Dyer Daniel Lum (February 15, 1839 – April 6, 1893) was an American

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessar ...

labor activist A union organizer (or union organiser in Commonwealth spelling) is a specific type of trade union member (often elected) or an appointed union official. A majority of unions appoint rather than elect their organizers. In some unions, the orga ...

and

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or w ...

. A leading

syndicalist Syndicalism is a revolutionary current within the left-wing of the labor movement that seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of pr ...

and a prominent

left-wing Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...

intellectual An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for the normative problems of society. Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator o ...

of the 1880s, Lum is best remembered as the lover and mentor of early anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre. Lum was a prolific writer who authored a number of key anarchist texts and contributed to publications including ''

Mother Earth Mother Earth may refer to: *The Earth goddess in any of the world's mythologies *Mother goddess * Mother Nature, a common personification of the Earth and its biosphere as the giver and sustainer of life Written media and literature * "Mother Ea ...

'', ''Twentieth Century'', ''

Liberty Liberty is the ability to do as one pleases, or a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant (i.e. privilege). It is a synonym for the word freedom. In modern politics, liberty is understood as the state of being free within society fr ...

'' (

Benjamin Tucker Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (; April 17, 1854 – June 22, 1939) was an American individualist anarchist and libertarian socialist.Martin, James J. (1953)''Men Against the State: The Expositers of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827–1908''< ...

individualist anarchist Individualist anarchism is the branch of anarchism that emphasizes the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems."What do I mean by individualism? I mean by individualism t ...

journal), ''The Alarm'' (the journal of the International Working People's Association) and ''The Open Court'', among others. Following the arrest of Albert Parsons, Lum edited ''The Alarm'' from 1892 to 1893. Traditionally portrayed as a "genteel, theoretical anarchist", Lum has recently been recast by the scholarship of Paul Avrich as an "uncompromising rebel thirsty for violence and

martyrdom A martyr (, ''mártys'', "witness", or , ''marturia'', stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an externa ...

" in light of his involvement in the

Haymarket affair The Haymarket affair, also known as the Haymarket massacre, the Haymarket riot, the Haymarket Square riot, or the Haymarket Incident, was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square i ...

in 1886.

Life

Lum was a descendant of the prominent

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

Tappan family as his grandfather was an

American revolutionary Patriots, also known as Revolutionaries, Continentals, Rebels, or American Whigs, were the colonists of the Thirteen Colonies who rejected British rule during the American Revolution, and declared the United States of America an independent n ...

. In hopes of bringing about the end of

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

, he volunteered to fight for the

Union Army During the American Civil War, the Union Army, also known as the Federal Army and the Northern Army, referring to the United States Army, was the land force that fought to preserve the Union (American Civil War), Union of the collective U.S. st ...

in the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and t ...

. He served as an

adjutant Adjutant is a military appointment given to an officer who assists the commanding officer with unit administration, mostly the management of human resources in an army unit. The term is used in French-speaking armed forces as a non-commission ...

in the Fourteenth New York Cavalry and later as a brevet captain, seeing combat in the Red River Campaign. A

bookbinder Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book of codex format from an ordered stack of ''signatures'', sheets of paper folded together into sections that are bound, along one edge, with a thick needle and strong thread. Cheaper, ...

by trade, Lum became active in the American labor movement in the aftermath of the war. He served as a secretary to Samuel Gompers and ran for

lieutenant governor A lieutenant governor, lieutenant-governor, or vice governor is a high officer of state, whose precise role and rank vary by jurisdiction. Often a lieutenant governor is the deputy, or lieutenant, to or ranked under a governor — a "second-in-comm ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...

on the Labor Reform ticket of abolitionist Wendell Phillips in 1870. Lum became widely known in 1877 after a period traveling across the country as secretary to a

congressional committee A congressional committee is a legislative sub-organization in the United States Congress that handles a specific duty (rather than the general duties of Congress). Committee membership enables members to develop specialized knowledge of the ...

appointed to "inquire into the depression of labor". Between 1880 and 1892, he was an advocate of

direct action Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power (e.g. economic or physical) to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to oth ...

and trade unionism and in later years was "the moving spirit of the American group" which worked for the commutation of

Alexander Berkman Alexander Berkman (November 21, 1870June 28, 1936) was a Russian-American anarchist and author. He was a leading member of the anarchist movement in the early 20th century, famous for both his political activism and his writing. Be ...

's sentence for the latter's attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick.

Relationship with Voltairine de Cleyre

When Lum met Voltairine de Cleyre in 1888, he was twenty-seven years her elder and had lived a life rich in experience. They forged an "unshakable" friendship and Lum had a profound influence on de Cleyre's political development which evolved in an opposite direction to his as she started out as an orthodox Tuckerite

, but became increasingly involved with the radical labor movement and ultimately called for a panarchist anarchism without adjectives movement. Their relationship ended after five years of intense involvement, leaving their planned collaborative project—a lengthy social and philosophical anarchist novel—ultimately unpublished.

Involvement in the Haymarket affair

Lum was closely associated with and worked alongside those involved in the

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

in 1886. In an 1891 essay, he wrote that

August Spies August Vincent Theodore Spies (, ; December 10, 1855November 11, 1887) was an American upholsterer, radical labor activist, and newspaper editor. Spies is remembered as one of the anarchists in Chicago who were found guilty of conspiracy to commi ...

sent word to the militants on the afternoon of May 4 that they were not to bring arms to the Haymarket. This order was not respected, Lum noted, as "one man disobeyed that order; always self-determined, he acted upon his own responsibility, preferring to be prepared for resistance to onslaught rather than to quietly imitate the spiritual "lamb led to slaughter". Lum asserted that the eight defendants were initially unaware of the bomb-thrower's identity, although it became known to two of them ("but neither Spies nor Parsons"), believed by Paul Avrich to be George Engel and

Adolph Fischer Adolph Fischer (1858 – November 11, 1887) was an anarchist and labor union activist tried and executed after the Haymarket Riot. Early life Adolph Fischer immigrated to the United States in 1873 at the age of 15. He became an apprentic ...

. In Lum's account, the bomb-thrower's name "was never mentioned in the trial and is today unknown to the public". Paul Avrich attests that Lum urged Albert Parsons to refuse

clemency A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the j ...

and plotted to rescue the anarchists from Cook County Jail by attacking it with explosives. According to de Cleyre, he then assisted the suicide of Louis Lingg (one of the eight defendants) by smuggling into Lingg's prison cell a

dynamite Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents (such as powdered shells or clay), and stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern Germany, and patented in 1867. It rapidl ...

cap concealed in a

cigar A cigar is a rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco leaves made to be smoked. Cigars are produced in a variety of sizes and shapes. Since the 20th century, almost all cigars are made of three distinct components: the filler, the binder l ...

which Lingg subsequently lit, thereby blowing off half his face and leaving himself lingering for several hours in torturous pain before dying.

Death

Lum committed suicide in 1893 after suffering from severe depression, although at the time the cause of death was reported in the anarchist press as "fatty degeneration of the heart".

Philosophy

Lum's

political philosophy Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics, ...

was a fusion of individualist anarchist economics, "a radicalized form of ''

laissez-faire ''Laissez-faire'' ( ; from french: laissez faire , ) is an economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies) deriving from special interest groups ...

'' economics" inspired by the Boston anarchists, with radical labor organization similar to that of the Chicago anarchists of the time. Lum's ideas have variously been described as

, mutualist and anarcho-communist as well as anarchist without adjectives.

Herbert Spencer Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism. Spencer originated the expression " survival of the f ...

and

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (, , ; 15 January 1809, Besançon – 19 January 1865, Paris) was a French socialist,Landauer, Carl; Landauer, Hilde Stein; Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl (1979) 959 "The Three Anticapitalistic Movements". ''European Socia ...

influenced Lum strongly in his individualist tendency. He developed a mutualist theory of unions and as such was active within the

Knights of Labor Knights of Labor (K of L), officially Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, was an American labor federation active in the late 19th century, especially the 1880s. It operated in the United States as well in Canada, and had chapters also ...

and later promoted

anti-political Anti-politics is a term used to describe opposition to, or distrust in, traditional politics. It is closely connected with anti-establishment sentiment and public disengagement from formal politics. In social science, anti-politics can indicat ...

strategies in the

American Federation of Labor The American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States that continues today as the AFL-CIO. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions eager to provide mutua ...

. Frustration with

abolitionism Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The Britis ...

spiritualism Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spiritualism (when not lowercase ...

and labor reform caused Lum to embrace anarchism and radicalize workers as he came to believe that

revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...

would inevitably involve a violent struggle between the

working class The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...

and the employing class. Convinced of the necessity of violence to enact social change, he volunteered to fight in the

, hoping thereby to bring about the end of

. Kevin Carson has praised Lum's fusion of individualist ''laissez-faire'' economics with radical labor activism as "creative" and described him as "more significant than any in the Boston group". Lum argued in ''The Economics of Anarchy'' that the

labor problem "The labor problem" is the economics term widely used toward the turn of the 20th century with various applications. It has been defined in many ways, such as "the problem of improving the conditions of employment of the wage-earning classes." T ...

was a result of intervention by the state in creating

monopolies A monopoly (from Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situation where a speci ...

, particularly the "land monopoly" of land titles and the "money monopoly" of a constrained

money supply In macroeconomics, the money supply (or money stock) refers to the total volume of currency held by the public at a particular point in time. There are several ways to define "money", but standard measures usually include currency in circu ...

. Lum advocated the destruction of the land monopoly which he saw as a

government-granted monopoly economics, a government-granted monopoly (also called a "de jure monopoly" or "regulated monopoly") is a form of coercive monopoly by which a government grants exclusive privilege to a private individual or firm to be the sole provider of a good ...

by abolishing land titles and to allow free access to land, thus making the extraction of rent impossible. Similarly, mutual banks set up to issue their own currencies would end the state monopoly and undercut the ability of banks and lenders to charge interest. His thoughts could be summarized as such:

Bibliography

* ''Utah and Its People: Facts and Statistics Bearing on the "Mormon Problem"'' (1882). A defense of the

Mormons Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into sever ...

and a plea for tolerance of

polygamy Crimes Polygamy (from Late Greek (') "state of marriage to many spouses") is the practice of marrying multiple spouses. When a man is married to more than one wife at the same time, sociologists call this polygyny. When a woman is marr ...

. * * ''Spiritual Delusions'' (1873). A further treatment of Mormonism. *
The Economics of Anarchy: A Study of the Industrial Type
' (1890). * ''Philosophy of Trade-Unionism'' (1892).

Selected articles

Published in '' The Alarm'' and in Albert Parsons' ''Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis''.
"Eighteen Christian Centuries or the Evolution of the Gospel of Anarchy"
(PDF). It was syndicated in ''

''. * "The Status of the Scab" (1890). Published in ''Rights of Labor'', it was later heavily critiqued by Victor Yarros in ''Liberty''.

Footnotes

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lum, Dyer D. 1839 births 1893 deaths 1890s suicides American anarchists American anti-capitalists American male non-fiction writers American male poets American political writers American syndicalists Anarchist writers Individualist anarchists American trade union leaders Libertarian socialists Mutualists Suicide bombers Suicides in Massachusetts