The Radical Life and Tragic Decline of Warren Starr Van Valkenburgh

Image of front page of the anarchist newspaper Road to Freedom while under the editorship of Warren Starr Van Valkenburgh. 

Schenectady’s association with radical politics in the first quarter of the twentieth century is perhaps most associated with George Lunn, Schenectady’s first and only Socialist mayor. Another of Schenectady’s radicals of the period, Warren Starr Van Valkenburgh, is much less well known. A Socialist-turned-anarchist, critic of Lunn, and friend of the famous anarchist Emma Goldman, Van Valkenburgh experienced his political awakening in Schenectady and brought his perspective about local events to a broader audience through articles in Goldman’s magazine, Mother Earth. After relocating to the New York City area, Van Valkenburgh achieved some prominence as the editor of Road to Freedom, the most prominent anarchist periodical of the 1920s. However, the last ten years of Van Valkenburgh’s life were a struggle, marred by spotty employment and heavy drinking. This article serves as but a scant sketch of the life of a man whose personal history intersected with the history of Schenectady for about a decade.

Warren Starr Van Valkenburgh was born in 1884 in Albany. Van Valkenburgh first appears in the 1909 city directory, living at 10 Duane Avenue and working for General Electric as a bookkeeper. By 1914 he and his wife had moved to Scotia, where the couple and their two children would live until the family relocated to Staten Island around 1918.

The 1910s were a dynamic time in Schenectady. Between 1900 and 1920, the city’s population nearly tripled, as workers flocked to Schenectady to work at G.E. and the American Locomotive Company. The voices of reformers, suffragists, labor organizers, and Socialists were growing in volume and in number throughout the decade. Van Valkenburgh became involved with the Socialist Party soon after moving to the city. On September 19, 1912, he wrote a letter officially resigning from the party in favor of anarchism. He served as secretary of the Economic Club (soon renamed the Sociology Club), a group organized to study and debate social problems, from 1914 to 1918. One of his associates in the Sociology Club, Shankar Gokhale, was also active with Van Valkenburgh in co-founding the Schenectady Free Thought Society, an organization formed for the study and discussion of religious thought, in 1915.

Downtown Schenectady in 1910. This view shows State Street from Centre Street (now Broadway) looking toward Jay Street. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

Although Van Valkenburgh was somewhat politically active locally, his connections outside of Schenectady proved to be of more consequence in his life. Around 1912, he began corresponding with Emma Goldman, the anarchist orator who was branded “the most hated woman in America” after being accused of complicity in the assassination of President McKinley in 1901. Van Valkenburgh would become one of Goldman’s lifelong friends and correspondents and, in later years, helped to raise funds to support her financially while she wrote her memoirs. He also organized three speaking engagements for her in Schenectady in the early part of 1915.

Goldman’s local lectures provided a focus for Van Valkenburgh’s criticisms of Mayor George Lunn in what would be his first article for Mother Earth. In addition to anarchist luminaries such as Peter Kropotkin and Lucy Parsons, Mother Earth featured articles by Margaret Sanger, Leo Tolstoy, Margaret Anderson, and Helen Keller, and featured cover art by Man Ray and Robert Minor. Its subscribers numbered about 10,000. Van Valkenburgh’s article, “Schenectady Socialism,” appeared in the May 1915 issue. In it, he charged that The Citizen’s refusal to accept a paid advertisement for one of Goldman’s lectures, the paper’s insinuation that Goldman’s lectures were organized by the Democrats, and Lunn’s refusal to debate Goldman on the grounds that “debates settle nothing” -- while he engaged in a series of debates with other politicians -- amounted to hypocrisy on Lunn’s part. “There was a time when I believed Dr. Lunn as a sincere man,” he wrote. “Now I know he is an unscrupulous charlatan ... As a politician he can operate the steam roller with the dexterity of Elihu Root ... If he believes in a free press, as he says he does, it is in the other fellow’s paper, not his own. It would be a treat to hear him wax warm in his verbosity if only he could be induced to take as his theme some Sunday night, ‘Why I preach one thing and practice another.’” Van Valkenburgh closed by stating his hope that Schenectadians would soon realize that the city was the victim of “too much Socialist politics and too little social conscience.”

Another of Van Valkenburgh’s articles, in the November 1915 issue of Mother Earth, discussed a strike at General Electric for an eight-hour workday. By the evening of the second day of the strike, 12,000 workers were participating. “The most illustrious feature, aside from the unity of the strikers, was the total absence of violence,” wrote Van Valkenburgh. “The parade of more than twelve thousand men, women and girls, peacefully walking into a struck factory for their pay without a policeman in sight was a wonderfully majestic spectacle.”  The latter half of the article stressed the importance of including office workers in the future of labor organizing, a view perhaps influenced by Van Valkenburgh’s own position as a bookkeeper. In the end, the workers returned to their jobs after five weeks, not having won their demands. Despite this loss, Van Valkenburgh stated that the result of the strike should not discourage the workers, citing their courage in taking on G.E. as “ample proof that they will not long remain in servitude without protest.” Alongside this championing of the striking workers, Van Valkenburgh could not resist taking some digs at Lunn, implying that the support voiced for the strike in the pages of The Citizen was a cynical ploy to secure votes for Lunn that fall: “for his paper to do anything else,” he wrote, “would eventuate in political suicide, and the crafty Dr. Lunn has no such good intentions.”

Aside from the articles written with a local focus, Van Valkenburgh wrote many other short pieces on a variety of topics during his time in Schenectady, including militarism, the execution of labor activist Joseph Hillstrom, and a championing of the birth control movement as led by Margaret Sanger. In addition to writing articles for Mother Earth, he also contributed to The Blast, edited by Alexander Berkman, Revolt and Road to Freedom, both edited by Hippolyte Havel, and Instead of a Magazine, edited by Herman Kuehn.

Around 1918, Van Valkenburgh moved to the New York City area, where he would live for the remainder of his life. He was hired to work in advertising for the Elliott-Fisher Company, a manufacturer of typewriters. In 1927 he was fired from his position following his active and public involvement on behalf of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrant anarchists accused of murder in one of America’s most notorious trials. Van Valkenburgh’s statements about the case made the New York papers, and he was convinced that this was the reason for his termination. Following his dismissal, he found it very difficult to find lasting employment and was convinced that he had been blacklisted. In late 1934, he wrote to anarchist printer Joseph Ishill: “Since that fateful year [1927] I have held about six jobs at different times, from each of which I was removed either because of some indescretion [sic] regarding my opinions ... or because of some reason which the boss was ‘not at liberty to divulge.’ That infamous black-list ... does, in fact, exist ... In the last 7 years, I have possibly worked three.” He had tried to salvage his professional career by assuming a pseudonym, Walter Starrett, for his political writing and activity after he was fired.

Van Valkenburgh’s compatriots in New York City remembered him as a fiery speaker with a sharp tongue. Jack Frager recalled him as “an acid critic of his opponents [who] refused to show tact or pull punches.” Franz Fleigler characterized Van Valkenburgh as having “the native flavor of American sharpness and a good manner of talking and making sense at the same time.” Louis Slater recalled him being knocked off of the speaker’s platform in Union Square by his Communist opponents. A 1931 New York Times article describes a rally where Van Valkenburgh drew boos for comparing the United States favorably to the Soviet Union, saying that politicians “are all alike, whether in New York, Centralia, or Moscow, and you can’t hold a protest meeting in Moscow, but in capitalist America you can at least speak.” When booed, he retorted, “The truth hurts, doesn’t it?” and characterized those heckling him as “the children of Jesuits in Moscow.”

Along with his speeches, Van Valkenburgh’s friends in New York also remembered his heavy drinking following his dismissal from Elliott-Fisher. “He drank very heavily,” Sarah Taback remembered. “One day while walking to a meeting I saw him lying in the gutter on 14th Street, drunk and dirty and mumbling to himself.” Arnold Leonard Ross recalled that Van Valkenburgh “never got over” his firing. “He took to drink and fell heavily into debt and finally separated from his wife.” After Road to Freedom ceased publication in 1932, Van Valkenburgh became less prominent in anarchist circles, although during the last years of his life he remained active, bringing speakers to New York City and editing the periodical Spanish Revolution in support of the anarchists during the Spanish Civil War. He died on May 22, 1938, at the age of 53. Following his death, Challenge: A Libertarian Weekly remembered him as “a man who willingly gave up position, career and personal security out of devotion to an Ideal.”

Happy Birthday, Charles Steinmetz!

Charles Steinmetz at work. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

"Through a decade he led the advance of electrical engineers to the modern understanding of the electric circuit, the transformer, induction motor, alternator and high-voltage phenomena. Dr. Steinmetz assisted his brother engineers by an untold degree by his books, papers and discussions, by his profoundly intelligent vision and by his example of persistent, ably directed enthusiasm." 

- Professor Harris J. Ryan, President of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers

"mathematics to Steinmetz was muscular strength and long walks over the hills and the kiss of a girl in love and big evenings spent swilling beer with your friends"
- John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel

April 9, 1865 marks the birth of one of the most famous Schenectadians - Charles Proteus Steinmetz. Known as the "Wizard of Schenectady," Steinmetz was a mathematician and engineer. He was born in Breslau, Germany, and came to the United States at age 24 to work for the General Electric Company. After working in Lynn, Massachusetts, Steinmetz moved to Schenectady, where he lived until his death in 1923.

Charles Steinmetz at his camp along the Mohawk River to the west of Schenectady. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

Steinmetz is best known for his work in developing a mathematical method of understanding alternating current using complex numbers, which allowed engineers to extend the transmission of electrical current over long distances and enabled the great expansion of the electric power industry in the United States. His research on magnetism led him to his discovery of the law of hysteresis, which allowed inventors to design motors that would not overheat. After he began working for General Electric, he very quickly became a star engineer for the company. He helped to found the GE Research Laboratory and was a distinguished professor at Union College, where he founded the electrical engineering program. In 1916, he built a lightning generator. His discoveries with the generator helped to create efficient devices to harness electricity for use in industry. Steinmetz also held over 200 patents. 

In addition to his achievements as a scientist and mathematician, Steinmetz was well known for his activity as a Socialist. His political convictions began when he was a young man in Germany; increasing scrutiny of Socialist activity likely contributed to his decision to leave the country (his home life with his family was also tense). Steinmetz began serving on the Board of Education in 1908, where he introduced free textbooks for primary-level students, established a free lunch program, and advocated for special education programs. When the Socialist Party came to power in Schenectady with the election of Mayor George Lunn, Steinmetz was elected President of the Common Council and was appointed to serve as President of the Board of Education. Following the Russian Revolution, Steinmetz wrote to Vladimir Lenin, offering to help electrify Russia. Lenin declined the offer, but sent a photograph of himself and signed it "To the highly esteemed Charles Proteus Steinmetz, one of the few exceptions to the united front of representatives of science and culture opposed to the proletariat." 

Charles Steinmetz with his adopted grandchildren -- Billy, Marjorie ("Midge"), and Joe Hayden -- and actor Douglas Fairbanks in Hollywood, ca. 1923. Photograph from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

Steinmetz suffered from dwarfism, hunchback, and hip dysplasia, which ran in his family; he chose not to marry and create a family for fear of passing on his conditions to children. However, he longed for family life. Steinmetz became very close friends with one of lab assistants, Joseph LeRoy Hayden. Eventually, Hayden and his wife, Corinne, moved into Steinmetz's Wendell Avenue home. Steinmetz legally adopted Joseph Hayden as his son, and Joseph and Corinne's three children had "Daddy" Steinmetz for their grandfather. "He was a perfect dear, and I really can't say enough about him," 94-year-old Marjorie Hayden said of Steinmetz in 2003. "Whatever we wanted, he got for us. We were completely spoiled by him."

In addition to his achievements in life, Steinmetz was known as a colorful character. He kept a strange assortment of animals at his home, including owls, alligators, a raccoon, and a Gila monster. He was almost always seen chomping on a cigar -- even when swimming. He kept up an active social life and was known as an avid card-player and practical joker. His colleague Ernst Berg later recalled "it seems extraordinary that so much real work was done because we played so much."

Emma Goldman in Schenectady



Portrait of Emma Goldman, ca. 1911. Source: Library of Congress.


Emma Goldman was an anarchist, activist, writer, and orator known for her fiery speeches. A frequent orator about topics as widely varied as militarism, birth control, and modern drama, she was branded "the most hated woman in America" after being accused of complicity in the assassination of President McKinley in 1901. Goldman spoke around the country and the world, and she is known to have spoken in Schenectady on at least four occasions.

The first occasion that Goldman spoke in Schenectady was on January 16, 1908. The topic of her speech as "Syndicalism - A New Phase in the Labor Movement." In writing about her speaking tour that year, Goldman wrote: "Schenectady gave the largest American audience and a very enthusiastic one at that." Julius Seltzer, an anarchist who lived in Schenectady from 1907 until 1911, helped to organize the talk. In an oral history interview conducted in 1972, Seltzer remembered organizing the lecture for Goldman: "it was an enormous success, with an overflow crowd." Of Goldman herself, Seltzer remembered that she was "affectionate, always hugging and squeezing me . . . she was a homely woman, but once she mounted the rostrum she became a different woman, beaming with fire, beautiful in her Spanish shawl."



"Schenectady Ripe for the Revolution." This headline appeared in the daily Socialist newspaper New York Call in 1911, as George Lunn's election as the first Socialist mayor for the city of Schenectady seemed to be a real possibility. A few years later, in 1914, the Albany Evening Journal referred to Schenectady as being "a hotbed of Socialism." Image obtained via http://www.fultonhistory.com/.


Goldman had planned another trip to Schenectady to speak in 1911, but the talk was cancelled. She did not speak in Schenectady again until 1915, when she spoke three times within a period of a few weeks. Her first talk in 1915 was on February 24, 1915 at the Red Men's Hall at Ferry Street and Liberty Street. About 300 people gathered to hear her lecture, entitled "Why the Socialists of Germany Betrayed Their Cause to the Kaiser." An article in the Schenectady Gazette the following day called the talk "an interesting discussion of the present war in Europe," and shared quotations from Goldman's talk. The article commented on Goldman's refusal to have a chairman introduce her: "The speaker was not introduced and occupied the stage alone, saying she had found a chairman as much of a hindrance as a help. By way of personal introduction she said she was not sent by the Republican or Democratic party nor by the Catholic Church."

Headline of story highlighting Goldman's lecture on February 24, 1915, that appeared in the Schenectady Gazette the following day. Image obtained via http://www.fultonhistory.com/.

Soon after, Goldman spoke again at the Red Men's Hall on March 10, 1915, on the topic of "Some Misconceptions of Free Love." Following her talk, the Schenectady Gazette reported on her lecture under the headline "Emma Goldman Scores Marriage." The reporter did not quote Goldman, but simply paraphrased her talk and delivered it in a matter-of-fact manner: "The speaker took the stand marriage is an economic and social institution and not a religious one. She branded it as legalized immorality. That the marriage ceremony is a  mere farce was another statement. As proof of this she claimed that no intelligent woman would take the marriage vow with the intention of keeping it, as that would be swearing away all her self-respect and independence and giving herself over into chattel slavery."



This letter to the editor and reply appeared in the Schenectady Gazette on March 16, 1915. Goldman was a divisive figure among leftists during this time period. Some groups and individuals aligned themselves with her voice to increase their profile, while others sought to distance themselves from her.  Image obtained via http://www.fultonhistory.com/.


The last time Goldman spoke in Schenectady was on March 31, 1915. She spoke at the Machinists' Hall at 258 State Street on "The Birth Strike," delineating the disadvantages of a large family for working men and championing the cause of Margaret Sanger, who was facing prosecution under the Comstock Law for distributing a family planning pamphlet. This talk was organized under the auspices of the Schenectady Social Science League; thus far, I have not come across any mentions of the organization other than in connection with this lecture.

Lucia Newell Oliviere

Lucia Newell Oliviere, ca. 1920. Photograph

from Grems-Doolittle Library Collection.

Oliviere was born and named Lucinda Newell in North River, New York, around March 1855. After her father died, she was taken into the home of Rev. Enos Putnam in Johnsburg, an abolitionist who is said to have helped escaped enslaved people on their way to freedom in Canada. She was trained as a teacher at Albany Normal School and went on to teach for twelve years in Peekskill, Elmira, and Chestertown. She married Frank Oliver, and the couple had their first child, Julia, in 1879. Julia went on to be known as Jeanne Robert Foster, a noted poet, model, and journalist. Lucinda and her husband moved to Glens Falls during the 1890s and were living in Schenectady by 1900. Oliviere would continue to live in Schenectady until her death in 1927. After moving to Schenectady, Lucinda changed her name to "Lucia" and the family altered its last name to "Oliviere." In Schenectady, Oliviere became active in the Socialist party and local politics, writing in newspapers such as the Knickerbocker Press and George Lunn's newspaper, The Citizen. She wrote and lectured about a number of topics related to politics and social justice, advocating anti-militarism, socialism, suffrage for women, women's rights, labor rights, education, birth control, and the abolition of child labor and capital punishment.

Election ephemera from Lucia Oliviere Scrapbook. A hand-
written note beneath the card reads: "This card was used on
election day in Schenectady on November 6, 1917 - when
 equal suffrage was won."

Soon after suffrage for women was granted, Oliviere began making appeals to women voters, urging them to support Socialist candidates. In a November 1919 article titled "Women of Schenectady - How Will You Vote?" Oliviere addresses the working-class women of Schenectady, writing "the Democrat and Republican parties having each fought your right to political equality are now persistently seeking to secure your vote in their behalf. They have not changed their ideals - they still believe woman's place is in the home - but they remember that the women of the west turned the scales and elected Woodrow Wilson on the slogan 'he kept us out of war.' . . . You are willing to go out on a strike at much loss to yourself and your family, but you strike against the very conditions which you vote to maintain in November of every year. An ape should have more sense than that."  Throughout her articles, Oliviere addressed the concerns of working women, whether in an article highlighting the story of a female union organizer laid off by General Electric or an article aimed at wealthy families suggesting reforms that might make domestic work more attractive to young women than factory work.

Card promoting Lucia Oliviere, Socialist
Candidate for Supervisor of 8th Ward (1919).
From Lucia Oliviere Scrapbook.

Oliviere commented favorably on the "flapper" phenomenon of the 1920s, observing in a railroad station a young woman in flapper attire, unconcernedly crossing her bared legs while munching on a piece of fruit and reading "A Treatise on Political Economy for Women." Oliviere writes: "the coming woman of which a flapper is the advance guard are determined to have liberty and equality, to wear what they choose, to work at any trade or profession they desire, and the old fogies err if they think this will have any bad effect on public morals . . . the flappers will not forget mother today. They may feel a little sorry for our Victorian ideas." Oliviere also used her poked fun at charity-minded wealthy society ladies, employing a fictional "Mrs. Vanderburger" who offers skim milk to poor women an children as charity while advocating that "rich, creamy milk" be fed to pigs and calves to produce the finest meat for her family.

In addition to her work as a journalist, Oliviere also wrote poetry and fiction, which would occasionally appear printed in the newspaper. Her poem "Steinmetz" was published in the New York Times on January 30, 1923, after Charles' Steinmetz's death on January 26. The Anthology of Modern Poetry included Oliviere's poems "Carillo" and "She Will Go Out and Close the Door." A volume of Oliviere's poetry, titled Old Houses, was edited by Jeanne Robert Foster and published in 1928.

Oliviere was also active in local politics and civic activity. She was active in the fight for women's suffrage, organizing the Schenectady Industrial Suffrage Association and serving as its secretary. Under the Socialist ticket, she ran for the position of Schenectady County clerk in 1918, supervisor of the eighth ward in 1919, and ran twice for state senator, in 1922 and 1926. She was also a member of the Women's International League, the Consumers League, and the Woman's Club of Schenectady.

For those interested in finding out more about Oliviere's life in Schenectady, the Grems-Doolittle Library has a clipping file and photograph file for the surname Oliviere. We also have in our holdings a scrapbook compiled by Oliviere that includes clippings of her articles, poems, and short fiction, family photographs, and election-related ephemera.