The Anarchist Historian Radium Levin
From The Transmetropolitan Review
Click here for Watch Home Grow! An Anarchist Index, 1898-1908 [note: pamphlet requires 0.5 inch staples]
I: Bessie And Nathan Go Home
The first historian of the anarchist Home Colony was Radium Levin, born there in 1903. He was actually born at a hospital in Tacoma, but he was raised at Home along the sea, within the trees, like dozens of other anarchist children. Decades later, Radium had legally changed his name to Ray LaVen, but in his report-backs for the Home Colony reunions, he always signed with the simple name Radium. It was during the 1945 reunion in Los Angeles that he presented his major work of history, There Was No Place Like Home, a 35-page chronology of events at Home, along with reflections from those who lived there.
Radium was the son of Bessie and Nathan Levin, both Jewish anarchists who fled the pogroms of the Russian Empire. Bessie was from Minsk, Belarus, while Nathan was from Babryusk, Belarus. Neither of them were religious, and as Radium recalled, my father rebelled against everything.They landed in Philadelphia and joined the circle around the anarchist newspaper Fraye Arbeiter Shtime, a Yiddish-language weekly. Here the Levins met the anarchists Chaim Weinberg, Voltairine de Cleyre, and David Caplan, among many others. They were also members of the Workmen’s Circle, whose anarchist branch ran the local Radical Library.
Chaim Weinberg would later recall how, sometime before 1903, their circle desired to pursue cooperative activity. A certain comrade Mrs. Levin arrived on the scene, who showed a strong willingness to work. Comrade Caplan wrote to us from Boston that he was willing to come with his wife, who could also be a cook. This was, of course, one of the most important things for us in maintaining a house. We, the Philadelphians, went to look for a house. This time we rented a six-room house on Morse Street for $15 a month. The members were: Comrade Levin and his wife, Comrade Caplan and his wife, Comrade Zarember and I: six in all.
However, this communal anarchist house was sunk by the love affairs of David Caplan, who brought his lover Vera Bayer and his wife Fannie together under their roof. Knowing what would happen, Caplan went to work while back home Fannie tried to poison Vera, then she threw boiling fat at her face. After being treated with skin-grafts at a local hospital, Vera quickly recovered, and when she left the hospital one could hardly tell that she had had such terrible facial injuries as we had seen that Monday when the horrible deed was done.
Caplan then abandoned Fannie and their children to go live in New York City with Vera, who he soon got pregnant. After she gave birth, Caplan denied the child was his and ran off to San Francisco with a British anarchist named Flora. By then, the communal apartment in Philadelphia was finished, so in those final days, Nathan Levin left the city and traveled westward across the US to the anarchist Home Colony in Washington State, looking for a new place to live.
According to the Home News column for The Demonstrator of June 24, 1903, Nathan Levin, of Minneapolis, Minn., is here looking us over. He expresses himself as satisfied with our looks and is seriously thinking of locating here. It appears Nathan lied about his origins, but he also seems to have immediately taken to the beauty and ease of Home. In the July 29, 1903 issue of The Demonstrator, we find that Bessie Levin came from Minneapolis, Minn., the other day to join her companion who had preceded her here. We hope the young couple will be able to make a comfortable home here.
It seems they bought land at Home, just as it seems Bessie had been pregnant since April, and in the September 16 issue, we find that Nathan and Bessie Levin have gone to Tacoma for the winter. We hear that they are doing well, and will be in shape to make a showing here next spring. Nathan came back for a brief visit a few weeks later, alone, and then it was announced that a boy was born to Bessie Levin on Tuesday, December 22. Mother and son are doing exceptionally well. Less than three weeks later, the January 13, 1904 issue revealed that Nathan and Bessie Levin, and their little boy, are back here again. They are going to see about building a home.
As explained by Radium in There Was No Place Like Home, his parents did very little besides buy some land. Radium wrote that an excellent example of the cooperative spirit that existed in Home was demonstrated when I was a baby. We were staying with Joe Heiman at the time and Dad bought a piece of land on the hill (this was later sold to Falkoff’s.) There was no house on it so Dad bought $15.00 worth of lumber and the morning the lumber was delivered, the men of the community gathered at the place with hammers and saws and the women came later with food and coffee—by evening they had built us a frame house. That was their contribution to a young couple who decided to live among them.
II: Tinker, Tailor, Homeite, Anarchist
Nathan and Bessie lived in Home through the winter, leaving only to go work in Tacoma. As we learn from the March 16, 1904 issue, Nathan and Bessie Levin have left us again, going to Tacoma to work for a few months. Their house here is just about finished. It’s unclear who they left Radium with, but he didn’t join them in Tacoma during their two week work-stint, and they were back by the March 30 issue, now living in their new house. They went back to Tacoma for work that spring but returned to Home by the May 11 issue.
Later that fall, a comrade from Philadelphia came to visit them, an anarchist named Joseph Bogdanoff. It’s unclear who this is, but less than two weeks later, it was announced that Nathan and Bessie Levin have opened up a tailor shop on St. Helen avenue near Ninth street, Tacoma. Those who are going to have clothes made or have any they want cleared, dyed or repaired should call on them. They appear to have moved away from Home, and it’s unclear where Radium was, but in the December 21 issue, we learn that Nathan and Bessie Levin are now at 728 St. Helens avenue, Tacoma, where they will be pleased to see all their friends. They are prepared to do dyeing, cleaning, and repairing of clothes.
Bessie came back for a solo visit in January 1905, when Radium was just over one year old, and its unclear if she went back to Tacoma. In the March 15, 1905 issue, The Demonstrator wrote that our readers in and around Tacoma who want clothes made, cleaned, dyed and repaired should call on Nathan Levin, 728 St. Helens avenue. He will take great pains to suit you. Aside from the pun, this entry also reveals that Nathan was seemingly alone in Tacoma. However, in the April 18 issue, we learn that Bessie and Nathan Levin came out Sunday to talk up the pants factory. Nathan went back Monday, but Bessie remained several days.
It’s likely Bessie often returned to Home to be with her two year-old son, but she did routinely work at the Tacoma tailor shop. As revealed in the July 19, 1905 issue, Nathan and Bessie Levin are out for a short rest. While they are here Charles Kranz is running their tailoring establishment in Tacoma. Charles Kranz and his wife Angelika were Swedish anarchists from Chicago, having moved to Home in 1902 with their daughter Henrika.
After letting Charlie run the place, Bessie and Nathan worked in Tacoma for many months. As revealed in the December 6, 1905 issue, Nathan and Bessie Levin are at home again after an absence of a year in Tacoma, where they were engaged in the tailoring business. Andy Klemencic has charge of the place now, which is located at 728 St. Helens avenue. If you want any clothes made, repaired, cleaned or dyed call there. Andy Klemencic was actually the Slovenian anarchist Andrej Klemenčič, a founding member of the IWW and one of Home’s original members. He appears to have been running the Tacoma tailor shop until July of 1906, when he suffered a train-hopping accident and went Home to recuperate.
While he was running the shop that spring, Nathan and Bessie Levin hosted their friend Ida Rosenson from Seattle, just as they were visited by Sarah Bogdanoff and two children, of Seattle. At the end of summer, it was announced that Bessie and Nathan Levin have gone to Tacoma to stay until January. They have sold their improvements on the hill and bought those of Nellie Sherman on the waterfront. Nothing was heard of the Levins for many months until the April 3, 1907 issue of The Demonstrator, where we learn Nathan Levin has had a nice wire fence put around his place.
Later that fall, in the November 20, 1907 issue of The Demonstrator, we learn that a class for the study of Esperanto meets every Sunday afternoon at the home of N. Levin, W.P. Austin teacher. All our gatherings are free and all are welcome. The next month, Nathan donated $5 to The Demonstrator and would soon travel to the east coast soliciting funds for the paper and a new print shop. They left on January 2, 1908, and by the time they got to Chicago, the Demonstrator had ceased publication. It wouldn’t be until Home got it’s next newspaper that Bessie and Nathan returned to the columns of Home News.
In the meantime, the anarchist Jay Fox arrived from Chicago. According to Radium, shortly after arriving, my mother invited Jay to the house for dinner. Mother usually baked her own bread, but on this occasion she had bakery bread and Jay questioned mother to learn if the bread was union made. Mother didn’t remember for sure, so Jay explained the importance of insisting on seeing the union label before buying anything. It seemed that mother learned her lesson well, for sometime later when Jay was invited over for dinner again, my mother placed a platter stacked high with bread, and pasted to each slice was a union label. Funnily enough, it would be Jay Fox who launched Home’s next newspaper, The Agitator.
III: The Home Grocery Company
The Agitator was inaugurated on November 15, 1910, and in the January 1, 1911 issue, we learn that the reading class that meets every Friday evening at Comrade Levin’s, is well attended, and the discussion which follows the reading, bringing out the numerous phases of the subject, is very instructive. This is one of the few mentions of the Levins in The Agitator, and the final mention from June 15, 1912 indicates Nathan had become responsible for the Home Grocery Store and needed to be paid out. This episode with the store was later chronicled by Radium in his There Was No Place Like Home.
As he explained, when the Home Grocery went broke, Oscar Ingvall sued the members of the “co-op” store for back wages as clerk and manager. At the hearing many of the members accused Ingvall of wrecking the store by his drinking and mismanagement, but the court granted him a judgment against each member for a sum of money he borrowed for the store in an effort to save it.
Radium went on to write how most of the members were very poor and a few of the Anarchists who had little respect for court decisions decided that they wouldn’t pay. John Buchi was one of the latter and while he could afford the $47 judgment to Ingvall and the $42 to Dad, he just refused to recognize the court’s decision. As time went on most of the members cleared up their indebtedness with cash or labor—but not John, he’d hold out till the end.
Came a time my mother needed some money badly as Dad wasn’t doing too well in his business in Tacoma—so being a direct-actionist mother took a .32 pistol which Dad kept in the house loaded with blank cartridges and called on Buschi. She told him that John owed her and Nathan $42, and she was there to collect it. John turned white at the sight of this determined woman with a gun pointing at him and said that he intended to pay all along but didn’t know that she needed it so badly. Then he suddenly dashed into his bedroom.
Mother reasoned quickly to herself that John also had a gun in his bedroom and that his bullets were not blanks—she decided that there was no time to lose in getting away. She ran as fast as she could to the road where fortunately Mr. Cooper was driving towards the store with his team and wagon…meanwhile thanking her lucky stars that John didn’t shoot her while she was running.
Mother climbed aboard Cooper’s wagon and on the way to the store she told him the story and handed him the revolver so that he could see that the cartridges were blanks. When mother returned home she felt like ¢2. She had not only risked her life but she had accomplished nothing. Would John sue her for threatening his life? Or would he just shoot her on sight? Mother spent a sleepless night. But the next morning Phil Cohn, whose father was running the store then, called on mother to tell her that John Buschi asked the store to credit my mother with $5.00 and charge it to him. It was only then that mother felt she could breath easier and that John was probably more scared than she was (that was all John ever paid though).
Oscar Ingvall on the other hand let the law take its course and a short time later foreclosed and John lost his home to Ingvall because he wouldn’t pay him the $47. Jay Fox had worked his indebtedness off to Dad in the form of carpenter work, but he didn’t pay Ingvall so he too lost his home for $47. This all represented the beginning of Home’s decline, but Radium appears to have had an ideal, loving, wholesome, funny childhood at Home. His mother Bessie was certainly at the end of her rope around 1912, because in 1911 she’d given birth to her second son, who was first named Ferrer after the executed anarchist school-teacher.
IV: There Was No Place Like Home
As explained above, the Levins sold their first house and moved down to the waterfront. Radium would describe how our two acre place was along the waterfront. Across the road from out gate were steps leading down to the beach. Because of the shrubbery between the road and the beach, a tall maple tree growing in this spot and two logs about 20 or 25 feet apart that lead from the bank part way down the beach—the spot in between was completely secluded from the road. In the summer when the tide was full during the early hours, my mother enjoyed hoping out of bed, crawling into a kimono then walking down to the secluded spot on our beach for a cold plunge into the water before starting her day’s activities.
Unfortunately, a local creep named Teddy Meyers came snooping around one day, hoping to sell nude pictures to Tacoma newspapers. The next morning after seeing Teddy, Bessie took her plunge 15 minutes early. Sure enough, Teddy arrived 15 minutes later with his camera, but fortunately Bessie had already put her kimono back on. She went bathing earlier and earlier, thwarting creepy Teddy, and then randomly stopped going altogether until Nathan cornered him in the woods, beat his ass, and according to Radium, almost threw him into the bay. Fortunately for Bessie, this creep didn’t get her picture, given the dreaded nude bathing scandal was right around the corner.
In the meantime, it seems the Levins bought ten acres of land just south of Home, and they traded it for a launch (a type of boat) which would run a Home to Seattle ferry service. The launch was named the Hoo Doo and first captained by Home resident Bill Larkin, who then passed the wheel off to a young man named Donald Vose, son of the anarchist Gertie Vose. One day, Donald asked a bunch of kids if they wanted to ride along while he towed a boat-house, so many of them agreed, including Radium. However, the engine suddenly failed and the launch ended up beached across the water near Arletta. Donald and the kids camped the night by a fire, went to the Arletta general store the next morning for a breakfast of tobacco and soda-crackers, and after the engine still wouldn’t start, the kids took the local ferry back to Home.
This is one of the few wholesome stories involving Donald Vose, for shortly after this incident with the Hoo Doo, it seems Donald began working for the Burns International Detective Agency, one of the closest equivalents to today’s FBI. Back then, the federal government was extremely weak and most high-level law enforcement was contracted out to agencies like Burns, Pinkerton, Thiel, etc. After the Los Angeles Times building was dynamited on October 1, 1910, the City of Los Angeles paid Burns to find the bombers, and the agency immediately zeroed in on David Caplan, the womanizing anarchist who lived with Nathan and Bessie Levin back in Philadelphia. As they discovered, Caplan fled San Francisco in December 1910 for the anarchist colony of Home, where he disappeared.
William J. Burns himself posed as an encyclopedia salesman and went door to door at Home trying to find Caplan, but little did his agency know that Caplan was living on a chicken farm sixty miles north on Bainbridge Island, the land paid for by Ersilia Cavedagni and Leon Morel, two anarchists from Home. According to Radium, his future mother-in-law Frankie Moore was keeping house for Caplan up in Bainbridge, and it’s likely they were having an affair. It seems that Donald Vose knew someone was hiding out on Bainbridge, but not exactly who, and when Donald began working for Burns in late 1913, he certainly mentioned this fact.
Radium Levin refers to everything that took place at Home prior to 1915 as B.C., or Before Caplan. In those last cheery years, no one thought it odd that Donald Vose went north to hang out with David Caplan, nor did they find it odd when, shortly after, Donald used his anarchist connections to visit New York City and finally see the world. When this son of anarchists claimed to have a letter for Mathew Schmidt, another of the Los Angeles Times bombers, no one thought anything was amiss.
However, on February 13, 1915, the NYPD arrested Schmidt, while Caplan was arrested on Bainbridge Island on February 18. It took nearly half a year for the anarchists to verify that Donald Vose was a traitor, and some (like Alexander Berkman) wanted to kill him. In the end, it was another resident of Home, the Ukrainian anarchist Lucy Robin Lang, who found coded documents in Donald’s bags proving he worked for Burns.
This information struck Home like a thunderbolt, especially Donald’s mother Gertie Vose, who seems to have flown into a bit of denial. She could never say no to her son when he showed up at her door like a dog, but the rest of Home made sure he never came back. In 1974, Radium told Paul Avrich that Donald Vose was a weak person who saw a chance to make some money by becoming a stool pigeon. He went on to explain how Donald tried to come back to Home for a baseball game when one of the older French colonists, Gaston Lance, went up and spat in his face.
V: Look Homeward, Angel
Radium was twelve years-old when Caplan was arrested, and he grew up knowing all the details of what lead to this betrayal. Despite the gravity, life seems to have rolled on usual at Home. Sometime in 1915, Radium described a resident of Home named Mr. Hawks, who the children called Deacon Hawks. According to Radium, the old gent was quite a character. He had a large goiter on his neck and he could talk for hours extolling the virtues of Woodrow Wilson who was President at the time. Hawks would wall-talk, or button-hole, anyone who came his way, including Radium.
According to him, I was about 12 or 13 at this particular time and was boarding with Macie Govan whose place adjoined the Hawks place. I had the newspaper route in home then and Hawks was the last customer on my route. Try as I would, I was unable to get by his place without his button-holing me…but one day the problem was solved and after that I had no more trouble getting away—As I would come up the road after that, one could hear me whistling as loud as I could, and just as far. Hawks was ready to start in on his long dissertation, but Macie came out on her porch to announce that dinner way ready.
It remains unclear why Radium was staying with Macie Govan in 1915, but his parents were likely in Tacoma. However, they could have been up to something more interesting. Nathan and Bessie Levin were deeply connected with the global anarchist net-work, and when Emma Goldman came to Home with her lover Ben Reitman, the couple stayed with the Levins. Radium later told Paul Avrich that Emma was very jealous of any attention that other women paid [Ben]. When Mother was talking to him out in the yard, Emma couldn’t stand it and kept calling him to come into the house. Reitman told ghost stories around a bonfire to us kids. Emma Goldman only showed her vulnerabilities around her close friends, historically, so this incident speaks much about her relationship to the Levins.
There isn’t much documentation about the Levins following 1913. After the Agitator left Home in November 1912, the next closest thing Home got to a newspaper was Why?, published by Frankie Moore and Enrico Travaglio out of Tacoma. The Levins donated to the May 1913 and June 1914 issues, but the final donation was just fifty cents. In 1915, it seems Bessie and Nathan separated, with of both them finding new partners. Radium went with Nathan to Tacoma in 1917, while Ferrer stayed with Bessie. Oddly enough, two publishers of Why?, Frankie Moore and Enrico Travaglio, would soon become Radium’s parent-in-laws, for sometime in the late 1910s, their daughter Leah Travaglio fell in love with Radium Levin, and the two were legally married before 1920 under the last name LaVene.
Leah and Radium appear to have had children based on this passage from Radium’s history: I’d have difficulty convincing my daughter of my truthfulness after telling her how much better behaved I was than she, at her age and younger, for example: how could I explain the time when I was about 8, and one of mother’s friend who was always suggesting to mother ways of disciplining me, so antagonized me that once on the beach in front of our place when she was undressing to go bathing, I ran up and bit her on the breast? And on another occasion when I saw her enter our back-house, I sneaked around and let the trap door silently down in back and tickled her while she sat with a long oat straw, at which she let out a screech, jumped up and ran out of the place as fast as she could. (How could I explain such wicked actions?)
Radium and Leah seem to have lived in Home until 1920, at which point they moved to Los Angeles. Many former residents of Home also moved to this coastal wonderland, and they began having Home reunions in MacArthur Park, which back then was called Westlake Park. It seems that Radium composed his There Was No Place Like Home for the 1945 reunion, and the intro to that text is dated September 22, 1945 from Los Angeles.
Unfortunately for Radium, his wife Leah left him sometime that year, and she married the radical LA City Councilman Arthur E. Briggs on December 25, 1946. This was probably one of the saddest Christmas presents Radium could have received, but he remained the main organizer of the Home reunions and wrote the report-back for the 1947 gathering in Westlake Park. Leah didn’t show up with her new husband, but Macie Govan and her daughter Opal mailed the reunion a bound volume of the complete Discontent and Demonstrator print runs. Radium wrote that we will take care of this treasure and will display it with the other volume at future picnics.
This other volume was the Home Album and the Home In The News volume kept up by Nina Halperin, the other primary historian of Home. As Radium wrote into the intro to his history, I wish also to dedicate my part in this effort to Nina Halperin, without whose pleasant but persistent prodding, this great (?) document might never have been produced. Nina had known Radium since he was a little boy, and this dedication is quite sweet. Without their efforts at preserving the history of Home, untold truths would have already vanished from living memory.
Radium lived the rest of his life in Los Angeles, residing at 536 West 89th Street, which is in the Vermont Vista neighborhood of South Central. Radium lived about an hour’s walk away from Nuestra Pueblo, the famed Watts Towers of Sabato Rodia, another anarchist who settled nearby. Meanwhile, his former wife Leah Travaglio was living with her new husband at 2424 Hidalgo Avenue, a property in the Silver Lake neighborhood not far from the former Magonista commune in Edendale. It’s unclear when Leah died, but her childhood love Radium Levin passed away in Los Angeles in 1991. He was eighty-eight years-old.
Radium was the first historian to collect the Home News items from Discontent and Demonstrator, enabling researchers to more easily track the anarchists who came and went from Home. Radium only collected less than 50% of these items, and in his memory we continue the work, bringing the number of transcribed Home News entries up past 90%. We hope the following collection and index can help anarchists, historians, and descendants follow the lives of those Home residents who didn’t wait for a new world to emerge from nothing, but instead built one with their own hands. May their work not be in vain, and may we all create new worlds just as vibrant as theirs.