From Anarchistories by Tom Goyens
It is perhaps not surprising that before 1939, few serious studies on American anarchism by scholars outside the movement existed. By “serious,” I mean an effort to move beyond sensationalist accounts and a recognition that anarchism—its movement and its thought—deserves to be studied on its own terms. Not a single paper on anarchism was presented at the annual meetings of the American Historical Association during this period. The movement itself was in decline during the 1920s and 1930s, a development that certainly contributed to a broader climate of disinterest and amnesia. Yet even in this inhospitable intellectual landscape, several scholars—now entirely forgotten—made genuine attempts to treat anarchism with the rigor it deserved.
As far as I can tell, the first American scholar-historian (outside the movement) to research and write about anarchism was Herbert Levi Osgood (1855-1918). Born in Maine to a farming family, Osgood distanced himself early on from the overly Christian atmosphere during his undergraduate years and adopted a secular, reformist outlook. He was drawn to scientific investigation and historical impartiality. Encouraged by a mentor, he studied German and then traveled to Germany in 1882, where he absorbed the scientific-historical principles associated with Leopold von Ranke.
Only two years after the Haymarket affair, Osgood submitted his Columbia dissertation, “Socialism and Anarchism: Rodbertus and Proudhon,” in 1888; it appeared in print the following year. At a time when anarchism was widely portrayed as a foreign contagion, Osgood rejected this view outright and spoke forcefully against “the clamor for restrictions upon immigration.” “Anarchism,” he argued, was instead “a natural product of our economic and political conditions. It is to be treated as such, both theoretically and practically. Anarchism is a product of democracy. It is as much at home on American soil as on European."1 Although his work focused on political philosophy rather than social history, it is noteworthy that Osgood drew on German-language sources, including Johann Most’s newspaper Freiheit. In later years, he turned away from radical politics altogether, devoting himself instead to colonial history.
Osgood’s work marked an important first step, but it also revealed the limits of a purely intellectual approach to anarchism, one distant from the movement itself. By the interwar years, a new generation of scholars could, at least in theory, engage directly with the surviving protagonists of American anarchism. Modern historians of anarchism would envy scholars of the 1920s and 1930s for precisely this reason: many of the movement’s leading lights were still around.
Eunice Minette Schuster (1907-1992) was the first American scholar-historian to take advantage of this opportunity by researching and writing about anarchism through direct contact with the movement. Born in St. Louis in 1907, she was the youngest of three daughters of Otto Schuster, a barber, and Estella Schuster, both Illinois natives. Her grandparents had emigrated from Germany, and sometime before her twelfth birthday the family moved to Seattle, where her father briefly worked in the shipyards.
Schuster entered Cornell University in 1926 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa a year later. Like Osgood before her, she spent her senior year studying history in Germany, this time at the University of Munich. These formative experiences—academic distinction, study abroad, German-American roots—likely shaped her capacity to approach anarchism as both a political doctrine and a social movement.
In the fall of 1930, amid the Great Depression, she enrolled at Smith College to pursue a master’s degree in history. Her thesis adviser was Merle Curti, then a young professor who would later emerge as a pioneer in American intellectual history. Curti suggested “The History of Anarchism in America” as a thesis topic and managed to secure copies of Mother Earth for her, though little else. Earlier that spring, Curti had met Emma Goldman in Paris while researching the peace movement and anti-war activism. It was an extraordinary experience. Goldman, sixty-one and living in southern France, proved eager to help, supplying contacts and advice.
Curti urged Schuster to write to Goldman immediately. In her November 1930 letter, Schuster asked where she might “obtain primary source materials,” including copies of Johann Most’s Freiheit. She emphasized her desire to write an “unpartisan” account that would also address the repression anarchists had faced in the United States. She also inquired about the movement’s former numerical strength and its views on the vexed question of human nature.2
Goldman replied from France about two weeks later. Delighted by the project, she offered whatever assistance she could despite the pressing deadlines for her memoirs. She wrote to old comrades like Warren Van Valkenburgh, Hippolyte Havel, Sébastien Faure, and Agnes Inglis, who managed what would soon become the formidable Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan. Goldman also urged Schuster not to overlook the work of anarchism’s foremost historian, Max Nettlau.3 “Anything we do,” Goldman wrote, “will be amply rewarded if you succeed in making your thesis truly representative of Anarchism. For me it will be the fulfillment of one of my dreams.”4 It was, perhaps, a heavy burden to place on a graduate student.
Schuster ultimately submitted a 308-page typewritten thesis in May 1931 titled “Native American Anarchism.” The work focused primarily on early, individualist anarchism. Schuster and Curti both maintained that insufficient primary sources made a comprehensive treatment of American anarchism impossible. Time constraints may also have played a role. Only the final chapter was devoted to the “Most-Berkman-Goldman anarchism,” though it nonetheless provided a clear overview of key figures, developments, and events.5
These limitations did not go unnoticed, least of all by Emma Goldman herself. She was disappointed. Given the wealth of information available through her network, Goldman could not understand, as she wrote to Curti, “why she should have dealt only with the academic [i.e. individualist] when the later period is so much more timely and interesting.”6 She was also “startled” by the title of Schuster’s final chapter, “The Great Disillusion.” Why disillusion? “The fact that a great ideal does not succeed,” she replied to Schuster, “is no proof against it nor is it any indication that its sponsors have been disillusioned.”7
To be fair, Schuster openly acknowledged that anarchist-communism “has been treated here in only a very cursory manner.”8 Curti, for his part, considered the work “very good” and encouraged her to expand it. “She is a young woman of fine intelligence, deep human sympathy, and in no way at all prejudiced against anarchism,” he reassured Goldman.9 Published in 1932 as Native American Anarchism: A Study of Left-Wing American Individualism, the thesis received a favorable review in The American Historical Review, which praised it as “a work of thorough scholarship and intelligent interpretation.”10
Encouraged by Curti and Goldman, Schuster sought further opportunities to continue her research. She hoped to work at the Labadie Collection in Ann Arbor and also applied for a foreign fellowship, though unsuccessfully. Instead, she accepted a fellowship at the University of Chicago, which she soon left. When it was announced that Emma Goldman would be permitted to visit the United States from February to May 1934, Schuster was elated, though it remains unclear whether the two ever met. Schuster did lecture on American anarchism at the University of Chicago on March 20, 1934; Goldman, however, was speaking in Cleveland at the time. In the last surviving letter, Schuster floated the idea of writing Goldman’s biography. Nothing came of it. “I want to see you, aside from the study,” she wrote in 1934, “because I admire you so tremendously. You have dared to live when the rest of us have been afraid!”11
Osgood and Schuster represent two distinct but complementary beginnings in the historiography of American anarchism: the first treating anarchism as a legitimate subject of political theory, the second attempting—however imperfectly—to recover it as a lived social movement. That Schuster’s project remained unfinished reflects not her failure, but the broader practical obstacles facing early historians.
* Photo of Osgood in Dixon Ryan Fox, Herbert Levi Osgood: An American Scholar (NY: Columbia University Press, 1924), frontispiece.
Osgood, “Scientific Anarchism.” Political Science Quarterly 4, 1 (1889): p. 30.
Schuster to Goldman, Nov 2, 1930, Emma Goldman Papers #145, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam (hereafter: IISH).
Goldman to Schuster, Nov 18, 1930, Goldman Papers #145, IISH.
Goldman to Schuster, undated [Jan 1931?], Goldman Papers #145, IISH.
Schuster to Goldman, Oct 25, 1931, Goldman Papers #145, IISH.
Goldman to Curti, Aug 2, 1931. Goldman Papers #145, IISH.
Goldman to Schuster, Nov 18, 1931, Goldman Papers #145, IISH.
Schuster, Native American Anarchism: A Study of Left-Wing American Individualism
(Northampton, MA: Smith College, 1932), 184. She cited Osgood in her bibliography.
Curti to Goldman, Jul 12, 1931, Goldman Papers #145, IISH.
“Historical News,” The American Historical Review 38, 4 (1933): p.842.
Schuster to Goldman, Mar 9, 1934, Goldman Papers #145, IISH.




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