Looking Backward at Edward Bellamy's Influence in Oregon, 1888–1936

By: James J. Kopp

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On the evening of Friday, November 6, 1936, Mrs. Emma S. Bellamy and Miss Marion Bellamy addressed a public meeting in Portland’s Congregation Ahavai Shalom on the topics of “Edward Bellamy as I Knew Him” and “Edward Bellamy Today.” The wife and daughter of nineteenth-century writer and reformer Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) were key figures in the revival of interest in Bellamy and his writings during the 1930s, a time of economic crisis and social upheaval similar to the period when Bellamy penned his utopian novel, Looking Backward 2000–1887, which was published in 1888. With several other notable individuals, including journalist Heywood Broun and educator John Dewey, the two Bellamy women were part of what Broun called a “Back to Bellamy” movement. ¹	1
This 1890 London edition of Looking Backward, one of the first with cover art, depicts Julian West awakening in the year 2000 after his 113-year mesmeric trance. Within two years of its publication in the United States, the novel had been translated and published in several European countries. Courtesy of James J. Kopp
Mrs. Bellamy and her daughter, who toured the country on a lecture circuit and also broadcast talks on the radio, came to Portland at the invitation of Rabbi Edward T. Sandrow.² The Oregon Journal announced the event: “[Bellamy’s] visualization of America peacefully converted into a vast industrial machine, with its resources and riches available to all, has continued to influence political and economic thought since” the success of Looking Backward. The Journal also reported: “Candidates of both the major parties have used quotations from ‘Looking Backward’ in the current campaign.”³ The renewed interest in Bellamy, as evidenced by the Bellamys’ stop in Portland, echoed an earlier influence that Edward Bellamy, his writings, and the movement he inspired had in Oregon.	2
Bellamy found his largest audience in his native Massachusetts and in California, where perhaps the strongest movement was centered; his effect on people in Oregon during the late 1880s and 1890s paled in comparison.⁴ Still, the influence of his ideas in Oregon is noteworthy as part of a broader reform spirit that helped define the period and, increasingly, characterized the state and the region. Historian Chester McArthur Destler includes the Nationalist Movement that was inspired by Looking Backward among the reform activities that bridged urban and agrarian interests and East and West in the United States.⁵ “Bridging” is an appropriate metaphor for how Bellamy’s appeal was realized in Oregon, where his followers made a connection between the writer’s East Coast roots and the Nationalist Movement.	3
This fifteen-page pamphlet, “Edward Bellamy Today,” includes the text of the lecture that Bellamy’s daughter, Marion, gave during speaking engagements in the mid-1930s, including one in Portland in November 1936. Courtesy of James J. Kopp
The Nationalist Movement also helped bridge the ideas and activities of reform groups and individuals. Bellamy, his work, and the movement served as a catalyst for the exchange of reform ideas and ideals and generated interest among an array of contemporary reform groups, including Single-Taxers, Theosophists, Grangers, and members of the Knights of Labor, the Farmers’ Alliance, and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Bellamy and his followers were key players in the Populist campaign of 1892, and legacies of Bellamy’s ideals and influence can be identified in later reform groups, including the Progressives and Technocrats. In Oregon, the influences of Bellamy’s ideas were sometimes direct, such as in the establishment of clubs or settlements based on his ideals. More often, his influences were indirect and woven into the general tapestry of reform.	4
That Edward Bellamy’s influence in Oregon has been overlooked is not surprising, since Bellamy himself and Looking Backward have been relegated largely to footnote status in the past several decades. “The name Bellamy is half forgotten,” Monica St. Romain concluded in a 1969 article on an Oregon colony named for Bellamy, “existing only on library shelves or in the pages of an encyclopedia.”⁶ The lack of interest in Bellamy is somewhat remarkable considering that Looking Backward had been judged one of the most influential books ever published. In 1935, Edward Weeks, Charles Beard, and John Dewey each placed Looking Backward as second only to Karl Marx’s Das Kapital as the most influential book published in the previous fifty years.⁷ Thirty-five years later, Robert Downs included Bellamy’s Looking Backward among his prestigious list of twenty-five Books That Changed America. “Over the past eighty years,” Downs wrote, “the social and political influence of Looking Backward has been incalculable.”⁸ Nevertheless, the interest in Edward Bellamy, the awareness of his novel, and the role the book played in the reform spirit of the late nineteenth century and afterward waned in the mid- to late twentieth century.	5
Bellamy’s ideals would become associated with totalitarianism, and readers in the United States were critical of the socialistic nature of his utopia. Historian John L. Thomas concluded in 1983: Subsequent American experience with fascism and dictatorship during and after the Second World War turned an original attraction to utopia into a fascination with Orwellian dystopia; and an affluent society, familiar with credit cards, brainwashing, television, and hallucinogenic drugs, found little to admire in Bellamy’s primitive social engineering and much to deplore in the loss of political freedom and cultural vitality in applying it.⁹A century after Looking Backward was published, Thomas labeled it a “literary curiosity.” It was neither an enticing work of fiction nor a work with much relevance to late twentieth-century readers. Looking Backward and its author slipped into the recesses of the American mind.	6
Still, Bellamy and his work did have significant influence in the United States and internationally.¹⁰ This article will reintroduce Edward Bellamy as a player in the reform movement in the late nineteenth century in Oregon by examining his influence through the state’s Nationalist Clubs, identifying efforts to establish cooperative colonies based on elements of the Bellamy Plan, and suggesting that general legacies of reform in Oregon can be linked with Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement. Undoubtedly, there is still much more to this story than is presented here. Hidden away in small-town newspapers, reports of meetings and other gatherings, and family diaries and albums is more information on Bellamy’s influence on Oregonians. It is hoped that this study will generate a broader examination of how Bellamy’s ideas bridged the spirit of reform in late nineteenth-century Oregon with the rest of the nation.	7

Born on March 26, 1850, in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts, Edward Bellamy was the son of Rev. Rufus King and Maria Putnam Bellamy. ¹¹ Following a brief stay at Union College in Schenectady, New York, a year traveling in Europe, and an attempt to work in the legal profession, Bellamy turned to journalism in 1871. He began as a freelance journalist in New York City but returned to Massachusetts in 1872 to work for the Springfield Union. During this time, he published several short stories that received critical and public acclaim. He left the Union in 1877 and published his first novel, Six to One: A Nantucket Idyll, the next year. In 1878–1879, the Union serialized Dr. Heidenhoff’s Process, a novel published in 1880. Another novel, The Duke of Stockbridge, was serialized in the Berkshire Courier in 1879 and published as a book in 1900. In 1884, the Literary World serialized Miss Ludington’s Sister, which was also published as a book.	8
Bellamy’s literary efforts during this time can best be labeled “romantic imagination,” a term William Dean Howells used in his memorial to Bellamy in 1898: “… in Edward Bellamy we were rich in a romantic imagination surpassed only by that of Hawthorne.”¹² There was little indication in Bellamy’s early writings that he would engage the complex ideas found in Looking Backward. His shift in focus may have had as much to do with his personal situation as with the changes in the world around him. In 1882, he married Emma Sanderson, eleven years younger than he and since 1874 a ward of the Bellamy household. The couple had two children — Paul, born in 1884, and Marion, born in 1886. Perhaps due to concerns related to his own growing family and such events as the Haymarket Riot in 1886, Bellamy decided that his next major writing effort would be different. As he later remembered: According to my best recollection it was in the fall or winter of 1886 that I sat down to my desk with the definite purpose of trying to reason out a method of economic organization by which the republic might guarantee the livelihood and material welfare of its citizens on a basis of equality corresponding to and supplementing their political equality. There was no doubt in my mind that this proposed study should be in the form of a story.¹³The story was Looking Backward 2000–1887, which Ticknor and Company published in January 1888.	9
The Larkin Co. published several “albums” with portraits and brief biographies of notable individuals as marketing tools for its Sweet Home Family Soap — “The Finest, Best Seasoned and Most Economical Soap, to be had.” Edward Bellamy appeared in a number of these published in the late 1880s and early 1890s, along with such individuals as George Washington, Otto Von Bismarck, Henry Morton Stanley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Ulysses S. Grant, and Robert E. Lee. Courtesy of James J. Kopp
Looking Backward is about Julian West, a wealthy Bostonian, who on a fateful Decoration Day in 1887 surrenders himself “to the manipulations of the mesmerizer” to combat his chronic insomnia, recently compounded by labor disputes that were delaying the completion of his new house, which in turn was delaying his wedding. With the intent of being awakened the following morning, West is placed in a mesmeric trance in a specially designed sleeping chamber below his house. When he awakes, it is September 30, 2000. He is no longer in the economically troubled and strike-torn Boston of 1887 but in a transformed Boston on the verge of the twenty-first century.	10
Through this device, Bellamy sets the stage for his nineteenth-century visitor to learn of the vast changes that had occurred since West last saw the light of day.¹⁴ West’s guide and mentor is Dr. Leete, with occasional assistance from Leete’s daughter Edith, who, the novel ultimately reveals, is the great-granddaughter of West’s betrothed, Edith Bartlett. Through lengthy discussions with Dr. Leete and visits to places in and around Boston, West learns how the city and society have been transformed. At the center of the change is the nationalization of industry. The government has become the ultimate monopoly, and the evils of the nineteenth-century competitive system of monopolies and industrialized slavery have been eliminated. Bellamy presents the transformation as the natural evolution of the monopolistic tendencies evident in the 1880s, a change that occurred without violence and with little opposition.	11
The new society is based on an industrial model with significant military overtones. Every individual is educated and enrolled in the Industrial Army at the age of twenty-one. He or she is “mustered out” of the Army at age forty-five, free to pursue individual interests or loftier social callings. Money as a medium of exchange has been eliminated, and every individual is issued a credit card (a term Bellamy is credited with coining) from which expenses are deducted from his or her annual allowance. As a result, poverty has been eliminated, as well as greed and other evils inherit in a money-grabbing society. Technology is evident in various capacities, from pneumatic tubes for the distribution of goods throughout the city, to the delivery of concerts to homes through a telephone-like device, to awnings that automatically cover the sidewalks when it rains. Bellamy cast his plan for an economic reorganization of society within a thinly guised romantic tale — “a sugar-coated pill,” as his wife later called it.¹⁵	12
Looking Backward appeared with little fanfare in late January 1888. Early reviews were mixed, with the Saturday Review of London predicting that readers of Bellamy’s earlier work would be disappointed and judging that “to put the matter plainly [it] is a stupid book.” The New York Tribune reviewer wrote: “Mr. Bellamy has achieved so brilliant and complete a success.”¹⁶ Initial sales were slow, but within months of its publication individuals and groups began to find a cause in Looking Backward. The publication of an inexpensive edition in June 1888 hastened sales; and Cyrus Field Willard, a Boston newspaperman, proposed to Bellamy “that it would be a good idea to organize an association to spread the ideas contained in your book.” Bellamy supported the concept, and he responded to Willard on Independence Day 1888: “No doubt eventually the formation of such Nationalist Clubs or associations among our sympathizers all over the country will be a proper measure and it is fitting that Boston should lead off in this movement.”¹⁷	13
Bellamy’s support, as well as his suggested name for the clubs, paved the way for the formal establishment of such groups. An organizational meeting was held in December 1888, and Bellamy’s suggested name was adopted. The Boston Nationalist Club Number One met for the first time on January 9, 1889, and included such prominent individuals as Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Edward Everett Hale, William D.P. Bliss, Frances E. Willard, Laurence Grönlund, Solomon Schindler, and William Dean Howells. Club members saw the opportunity to educate the populace on Bellamy’s plan for a new social order. In May 1889, The Nationalist, a monthly magazine, published its first issue under the auspices of the Nationalist Educational Association, with Henry Willard Austin as editor.	14
In addition to being a literary and educational vehicle, The Nationalist published information about the movement and frequently included a “News of the Movement” section that reflected the growing interest in Bellamy and the ideals expressed in Looking Backward. The inaugural issue includes reports of Nationalist Clubs being formed in New York City; Washington, D.C.; Hartford, Connecticut; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; and Oakland, California. There was also interest in establishing clubs in several other cities, including Baltimore and St. Louis, as well as smaller communities such as Chetopa, Kansas; Middleton, Connecticut; and Marshall, Texas. The earliest mention of interest in the Pacific Northwest appears in the July 1889 issue with a report that people were interested in forming a club in Tacoma, Washington Territory. Two months later, the paper announced that the club had twenty-five charter members.¹⁸	15

By the first anniversary of the first Nationalist Club in Boston, nearly fifty clubs were active throughout the United States, with many more being formed. The state with the most clubs was California, with several in Los Angeles and San Francisco as well as in a number of small towns. “The Nationalist movement is just as strong in California as in Boston,” The Nationalist reported in October 1889. ¹⁹ Ultimately, almost two-fifths of all Nationalist Clubs in the United States were located in California, with individuals such as Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman leading the movement there. ²⁰	16
The earliest clubs on the West Coast were in larger cities, and they followed the early focus of the Nationalist groups on the East Coast as “reading clubs.” Interest soon spread to smaller and more rural locations, however. The Farmers’ Alliance, perhaps more than any other group, was instrumental in introducing Bellamy and his works to farming communities in the West. As John D. Hicks notes in his classic examination of the Farmers’ Alliance and the People’s Party, Alliance newspapers often sold books “that the editors thought the farmers should read.” In 1889, “the Alliance offered a copy of Bellamy’s Looking Backward and a year’s subscription to the paper for a dollar and a quarter. The book alone in paper covers could be obtained for fifty cents.”²¹ According to Carleton Beals, “The Alliance distributed hundreds of thousands of copies of Bellamy’s Looking Backward and his Duke of Stockbridge, the fictionalized story of Shay’s early rebellion.”²² N.B. Ashby, a National Farmers’ Alliance lecturer, included a lengthy discussion of Bellamy’s book and Nationalism in The Riddle of the Sphinx in 1890, which was also distributed among Alliance members. “Edward Bellamy is the beloved Apostle of Nationalism,” Ashby concluded. “His enchanting romance, ‘Looking Backward,’ is its bible.”²³ Through its sponsorship, the Farmers’ Alliance helped spread the word about Bellamy, generating interest in his work and the movement it inspired among the rural communities of the West.	17
The infection of interest in Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement first broke out in Oregon in a seemingly unlikely location. In February 1890, The Nationalist included this notice: Coquille City: A Nationalist Club was organized here the first of last month, and is the first Club in Oregon. The officers are, President, S.W. Harrington; Vice-President, W.H. Nosler, and Secretary, H.H. Nichols. The members are very enthusiastic and intend to organize through the County and possibly the State. To Mr. Nosler is due the credit of starting this Club. The newspaper of the town, the Herald, has adopted Nationalistic ideas.²⁴The establishment of the Coquille City club and the report that the Coquille City Herald “has adopted Nationalistic ideas” present an opportunity to examine how interest in Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement came to a small, rural community. The first organized efforts to establish Bellamy or Nationalist Clubs generally took place in urban areas, so it is unusual that the first reported instance of such activity in Oregon was in a small town. Many of the reasons for the appeal of Bellamy’s ideas to Coquille City residents can be tracked through the Coquille City Herald, a leading voice for Nationalists in the Northwest.	18
The first paper published in Coquille City, the Herald was founded in 1882 with John A. Dean as editor-publisher and his brother, D.F. Dean, holding a half interest.²⁵ A Coquille Valley pioneer described the Herald in 1887: “It is very popular and very deservedly so, and has done a great deal toward drawing attention to the valuable and varied resources of our river valley and the extensive land adjoining and also the coast, its peculiar attractions, and the vast country.”²⁶ In its early years, the paper published news typical of a small, rural community, with reports on accidental shootings and drownings, the outlook for fishing and hunting, the comings and goings of individuals, cures for cholera morbus and bilious colic, and timber sales. Occasionally, there was a brief mention of a meeting of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union or some other reform group. Letters to the editor from “The Sidewalk Philosopher” or “The Devil” spiced up the Herald‘s pages with views on Chinese immigration, “The Water We Drink,” and other topics.	19
The publication of cheap editions such as this one from Tickenor’s Paper Series (and later the Riverside Paper Series) made Looking Backwardmore widely available. The Farmers Alliance and other reform groups distributed such paperback editions, significantly expanding the readership and influence of the novel. Courtesy of James J. Kopp
In late 1889, the Herald began to include more political and social comment than it had previously, with brief articles on the “new union party” and opinions such as “One must be deficient in even the commonest senses of justice to advocate the ‘single tax theory.'”²⁷ Then, on December 10, 1889, tucked away on page 3 between a notice of “Fine Hogs” and a report of a “Stray Bull,” the following appeared: Educate! Agitate! Legislate! There will be a meeting of the citizens of Coquille City and vicinity at the Universalist church on Thursday night next at 7 o’clock for the purpose of organizing a National or Bellamy club. All believers in reform and especially the ladies are earnestly requested to attend.Two weeks later, the paper announced: “the Bellamy club meets at the Universalist church this place on next Monday evening.”²⁸ More significant is a lengthy column titled “Bellamy and How He Has Stirred up the People.” The unsigned piece begins: There is a world of dissatisfaction among the laboring people the world over, and it is confidently believed that preconcerted action for a remedy of the existing wrongs is just now on the tapis. Well informed men actually believe that in two or three years we will as completely revolutionize as it is possible to be. A young man living down in Boston has done more in the past year than all others combined to bring about this new state of affairs. We refer to Edward Bellamy and his book “Looking Bacbward” [sic].²⁹	20
Henry H. Nichols reported on the inaugural meeting of the Nationalist Club of Coquille City in the January 7, 1890, Herald. He provided a list of officers and identified the club’s plan to “form itself into a debating society to discuss the political questions of the day.” The focus of the discussions, as Nichols described them, suggests the influence of Bellamy’s views: how the people can get along without money as a circulating medium; how crime can be lessened; how millionaires and paupers can be wiped out; how a government can be run and rights of man, woman and child be respected; theft and intemperance die a natural death, and happiness instead of misery be the existing state of society; that caste in society shall depend upon intelligence and moral worth instead of gold.Nichols also made special note that “the club recognizes the equality of woman with man. The fight is for all of America’s citizens regardless of sex. The ladies are especially invited to come out.” Elsewhere in the issue, Nichols offered his views on “The Nationalists” and predicted that “within two years there will be an organized party of nationalists in the field.” He again emphasized the potential for the role of women: “Women above all others should be first and foremost in this movement. It is her friend.” Nichols’s repeated references to women reflect similar views of the period. Frances Willard of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and a charter member of the Boston Nationalist Club, for example, urged WCTU members to read Looking Backward. Similarly, the American Fabian— the monthly organ of the American wing of the Fabian Society, which was founded in England and promoted evolutionary socialism — exhorted its readers to “lend Looking Backward to women, and talk it over with them.”³⁰	21

Sylvia Strauss, who has written on several aspects of women in utopia, characterizes Bellamy as a “self-proclaimed feminist.” In Traitors to the Masculine Cause, her study of men who championed women’s rights, she concludes that Bellamy “touted the importance of feminine culture and its holistic values — cooperation, loyalty, altruism, the capacity for nurture, and respect for human life.” ³¹ Bellamy was strongly influenced by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, an American feminist philosopher and a member of the Boston Nationalist Club Number One; and a number of Bellamy’s early non-utopian writings suggested that he was inclined to be a spokesperson for women’s rights. Hopes were high that Looking Backward would address many issues and concerns of women in the nineteenth century.	22
Several aspects of Bellamy’s ideal society could be viewed as championing women’s rights. The Industrial Army — in which all adults, females as well as males, provide service to the nation through employment in a trade or occupation of their choice — addressed many issues associated with equality for women. Bellamy makes a case for women’s independence in Looking Backward by freeing them from economic bondage to men. In the nationalized society of the year 2000, women earn their own wages and have their own accounts in the centralized banking system, and Bellamy allows them to marry or to remain single. Bellamy incorporated some of the reforms that women’s rights groups were advocating at the time, but he did so in a conservative manner and in a style that is far too similar to the male-dominated literature of the period. On close analysis, the “equality” of the Industrial Army is limited, as there is a separate army and separate career paths for women and their male counterparts.	23
Nevertheless, Bellamy’s view of an ideal world resonated with leaders of women’s movements and others interested in women’s rights. In addition to Higginson, suffragist Lucy Stone, novelist Abby Morton Diaz, and home economist Helen Campbell were involved with the Nationalist Movement.³² Charlotte Perkins Gilman, whose novels would set a standard for feminist utopian literature in the twentieth century, saw value in Bellamy’s ideals, which are reflected in her writings. Although Gilman disliked the centralism of Bellamy’s Nationalism and the methods he designed to achieve his perfected world, she joined one of the Bellamy Clubs in 1890 and was a frequent speaker and contributor to the publications associated with the Nationalist Movement.³³ Other feminist leaders stayed clear of the Nationalist Clubs, and many of those who joined early would later divorce themselves from the Bellamy brigade. Although many believed that Bellamy had opened the door to potential improvements in the status of women, they judged that he had not gone as far as he might have and initial support turned to criticism. Seeking to reestablish support among divergent women’s rights groups, Bellamy offered some apologetic overtures, explaining why his utopia had not been as radical as some had hoped, with much of the blame going to attempts to find a middle ground that would sell to middle-class (and male) America.³⁴ Just how many women attended meetings or joined the Nationalist Movement in Oregon is difficult to ascertain, as rosters of the clubs in Coquille City and other Oregon communities are not available. The officers of the Coquille club were all men, and all but one officer of other Oregon clubs was male. It is likely that women did participate in club activities, but there is no clear indication of their level of participation or their influence. Further investigation into the role of women in the Nationalist Clubs and other reform activities in Oregon is warranted.	24
Nationalism in Oregonby J.A. DeanJ.A. Dean, the former editor of the Coquille City Herald, wrote this essay on “Nationalism in Oregon.” It appeared in the April 4, 1891, issue of New Nation, the successor to The Nationalist. The cause of nationalism is rapidly spreading in the West, and we doubt if any other part of this country will be ready for its adoption as soon as Oregon and California. The need of government ownership and control is nowhere so plainly to be seen. Our once splendid rivers navigable for big ships are in many instances ruined forever by the debris washed down from the mines. To get gold — which is at best but a representative of a value — at least several million days of hard work and thousands of lives have been sacrificed, while millions of acres of rich lands have been converted into barren gravel beds. To make range for a few cows, or to clear a garden patch, the settler sets a forest on fire and timber to the amount of hundreds of thousands of dollars is at once destroyed, and this while other portions are burning grain for fuel and living in sod shanties. It is no uncommon thing for the land owner in this valley to pay $25 per acre and upwards for having the timber burned off his lands — magnificent myrtle trees that for beauty of wood the black walnut is no comparison. All this while Eastern Oregon is freezing for want of fuel and suffering for want of lumber. Our noble game animals — especially deer and elk — are fast disappearing at the hands of the professional skin and horn fiends, as did the buffalo on the plains. Our rivers that were once fairly alive with salmon, making Oregon a national reputation for this valuable food fish, are fast becoming fished out and yielding poor returns. The early settler, in his extravagance and greed saving only the salmon bellies, threw away four fifths of the fish. Even the ocean is being denuded of its bounteous store by the hand of greed, and ere long the fertility of the land must necessarily become exhausted, and all the people, except the wealthy, become paupers, or well-nigh so. Observation will convince any thinking mind that the condition of the masses is waxing worse even in the heyday of boundless resources and fertile lands. What must the scramble for life be, with billionaires to deal with and resources and fertility of land exhausted? Thus, while the mortgage is swallowing the farm, the farmer is exhausting its fertility. The only remedy for all this is ownership and control by the government — nationalism, if you please. Some seem to think it we nationalize railroads, telegraph lines and the express, it will be sufficient. Let the lands fall into the hands of the few rich who are too far-sighted to exhaust fertility for little or nothing, and who are able to let the lands lie idle for years to regain its lost fertility; then the people will realize that the evils they encounter at the hands of the railroad, telegraph and express are as nothing. The means of food production are yet in their hands, but the foundation, the land, is fast passing out of their possession. Does the reader ask if the rich are so mean as all that? They would be much better than their poor brethren if they were not. Opportunity is everything with a very great majority. The farmer would sell his wheat for $10 a bushel, regardless of what it cost him to produce it, and buy corn at 10 cents from his neighbor, regardless of the cost of its production. It is the fault of the existing system rather than that of the individual. Give us absolute nationalism.

Beyond the call for women to participate, the Coquille City Herald sought to educate readers about the Bellamy Plan. The January 28, 1890, issue includes three substantial contributions related to Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement. W.H. Nosler, a Civil War veteran who had moved to Coos County in 1871 to work as a carpenter and to teach in the first school there, offered a lengthy page-one column on “Nationalism.” Nosler focused on the “no money aspect” of the Bellamy system and exclaimed: “the grandest feature of the no-money principle is this: It would almost completely annihilate evil.” ³⁵ In the same issue, “The Devil” — a frequent contributor and commentator — took exception to this development and offered a tongue-in-cheek view in “The Devil on Bellamy’s Book — A Death in the Herald Family.” He lamented that “since Bellamy introduced his book — Looking Backward — we feel like folding up our tent and silently stealing away.” With the reorganization of the industrial system, The Devil proclaimed, “There will be no murderers, no robbers, no drunkards, no paupers, no want, no wolves in sheeps clothing, no money, no competitive system, no Chinese, no gamblers, no sinners and worst of all no devil.” Sadly, The Devil conceded, “We ‘look forward’ and see happy contented and prosperous people, equality, sociability, honor, truth, virtue, education, morality, religion, heaven and the millennium,” with the result that “Hell’s fire would be quenched and the devil and his angels would be myths.” The issue also includes a column-long synopsis of Looking Backward, which concludes with this paragraph: We have yet to find the one who has read it that would not give all he has to bring it about. It teaches truth, virtue, honesty, morality and equality and where is the person with the hardihood to oppose these! It brings out human nature that a radically wrong industrial system has cultivated in man. It is wrong to require a service that would not perform in return. This is the teaching of Looking Backward and the golden rule. Mr. Bellamy takes a peep into the twentieth century and sees all the new order of things working — a paradise on earth where, as he says, the only currency of the country is the image of God and that that is good for all they have. Space forbids a continuation. Read the book.	25
The next issue of the Herald included this small item under “Coos Bay News”: “A Bellamy club has been organized at the Blanco hotel, and Looking Backward meets with general indorsement [sic].”³⁶ Throughout 1890, the Herald provided comments and reports on local and Nationalist activities as well as regular advertisements for The Nationalist. In the August 12, 1890, issue, for example, the “Nationalist Echoes” column reported that “the sale of ‘Looking Backward’ has reached 347,000 in the United States.” There was also a report that Edward Bellamy “spends most of his leisure hours in sorting and labeling his collection of rare seashells.” The August 26, 1890, issue reported that “Edward Bellamy is now engaged in preparing a drama based on his ideal of society and government as expressed in ‘Looking Backward.'”	26
The Herald, under J.A. Dean’s editorship, had clearly “adopted Nationalistic ideas” in 1890, as The Nationalist reported, but the Coquille City paper also would see changes that year. Dean sold his interest in the paper to J.S. McEwen, who would run the paper with D.F. Dean for the next several years.³⁷ J.A. Dean continued his interest in the Nationalist Movement and published an essay in the April 4, 1891, issue of the New Nation, the successor to The Nationalist. “Nationalism in Oregon” offers a strong sense of why Bellamy’s ideas caught on in a place like Coquille City. He began: “The cause of nationalism is rapidly spreading in the West, and we doubt if any other part of this country will be ready for its adoption as soon as Oregon and California.” In support of his argument, he highlighted how Oregon’s natural resources — rivers, gold, timber, game animals — were being exploited by the monopolies and the greed of the competitive system. Some of his remarks seem familiar today, such as when he wrote that “our rivers that were once fairly alive with salmon, making Oregon a national reputation for this valuable food fish, are fast becoming fished out and yielding poor returns…. The only remedy for all this,” Dean continued, “is ownership and control by the government — nationalism, if you please.” He concluded the essay with a plea similar to ones he made in the Herald: “Give us absolute nationalism.”³⁸	27
Dean’s emphatic plea captured the passion of those who believed that Nationalism was the answer to many of society’s problems. The essay also can offer significant clues about why Bellamy and Nationalism appealed to some people in Oregon and why his ideas gained a foothold in Coquille City and other rural communities. Dean’s litany of woes suggests — to borrow the title from historian William G. Robbins’s book — “hard times in paradise.” Robbins’s study of the lumber industry in Coos Bay offers many examples of the developing concerns that Dean discussed in his article, from the role of capitalism in the forest industries to the increasing reliance on the means for shipping products. The threat of monopolies, the controls put in place by such entities, and the unpredictable fluctuations in the economy were as real to the rural residents of southern Oregon as they were to urban factory workers on the East Coast. Nationalism as a solution to these problems would be as appealing in Oregon as it would be in Massachusetts. As Dean also pointed out, Nationalism appealed to the rural Oregonians whose lives, and livelihoods, were closely tied to the natural setting in which they lived and worked.³⁹ In an almost prophetic manner, Dean presented a plea for the deer, elk, and salmon as well as the forests and waterways. He saw the Nationalist program as a way to address the environmental consequences of uncontrolled industry and greed. This element of Nationalism — which may be unlike the ideals embraced by the East Coast advocates of Bellamy’s work — offers another reason why Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement found a following in Coquille City and other rural areas in Oregon.	28
Throughout most of 1890, The Nationalist continued to report “News from the Movement.” In fact, the increasing amount of news from Nationalist Clubs seemingly put some pressures on the editors to try to include it all. Reports of activity in Oregon appeared in March 1890 with a listing of officers of the club formed in Corvallis, where “it was thought best to conform as closely as possible to the constitution and by-laws of the Nationalist Club of Boston.” The Corvallis club met for the first time on January 22, 1890, with C.C. Hogue as president, E.R. Lake as vice president, C.T. Wardlaw as secretary, O.G. Hopkins as treasurer, and F.J. deNeven as corresponding secretary.⁴⁰	29
The club’s “declaration of principles,” which appeared on page one of the February 14, 1890, Corvallis Gazette, is taken directly from the “Declaration of Principles” that Bellamy put forth in the May 1889 Nationalist. It directed that “those who seek the welfare of man must endeavor to suppress the system founded on the unreasonable principle of competition and put in its place another based on the nobler principle of association.” There would be “no sudden or ill considered changes” and “no war upon individuals.” Rather, the Nationalists sought to have “all industries operated in the interest of all by the nation — the people organized — the organic unity of the whole people.”	30
The broad international interest in Looking Backward and the revival of that interest in the 1930s is reflected in this 1937 edition translated into Esperanto — an international language made public in 1887 by L.L. Zamenhof — and published under the auspices of the International Bellamy League in The Netherlands. Courtesy of James J. Kopp
Unlike the Coquille City Herald, the Corvallis Gazette was not a Nationalist paper, and it only occasionally included items related to the Nationalist Movement. One such report appeared in the March 15, 1890, issue: “J.W. Hines, at a nationalist club meeting in San Jose, Cal., not long since,” remarked that “under the present system when a man steals a little he is a thief; when he steals a great deal he is made a senator!” The Gazette responded by asking, “If such is the case, just see how many thieves there will be in Oregon soon after the coming June election.”	31
A report on club activity in Oregon in the August 1890 Nationalist announced that several groups had been initiated “through the instrumentality of Bro. J.H. White,” in locations that included Astoria, Beaver Creek, and Natal.⁴¹ The September 1890 issue also mentioned White, along with a report that new clubs had been organized “at Briggs school-house, Columbia county,” Vernonia, and Pittsburg. G.C. Barker was reportedly named the president of the club at Briggs schoolhouse, located five miles from St. Helens on Milton Creek. The secretary of the Vernonia club was A.B. Lewis, and Grace Cross was the secretary at Pittsburg. G.C. Barker was probably Gordon Cloid Barger, who moved with his family to the area in 1885 and helped organize the Briggs school.⁴²	32
Little is known of J.H. White or the clubs in Astoria and Columbia County, but the interest in Bellamy and Nationalism there also seems tied to the general discontent over economic conditions and the search for a solution that might ease the troubling times.⁴³ In his history of Columbia County, Egbert Oliver described the situation: “Distrust of power and privilege were rising and more farmers were following the advice to quit growing corn and raise hell.” Egbert highlighted another source of economic insecurity and frustration: “The owners of the timber and the logging operations and mill owners were hostage to the weather and the roads, the availability of orders, boxcars, and river shipping, and the fluctuations of the market.” Some could see aspects of the Bellamy Plan, as represented in the Nationalist Movement, as solutions to the unevenness of the lumber industry. Egbert also mentioned lyceum programs, which could have been a means of spreading interest in Bellamy’s ideas among inhabitants of Columbia County. “The lyceum was a popular method of bringing people together for sociability,” Egbert wrote, and “the lyceum at Vernonia met regularly during the first years of the 1890s.”⁴⁴ Topics of discussion included women’s suffrage, the initiative, and temperance; Nationalism might also have been a focus.	33
The establishment of Nationalist Clubs in rural Columbia County also suggests the “bridging” role that the movement may have played in Oregon. The August 1890 Nationalist reported that “the Farmer’s Alliance is said to be opening its eyes to the fact that nationalism embraces everything for which they are striving, and are consequently manifesting a strong disposition to join with us in our work.”⁴⁵ According to Oliver, “the Farmer’s [sic] Alliance began making its presence known in Columbia county” in August 1891. The formation of Nationalist Clubs a year earlier may have served as the catalyst for the arrival of the Alliance, much like the Nationalists followed on the heels of earlier reform interests.	34

The reports of club activity in Columbia County, as well as elsewhere in Oregon, hint at the manner in which Nationalist Clubs were founded and, in most cases, why they were short-lived. Often, the individuals who joined the Nationalist Clubs had been involved with some other reform organizations, such as the Single-Taxers, the Knights of Labor, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, or the Theosophists. The membership in or activity level of an organization tended to ebb and flow depending on the issue of the moment. ⁴⁶ Although there was some competition among the groups, the shift in allegiance seemed to be about social agendas as much as political ones. In Columbia County, the shift appears to have been from Nationalism to the Farmers’ Alliance in late 1891. On the national level, the shift was from Nationalism to Populism.	35
This change was first suggested in the February 1891 Nationalist, which reported that “Boston is also coming into the field shortly with a weekly, Mr. Edward Ballamy [sic] having decided to make this city the place from which to issue the journal which he has for some time been thinking of conducting, and which will be called the New Nation.”⁴⁷ Bellamy and others believed it was time for the movement to take a more active position on political matters, and the new publication signaled that change. It also was the death knell for the monthly magazine. The March–April 1891 issue of The Nationalist would be the last, and with it went the somewhat regular “News of the Movement” section and the means to track club activity around the nation. There is no further word on club formation in Oregon or on the report that “the work of organizing is being pushed at Portland,” which appeared in the September 1890 issue.⁴⁸	36
The focus and intent of the New Nation became apparent as soon as the weekly publication appeared on January 31, 1891. Each issue includes articles, editorial pieces, and wide-ranging reports of reform activities, from municipal lighting initiatives to election reforms. A “News from the Clubs” column ran occasionally, but it soon disappeared and was replaced by “Nationalist Drift,” reports from states about reform activities. The February 28, 1891, issue includes a brief report from Oregon that “a bill to provide the Australian ballot system has passed the lower branch of the Legislature,” but specific news of club activity in Oregon cannot be found.⁴⁹	37
Reports of Nationalist support from Oregon appeared in the New Nation through 1892. On March 19, G.C. Barger, “from St. Helena [sic]” and “frequently … a member of the Oregon central committee of the prohibition party,” wrote: “I have talked nationalism with many in Oregon, who seem to like it up to the point of losing their vested title in land.” He continued: “I am too old (60 years) to expect to see nationalism in operation myself, but it is a satisfaction to contemplate that those living after me will.”⁵⁰ But support of the broader aspects and appeal of the Nationalist Movement appeared less and less in the New Nation, while more news of the Populist campaign took center stage.	38
It is no coincidence that the New Nation appeared as preparations were being made for the conference of the fledgling People’s Party in May 1891. Nationalists from several states were invited to the conference in Cincinnati, and five Nationalists helped frame the inaugural manifesto of the People’s Party.⁵¹ Nationalists also played some role in the Populist conventions in St. Louis and Omaha in 1892. John Hope Franklin has suggested that “the Nationalists had come to feel that their cause was being sponsored by the Populists and that the issue of 1892 was Nationalism.”⁵² The Cleveland Nationalists were even prepared to propose at the Cincinnati conference that the party be named “The Nationalist Party.”⁵³ Although Bellamy frequently cited the involvement of Nationalists in developing the People’s Party platform, their “success” eventually led to the demise of the Nationalist organization as it was absorbed into the Populist campaign. As one student of this development has noted, “After a few months of publicizing the virtues of public ownership of monopolies, Bellamy turned his newspaper into a Populist propaganda organ.”⁵⁴	39
After the Cincinnati conference, the New Nation regularly published the platform of the People’s Party. As editor, Bellamy kept close tabs on developments that he believed drew the Nationalist ideals and Populism close to each other. In Oregon, Governor Sylvester Pennoyer became a focal point of the Populist campaign in 1892, and Bellamy turned his attention to the rather aloof, if not maverick, governor. Although Pennoyer is not known to have embraced Bellamy or Nationalistic principles, he had unsuccessfully run for mayor of Portland in 1885 on an issue of municipal ownership of the city water plant, a topic that would later be consistent with Nationalist objectives.⁵⁵ The August 1, 1891, New Nation includes an article by Pennoyer titled “Significance of the New Political Party.”⁵⁶ The May 28, 1892, issue reported that “Gov. Pennoyer of Oregon has joined the new party.” A week later, the paper announced: “A Portland (Ore.) dispatch states that Gov. Pennoyer is mentioned for the presidency on the people’s party ticket.”⁵⁷ Although Pennoyer did not receive the Populist nomination for president, he remained visible in the pages of the New Nation and Bellamy included him among the converted: “The people’s party has now three governors of states, all converted after election — Pennoyer of Oregon, Buchanan of Tennessee and Toole of Montana.”⁵⁸	40
Other reports of Nationalist/Populist activities in Oregon also appeared in the New Nation in 1892. One outcome of the Populist convention in Omaha, for example, was the establishment of a national committee for propaganda work. Included among those “chosen or suggested for this committee” was Joe Waldrop of Portland.⁵⁹ Following the 1892 election, the New Nation reported that “the populists have captured one presidential elector in Oregon,” but few other details of elections in Oregon are provided. The paper overlooked the election of J.S. McEwen, coeditor of the Coquille City Herald (itself a Nationalist-turned-Populist paper), to the Oregon legislature as a representative from Coos County on the Populist ticket.⁶⁰	41
The New Nation continued into 1894, and a few Nationalist Clubs (particularly in California) lasted that long; but the momentum of the movement had subsided as Bellamy’s followers were immersed into politics and their energy was absorbed into the Populist and other reform movements. What Populism had not completed, the 1893 economic crisis may have finished off. Even though the Industrial Army of Bellamy’s utopia might be reflected in the spirit, if not the organization, of Coxey’s Army — the formation of “armies” of unemployed men and sympathizers, named for Jacob S. Coxey, who marched to Washington, D.C., in the aftermath of the Panic of 1893 — the significant influence of Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement appears to have faded by the mid-1890s.⁶¹	42
Bellamy continued to push for issues related to Nationalism in the 1896 elections, but his influence was overshadowed by the politics of silver. He turned to the pen again to address some of the elements from his ideal society that were not included in Looking Backward. The result was Equality, a much longer novel than Looking Backward but one that was an even more thinly veiled economic treatise. Equality appeared in 1897, but its impact was minimal and it was seemingly soon forgotten. Perhaps most significantly, the effort of completing the book was extreme, and on May 22, 1898, Edward Bellamy died from what officially was diagnosed as tuberculosis.⁶²	43

While Equality did not have the immediate impact Bellamy had hoped for, it would be reprinted and translated into many languages over the years. In the Pacific Northwest, in November 1897, followers established Equality Colony in Skagit County. ⁶³ Equality Colony may be the best known of the settlements in the Pacific Northwest influenced by Edward Bellamy, but it was not the only one. Even before the first Nationalist Club was formed in Boston, an effort to establish a cooperative colony was made in Oregon’s Nehalem Valley. The Weekly Nationalist, published in Los Angeles and one of several Nationalist organs in California, carried this advertisement: The Nehalem Valley Co-Operative Colony Situated in the Nehalem Valley, Columbia County, Oregon; incorporated September 10, 1888.This colony is on the broad road to success, fully illustrating the principles of Co-operation as advanced in Edward Bellamy’s “Looking Backward,” and Laurence Gronlund’s “Co-operative Commonwealth.” For full particulars, address H.E. GIRARD, Sec’y⁶⁴Little or no information is available on the Nehalem Valley Co-operative Colony or on whether it was actually established. If it was incorporated in September 1888, however, it clearly was one of the earliest efforts to put Bellamy’s philosophy (along with Laurence Grönlund’s) into practice in Oregon or elsewhere. That such an effort may have been attempted is not inconsistent with other developments in cooperative communities at the time, even though Bellamy himself was not an advocate of this approach to realizing his ideal society.	44
Bellamy worried that such attempts would fail due to the size and isolation of the colonies and that they would dilute the “national” nature of the Nationalist program.⁶⁵ Nevertheless, a number of colonies were established that were directly or indirectly influenced by Edward Bellamy and the Nationalists. Along with Grönlund and Julius A. Wayland, Bellamy is included among a group whose “distinctly American ideology profoundly affected the revival of communitarianism.”⁶⁶ In addition to the Equality Colony in Washington, the utopian communities connected with Bellamy and the Nationalists included the Kaweah Colony in California, the Ruskin Cooperative Association in Tennessee, and the Fairhope Colony in Alabama. The Burley Colony on the Puget Sound had some connection with Bellamy and the Nationalists through one of its founders, Cyrus Field Willard.⁶⁷	45
In Oregon, Bellamy’s influence in communitarianism is best documented in a small, intriguing way in rural Lincoln County. In December 1897, a group of mostly Norwegian settlers, consisting of four families and two single men, started a colony on a 160-acre farm on what is now the Siletz Highway about three and one-half miles north of Toledo along Depot Slough. The name selected for the cooperative community was Bellamy.⁶⁸ Olaf A. Tveitmoe, who was joined by his wife and two children, led the group. The other families were those of Sondre Romtvedt, Oscar Pederson, and Oliver Johnson. The two single men were probably B. Tonder and Niles Matre, who are named as officers of the colony. The land was obtained from John Allen, “an old Swedish bachelor,” and the colonists set about clearing the land, building two houses, digging ditches, and constructing a bridge over a small stream.⁶⁹ A post office was established at the colony on May 24, 1898, with Tveitmoe as postmaster.⁷⁰	46
It is not surprising that there was interest in Bellamy among this Norwegian community. Bellamy’s novel and his Nationalism plan were well received and popular in Scandinavian countries, as well as with individuals from those countries who had immigrated to the United States. Looking Backward was translated and published in 1889 in both Sweden and Denmark, and a Norwegian translation, Tilbageblik, was published in the United States in the early 1890s. “Det nationalistiske program” was discussed in the widely circulated Norwegian review Kringsjaa, and other Norwegian periodicals and newspapers included reports on the Nationalist Movement during its peak period of activity.⁷¹	47
Why this group decided to establish its colony in Oregon and in Lincoln County is another matter. Berne Jacobsen wrote: “Back in Minnesota, Sondre [Romtvedt] felt that there must be a better place to live in his adopted land.” This sentiment was expressed by other Nordic immigrants to the Pacific Northwest, such as one who said, “Dakota is all right for those who like it, but there is just too much of Norway in me — of mountain, meadow, and fjord.” The lure of a landscape that was similar to Norway’s was strong, and many Norwegians were moving to Oregon. The combination of displeasure with their current surroundings, the attraction of a familiar environment, and fellow Nordic settlers in the area likely led the Bellamy colonists to settle in Lincoln County. Berne Jacobsen described the result for Sondre Romtvedt: “And there in this lush green valley just a few miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, Sondre found a measure of prosperity and the freedom he had been denied in his native Norway.”⁷²	48
The Sondre Romtvedt, Sr., family is shown here in 1897, shortly before Sondre, his wife, Aasne, and four of their nine children left Minnesota to move to the Bellamy Colony in Lincoln County, Oregon. The five oldest children later joined the family in Oregon. Courtesy of Carol Ginter
The euphoric nature of the new setting, however, was short-lived. The Bellamy Co-operative Colony was almost instantly embroiled in disputes internally and with outsiders. In the February 4, 1889, Industrial Freedom, the newsletter of the Equality Colony in Washington, Olaf Tveitmoe wrote: “Bellamy is not found on the map, but if you at any time happen to be in Toledo, Lincoln Co., Oregon, you will certainly find Bellamy, providing you are looking for it.” He continued: “Bellamy is but 10 months old and is organized on a similar plan to Ruskin, Tennessee.” But there was turmoil in the colony: “Owing to the furious and ignoble attacks of the enuemy [sic] and still more so the infernal machinations of cowardly traitors, Bellamy’s growth during its short period of existence has been greatly retarded.” He continued: “And today the members of Bellamy are more determined to succeed than ever, and they will succeed, though the arch-traitor, Judas Iscariot with all the hounds of hell are trying to hunt them down!”⁷³ It is not clear who was the target of Tveitmoe’s comments, although Sondre Romtvedt and his family had already left the colony, perhaps largely because of concerns over Tveitmoe’s leadership. Some of Tveitmoe’s vengeance may have been related to disputes over the sale and ownership of the land occupied by the colony. Eventually, a court case was decided against the colony, and its members dispersed. The post office closed on June 15, 1899, and the place named Bellamy slipped into a dim corner of Oregon history.⁷⁴	49
The Sondre Romtvedt family house was part of the Bellamy Colony. The Romtvedts left the colony after a year but returned to live in this house following the colony’s collapse in 1899. In 1918 Sondre’s son, Fred Romtvedt, and his wife, Mary E. Whitney, moved into the house. They lived there until it burned in March 1924. The family remained on the Bellamy Colony land until 1939. Courtesy of Carol Ginter
The experience of the Bellamy Colony is not unlike other efforts to establish cooperative communities, but it is an intriguing example of how Bellamy’s influence was felt in Oregon. His influence in other ways is more difficult to pinpoint. It is possible that Bellamy’s ideas may have had an impact on William S. U’Ren, the “father of popular government.” U’Ren and those who have studied him do not mention Bellamy’s influence, but there are suggestions that U’Ren may have been intrigued by some of Bellamy’s ideas.⁷⁵ U’Ren may have encountered Bellamy through his involvement with the Lewelling family of Clackamas County and the Farmers’ Alliance meetings held at the Lewelling home in Milwaukie. “When the Alliance appeared in Oregon,” historian Thomas McClintock wrote, “the Lewelling family not only became members but also were leaders of the organization in Clackamas County.” U’ren, who came to Oregon in 1889, was a regular participant in those meetings. The Alliance promoted the reading of Looking Backward, and members discussed J.W. Sullivan’s Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum, which was published in 1892 by the Twentieth Century Publishing Company. The 120-page book was so popular that a second edition appeared in 1893, this time published by the True Nationalist Publishing Company, an affiliate of the Nationalist organization.⁷⁶ Thus, there were at least some indirect ties between the Nationalist organization and U’Ren’s developing Progressive ideals.	50
Bellamy’s work also influenced other individuals and movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.⁷⁷ As Bellamy’s biographer, Arthur Morgan, noted: “When a specific movement blends into the total culture of a people as did Nationalism, there is no way to quantitatively measure its influence.” Morgan also suggested that “while the Nationalist movement was not destined to succeed quickly, perhaps it was like the tumbleweed on the western prairies, which breaks off from its roots and rolls across country, scattering its seed as it goes.”⁷⁸	51
One frequently identified indication of Bellamy’s influence is the plethora of utopian literature published in the quarter century following Looking Backward. Several hundred utopian works were published between 1888 and 1914, with many authors using the concepts of Bellamy’s utopia — sometimes even the title or characters from his works — and a large number writing in response or in objection to Bellamy’s ideal world.⁷⁹ A small number of these works were published in Oregon. Jeff W. Hayes’s Portland, Oregon A.D. 1999 (1913) used similar literary contrivances and references to technology.⁸⁰ Three other utopian works were published in Oregon in the quarter century following Looking Backward: Charles Cole’s Visitors from Mars: A Narrative; Ira S. Bunker’s A Thousand Years Hence; or, Startling Events in the Year A.D. 3000, which describes a Christian Science utopia; and Francis H. Clarke’s Morgan Rockefeller’s Will: A Romance of 1991–2.⁸¹ These works, although bearing no striking similarities to Bellamy’s utopian works or espousing ideals consistent with the Nationalist Movement, can be considered part of the legacy of utopian literature created by the popularity of Looking Backward.	52
The flyleaf of this 1931 edition of Looking Backward was inscribed by Bellamy’s wife, Emma, and his daughter, Marion, and presented to Rabbi Edward Sandrow in appreciation of their visit to Portland in November 1936. Courtesy of James J. Kopp
The seeds of the Nationalist Movement and Bellamy’s influence, as Morgan has suggested, found fertile ground once more during a period of economic crisis and social turmoil not too unlike the late 1880s and early 1890s. The Great Depression presented a setting for a renewed interest in Bellamy’s proposals, and many — including Bellamy’s wife and daughter — saw Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal as an implementation of many aspects of the Bellamy Plan. In 1931, an edition of Looking Backward was published with an introduction by journalist Heywood Broun. He suggested: “Many of the questions both of mood and technique are even more pertinent in the year 1931 than they were in 1887.” Two years later, following Roosevelt’s proclamation of a “new deal” for America, Broun wrote: “I think there should be a great revival of interest in the work of Edward Bellamy, for notions which he expressed before the beginning of the century are just now coming into articulation and a few, indeed, into action.”⁸²	53
It was this renewed interest that brought Emma and Marion Bellamy to Portland in November 1936. Although there is no significant report of their visit, the two women signed a copy of the 1931 edition of Looking Backward with the following inscriptions: To Rabbi Sandrow, In retrospect our stay in Portland will ever be held in grateful remembrance of you, Best Wishes of Emma S. BellamyTo Rabbi Sandrow who is a living example of the force for right which we hope for and appreciate in our religious leaders, Marion Bellamy⁸³	54
Edward Bellamy offered reform-minded Oregonians of the 1880s, 1890s, and even the 1930s a way to address a range of economic and social concerns. As historian Carlos Schwantes observed, “… Oregon has long avoided identification with the regional heritage of radicalism centering in western Washington and the mining areas of north Idaho and British Columbia….”⁸⁴ The Americanized socialistic ideals that Bellamy promoted were palatable to rural citizens in Oregon, and the agenda of the Nationalist Movement could be adapted to provide solutions for those whose livelihood was centered on timber and agriculture instead of manufacturing. Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement also served as a “bridge” linking concerns of the eastern United States with those in the Pacific Northwest, tying together interests of those in urban and rural areas, and connecting the common interests of late nineteenth-century reformers. For these reasons and others, the name of Edward Bellamy should be dusted off and reintroduced into the story of reform activities in Oregon.	55
NotesI would like to acknowledge my appreciation for the excellent suggestions and recommendations of readers of earlier drafts of this paper, including Charles LeWarne and Peter Kopp. I also want to express my thanks to Carol Ginter for the information she has provided on the Bellamy Colony.^1.ï¿½ Heywood Broun, “Back to Bellamy,” World-Telegram, July 19, 1933, reprinted in Broun, It Seems to Me, 1925–1935 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935), 207–10. See also James J. Kopp, “Edward Bellamy and the New Deal: The Revival of Bellamyism in the 1930s,” Utopian Studies IV, ed. Lise Leibacher-Ouvrard and Nicholas D. Smith (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1991), 10–16.^2.ï¿½ See, for example, “Mrs. Bellamy Heard on the Radio,” Los Angeles Times, May 23, 1934; “They Stand Out from the Crowd,” Literary Digest 117 (June 23, 1934): 11. The text of Marion Bellamy’s lecture was published as Edward Bellamy Today: A Lecture by Marion Bellamy (Kansas City, Mo.: Peerage Press, 1936). Edward T. Sandrow (1906–1975) served as rabbi at Ahavai Shalom, located at 1436 S.W. Park Avenue in Portland, from 1933 until 1937 and subsequently became rabbi of Temple Beth El in Cedarhurst, New York. See Pamela S. Nadell, Conservative Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 219–21; Scott Cline, “The Jews of Portland, Oregon: A Statistical Dimension, 1860–1880,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 88:2 (Spring 1987):5–25; and Gary Miranda, Following a River: Portland’s Congregation Neveh Shalom, 1869–1989 (Portland, Ore.: Congregation Neveh Shalom, 1989), 88–91. Also see Steve Lowenstein, The Jews of Oregon, 1850–1950 (Portland: Jewish Historical Society of Oregon, 1987); and William Toll, The Making of an Ethnic Middle Class: Portland Jewry over Four Generations (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982).^3.ï¿½ “Economic Seer’s Kin Will Address Ahavai Shalom,” Oregon Journal, November 1, 1936.^4.ï¿½ See Everett W. MacNair, Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement, 1889 to 1894 (Milwaukee, Wisc.: Fitzgerald Company, 1957); John Hope Franklin, “Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement,” New England Quarterly 11:4 (December 1938): 739–72; and Arthur Lipow, Authoritarian Socialism in America: Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). See also F.J. Vassault, “Nationalism in California,” Overland Monthly 15 (June 1890): 659–61.^5.ï¿½ Charles McArthur Destler, “Western Radicalism, 1865–1901: Concepts and Origins,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 31:3 (December 1944): 351.^6.ï¿½ Monica St. Romain, “County Saw Another Try at Religious Colony Plan,” Newport News-Times, June 26, 1969.^7.ï¿½ See Edward A. Weeks, “Fifty Influential Books: Edward Weeks, John Dewey and Charles A. Beard Each Select the Twenty-five Most Influential Books since 1885,” Publishers Weekly 127 (March 23, 1935): 1227–9. Also see Weeks, This Trade of Writing (Boston: Little, Brown, 1935), 278–81.^8.ï¿½ Robert B. Downs, Books That Changed America (London: Macmillan, 1970), 100. Included among Downs’s selections are Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, Lewis and Clark’s History of the Expedition, Joseph Smith’s The Book of Mormon, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Earlier, Downs had included Looking Backward in his Molders of the Modern Mind: 111 Books That Shaped Western Civilization (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1961), where he described the novel as “Socialism without Marx — A Dream of Utopia” (323–6).^9.ï¿½ John L. Thomas, Alternative America: Henry George, Edward Bellamy, Henry Demarest Lloyd and the Adversary Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 356.^10.ï¿½ For an examination of the international impact of Bellamy’s work, see Sylvia E. Bowman et al., Edward Bellamy Abroad: An American Prophet’s Influence (New York: Twayne, 1962). Included in this thorough study are discussions of Bellamy’s influence in Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia.^11.ï¿½ See Arthur E. Morgan, Edward Bellamy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944); Sylvia E. Bowman, The Year 2000: A Critical Biography of Edward Bellamy (New York: Bookman Associates, 1958); Nancy Snell Griffith, Edward Bellamy: A Bibliography (Methuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1986); and Richard Toby Widdicombe, Edward Bellamy: An Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Criticism (New York: Garland, 1988). Also see Toby Widdicombe and Herman S. Preiser, eds., Revisiting the Legacy of Edward Bellamy (1850–1898), American Author and Social Reformer: Uncollected and Unpublished Writings, Scholarly Perspectives for a New Millennium (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002).^12.ï¿½ William Dean Howells, “The Romantic Imagination,” Atlantic Monthly 82 (August 1898): 256.^13.ï¿½ Edward Bellamy, “How I Wrote ‘Looking Backward,'” Ladies Home Journal, April 1894, 2.^14.ï¿½ Bellamy was accused of plagiarizing from early utopian works, including August Bebel’s Woman in the Past, Present and Future (1885), John Macnie’s The Diothas (1883), and Laurence Grönlund’s The Co-operative Commonwealth (1884). Marie A. Shipley was the principal accuser in a brief article titled “Bebel’s Bricks or Bellamy’s?” that appeared in Liberty 7:4 (June 21, 1890): 3, and subsequently in a forty-five-page pamphlet titled “The True Author of ‘Looking Backward'” (1890). Arthur E. Morgan addresses these accusations in Plagiarism in Utopia: A Study of the Continuity of the Utopian Tradition with Special Reference to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (Yellow Springs, Ohio: Author, 1944). As Bellamy’s biographer, Morgan takes a sympathetic view toward the writer, but he presents sound arguments that the “continuity” of this type of literature allows for similarities in style and content.^15.ï¿½ Joseph Schiffman, introduction to Edward Bellamy, Selected Writings on Religion and Society (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1955), ix. The military itself plays no major role in the society described in Looking Backward.^16.ï¿½Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art 65 (March 24, 1888): 356; New York Tribune, February 5, 1888, 10.^17.ï¿½ Cyrus Field Willard, “The Nationalist Club of Boston (A Chapter of History),” The Nationalist 1 (May 1889): 16, 17.^18.ï¿½The Nationalist 1 (July 1889): 94, (September 1889): 174.^19.ï¿½The Nationalist 1 (October 1889): 219. See also MacNair, Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement, 202.^20.ï¿½ Vassault, “Nationalism in California,” 659–61. Gilman (who published in the Nationalist under the name of Stetson) was the niece of Edward Everett Hale. Through his prompting, her poem, “Similar Cases,” was first published in the April 1890 The Nationalist. She contributed three other poems to the magazine and ten poems to the New Nation. Several other items appeared in California Nationalist publications. See Gary Scharnhorst, “Making Her Fame: Charlotte Perkins Gilman in California,” California History 64 (1985): 192–201, 242–3. Also see Carol Farley Kessler, Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Her Progress toward Utopia with Selected Writings (Syracuse., N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 23, 53; and James Robert Biggs, “Justice, Love and Liberty: The Nationalist Movement in Los Angeles” (M.A. thesis, California State University, Fullerton, 1990).^21.ï¿½ John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers’ Alliance and the People’s Party (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1931), 131. Also see Clinton Keeler, “The Grass Roots of Utopia: A Study of the Literature of the Agrarian Revolt in America, 1880–1902,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1953), 26–7.^22.ï¿½ Carlton Beals, The Great Revolt and Its Leaders: The History of Popular American Uprisings in the 1890’s (London: Abelard-Schuman, 1968), 100.^23.ï¿½ N.B. Ashby, The Riddle of the Sphinx (Des Moines, Iowa: Industrial Publishing Co., 1890), 237.^24.ï¿½The Nationalist 2 (February 1890): 120. The list of club secretaries in the February 1890 issue includes an entry for “Corvallis, Benton Co.,” with F.J. DeNeven as the secretary (121).^25.ï¿½ See Emil R. Peterson and Alfred Powers, A Century of Coos and Curry: History of Southwest Oregon (Portland, Ore.: Binford & Mort, 1952), 248–9.^26.ï¿½ George Bennett, “A History of Bandon and the Coquille River,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 29:2 (March 1928): 45. See also Orvil Dodge, Pioneer History of Coos and Curry Counties, Or.: Heroic Deeds and Thrilling Adventures of the Early Settlers (Salem, Ore.: Capital Printing Co., 1898), 235.^27.ï¿½Coquille City Herald, November 26, 1889.^28.ï¿½Coquille City Herald, December 24, 1889.^29.ï¿½ Ibid.^30.ï¿½ Sylvia Strauss, “Gender, Race, and Class in Utopia,” in Looking Backward, 1988–1888: Essays on Edward Bellamy, ed. Daphne Patai (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 86; “What to Read,” American Fabian 3:6 (June 1897): 12.^31.ï¿½ Sylvia Strauss, “Traitors to the Masculine Cause”: The Men’s Campaign for Women’s Rights (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982): 126–7. Much of this discussion derives from James J. Kopp, “Women in the Year 2000 — Views from the 19^th Century: The Role of ‘The Fairer Sex’ in American Utopian Fiction, 1888–1900,” presented at the nineteenth annual Lewis & Clark College Gender Studies Symposium, Portland, Oregon, March 9, 2000.^32.ï¿½ Dolores Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), 135; Strauss, “Gender, Race, and Class,” 85–6.^33.ï¿½ Strauss, “Gender, Race, and Class,” 86–7; Daniel T. Rodgers, The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 192.^34.ï¿½ Such articles as “Woman in the Year 2000,” which appeared in the February 1891 Ladies Home Journal, emphasized the positive aspects of improvements in the status of women as outlined in Looking Backward. Edward Bellamy’s final effort to write about this matter was in Equality, the sequel to Looking Backward, which was published in 1897. In Equality, he addressed many of the deficiencies related to the status of women in his earlier novel, from the role of women in the Industrial Army to dress reform.^35.ï¿½ For more on Nosler, see Peterson and Powers, A Century of Coos and Curry, 561; and “From the Newspapers,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 42:4 (December 1941): 346.^36.ï¿½Coquille City Herald, February 4, 1890. The Nationalist never included a report on the Coos Bay club.^37.ï¿½ Peterson and Powers, A Century of Coos and Curry, 248-9. McEwen sold his interests to D.F. Dean in 1901, and Dean continued to produce the Herald until 1912, when it was taken over by P.C. Levar. The paper changed hands several times between 1912 and 1917, when it was consolidated with the Sentinel.^38.ï¿½ J.A. Dean, “Nationalism in Oregon,” New Nation 1 (April 4, 1891): 162.^39.ï¿½ See William G. Robbins, Hard Times in Paradise: Coos Bay, Oregon, 1850–1986 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988). See also Robbins, Landscapes of Promise: The Oregon Story, 1800–1940 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997).^40.ï¿½The Nationalist 2 (March 1890): 149. C.C. Hogue’s essay, “The Southern Question,” appeared in The Nationalist 2 (June 1890): 228–9. He addressed what he believed was the major impediment to the adoption of Nationalism in the southern states, the “race problem.” The best known of the Corvallis club officers was E.R. Lake, a professor of botany and a horticulturist at the Oregon Agricultural College (present-day Oregon State University).^41.ï¿½The Nationalist 3 (August 1890): 44. The Daily Astorian includes only passing references to Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement.^42.ï¿½ Egbert S. Oliver, Homes in the Oregon Forest: Settling Columbia County 1870–1920 (Brownsville, Ore.: Calapooia Publications, 1983), 9, 51, 68–9.^43.ï¿½ A J.H. White served in the Oregon House of Representatives in 1872 from Polk County, but it is unclear if he and “Bro. J.H. White” are the same individual.^44.ï¿½ Oliver, Homes in the Forest, 83, 85, 123.^45.ï¿½The Nationalist 3 (August 1890): 44.^46.ï¿½ For an example, see “News of the Movement,” The Nationalist, August 1889. The report of a new club in Cleveland, Ohio, reads: “The Free Land Club has become a Nationalist Club. It was first a Henry George Club, then a Single-Tax Club, then a Free Land Club, and it has now made its final change, so the members think.”^47.ï¿½The Nationalist 3 (February 1891): 503.^48.ï¿½The Nationalist 3 (September 1890): 112.^49.ï¿½New Nation 1 (February 28, 1891): 73.^50.ï¿½New Nation 2 (March 19, 1892): 183.^51.ï¿½ See Fred E. Haynes, Social Politics in the United States (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924), 147–9.^52.ï¿½ Franklin, “Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement,” 201.^53.ï¿½ William F. Zornow, “Bellamy Nationalism in Ohio 1891 to 1896,” Ohio State Archaeologist and Historical Quarterly 58 (1949): 159.^54.ï¿½ Christine McHugh, “Edward Bellamy and the Populists: The Agrarian Response to Utopia, 1888–1898” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1977), 112.^55.ï¿½ Maude Davis Chapman, “Sylvester Pennoyer, Governor of Oregon, 1887–1896” (M.A. thesis, University of Oregon, 1943), 21. See also Life and Political History of Sylvester Pennoyer, Governor of Oregon (Portland, Ore.: History Publishing Company, 1891).^56.ï¿½New Nation 1 (August 1, 1891): 429–30. The original article appeared as “The New Political Party,” North American Review 153 (August 1891): 220–6.^57.ï¿½New Nation 2 (May 28, 1892): 344, (June 4, 1892): 360. A similar reference appeared in the July 2, 1892, issue in a report “On the Eve of the Omaha Convention.”^58.ï¿½New Nation 2 (October 1, 1892): 608.^59.ï¿½New Nation 2 (July 23, 1892): 470.^60.ï¿½ Peterson and Powers, A Century of Coos and Curry, 248. Also see Marion Harrington, “The Populist Movement in Oregon, 1889–1896” (M.A. thesis, University of Oregon, 1935), 23. In the election of 1894, the other coeditor of the Coquille Herald, D.F. Dean, was elected Coos County clerk as a Populist.^61.ï¿½ See Donald L. McMurry, Coxey’s Army: A Study of the Industrial Army Movement of 1894 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1929); and Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey’s Army: An American Odyssey (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985). Also see Herman C. Voeltz, “Coxey’s Army in Oregon, 1894,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 65:3 (September 1964): 263–95.^62.ï¿½ There is some evidence that Bellamy had cancer of the throat. See Morgan, Edward Bellamy, 71.^63.ï¿½ See Charles P. LeWarne, “Equality Colony: The Plan to Socialize Washington,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 59 (July 1968): 140. Also see Charles P. LeWarne, “Equality Colony,” in Utopias on Puget Sound (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975), 55–113. The first building erected at the colony was named Fort Bellamy.^64.ï¿½ See, for example, Weekly Nationalist 1 (May 17, 1890). The paper also included advertisements for Kaweah Colony, which had adopted Nationalist ideals and was frequently mentioned in The Nationalist.^65.ï¿½ Paul M. Gaston, Man and Mission: E.B. Gaston and the Origins of the Fairhope Single Tax Colony (Montgomery, Ala.: Black Belt Press, 1993), 5; Robert V. Hine, California’s Utopian Colonies (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1953), 86; Lipow, Authoritarian Socialism in America, 88n.^66.ï¿½ LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 7.^67.ï¿½ Hine, California’s Utopian Colonies, 85–6, 142, 162–3; Lipow, Authoritarian Socialism in America, 87–8; Gaston, Man and Mission, 24–7, 55; LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 131–2.^68.ï¿½ For information on the Bellamy Colony, see Rosa Claridge, “Lincoln County’s Bellamy Colony,” prepared for the Lincoln County Historical Society and the Sons of Norway, 1965–1966. To Rosa Claridge goes much of the credit for reviving the history of this colony. Continuing Mrs. Claridge’s work, Carol Romtvedt Ginter, a granddaughter of an original settler, wrote “Looking Backward … at the Bellamy Colony,” Bayfront 9 (June 1999). Also see St. Romain, “County Saw Another Try at Religious Colony Plan,” mentioned in the “News Notes” section of the Oregon Historical Quarterly 71:3 (September 1970): 289.^69.ï¿½ Rosa Claridge notes: “The records of the Post Office Department in the National Archives show that the site was located in the Northwest quarter of Section 32, Township 10 South, Range 10 West, 3½ miles north of Toledo, 10½ miles south of Siletz and 8½ miles northwest of Yaquina. Originally the land was the homestead of Si Copeland and later owned by Al Waugh who sold it to John Allen in 1896 or 1897.” See Claridge, “Lincoln County’s Bellamy Colony,” 2. The roles of John Allen and how the property was obtained are reported differently in various accounts of the colony. Claridge writes: “The colonists had leased the property” (2). In his autobiography, Fred Romtvedt (son of Sondre Romtvedt and seven years old when his family moved to Bellamy) remembered: “John Allen … had bought a 160 acre farm … and organized a cooperative colony called Bellamy.” See Fred Romtvedt, “Fred Romtvedt: His Life & Loves, 1890–[1983],” June 1981, typescript prepared by Carol Ginter, 2, copy at Oregon Historical Society Research Library, Portland, Oregon. Berne S. Jacobsen, Romtvedt’s cousin, writes in the story of his family “that a Swede named John Allen out on the Oregon Coast was organizing a cooperative colony….” Bernhardt Selvig Jacobsen, “Viking Roots: The Story of the Family of Roy and Sophia [Romtvedt] Jacobsen …,” typescript, 1983, 13, author’s collection.^70.ï¿½ See Lincoln County Leader, June 17, 1898; Lewis A. McArthur, “Oregon Geographic Names: X; Additions since 1944,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 49:1 (March 1948): 64. This post office, not to mention the connection with Bellamy, was initially missed in the first two editions of Oregon Geographic Names. McArthur’s first mention of it was in the March 1948 Oregon Historical Quarterly, where he wrote that the name “may have been intended to compliment a local resident or even someone living at a distance.” Thanks to the efforts of Carol Ginter, information on the Bellamy Colony will appear in the seventh edition of Oregon Geographic Names (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, forthcoming 2003).^71.ï¿½ See Lars Ahnebrink, “A Contribution to Scandinavian Socialism” in Bowman et al., Edward Bellamy Abroad, 261–4. Equality, in whole or in part, was translated into Danish and Swedish, and a Finnish translation was published in 1905 in Hancock, Michigan.^72.ï¿½ See Jacobsen, “Viking Roots,” 13; Kristina Veirs, ed., Nordic Heritage Northwest (Seattle: Writing Works, 1982), 17.^73.ï¿½ This same issue of Industrial Freedom includes an item titled “Bellamy Communistic Colony Falls Completely,” which reports that a cooperative colony near Hastings, British Columbia, collapsed after three years. Thanks to Charles LeWarne for bringing these items to my attention. Industrial Freedom is available in microfilm and hard copy at the University of Washington Libraries.^74.ï¿½ Ginter, “”Looking Backward …” See also Claridge, “Lincoln County’s Bellamy Colony,” 4–6. Appended to this report are a number of clippings tracking Tveitmoe’s activities after he left the Bellamy Colony. Tveitmoe moved to California, where he ran unsuccessfully for mayor of San Francisco and became a labor leader and president of the Asiatic Exclusion League. Eventually, he was embroiled in some sinister dealings in the Los Angeles area, which ultimately led to his imprisonment in Leavenworth.^75.ï¿½ U’Ren did acknowledge the influence that Henry George’s Progress and Poverty had on him, and George’s views on the single tax may have made him wary of Bellamy’s work. See Lincoln Steffens, Upbuilders (1909; reprint, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968), 297; Leonie N. Brooke, “W.S. U’Ren, Father of Popular Government,” Oregonian, June 5, 1938; Esther G. Weinstein, “William Simon U’Ren: A Study of Persistence in Political Reform,” (Ph.D. diss., Syracuse University, 1967), 11–12; and Robert C. Woodward, “William Simon U’Ren: in an Age of Protest” (M.A. thesis, University of Oregon, 1956), 1. On the lasting impact of George’s influence in Oregon, see James H. Gilbert, “Single-Tax Movement in Oregon,” Political Science Quarterly 31 (1916): 25–52.^76.ï¿½ Thomas C. McClintock, “Seth Lewelling, William S. U’Ren and the Birth of the Oregon Progressive Movement,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 68:3 (September 1967): 201, 206; Weinstein, “William Simon U’Ren,” 11–12.^77.ï¿½ See, for example, Peter H. Curtis, “Bellamy Nationalism and Later Reform Movements, 1888–1940” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1973); and Henry Elsner, Jr., The Technocrats: Prophets of Automation (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1967). Elsner devotes an appendix to “Edward Bellamy and Technocracy.”^78.ï¿½ Morgan, Edward Bellamy, 297, 298. See also John Clark Ridpath, “Is the Prophet Dead?” Arena (August 1898): 284.^79.ï¿½ The most extensive compilation of literature on utopias in English remains Lyman Tower Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516–1985: An Annotated, Chronological Bibliography (New York: Garland Publishing, 1988). On American utopias, see Vernon Louis Parrington, Jr., American Dreams: A Study of American Utopias (Providence, R.I.: Brown University, 1947); Kenneth M. Roemer, The Obsolete Necessity: America in Utopian Writings, 1888–1900 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1976), and Charles J. Rooney, Jr., Dreams and Visions: A Study of American Utopias, 1865–1917 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985).^80.ï¿½ This work was also published as Paradise on Earth (Portland, Ore.: F.W. Balte Co., 1913). One of Hayes’s earlier works of reminiscences about Portland is, coincidentally, Looking Backward at Portland (Portland, Ore.: Kilham Stationery & Printing Co., 1911), but there is nothing beyond the title that bears a likeness to Bellamy’s work. See also Howard P. Segal, “Jeff W. Hayes: Reform Boosterism and Urban Utopianism,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 79:4 (Winter 1978): 345–57.^81.ï¿½ Charles Cole, Visitors from Mars: A Narrative (Portland, Ore.: Beattie & Hofmann, 1901); Ira S. Bunker, A Thousand Years Hence; or, Startling Events in the Year A.D. 3000. A Trip to Mars. Incidents by the Way (Portland, Ore.: Author, 1903); Francis H. Clarke, Morgan Rockefeller’s Will: A Romance of 1991–2 (Portland, Ore.: Clarke-Cree Publishing, 1909).^82.ï¿½ Heywood Broun, introduction to Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward 2000–1887 (1888; reprint, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, [1931]), i; Broun, “Back to Bellamy,” 292–3.^83.ï¿½ In author’s collection.^84.ï¿½ Carlos A. Schwantes, “Free Love and Free Speech on the Pacific Northwest Frontier,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 82:3 (Fall 1981): 273. Also see Carlos A. Schwantes, Radical Heritage: Labor, Socialism, and Reform in Washington and British Columbia, 1885–1917 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979).