In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

265 Chapter Fourteen “Purpose: Keep the Group Going” Are the powers that be in the United States feeling so uncertain of the future that they can tolerate no analysis of the source of their wealth, no honest study of classes in the capitalist world? They have forgotten the great struggles for liberty which brought many of the earliest settlers to these shores. To them our Bill of Rights seems to have become a dead letter. —Anna Rochester (“Can Capitalism Take Criticism?” in Publisher on Trial, 47) Isn’t it about time that a halt is called on the use of paid informers by our government to put behind bars people whose main “crime” was that they disagreed with war in Korea, A-Bombs and H-Bombs as a solution to our relations with the rest of the world? —Andy Harris (secretary of the San Francisco Chapter, Civil Rights Congress, letter to the editor, San Francisco Chronicle, April 27, 1955) During the latter years of Rochester’ and Hutchins’s lives, as their own energy and health began to fail, they struggled against forces determined to ensure that the institutions of free speech and publication that they had helped to build would fail as well. Within a polarized postwar American society, Rochester and Hutchins worked to maintain space for voices challenging capitalism, racism, and sexism. The battle became primarily a financial one, as they re-experienced the lesson they had learned at The World Tomorrow in 1926: “free speech” is often an oxymoron in a capitalist society. Of their own partnership , however, Rochester and Hutchins said little, choosing instead to slide beneath the social radar and focus their rhetorical gifts outwards, crafting an inclusive space wherein others might flourish. This public quietude did not mean that the partnership starved. If anything, their devotion to each other increased, as first Rochester and then Hutchins suffered debilities eliciting the other’s care. Despite these debilities, neither Hutchins nor Rochester abandoned her work. Even as late as January 1, 1962, Hutchins wrote to herself in her personal notebook—“Purpose: keep the group going.”1 The “second string” trial ended on January 21, 1953, with convictions for all defendants , including Alexander Trachtenberg and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Both Hutchins and Rochester sent letters to Trachtenberg in prison the next day. “Dear Trachty,” Rochester wrote, “I often wonder what Thomas Jefferson would have said about the present-day political cases! And we don’t have to wonder about the popular judgment at the next turn of a century—But meantime it is no fun to be an historic figure—And your friends don’t forget you,” she reminded him.2 266 PASSIONATE COMMITMENTS Friends had not forgotten Trachtenberg—or the hundreds of others across the country facing trials. Yet the efforts to provide support were taxing the collective emotional and financial resources. After the convictions of the “second string,” Hutchins worked to raise money to post bail for the second-string prisoners, to free them while their case was on appeal. In mid-February 1953, Hutchins posted $15,000 of the $25,000 bail required for Alexander Trachtenberg, plus $10,000 in cash and $10,000 in US Treasury bonds for Elisabeth Gurley Flynn. Stanley Blumenthal borrowed $5,000 from Hutchins to post bail for Albert Lannon, another of the “second string.”3 This use of her share of the income from the family trust caused problems with Grace Hutchins’s brother, Henry, and especially with his wife, Alice, who may have seen Grace Hutchins’s withdrawal of money from interest-bearing accounts as the quintessential American heresy. In fact, much of what Grace Hutchins did was a mystery and an irritation to Alice Hutchins, who found Hutchins and Rochester’s appearances a particular affront. The two women rarely wore jewelry—certainly never earrings—nor did they use makeup. Their clothes were plain, usually black, after the manner of Vida Scudder, although they did bow to the summer heat and invest in a few seersucker dresses. “Why can’t they at least do something with their hair?” Alice Hutchins fretted, referring to the short, serviceable cuts that bespoke a lack of interest in hair fashion and its associated costs in time and money. She was losing patience with this annoying part of her husband’s family and finally decreed that Grace Hutchins was not welcome in the Hutchins home. For a number of years after that, Grace Hutchins would travel to Boston to meet her brother Henry in...

Share