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Joseph Labadie | |
|---|---|
 Labadiec. 1880 | |
| Born | Charles Joseph Antoine Labadie (1850-04-18)April 18, 1850 Paw Paw, Michigan, U.S. |
| Died | October 7, 1933(1933-10-07) (aged 83) Detroit, Michigan, U.S. |
| Occupation | Labor leader |
Charles Joseph Antoine Labadie (April 18, 1850 – October 7, 1933) was an American labor organizer,anarchist,Greenbacker,[1]libertarian socialist,[2] social activist, printer, publisher, essayist, and poet.
Jo Labadie was born on April 18, 1850, inPaw Paw, Michigan, to Anthony Labadie and Euphrosyne Labadie, who were both first cousins and descendants of seventeenth century French immigrants of the Labadie family who had settled on both sides of theDetroit River. His boyhood was a frontier existence amongPotawatomi tribes in southern Michigan, where his father served as interpreter between Jesuit missionaries and Native Americans. His only formal schooling was a few months in a parochial school.[citation needed]
Labadie began five years of "tramp" printing and then settled inDetroit as a printer for theDetroit Post and Tribune. He married his first cousin, Sophie Elizabeth Archambeau, in 1877, despite him beingagnostic and her being Catholic.[3] Their children were Laura, Charlotte, andLaurance, also a prominent anarchist essayist. The family was also involved in the film and the entertainment industry in the Detroit area.[4]
Labadie joined the newly formedSocialist Labor Party inDetroit at the age of 27 and soon was distributingsocialist tracts on street corners. As a printer, he was also a member of Detroit's Typographical Union 18 and was one of its two delegates to the International Typographical Union convention in Detroit in 1878.[citation needed]
In 1878, Labadie organized Detroit's first assembly of theKnights of Labor, and ran unsuccessfully for mayor on the Greenback-Labor ticket. In 1880, he served as first president of the Detroit Trades Council, and continued issuing a succession of labor papers and columns for the national labor press, including theDetroit Times,Advance and Labor Leaf,Labor Review,The Socialist, and theLansing Sentinel, which were admired for their forthright style. His column "Cranky Notions" was widely published.[citation needed]
In 1883, Labadie embracedindividualist anarchism, a non-violent doctrine. He became closely allied withBenjamin Tucker, the country's foremost exponent of that doctrine, and frequently wrote for the latter's publication,Liberty. Without the oppression of the state, Labadie believed, humans would choose to harmonize with "the great natural laws...without robbing [their] fellows through interest, profit, rent and taxes." Labadie supported localized public cooperation, and was an advocate for community control of water utilities, streets, and railroads. He also criticizedcapitalism and said that it "has had its day" and that "it must go." Although Labadie did not support the militant anarchism of theHaymarket anarchists, he fought for the clemency of the accused because he did not believe they were the sole perpetrators of violence. He broke with the Knights of Labor when their national leader,Terence V. Powderly, repudiated the defendants completely.[citation needed]
In 1888, Labadie organized the Michigan Federation of Labor, becoming its first president, and forged a tenuous alliance withSamuel Gompers. At age fifty he began writing verse and publishing artistic hand-crafted booklets. In 1908, the city postal inspector refused to handle his mail because it bore stickers with anarchist quotations. A month later the Detroit Water Board, where Labadie worked as a clerk, dismissed him from his post for expressing anarchist sentiments. In both cases, public officials were forced to back down in the face of mass public protests in support of Labadie, well known to Detroit citizens as its "Gentle Anarchist".[citation needed]
In about 1910, when he was 60 years old, Labadie began to prepare for the preservation of the vast collection ofpamphlets, newspapers, and correspondence which he had accumulated in the attic of his home.[5] The collection was eagerly sought by theUniversity of Wisconsin, one of the paramount repositories of materials relating to labor and socialist history in the United States, but Labadie spurned their offer of $500 for the collection.[5] The libraries ofJohns Hopkins University andMichigan State University also made attempts to acquire the collection.[5]
Labadie sought instead to keep the material as near to his hometown of Detroit as possible and contacted theUniversity of Michigan inAnn Arbor about their potential acquisition of the material.[5] While the University of Michigan was slow to show interest in the collection, an investigator was eventually dispatched.[5] The report returned on Labadie's collection was negative, dismissed as a great mass of "stuff."[6] Labadie remained persistent, however, and he eventually convinced nine Detroit residents, including several businessmen, to donate $100 each for the purchase of the collection, which was then donated to the university with requisite pomp.[6]
In 1912 twenty crates of material were moved from Labadie's attic to Ann Arbor, forming the foundation of the renownedLabadie Collection of radical literature.[6] Labadie spent his later years soliciting donations to the collection from friends and acquaintances, donating hundreds more items himself to the library in 1926.[6]Agnes Inglis cataloged and organized the collection. The collection thus preserved is today regarded as among the finest accumulations of 19th Century radical ephemera in the United States.[citation needed]
Joseph Labadie died on October 7, 1933, in Detroit, Michigan, at the age of 83. He donated the vast majority of manuscripts and ephemera acquired in his lifetime to the collection at theUniversity of Michigan Library, a deed he viewed as his primary legacy.[citation needed]
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