And They Called Them “Galleanisti”
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And They Called Them “Galleanisti”: The Rise of the Cronaca Sovversiva and the Formation of America’s Most Infamous Anarchist Faction (1895-1912) A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Andrew Douglas Hoyt IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Advised by Donna Gabaccia June 2018 Andrew Douglas Hoyt Copyright © 2018 i Acknowledgments This dissertation was made possible thanks to the support of numerous institutions including: the University of Minnesota, the Claremont Graduate University, the Italian American Studies Association, the UNICO Foundation, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura negli Stati Uniti, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, and the American Academy in Rome. I would also like to thank the many invaluable archives that I visited for research, particularly: the Immigration History Resource Center, the Archivio Centrale dello Stato, the Archivio Giuseppe Pinelli, the Biblioteca Libertaria Armando Borghi, the Archivio Famiglia Berneri – Aurelio Chessa, the Centre International de Recherches sur l’Anarchisme, the International Institute of Social History, the Emma Goldman Paper’s Project, the Boston Public Library, the Aldrich Public Library, the Vermont Historical Society, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, the Library of Congress, the Historic American Newspapers Project, and the National Digital Newspaper Program. Similarly, I owe a great debt of gratitude to tireless archivists whose work makes the writing of history possible, most notably: Rudolph J. Vecoli, Daniel Necas, Karen Lang, Fiamma Chiesa, Tomaso Maribini, Alessia Bruni, Elizabeth Haven Hawley, Rossella di Leo, Gaia Raimondi, Candace Falk, Barry Pateman and Marianne Enckell. This work greatly benefited from feedback provided by colleagues at the North American Anarchist Studies Network, the Society for the Study of European Periodicals, the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, the Labor and Working-Class History Association, the Nineteenth Century Studies Association, the American Historical Association, the Center for the History of Print & Digital Culture, the Royal Geographical Society, the Midwest World History Association, and the British Political Studies Association. Additionally, I received extensive guidance from many individual scholars, including but not limited to: Amedeo Bertolo, Kathy Ferguson, Pietro Di Paola, Davide Turcato, Kenyon Zimmer, Jennifer Guglielmo, Nunzio Pernicone, Marcella Bencivenni, Andrew Cornell, Nathan Jun, Tom Goyens, Carl Levy, Kerwin Shaffer, Allan Antliff, Andrea Staid, Maria Mattei, Antonio Senta, Paolo Finzi, Alex Prichard, Erica Lagalisse, Michele Presutto, Michele de Gregorio, Florian Eitel, Nino Kuhnis, Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, Montse Feu, Ron Sakolsky, Martha Ackelsberg, Justin Schell, and Jesse Cohn. The dissertation also owes much to teachers such as Jeffrey Pilcher, Mary Jo Maynes, Michael Gaudio, and Susanna Ferlito (all of whom served on my dissertation committee), as well as Tracey Deutsch, Erika Lee, Cawo Abdi, Saje Mathieu, and Barbara Welke and fellow students such as Hillary Gordon, Evan Taparata, Bernadette Perez, Ryan Johnson and Elizabeth Venditto. I could never have completed this project without the aid of my diligent and incredibly supportive adviser Donna Gabaccia and my unofficial mentors Dana Ward and Sal Salerno. And I would certainly have failed to finish this undertaking without the encouragement and patience of my loving family and friends including: Swati Guild, Sami Chan, Donald Hoyt, Gwen Hoyt, Ben Hoyt, Kim Hoyt, Elizabeth Velten, Tyler Velten, Sharron Velten, Elisa Grilli, Andrea Breda, Ryan Knight, Beatriz Paz, Aislinn Bird, Flavia Ravaioli, Andrew Hicks, Jessy Brown, Chiara Marcellini, Kellie Boss, William Budington, TK, and, of course, Siggy the Dog. ii This Dissertation is Dedicated To George and Bessie And to the Coast of California Where Their Ashes are Spread iii Table of Contents Lists of Maps & Figures .................................................................................................. iv Chapter 1—Immigrant Radicals, Propaganda Networks and Subversive Social Fields in the Early 20th Century .............................................................. 1 Chapter 2—Green Mountain Anarchists and the Founding of the Cronaca Sovversiva ................................................................................................. 41 Chapter 3—Anarchist Community Building in Barre ................................................ 76 Chapter 4—The Cronaca Sovversiva as the Champion of Immigrant Workers and the Battle Over Booze in Barre ............................................................ 126 Chapter 5—Galleani’s Arrest and the Rise of the Cronaca Sovversiva ................... 179 Chapter 6—Conflict within the Movement and the Emergence of the “Galleanisti” ................................................................................................................. 219 Chapter 7—The Relocation of The Cronaca Sovversiva ............................................ 257 Epilogue—Lynn and Barre After the Cronaca Relocated ........................................ 292 Concluding Analysis and Goals for Future Scholarship ........................................... 299 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 317 Bibliographic Index of Newspaper Articles:................................................. 333 Appendixes ................................................................................................................. 346 Appendix 1: Chronological List of Cronaca Sovversiva Articles Cited ............................. 346 Appendix 2: Collective Groups Contributing to Cronaca Sovversiva 1903-1919 ............ 354 Appendix 3: Lists of Purchasers of the Original Materiale Tipografico .......................... 362 Appendix 4: CPC Jackets for Founders of the Cronaca Sovversiva .................................. 363 Appendix 5: CPC Donors and Members of the Circolo Studi Sociali di Barre ............... 365 Appendix 6: CPC files on All identified Bundlers .............................................................. 370 Appendix 7: Plays Announced in the Cronaca Locale (in order of appearance) ............. 372 Appendix 8: Towns that Appear as New Subscribers After Galleani’s Trial: ................. 373 Appendix 9: Towns that Appear as Both New Subscribers and Donors after the Trial . 376 Appendix 10: Correspondents Involved with Relocating of the Cronaca Sovversiva ...... 377 iv List of Maps Map 1: Anarchist Collectives: Geographical Spread ..................................................................... 54 Map 2: Cluster of Sending Communities North of Milan ............................................................. 67 Map 3: Detail of Varese Communities .......................................................................................... 69 Map 4: Vermont Towns Appearing in Cronaca Sovversiva .......................................................... 73 Map 5: Major Towns Around Barre Where Cronaca Sovversiva Circulated .............................. 176 Map 6: Towns that Donated to Galleani Defense Fund ............................................................... 211 Map 7: First-Time Subscribers Post-Galleani’s Trial .................................................................. 213 Map 8: Location of Towns that Donated to Trasloco Fund ......................................................... 287 List of Figures Figure 1: Barre Social Events by Type and Day of the Week ....................................................... 80 Figure 2: Barre Social Events by Type and Month of the Year ..................................................... 81 Figure 3: Groups in Conflict with Barre Anarchists and Number of Times Referenced ............. 138 Figure 4: Number of Times Groups were Referenced in Conflict Notes ................................... 140 Figure 5: Number of Times Individuals were Mentioned in Cronaca Locale ............................. 141 Figure 6: Financial Transactions Minus Sottoscrizione, Abbonamenti and Galleani Defense Fund ............................................................................................................................................. 208 Figure 7: Unified Graph of Cronaca Sovversiva Financial Data ................................................ 209 Figure 8: Total Number of Donations to Galleani Defense Fund by Town ................................. 210 Figure 9: Published Financial Record of Galleani Defense Fund ................................................ 224 Figure 10: Total Annual Donations to Cronaca Sovversiva from Barre and Lynn ..................... 289 1 Chapter 1 Immigrant Radicals, Propaganda Networks and Subversive Social Fields in the Early 20th Century This dissertation develops a new methodology for writing the history of transnational immigrant anarchism that I call “propaganda-outward.”1 It requires an extremely close reading of anarchist print culture that avoids a focus on ideological debates. Instead of examining polemics, this approach mines financial records and other more mundane data related to the daily lives of immigrant radicals and their social networks. By focusing on these elements, which have been largely overlooked in scholarship dominated by biographies of major propagandists and dramatic events (such as strikes and assassinations),