In 1893, J. A. Wayland with a number of others decided to demonstrate
to the workers the advantage of co-operation over competition. A group of
people bought land in Tennessee and founded the Ruskin Colony. They
invited me to join them.
"No," said I, "your colony will not succeed. You have to
have religion to make a colony successful, and labor is not yet a religion
with labor."
I visited the colony a year later. I could see in that short time
disrupting elements in the colony. I was glad I had not joined the colony
but had stayed out in the thick of the fight. Labor has a lot of fighting
to do before it can demonstrate. Two years later Wayland left for Kansas
City. He was despondent.
A group of us got together; Wayland, myself, and three men, known as
the "Three P's" -Putnam, a freight agent for the Burlington
Railway; Palmer, a clerk in the Post Office; Page, an advertising agent
for a department store. We decided that the workers needed education. That
they must have a paper devoted to their interests and stating their point
of view. We urged Wayland to start such a paper. Palmer suggested the
name, "Appeal to Reason."
"But we have no subscribers," said Wayland.
"I'll get them," said I. "Get out your first edition and
I'll see that it has subscribers enough to pay for it."
He got out a limited first edition and with it as a sample I went to
the Federal Barracks at Omaha and secured a subscription from almost every
lad there. Soldiers are the sons of working people and need to know it. I
went down to the City Hall and got a lot of subscriptions. In a short time
I had gathered several hundred subscriptions and the paper was launched.
It did a wonderful service under Wayland. Later Fred G. Warren came to
Girard where the paper was published, as editorial writer. If any place in
America could be called my home, his home was mine. Whenever, after a
long, dangerous fight, I was weary and felt the need of rest, I went to
the home of Fred Warren.
Like all other things, "The Appeal to Reason" had its youth
of vigor, its later days of profound wisdom, and then it passed away.
Disrupting influences, quarrels, divergent points of view, theories,
finally caused it to go out of business.
Next page > Chapter V: Victory at Arnot
| 