the  Socialist Party of America. She dedicated the bulk of her time to organizing efforts in the American South from 1914 to 1916. Crouch-Hazlett moved to Brooklyn, New York during the latter part of the decade and ran for New York State Assembly in the 1st District of Kings County, New York on the Socialist ticket in 1920.
     Crouch-Hazlett ended her career as an organizer on behalf of the Socialist Party in 1921. During this final year, Crouch-Hazlett was at least once kidnapped by a band of members of the American Legion, who transported her hundreds of miles before leaving her in a deserted area. This experience did not break Crouch-Hazlett's commitment, but it did nonetheless coincide with an end to her tenure as a Socialist Party organizer.
     Membership in the SPA plummeted during the early part of the 1920s, following its split into rival Socialist and Communist organizations at its 1919 Emergency National Convention. With dues collections drastically diminished, the party was forced to curtail the number of its paid functionaries due to ensuing budgetary difficulties, forcing Hazlett to seek other means of support.
     Crouch-Hazlett visited England, arranging beforehand with British labor activist Jessie Stephen to have her letters typed whilst there.
. . .
     In 1925 Crouch-Hazlett enrolled at New York University in an effort to earn a Doctorate degree. She died in May 1941. Her papers reside among the Social Democratic Party Papers of the Milwaukee County Historical Society in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

     Let's turn, now, to the sentiments expressed in the two items with which I started. I like 'em. (I'm particularly impressed with Mills' inclusion of the adjective "planless" to describe competition in the so-called "free market.")
     Obviously, we are now living through a time of transition, and one naturally guesses that, while the right has turned increasingly to selfishness and tribalism, the left will inevitably turn increasingly to something like the progressivism of Ms. Crouch-Hazlett, James Graham, and Mr. Benjamin Fay Mills a century or so ago.
     We'll see, I guess.
     Things never seem to change, do they? Down, I say, with idle, loafing, vagabond millionaires! Power to the 99%!
     Feel free to disagree, past and present Montanans!

—Roy Bauer (from Orange County, CA!)