This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
We Rock Islanders like to think of ourselves as the heart of the heart of the country. How do you think we might have reacted way back in 1886 to an English citizen coming to lecture us on how to run our American government? And then suppose that the lecture is an attack on capitalism and a defense of socialism. And that the lecturer is a woman. And not just any woman, but the daughter of the already infamous Karl Marx.
The answer, at least in Davenport, Iowa, was—no problem at all. The Davenport Democrat of November 19, 1886, announced the arrival in the city of Dr. and Mrs. Edward Aveling, "the most noted leaders of English socialism," who were to lecture that evening at the Davenport Turner Hall. The reporter pointed out that Eleanor Marx-Aveling was the daughter of Karl Marx, and an advocate for his socialist ideas as well as for her own feminist positions.
The newspaper did mention some of her womanly qualities: she was brunette, less than 30 years old, with dark brown eyes and curly hair, but the emphasis was on the fact that she was "an able and impressive speaker in three languages."
Her lecture was a plea for Americans to turn to socialism. "All over the world," she said, "the cry is 'there is something wrong; something needs to be changed." Asked about the use of force to bring about change, she could not rule it out, but did suggest that capitalism was historically the first side to resort to arms. She reminded the audience of the recent shooting of six strikers by the Milwaukee police, and concluded her lecture with a plea for equal rights for women in everything.
These views met with no righteous editorial rebuttal in the paper, no riot among the audience. She and her husband were not ridden out of town on a rail. How could these un-American sentiments go unchallenged in the heart of the heart of the country?
Or could it be that Davenport's early devotion to the idea of free speech above political parties and causes was the very quality that made us that heart?
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
