OHIO AT MICHIGAN:
IMPORTANT HOLDINGS FROM THE STATE OF OHIO

THE LABADIE COLLECTION

The Labadie Collection was established in 1911 when Joseph Labadie, a prominent Detroit anarchist, donated his library to the University of Michigan. Although the Collection was originally concerned mainly with anarchist materials (the field in which it remains strongest), its scope has widened to include a great variety of social protest literature together with political views from both the extreme left and the extreme right. The Collection's other strengths include: civil liberties (especially for racial minorities), socialism, communism, colonialism and imperialism, American labor history through the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War, sexual freedom, women's liberation, gay liberation, the underground press, and student protest. After some 90 years of active collecting it is now the largest collection of its kind in the country, and among the best in the world. Its holdings include 115 manuscript collections; nearly 40,000 books; 8,000 periodicals (including 800 currently received titles); 6,000 subject vertical files containing brochures, leaflets, and clippings; 700 posters; photographs of people prominent in the anarchist movement; and small numbers of cartoons, sheet music, buttons, bumper stickers, and armbands.

Shown on this page are two items from the Labadie Collection that have their roots in Ohio.

William Denton. Poems for Reformers. Printed and Published by William and Elizabeth M. F. Denton, Dayton, O., 1856. Later republished with additional poems as Radical Rhymes, Wellesley, Massachusetts, 1881.

William Denton was a professor of geology and advocate of spiritualism and parapsychology. These poems, published when he and his wife were living in Dayton, Ohio, demonstrate his early disregard for organized religion and his championing of the rights of the common man.

After William and Elizabeth Denton moved from Ohio to Massachusetts, they were closely involved with many radical thinkers in the Boston area. The “Denton Family Papers” in the Labadie Collection consist of a number of letters written to the family from noted people of the time, as well as other documents, photographs, and an autograph album related to the Ezra Heywood family. Heywood championed many radical causes, among them anti-slavery societies, women’s rights, free love, and economic reform. When he was convicted on charges of distributing obscene material, some 6,000 people attended a meeting in support of his early release. Among the most poignant items in the Denton Family Papers is a small postcard from Angela Tilton Heywood, his wife, to Mrs. Elizabeth M. F. Denton on the day after Ezra Heywood’s release from prison. It reads:

Princeton [Mass.] Dec. 20th, 1878.
Dear Mrs. Denton,
Paper’s say this a.m. that the President has granted Mr. Heywood’s release yesterday. He has not yet time to arrive here. The stage brought me the news. Ezra may be here tonight I do not know. …

Sincerely,
Angela T. Heywood

The Industrial News, Toledo, Ohio. Vol. viii, Sept. 3, 1887.

The Industrial News from Toledo probably began as a weekly in about 1885, and was devoted to news of the labor movement then in its infancy. In 1878 Jo Labadie in Detroit had been invited to form the first local organization of the Knights of Labor in the state of Michigan. This copy of The Industrial News is Labadie’s own copy, and has his name and address stamped on the front.

The many local newspapers and newsletters that sprung up around the early labor movement were a valuable tool for recruiting new members as well as a means of keeping far-flung activists informed of each other's activities. This issue of The Industrial News features a column, “Toiling Millions,” with labor news from around the U.S., including reports from Steubenville, Caledonia, Youngstown, Cincinnati, and Findlay in the Ohio report.

An advertisement for the Toledo Nachrichten, a German-language newspaper, promises news from Europe and around the U.S., as well as all the labor news contained in the Industrial News, and urges readers to get a package of samples for their German neighbors.