The Labadie Collection A Hidden Treasure In Our Midst

What is it that you have come here to learn? Is it here in AGENDA where you expect to find at least a glimpse of the other side of the story? Is it here, at school, where you expect new horizons to come creeping up on you? The question, rephrased, is this: to what do you want to be exposed?

Perhaps, but not necessarily, you have heard of the Rare Books Department. It is located on the seventh floor of the U-M's Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library. In this department, overlooking campus and the rest of the city, is the Labadie Collection.

"There is this point about the Labadie Collection," said curator Edward Weber in a recent interview, "you feel that you better get what is offbeat. What we really have to do here is to try to collect the material that no one else is going to bother with."

Donated to U-M in 1911 by Joseph A. Labadie, the Labadie Collection is, unfortunately, a well-hidden treasure. It is the richest source of anarchist materials in this hemisphere, according to Weber. Also, the collection's broad scope of social protest literature and political views from both the radical right and radical left include such subjects as: socialism, pacifism, communism, free thought, sexual freedom, women's liberation, gay liberation, the underground press, colonialism, imperialism, and civil liberties with an emphasis on racial minorities.

Before understanding fully the significance of the collection , however, it is helpful to know about Joseph Labadie himself. His lifc and his philosophys, although those of only one man, are relevant in thal they served as the base for the once-infant collection.

Labadie (1850-1933) was a native of Michigan, born in Paw Paw, of French-Indian descent (his grandmother was the daughter of a Potawatomi chief.) He received little formal education, but fortunately attained a printer's apprenticeship in Indiana when he was 18. The apprenticeship not only contributed to his education, but was the impetus for his first involvement with organized labor.

Before returning to Detroit from Indiana in 1877, Labadie traveled a great deal and became involved with the "Bix Six" typographical union of New York City. He was one of the first field organizers for the Noble Order of Knights of Labor, the Greenback Labor Party candidate for mayor of Detroit in 1878, and the first president of the Michigan Federation of Labor.

Referred to as the "gentle anarchist," Labadie was known for his commitment to the betterment of human kind. R.C. Stewart, in an article entitled "The Labadie Labor Collection" (Michigan Alumnus Quarterly Review, May 10, 1947), explains this term as well as Labadie's character and integrity: "If Labadie became known lo his mullilude of friends as the 'gentle anarchist,' it was bccausc he was first and foremost a good ncighbor, a humanitarian, who despised (humans' cruelty to cach othcr) and fought it with such moral and intellectual resources as he had in his keeping. He never measured himself greater than his noonday shadow; he never claimed right and justice as the peculiar possession of those who agreed with him. In debate he appcars to have been reasonably contentious, and he regardcd anger as a childish weakness. His tolerance, as he used to say, extended even to the things he disliked."

When Labiadie was in his sixties. Carl Schmidt (a wealthy Detroit tanner) gave him a forty-acre farm which was located in what is now Kensington Metro Park. Only the fondations of the house remain and the nearby nature center hands out a few pamphlets on Labadie.

At this time (1911), Labadie donated the material he had collected throughout his life to U-M. It was still wrapped when, over 10 years later, Agnes Inglis took over the task of organizing and caring for the collection. Inglis (1870-1952), also an anarchist, categorized much of the collection and played a vital part in the acquisition of more material.

The collection has since grown to include 20,000 pamphlets, 7,000 books, numerous brochures, leaflets, flyers, union cards, buttons and badges, about 600 current periodicals (including AGENDA), cassette tapes, phonograph records and more. There are no definite guidelines as to what is to be included in the collection. And if the collection is to continue to reflect Labadie's "tolerance," the so-called guidelines will remain as nonexistent as they are.

"I think that policies and guidelines can be valuable," said Weber, "but I don't think that they should be rigidly enforced necessarily. Judgement should be left in the hands of the collector. . . for example, gay liberation was certainly not anything that was in the original Labadie plan."

Some eye-catching titles in the collection, evidence of the collection 's narrow (out of-the- ordinary) yet inclusive (most anything out-of-the-ordinary) format, include "Interrupt: Computer People for Peace," "The Anti-Bolshevist" (radical right) and "Birth Control Review: Dedicated to Voluntary Motherhood."

The collection, sometimes referred to as the "Labadie Labor Collection," contains a good deal of American labor history material dating back to the 1860s. The auto workers' unionsare well-represented (in content if not size), as are more radical organizations as the Knights of Labor, Industrial Workers of the World, and the Internationale Arbeiter-Union von Amerika (one of the oldest radical labor organizations in the United States).

One unfortunate aspect of the collection (although understandable) is that it must remain secured. Hours and hours of fascinating browsing, therefore, is not possible and you won't find material from the collection listed in the Graduate Library's second-floor catalogs. The collection is made accessible through bibliographies, indexes, an on-line data base for all serials and pamphlets, and a guide to manuscripts, which are available in the Rare Books Department.

Despite these restrictions, the Labadie Collection is the most frequently consulted separate unit in the department and is used constantly by students and researchers from all over the world.

The amount the collection is used, as well as the mere existence of it, is perhaps evidence of the power of one person's vision. "He (Labadie) worked for things that were not necessarily in the radical programs," said Weber, "reducing hours of work - anything to ameliorate the lot of the regular working man. (When I say 'working man' it sounds as if he were sexist, which wasn't true at all, of course, because as an anarchist he believed in the equality of the sexes.) It's a belief not only in intelligence of mankind, collective intelligence, which grows and grows. But I think you have to believe in the goodness of man, too. You have to believe that if you are informed enough, altruistic motives will be powerful. His belief was that if people would open their minds enough to listen, a climate would gradually be created where people could live fuller lives."