Accessible Archives Inc.

The boycott is the most ancient and most universal form of social control. The ostracism of the Greeks, the “interdicting from fire and water” of the Romans, “outlawry” in the Middle Ages, all are examples of the principle of the boycott. The Secession of the Plebians to the Sacred Mount to bring the Roman patricians to terms, the Irish boycott of the agents of English landlords, the ostracism visited upon Benedict Arnold, and Oscar Wilde, the recent Chinese boycott of American goods are but historic incidents of social control through “letting alone”—through withdrawal of fellowship.

A few years ago an editor in Everett, Washington, was tried for murder and acquitted, but his fellow citizens did not acquit him. All support was withdrawn from his business; all social recognition was denied him, he was obliged to leave the city.

But recently an Indian in Alaska, having killed in drunken anger, so roused the indignation of his fellow tribesmen that no one would speak to him, no one would hunt with him, no one would share with him either food or shelter. He was forced to seek another tribe to take him in. This was an almost universal form of punishment in the Middle Ages.

In American colleges the principle of boycott has been employed to raise the standard of honor. Ten years ago, in the Medical School at Ann Arbor, a young fellow was caught cheating on examination. He was completely ostracized. None of his college mates would speak to him, no one noticed him, no one would sit at table with him. He would go to the boarding house, throw himself on the sofa in the parlor which was immediately emptied when he entered. He stood it six weeks and then left. The boycott may be very cruel. It cannot fail to be effective.

(more…)

There is no surer method of destroying a political party than that of keeping it by any sort of management from freely expressing and following out its opinions. The strength of a party lies in the earnestness and sincerity with which its doctrines are maintained, and the energy of impulse by which it seeks to reduce them to practice. Strip it of these, and you divest it of what constitutes its life. No party, which is muzzled by the arts of those who seek to act as its leaders, can have any moral force in the community. It has then no enthusiasm, no enterprise, no energy.

The successful attempt of the Conservatives and their allies in the Syracuse Convention to prevent an expression of the views entertained by an immense majority of the Democratic party in this State, concerning one of the great political questions of the day, that question which the Southern Statesmen declare to be “paramount to all others,” was an act of the grossest treachery, even in a mere party view. It was an attempt to wrest from the people of the Democratic party one of their great and cherished purposes, and unless something is done to retrieve the consequences of that step, will leave us utterly weak, defenceless, and a prey to our political adversaries.

This item appeared in The Camp Sherman News (The Eighty-third Division News) on July 10, 1918.  Camp Sherman was established in 1917 after the U.S. entered World War I and today serves as a training site for National Guard Soldiers.

American Military Camp Newspapers provides users with unparalleled access to unique sources covering the experiences of American soldiers during the mobilization period in 1916, in the trenches in 1918 and through the occupation of Germany in 1919.

Camp Soldiers Warned Against
Making Reprisals to Interned Men

Kaiser William’s crew from the interned Hamburg-American liner Kron Prinz Wilhelm and four of his seamen from the captured submarine U-58, have accepted positions with Uncle Sam in Camp Sherman.

They are paid $1.25 a day minus $1 for food and lodging and are quartered in the new electrically-guarded stockade, Section R, near the Scioto river.

Hundreds of Camp Sherman soldiers have visited the prison to see the Hun sailors, still garbed in their native maritime outfits.

Under the vigil of 25 United States soldiers from Fort McPherson, Georgia, the prisoners are taken daily to the big camp war garden or to the incinerator and disposal plants for a regulation army work day.

Each day’s work means 25 cents profit to them. This either is saved for them or given them in the form of canteen checks.

Smith College Girl Aids Washington Suffrage Campaign

(Seattle, Washington – August 1910) – Miss Martha Gruening, of New York, a young graduate of Smith College, is generously devoting her summer to the Washington campaign. On her own responsibility and on her own resources, this young woman came across the continent to render service in what she beileves will be a winning campaign, and brilliant service she has rendered.

For this young girl has a message—a message from the working girls of Philadelphia to the working men and women of Washington. This message briefly stated is this: If the men of Washington will give women the ballot, it will help the hard pressed working girls of the East to a better chance.

Miss Gruening brings her message straight from the working girls for she took part in the shirt waist strike in Philadelphia last winter. While in her proper person of college girl she was not molested, though she “picketed” for weeks, but when one day she put on an old gown and a striker’s badge she was arrested and put in a cell.

(more…)

This list appeared in the September 1911 issue of the Western Woman Voter, a newspaper published in Seattle, Washington.

Established to serve all women voters throughout the western U.S., Western Woman Voter began publication following the passage of suffrage in Washington State. Adella Parker, a popular Seattle lawyer and prominent suffragist, was the driving force behind both it and the suffrage movement. It also served as a print forum for Parker’s progressivist sympathies regarding political and social reform.

(more…)