A Northwoods Moment in History

ANMiH is an ongoing exercise in public history which was written and performed by Gary R. Entz for nearly four years beginning in May 2018. The radio shorts appeared on the Rhinelander community broadcasting station WXPR. The early majority of these scripts were funded by the Wisconsin Humanities Council and compiled and published by White Pine Community Broadcasting in 2021. Dr. Entz is from Salida, Colorado with degrees from James Madison (M.A.) and Utah (Ph.D.). The bulk of his academic work appeared in the Kansas Historical Society journal. His articles and book are broadly about the American west, colonization and religion. From "Pap" Singleton, the Llewellyn Castle and Mormons in Kansas--Entz recreates the daily frontier life and internal migrations of utopian colonizers. Entz is a published expert in a field with Horace Greeley, John Brown and Joseph Smith as guideposts. One critique of ANMiH is the absence of regional equivalents like the Wisconsin Phalanx or King Strang. Maybe Ceresco (Ripon) and Beaver Island are outside of the show's geographical parameters but they seem like logical extensions of Entz' scholarship. Some of Entz experience, such as on Native American culture, does inform the radio and print editions of ANMiH. He is talented at contextualizing local events using national periods. For example, a story about the local Rouman drive in theater was also about resources, social independence, technological advancements, Hollywood and the automobile age.

Regardless of similarities in theory and sources, ANMiH's public history and Entz' peer-reviewed oeuvre are of different methodologies. ANMiH doesn't have a bibliography and there are no sources. One can assume that much of Entz' sourcing leads back to the Wisconsin Historical Society but without sources the content cannot be engaged. There are regularly cited is photographs which accompany online versions of articles. But even these citations are generic "WHS" without links or collection data. The lack of photo citations or credit is the convention for the Kansas History journal as well. In Entz' articles it is very hard to figure out where the images that accompany the text come from. This is not the case for text citations. In the peer-reviewed oeuvre Entz cites his university press (KS, NE, Temple, N. Illinois), journal (agriculture, religion) and popular secondary (including Thomas Frank) sources. His most cited primary sources include letters, testimonies, old histories, personal accounts, news papers, handbills, maps and speeches. The rigor and value of his academic work is described by the footnotes.

Doing public history on the radio is a different skill. Public radio in Wisconsin started broadcasting on 9XM from the UW in 1914 as part of the broader Progressive Era Wisconsin Idea intermingling of the university and politics. BBC Radio provided a national framework for this medium in 1922. Two classic BBC features Letter from America (1946-2004) and From our Own Correspondent (1955-present) are models of American studies which appeared on the BBC format. The BBC World Service was founded in 1932 as the international arm of British state media. The American model separates the international and domestic brands. Voice of America was founded in 1942. NPR and PBS were funded by the LBJ era Corporation for Public Broadcasting. XPR and thirteen other NPR affiliates were founded in NPR dead zones 1980s. A NPR version of the BBC American studies programs is This American Life which was first released in 1995. The state funded radio productions of social studies is an overt political act. This is most obvious in the VOA-style state media directed toward international audiences. But the same state-sponsored political narrative is created in at WPR, BBC, VOA, NPR and PBS--the medium and message are the same, only the style is tweaked.

ANMiH is a state sanctioned public media of a type which favors hagiography to subversion. That doesn't mean it can't be used to promote progressive change. Mr. Rodgers famously soaked his feet with Officer Clemmons on 9 May 1969 in support of racial justice. Dr. Entz, a navy veteran, might not have the counter-cultural cache of Mr. Rogers but the medium supports it. Entz self identifies with social history tropes "his goal is to approach history from the bottom up," explore the lives of "ordinary people" without retelling stories of "rich, famous or politically connected" people. Entz is doing a community history of "individuals, families, and organizations." He uses these small social units to tell a narrative about "how society changed over time." Some ideal versions for this type of social history are Studs Terkel, Michael Harrington or David Kyvig.

The print edition of ANMIH is divided into nine chapters. Two of these chapters, daily life and first nations, feature social history about making syrup, ice fishing, downtown life, local Hoovervilles, and a profile of a cow. Other parts of these two chapters are about the bourgeoisie rules based order including treaties, allotments, parking meters and diplomats. Five of the other chapters on industry, wartime, transportation, crime and famous visitors are thematically bourgeoisie histories of national chauvinism, law and order, industrial development and celebrity. Some of these are public history thematically because they answer local questions. For example "Why are the Rhinelander Smokestacks Missing the Letter "G" in Glassline?" The remaining two chapters on special events and town origins are also of this public history theme where ultra-local questions are answered through historical research.

Progressive social history, public community history, state sanctioned bourgeoisie history and American studies style ethnography are the methods Entz uses to explore the Northwoods region Entz geographic field might actually be measured by the transmitter range of WXPR. The larger imagined place the Northwoods is located north of America's Dairyland, the Fox River Valley and Driftless area. It is south west of the Upper Peninsula and south east of the Iron Range and east of Wisconsin's indianhead. The upper Wisconsin river has been the regional method of transportation and power production since the lumber era started. Wausau is where much of the Northwoods logs are milled into lumber. Other lumber towns emerged along the river from Rhinelander, Tomahawk and Merrill. Proximity to the two major rail lines: the Milwaukee Hiawatha and Minneapolis Soo defined the later economic success of non-river towns like Star Lake, Hazelhurst and Ladysmith. The fist regional state road, the Ontonagon military road, trail is featured in Entz.

The Ontonagon Trail is a classic part of Wisconsin, Northwoods and Upper Peninsula history. UW-La Crosse emeritus professor Al Gedicks career focuses on the similarities between resource extraction in developing economies (like in South and Central America) and the industrial periphery of America (like the Ladysmith mine). Gedicks dystopian world view demands solidarity and vigilance among those who live among natural resources. People from Wisconsin and first nations people have organized politically around this worldview and against resource exploitation to protect the Bad River watershed and Willow Flowage. While roadside historical markers often provide a sanitized history, through Gedicks framework, the Ontonagon trail roadside marker "In 1864 Abraham Lincoln commissioned this road extending from Green Bay to Fort Wilkins as a Military Highway to secure copper supplies for the Union Forces" can be read with a sense of resource exploitation and imperial intrigue.

Entz, while telling the same story, starts with the Indian removal in 1836 and the founding of Wausau in 1852. Entz' version of federal overreach is based in the Jacksonian state and the Indian Wars. This is probably in line with Gedicks' world view. The slightly later starting narrative--from the roadside marker--is about federal action, the president and acquiring resources to maintain order through war. That doesn't make Entz' version radical history. Instead, the Entz narrative is a different type of political history. It uses treaties, businesses and town foundings to tell the story that Gedicks tells through resource deposits and social movements. Entz describes economic imperatives of navigation, the availability of land due to indian removal, explains colloquialisms (like bull falls), and traces the historical trail through modern towns that are familiar to his listener. A critique of the Ontonagon Trail "moment" is where it ends. Instead of connecting the story to Lincoln or Gedicks the Entz narrative ends with "northwoods logging camps and mining camps in the Upper Peninsula" instead of Gettysburg or the Amazon.

This disconnect between established Northwoods narratives, like Gedicks, and Entz is especially frustrating because there are no sources to help explain it. Take, for example, "The History of the Bearskin State Trail" (26 September 2018, pg: 259). Some of the language in this "moment" sounds like an advertisement for the state park system which emphasizes the "scenic" and "recreational attraction" and "tourist destination." The train line was built on trail which "exist[ed] long before any railroads or logging camps were in the area..." There is a macabre part of the story that Entz doesn't include.

The part of the Bearskin Trail narrative that is missing is about Indian mounds. Jones/Mcvean (1923) cites Wisconsin Archaeological society surveys along the Wisconsin River Valley in Cassian and Heafford Junction (maybe also Bradley and McCord) where "large groups of Indian mounds" existed. This could have been an earlier settlement that would become McCord Village. Another set of mounds near Lake Tomahawk has been turned into a campground Wisconsin DNR. When Entz describes the history of Lake Tomahawk, he starts with the removal of an Ojibwe village as the railroad comes through in the 1880s. The burial mounds are not included in the narrative. Jones/Mcvean are most clear when they describe the railroad graders in 1888 Minocqua, who "unearthed quite a number of bodies. Not very long ago bones could be seen sticking out of the bank in the small cut at that point." The swamps of Lincoln and Oneida counties swallowed fill. Without fill, the tracks, trains and cargo were also destined for the bottom of the swamp. The burial mounds were not built on the swampy places and may have provided elevated land and convenient fill for the railroad grade. Entz interest in First Nations has a N.A.G.P.R.A. blind spot which make his "moments" seem corporate. The projects funders: XPR's public donors, corporate underwriters and the Humanities Council are probably aligned with the DNR and the Chamber of Commerce in downplaying the proverbial Indian graveyard upon which the Northwoods economy was built. The other faction: the Archaeological Society, the University system, the sovereign nations and the Federal Department of the Interior are empowered, but not compelled, to make this burial mound mole hill into a mountain by repatriating first nations graves.

Native histories versus Ethnographies

Entz' version of social history can cynically be used to sell trail passes by downplaying the macabre. It provides a place of belonging and serenity at the expense of some realism. Every rural community has a discovery story, first business, infamous criminal or recurring event. A Ph.d like Entz could take his "familiar[ity] with rural culture" and historical periods and write the same series of essays about any small town in America by changing a few dates, surnames and place names. There is a relationship between the palatability of the final narrative to the social conventions it relates. There are some local stories that represent the national historical tropes pretty well. It is interesting that Entz didn't cover some of these during his four year run.

Dr. Kate Newcomb--of million penny parade celebrity--is a part of the Wisconsin local history curriculum produced by Wisconsin Media Lab, she has a museum in Woodruff and a large replica penny built in her honor. Biographies by Comandini and Wojahn are available all over the region. She might have been too famous for Entz if he had not written two Buddy Holly features. Another option is the inversion celebrity which the two represent that might also be more visible to native historians than participant observers. That is to say, Buddy Holly was a national celebrity who came to the Northwoods and Dr. Kate was a Northwoods celebrity who (briefly) achieved national fame.

Another missing Woodruff celebrity is Gerald Boileau--the last Progressive Republican in congress. The Lorence's Boileau and oral histories are good sources. Three others from the Wisconsin 7th have achieved national fame: Melvin Laird--Nixon's Defense Secretary, Dave Obey--House Appropriations Chair and (was) longest tenured congressperson, Sean Duffy--cos-playing lumberjack and Fox News contributor. These are, like Dr. Kate, Northwoods establishments who gained national notoriety. Entz is not averse to using national politics to frame local stories. Rhinelander's Elbert Martin (not Frank Bukovsky?) tackled Teddy Roosevelt's assassin. Green Bay's hobo Frank Lamperer was forced to hop the train in 1905 because FDR's New Deal hadn't "established the first social safety net" thirty years later. There is a version of these national political narratives which begin with Alexander Berkman style anarchy of the deed or Jacqueline Jones style disspossession instead of relying on presidents as shorthand for periods. It is odd that Entz' community history can include national political figures and not locals. This might be part of the same inversion as appeared in Dr. Kate v. Buddy Holly. Joe McCarthy appears in the narrative as an aside during "The Most Boring Day of the Twentieth Century (3 November 2021) "moment." The exclusion of Boileau is especially strange on a public radio platform like XPR. Boileau was the last La Follette style Progressive Republican. The political party and public radio expressions of the Wisconsin Idea espoused by La Follette.

He doesn't include some standards like the Hodag origin story or Peshtigo Fire. He does include others like Jean Nicolet and John Dillinger. The best "moments" might be the ones which correspond to Entz academic oeuvre. This includes the early twentieth century migration of people from Kentucky following the completion of the railroad to Forest County. They are not to be confused with the earlier Scottish heritage of Crandon. The Kentuckian settlements are like the Great Migration and Mormon settler colonies of which Entz is an expert. The Kentucks joined natives, lumberjacks and railroaders to create an interesting local community. ANMiH's local ethnography is, of course, used to promote Crandon's Kentuck days annual festival.

Underwriters are not the only concern to a working historian like Entz. The Overton window for acceptable debate shifts after your work is completed. This leads to a post hoc memory-holing by the ministry of truth. One place where shifting sensibilities of political language are visible is in the reevaluation of John Brown as a crazy person or domestic terrorist following September 11, 2001. A notable modern example is McBride's Good Lord Bird. Those of radical historical theory will frame Brown as freedom fighter--this is the take of Douglass and the Secret Six, Thoreau and the transcendentalists, Debs and the socialists, Du Bois and the communists and so on. A more modern, authoritarian view would have a list of domestic terrorists like Shays, Brown, McVeigh and Kaczyinski and domestic iconoclasts like Thoreau, Debs, Stetson Kennedy, Jerry Rubin and Louis Farrakhan. This is the McCarthyite list of names and George W. Bush's "either you're with us, or your with the terrorists."

There is a point in revolutionary history where it is no longer okay to revolt. In theory the physical violence is replaced by political culture. Unfortunately, American democracy wasn't accessible to most people. Without the powers to vote or revolt American non-citizens used other mechanisms to promote social change. Some of these include withholding labor, boycotting taxes, blocking traffic, ignoring the draft and desegregating public spaces. The state response was to expand voting rights and outlaw the new forms of protest. After the Civil Rights movement, the New Left should inherit previous revolutionary momentum from abolition, socialism, suffrage and pacifism. Instead, Cold War and War on Terror domestic imperatives make have severed the left from its history and Americans emphasize the link between domestic terrorists like Brown, iconoclasts like Debs and international terrorists like Bin Laden. The silliest version of this chauvinist appropriation and recuperation can be described in culinary terms: liberty cabbage and freedom fries.

Entz also treads swampy ground in this regard. In the 23 October 2019 ANMiH he described Northwoods "Vigilante Committees" which was changed in the book to "Vigilance Committees." While there isn't an exact print date for the book, the latest article to print aired on 17 February 2021. This editorial shift was probably impacted by the collective trauma felt by public radio listeners following January 6, 2021. A lesson for all community historians on the public dole: your work will be scrutinized by shifting political and social standards by people who don't realize they are ideologues. The more milquetoast and procedural version of history probably has a longer shelf-life than more radical takes. In this case, one doesn't have to defend themselves from library censorship on the board or ballot and they can write more sanitized histories that reinforce the status quo.

Corporate Histories

Different events read differently to different historians. What is acceptable and interesting also changes over time. The scientific part of historical methodology is in the replication of the same story using different perspectives. This is why Entz' Bearskin trail narrative is about recreation and not disinterred graves. This is why his Ontanagon trail narrative is about Indian policy and not the Civil War. That doesn't make it any more or less true than the Jones/McVean and Roadside Marker histories. The boundaries of the history are defined by the commission that funds it. The WXPR defined boundaries of ANMiH are a satisfying middle ground between corporate hagiographies and underclass lamentations. This might be the case because the network is funded by a mixture of public donors and private underwriters. PBS News or culture programs like Frontline (underwritten by Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg and viewers like you) take money from both public and private sources and--theoretically--could produce a narrative with class nuance.

News media like MSNBC, CNN and Fox has exclusively corporate funding. Many of the hosts and guests have pubic credentials as politicians, military or security state employees but they a select few are invited to speak by the network funded by the pharmaceutical, transportation and finance industries (among others). This is the most important audience and the stories are tailored to this world view. The same thing happens--only inverted--on non-profit entities like Democracy Now!, WSWS.org or La Follette's The Progressive. These entities would cease to exist if the editors and subscribers weren't on the same page.

Of the corporate type of this media is an Escanaba Daily Press article from 1949 which describes a meeting of the Gladstone (Michigan) Rotary club. The featured guest was Jim Lydon, the Minneapolis based Assistant General Passenger Agent for the railroad. In attendance were a "group of railroad officials" including superintendent A.C. Peterson who was "in charge" of the meeting. Peterson described the "Diselizing" of the line to be completed later that year. Then came Lydon's history of the line which was part of a "prepared talk" which the EDP excerpted.

The Soo line was organized in 1883 and started to build from Minneapolis to Turtle Lake and eventually reached Pembine and Rhinelander. It was initially referred to as the Sault Ste. Marie line because that is where it's final destination was. By the time it reached Gladstone it was called the Soo line referencing the Soo locks which were completed in 1855. Most of the Gladstone-Rhinelander segment was completed in 1887 and the end of that year the Soo and Canadian Pacific "were joined." The first train load of "105 carloads of flour" departed from Minneapolis a week later. By summer of 1888 there were "sleepers from the Twin Cities to Montreal and Boston" that ran until World War I. Of particular interest to the assembled Rotarians was the building of the Gladstone "Lake Terminal." The Gladstone post office was built after the Soo line was completed. After that the station, machine shops, coal sheds, roundhouse, and two ore docks were constructed. From Gladstone, via Little Bay de Noc, the railroads could import coal and Minneapolis grain could be shipped to Great Lakes ports like Buffalo. According to Lydon, Gladstone once had the "largest flour docks in the country" and "was equipped for coal, iron, timber flour and merchandise." The company town of Gladstone, north of the much older Green Bay port city of Escanaba, was "a complete ne wcity containing everything to enable it to compete with all other lake ports."

Lydon continues "financing and building project worthy of later times." The railroad continued to invest in their Lake Michigan port by rebuilding the route from Minneapolis using heavy rail in 1890. The port expansions continued until the "large merchandise dock...flour shed and the original coal dock" burned down in 1891. They were rebuilt, larger, the next year along with a new grain elevator and "power house that had a brick chimney 130 feet high." At its largest, the Soo line connected the Dakotas, Winnipeg, Duluth and Central Wisconsin to Gladstone, the Soo Locks, Montreal and Boston.

Unlike the Lydon narrative of infrastructure "worthy of later times," railroad towns from Gladstone have no people or infrastructure left. What remains are rail engines turned historical artifact in towns from Hermansville to Ladysmith. These rusting behemoths--along with abandoned mine shafts and gravel pits, level grades through second growth forest, decrepit rooming houses and company towns, decomissioned depots turned seasonal botique and an extensive recreational trail system--are what the rail roads built for later times. The busted cities of the Indianhead, Northwoods and Upper Peninsula have a few other characteristics: American Legion military oridinance and taverns.

The necessary decline part of this narrative is anathema to corporate hagiographies. To Lydon, the corporation is the obvious unit of study. This is a fundamental difference between Lydon and Entz social history which centered community individuals instead of corporations. A radical history of railroads role in industrial development between 1877 and 2022 would probably include the state's role in native depopulation, land grants, resource capture and worker repression which allowed the corporate capitalist mode of production to exist in the free market.

Lydon actually responds to part of the radical critique, emphasizing the difference between land grant rail roads which use federal powers like eminent domain and the Soo line which "purchased all of it's right-of-way." The declension part of the cycle is also framed as a deus ex machina instead of the direct result of corporate over-consumption. To Lydon, the railroad declined after 1923 when the "great forests" were exhausted, lakes shipping ended and the "mills dismantled." What was left were "ghost towns." It seems like the railroads facilitated the removal of most of the regions natural resources and were left along with the stumps, dead mine shafts and crumbling ore docks. As a capitalist, Lydon doesn't see the corporation as the problem--the corporation is "still there waiting to serve." He explains how technological advancements in flour milling, the end of "free lands" and "settlers...traveling...to seek new lands and fortune..." as the reason the Soo line stopped expanding. The end of manifest destiny and the frontier is as good a reason as any for the failure of the railroads. Lydon's corporate narrative doesn't take the one extra-step to explain where all this "free" land came from. ANMiH's public-private social history locates the start of the regions economic boom in Indian policy like ceded territories treaty, native removal and allotments.

By centering the railroad in his narrative and discounting the federal role in securing the land and maintaining the market, Lydon is able to blame "Laws [that] forced them to keep...operating and open," "fixed" rates, regulation "in everything by commissions of the states...and by the Interstate Commerce commission." Blaming interstate commerce protections for the failure of the railroads is a strange historical take because it is the established federal mechanism of breaking rail unions and compelling work without contract used from the Gilded Age to the Biden administration. After protesting federal regulation Lydon claims "Railroads are public service companies..." by which he doesn't mean they deserve special regulation. What he means is "selling of railroad services differs from all other kinds of selling..." and part of the sales pitch is nostalgic, self-serving history. Lydon doesn't see selling selling public services for a private profit as problematic. The historic trend from the 1894 Pullman injunction to th 1971 PATCO strike shows a strong agreement between politicians, corporations and consumers that nationalization and unionization are bad for transportation. The Pullman Strike ended two and a half months before the Soo Line events. There is no proof that the Chicago strike influenced Paflinski and Hazelton but the national violence and subsequent Darrow for the defense and conspiracy conviction for Debs were a big deal in the region and rail community.

Entz' Soo Line narrative is different from Lydon's. There are nine ANMiH that describe the rail road including "The Bindlestiff Who Hopped a Train North" (15 June 2018, pg: 35), "The First and Last Soo Line Passenger Trains" (17 April 2019, pg: 263) and "1894 Train Robbery Turned Tragic Accident in the Northwoods" (22 September 2021, not in book). The first of these three is about Frank Lamperer a hobo from Green Bay who "decided to hop a Soo Line train" only to be "dislodged...from his perch" onto the tracks and was "struck repeatedly" by the train cars as they went by. He "dragged himself" to Rhinelander where "charitable individuals" took him off the street and into a hotel and provided a doctor. The second ANMiH explains "the company was primarily a freight railroad" but there was regional passenger service. This is very much like the corporate history from Lydon and it describes building the "depot, watertank, and roundhouse." The first passenger train toured the line in 1886 carried "railroad representatives" who were "welcomed by a civic committee, a band and a crowd of several hundred people" and attended a party. Passenger service was discontinued in 1960 with much less fanfare as the westbound No. 7 went through with only a handful of passengers.

Soo Line Event (1894): Entz Framing

On October 7, 1894 on a "20-foot-long trestle north of Tomahawk between Heafford Junction and Bradley" the westbound train derailed as the tracks collapsed. The wreck would have been worse but the train was "moving at a relatively slow speed." As the locomotive and cars rolled down the embankment and engineer James Dutch was tossed out and injured. Fireman Charles Cottrell was "caught beneath the falling locomotive and crushed to death." These were the only major injuries. A train was dispatched "carrying a doctor and a railroad detective." The scene that Entz described when they arrived "Someone had taken a saw and cut through the timber stringers and braces supporting the railroad ties. With those cut, the only thing holding up the entire trestle were the rails themselves, and that could not support the weight of a train." A similar set up had been discovered in Prentice the week earlier. Entz describes this as a "death trap." In this early part of the story--the stringer cutters have no motive. This is not a "prank" and it made people "outraged." Without a motive this could be anything from political violence, murder, terrorism or robbery.

Two men, "Levitt Hazelton of Brainard, Minnesota, and Frank Williams, alias Paflinski" are placed in Rhinelander the day before the crash. Four days after the crash Sheriff Patzer got a telegram from a "station agent informing him of two suspicious-looking characters skulking around the area." Patzer jailed "the two heavily armed men" on "concealed weapons charges." This was a pretense to keep them under observation while a case was built against them concerning the train crash. The men were held for more than two weeks while the investigation proceeded. Hazelton "confessed" in the face of "evidence mounting." The evidence is never described by Entz. The plan which Hazelton describes "had been to cause a high-speed wreck where everyone would die. With no witnesses, they would rob the safe in the express car." When they failed to murder everyone on the train they got scared and ran away. In Entz' retelling "Hazelton and Williams were convicted of murder and sentenced to the state penitentiary."

Soo Line Event (1894): Radical Framing

To better understand this event requires an introduction of some supplemental sources. The first compares Civil War train saboteurs to Gilded Age train robbers. The second is Lucy Parson's "A Word To Tramps" which was published in Chicago a decade before the Soo Line Event. And the third places hoboes in labor and social history. Entz piece on Lamperer is of this type in a field defined by labor-gender historian Higbie, social historian of homelessness DePastino and Progressiv Era urban studies sociologist Nels Anderson.

During the Civil War it was common for irregular confederate militias in border states to sabatoge Union infrastructure. In the slave holders world view, this was a proportional response to emancipation. One such event occurred is the O&M train collapse in Southern Indiana. Compared to to Gilded Age train robbers like the Reno and Hole in the Wall gangs--who targeted physical loot in the mail car and on the passengers--the O&M attack was an act of mass murder. The Gilded Age train robbers limited the body count and focused on the loot. In terms of extraordinary punishment, of the 115 ESPY File executions from 1894: 109 were for "Murder" and twenty eight were for 28 "Robbery-Murder" and no one was executed for robbery alone. Of course, Wisconsin doesn't have the death penalty but it is still a deterrent. First, killing somebody while doing crime against interstate commerce or the postal system is a Federal offense. Second, Paflinski's relief was observed by the press when his prison sentence was read and it is suggested he was expecting to be hung or electrocuted.

Ashbaugh's classic biography of Lucy Parsons emphasizes her membership in three underclass communities defined by gender, race and class and advocacy for free-speech, against hunger and poverty. One mechanism that the elites used to delegitimized her demands was by "portraying [Parsons] as a criminal...to direct public attention away from the real issues..." Jones' biography of Parsons emphasizes her life outside of her husband (executed in 1887 following Haymarket) as a radical provocateur for worker rights and free press advocate whose personal conradictions regarding race, wealth, status, sexuality and established law is described by Jones in her "deep commitment to informed debate and disqusition, on the one hand, and, on the other, an unthinking invocation of the virtues of explosive devices." The disconnect between theory and deed is a problem for Albert and Lucy Parsons, Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman and Dr. Ben Reitman. Jones' Parsons survived in limimal spaces like "indetermininte" race, public personas, media narratives, press because of personal and generational trauma based in slavery, the Confederacy, masculinity and capitalism. Ashbaugh's public biography and Jones' personal (and disposessed) biography both describe Parson's provocation in Alarm to "learn the use of explosives!" It advocates tramps learn how to destroy infrastructure in order to end capitalist exploitation. Parsons' broader underclass appeal was meant for migrant labor (hoboes), migrant unlabor (tramps) and unmigrant unlabor (bums). It is safe to assume that Paflinski and Hazelton were familiar with Parson's appeal. Like Parsons, Paflisnki had an unsettled childhood bouncing around the midwest. Maybe this dislocation and appeal to arms can explain the "heavily armed" men taken into custody near Irma and, according to Entz, charged with concealed weapons. The train wreckers gave up without firing a shot.

Soo Line Event (1894): Synthesis

Established passenger and commerce lines are attractive to criminals because they represent concentrated wealth on predictable routes moving through unpopulated space. Train robberies are covered by the newspapers. Robbers are turned into popular characters by American icons. Members of the Reno gang have been played by Forrest Tucker and Elvis Presley. Elton John and Larry Cordle have written songs about them. The celebrity that is created by retelling these events can sell advertisements and reinforce cultural norms. Many outlaw stories end with tragic justice. Elvis' Clint Reno is killed, the confederates are arrested and the money is returned. Some other examples: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are lost in a shootout, Billy the Kid escapes execution and is killed and Wild Bill Hickock was killed while gambling. Another frame--in tension--from the period: the heroic Tejano freedom fighters like Davy Crockett vs. the villainous Confederate secessionists--both destroyed by larger and better armed federal forces. In the end, law and order prevails.

Stories that propagandize non-republican and non-capitalist ideas are censored as disinformation or foreign intervention. The Soo Line events are most dangerous to this corporate-state status quo if they emphasize the miles of vulnerable infrastructure to Anarchists and Socialists during a period of rail based labor violence like the Pullman strike. Charges of insanity, robbery and murder are valid and personal. These charges can be framed as deeds without theory which limits their meaning. Anarchists that believe political assassination can have revolutionary implications have been limited to niche media where they will only encounter other true believers. Berkman's attempt on Henry Frick was meaningless, not because the assassin was inept, but because the mainstream media, political elites and corporations were agreed that it was illegal violence. Public outlets are also precluded from explaining when it is okay to break the law. The radical press that can get away with framing deed as Anarchist methodology using cultural relativism and workplace exploitation but nobody will read it. This is probably why heterodox thinkers from Lucy Parsons to Bob La Follette were obsessed with an independent free press. Without a legitimate and sympathetic press, heterodox political acts are only covered--often unfavorably--by the corporate media.

The Reno Gang committed the first American train robbery in 1866. They stole more than $10,000 from an Adams Express Company car on the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad in Jackson County, Indiana. This gang started during the Civil War as war profiteers and bounty jumpers. The gang's first robbery was a store and post office in Jonesville, Indiana in 1864. To the Renos there is no difference between robbing the Federal state and robbing corporations. The anti-federal iconoclast ideology between Civil War confederates and Gilded Age anarchists but people like Lucy Parsons--with ironic views about race, authority and sex--are part of both coalitions.

Jennett Blakeslee Frost The Rebellion in the United States describes the O&M Event as "Another railroad disaster" on Sptember 17. Irregular and guerrilla warfare is standard for Confederates who didn't care how their "enemies were destroyed, whether by fire, by explosions, by poison, by submarine batteries, by railroad accidents, by ambuscade, or at the cannons mouth on the field of battle..." The O&M Event was "another bridge destroyed" this time near Huron, Indiana. On this train two hundred and fifty union soldiers on their way to fight in West Virginia "preciptated down into" the creek bed because the bridge abutments were cut. One hundred soldiers were killed or wounded.

Frost describes at least six instances of trestle sabatage during the civil war. An expected train never arrived and it was found derailed two miles from the Junction because "between the time the train passed up and its return, some of our gentle friends in Maryland had torn up a rail..." (206) The "splendid" B&O bridge across the Potomac was burned by Confederates from the northern end and dynamited from the south. (249) Sabotage on the North Missouri railroad set up an ambush "from the woods, where the rebels, after tearing up the track had secreted themselves." (270) A reconnaissance mission of the Illinois Eleventh regiment to "prevent the enemy from burning the trestle work on the railroad near Charleston." (337) The Platte River "catastrophe." The bridge was one hundred feet long and thirty-five feet high. The bridge was burned until it almost collapsed and the fires were put out. There were ninety people (men, women and children) aboard when it crashed and only three weren't hurt or killed on impact. Targeting civilians in passenger coaches makes Platte River particularly terroristic. (349-50) This is a characteristic it shares with the Soo line event thirty years later. The last of these escalating attacks on union train lines is the "deep-laid plot" that sabotaged an O&M trestle near Huron, Indiana. (368-9). The targeting of soldiers during war-time seems different than the Platte River indiscriminate attack even after the rhetorical escalation of Gilded Age anarchists like Parsons, Goldman and Berkman.

The trestle was also exploited by Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. They didn't maximize the body count like Confederate saboteurs during wartime. Instead, they damaged the trestle to separate the engine and passenger cars. This facilitated a robbery of the mail car without putting the civilians at risk. The Soo Line robbers--Domonick Pfalinski and Leverette Hazelton--damaged the trestle in front of a moving train. This is more like Civil War era irregular warfare than Gilded Age highway robbery. The civilians aboard the train make it seem more Platte River then Huron, Indiana.

The Reno Gang's Jackson County robbery started in Seymour, Indiana on October 6, 1866. Three gang members boarded the train at Seymour. They broke into the express car and stole money from a safe. This was a well planned robbery. The gang had support from riders on horseback. They were able to escape the posse and go to a hideout. They didn't hide their faces though. A passenger identified the gang members who were arrested. The witness was killed and the gang escaped the law. After that, the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang covered their faces with handkerchiefs or napkins when they robbed trains. Paflinski and Hazelton didn't have a getaway plan and they were caught days later wandering the tracks by Irma.

After the Jackson County robbery the Adams Express Company hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to bring the gang to justice. The robberies continued. One of the Pinkerton's innovations during this manhunt was to post agents on the trains to ambush the robbers. This is how they caught the gang as they tried to rob a train on July 9, 1864. On July 10, the Jackson County Vigilance Committee hung took the Pinkerton's prisoners and hung them at a place called Hangman Crossing, Indiana. This type of vigilantism--to include extrajudicial lynchings--is the reason why Entz narrative on the region's vigilantism is notable.

The Jackson County lynching is of a broader type than the Ida B. Wells style racist, communal act. It also includes the frontier and territorial justice in places with undeveloped justice systems. The distinction is important when transients are involved because of Dr. Ben Reitman, the syphilis doctor and king of the hoboes, who--while supporting Emma Goldman's campaign for birth control in San Diego--was tortured and mutilated by a mob. If the distinction between lynchings and violence is the end result of execution then Jackson County and Ida B. Wells style lynchings are different than Reitman. They are both of a broader style of terror invoking social coercion and extra-legal deterrent.
--What is the sourcing on Jackson County, Reno Gang? Gotta be more than Elvis movie and Wikipedia...

Dobson's "Wyoming Tails and Trails" documents the train robbery era and the Hole in the Wall Gang. They targeted frontier banks, trains and stage coaches. When the Montpelier bank in Idaho was robbed the men hid their faces and an accomplice tended get-away horses during the robbery. This is evidence of a Gilded Age developing method from Indiana to Idaho. The capitalist response--empowering private police and vigilantism--was also national in scope. More police meant the heists needed to be better planned. When the Pleasant Valley Coal Company was robbed it took a week of surveillance to target the payroll car. The robbers cut the telephone lines. The 1899 Wilcox Wyoming Robbery started with a barricade across the Overland Flyer tracks. Masked men boarded the train and seperated the express car from the passenger cars. The blew up the trestle between the two cars and the safe inside the express car. There is a method to train robberies. Paflisnki and Hazelton were doing something different--something more like Civil War era irregular warfare--durin the Soo line events of 1894.

The trains were attractive targets because they were predictable and mobile. Sabateurs and robbers could target a train load of city folk from Montreal, Boston and Minneapolis in the middle of a Lincoln County swamp and be far away before law enforcement could arrive or a posse was formed. The Hole-in-the-Wall gang was ended when the railroad companies started appointing mounted train guards. The robbers lost the surprise.

The Soo Line event happened somewhere between Heafford Junction and Bradley. Bradley is a small town north of Tomahawk. The 1895 plat of the region shows Bradley as a six block town. Heafford Junction is just a station at the intersection of the Soo and Hiawatha of the Milwaukee Road. Pfalinski and Hazelton were found wandering the Hiawatha near Irma after destroying the Soo. According to Burg and Storozuk, Tomahawk was first served by the Hiawatha of the Milwaukee Road in October 1887. This line followed the Wisconsin River Valley north-south from New Lisbon to Tomahawk. The railroad turned north at Tomahawk when the river went East towards the river's headwaters at Land O' Lakes. The Hiawatha ended at the Boulder Junction/Star Lake lumber camps.

Rosholt echos the Lydon's corporate narrative of the Soo Line: originally a flour freight line from "the Twin Cities for eastern markets over the short route." This route included Wisconsin and Michigan and connected with the Canadian Pacific at the St. Mary's River bridge at Sault Ste. Marie and named for the Soo Locks there. The scale of the railroad increased through mergers with competitors until it was 737 miles "in the wilderness" between Minneapolis and Canada. Rosholt cites volumes from the Soo line Railroad Company (1955, 56) and the Soo Line Historical and Technical Society (1984).

The corporation maintained an institutional narrative even during the declension period through representatives like Lydon and Rosholt. The Soo Line mission as described by Lydon: "to break the fetters of the Chicago gateway to the East [and] make the small city of Minneapolis the world's largest flour milling center." Paflinski and Hazelton's crimes should include compromising the national distribution network of flour. American anarchists like Parsons and Emma Goldman use as part of their politics to include hunger strikes and bread piracy. Disabling the Soo line has the potential to be this kind of act. But this type of overt politics reveals the heterodox among us and the fragility of the national infrastructure. The actual convicted crimes were murder of a fireman, injury of an engineer and the failed robbery. Even the more niche explanation--assassination of the engineer--doesn't begin with a anarcho-communist primer of voluntary associations and radical dissent.

A map from Burg/Storozuk shows a one stop Soo line spur from Bradley to Tomahawk. In 1887, the intersection of the Hiawatha and the Soo Lines at Heafford Junction was the confluence of two major trade networks with national import to the lumber and wheat industries. The midwestern English and German press picked up on the Soo Line event late November. The Merrill Advocate was "[t]he largest paper published in Northern Wisconsin." This paper's coverage of the event started on October 9. In this first article "Buried In the River" has a dateline Rhinelander Oct. 8.

Rhinelander was the last major stop before Heafford Junction. According to the 1895 Plat, the Soo didn't stop in Tomahawk. The Advocate's Rhinelander dateline followed the story into the Midwestern press as did it's description of "wrecking a train on the Soo Line near Rhinelander." Paflinski would become the "trainwrecker" in the press. Even this is different then the "trainrobber" used to describe the Reno and Hole-in-the-Wall gangs.

According to "Buried in the River" Paflinski and Hazelton targeted the "Boston-Minneapolis limited," a west bound train that crossed a "trestle between Heafford Junction and Bradley." The trestle had been sabotaged "stringers and piles had been sawed after the east-bound limited passed." The two men had one hour and forty minutes to saw the bridge in between east and westbound trains. This is the same tactic that Confederate saboteurs used against the Ohio & Mississippi during the war. The timing of the event makes it appear that they were targeting a specific train or service.

Jennett Blakeslee Frost's description of the O&M, "a train...broke through the bridge, the abutments having been sawn nearly in two by some traitorous or malicious persons, by which means four passenger cars were precipitated down into the bed of the creek..." There is a difference between traitorous or malicious. The former is a political statement (traitor to whom?) and the later is a value statement (mal=bad). This makes sense in the Civil War irregular warfare context.

The "Buried in the River" narrative describes a previous attempt on the line: "the job of cutting the stringers and piles was exactly the same as done in Prentice last week." The Prentice train wasn't destroyed. Engineer Dutch was driving both trains when they were targeted for sabotage. He believed "someone who aims at his death" was committing the crimes. This was replaced by the official narrative: "it was done by tramps for robbery."

The Soo Line event was poorly planned. The press reports describe "an overcoat and the saw" left at the scene of the crime. The saw was stolen from nearby but the overcoat is evidence to the Advocate that the saboteurs were "surprise[d]" but the train, in "the overcoat were certain articles which will help to identify" the saboteurs. There is no evidence that the "trainwreckers" took anything from the scene. It seems they went south towards Irma and then returned to Merrill a few days later. Stealing tools, leaving evidence, returning to the scene can be added to the list of terrible ideas which are not part of the developing train-robber methodology of the period.

in the first few Advocate articles about the event Hazelton was a patsy who Paflinski corrupted. Paflinski became the trainwrecker's name after an Advocate article tilted "Not His True Name" which portray him as an ethnic drifter. This one paragraph article was reprinted in the New Ulm and Veroqua papers, with a dateline "APPLETON, Wis., Nov. 10." It might have originated from one of the Fox Valley Papers. After this article, the ethnic weight of Paflinski accompanies the trainwrecker even though "he has never lived under that name."

Engineer Dutch's paranoia is not repeated in the later articles. State and local legal officials become the focus of the stories. Hazelton confesses and corroborate that confession in court. The confession and Hazelton's apparent corruptibility were part of his plea deal guilty of manslaughter and twenty years in the state penitentiary. Paflinski found guilty of second-degree murder and sentanced to twenty-five years in the state hospital. The judge added an unusual condition to his punishment that he be held in solitary confinement one day annually to think about what he had done. For both Hazelton and Paflinski these were life sentences.

A justice narrative emerged during the trial and in subsequent corporate rail road histories. This narrative sells more trail passes than a counter-narrative about anarchist highwaymen and domestic terrorism. The justice narrative also keeps people from emulating the bad guys. This is the newspaper's version of the motion pictures Hayes Code--an industry adherence to accepted narratives in service of social harmony. In the twentieth century this is Manufacturing Consent and in the twenty-first century it is called the Trusted News Initiative. The role of state media like the BBC, VOA and NPR is to reinforce state narratives and dismiss heterodox propaganda. In the Soo Line case, there is nobody to question basic assumptions of the the state narrative "it was done by tramps for robbery" even though there was nothing taken, no getaway vehicles and no hideout--standards of the robbery genre.

Hazelton does claim he was enticed by the "vast amount of money" that Paflinski said was on the train. But there is no report of the men trying to acquire the money after the crash. Instead it seems like they ran--on foot--to the southbound Hiawatha and either jumped a train or walked south towards Merrill, Irma or Wausau. They were "heavily armed" but didn't use the guns on on the passengers. There is no report of dynamite on the Soo Line robbers. Even if they could have robbed the passengers, mail or express cars--the men were still on foot during already carrying bindles full of stuff for the road. The weight of currency or jewelry would have been theirs to carry. Paflinski "refus[ed] to talk" and was implicated by his accomplice. Afterwards, Paflinski is portrayed a shameless man who corrupted the younger Hazelton. Hazelton is the one who claims it was a robbery.

Neither Lydon nor Rosholt include a narrative for the Soo line robbery of 1894. This is a shortcoming of these corporate funded histories that emphasize new diesel engines, stock options and wider service. Period newspapers from four states covered the aftermath of the story. So did the German press in New Ulm. The J.H. Molony collection at the Central Wisconsin Digitization project hosts two photographs with captions. Domonick Paflinski "planned the train robbery and wreck in which an engineer was killed in 1894 between Bradley and Heafford. Sentenced to 25 years, Paflinski went to Northern Hospital for the criminally insane where he died 5/12/1927." Leverette C. Hazelton "wrecked and robbed a train between Heafford and Bradley in 1894; killing an engineer. Hazelton was sentenced to 20 years at Waupun and died of TB in 1899."

Both photo descriptions depict a train wreck, robbery and the death of an engineer. Lost as conjecture are the engineer's targeting, documents found in the overcoat and the manhunt described in the Advocate--"Every suspicious character in the country will be made to explain his whereabouts last night." This was funded by the Soo: "$500 for information leading to the capture of guilty parties." The subsequent articles focus on law enforcement and the judicial system rather then the extra legal private security plan employed by the railroads.

There are many articles from 1894-95 available online. This doesn't include the Merrill (Lincoln County) Advocate which is hosted by the Merrill public library. This was the paper of record for the Wisconsin River Valley north of Wausau.

The historical articles add some nuance to the train wreck, robbery and death narrative. The Vernon County Censor provides a personal history for Paflinski. He was born Dominick Paflinski and orphaned as a child. He was adopted by Valentine Schwalbach and was called Frank Williams. He worked as a lumberman in Michigan where it is thought he drowned in around 1884. He resurfaced in northern Wisconsin during the lumbering period. The Vernon County Censor is one of two pre-trial articles that have been archived.

The second pre-trial article is from Der Fortschritt in New Ulm, MN. Its is a translation of the Censor article. New Ulm is not on the Soo Line but it is in the grain producing periphery of Minneapolis. At the time of the robbery, New Ulm had already been an established German settlement for forty years. They were about to complete construction of a monument to a Cheruscan chief from Germania. Hermann (Arminius) Monument Society. As the American imperial state expanded, national chauvinism began to target European culture within the state. Der Fortschritt was writing about a seeming compatriot caught up in this inward anti-immigrant period. The name shift is a sign of those times. In the Censor and Fortschritt the man is called Frank Williams because he is not guilty, awaiting trial. When the trial started, Pfalinski was guilty in the court of public opinion and there is no mention of his anglo name.

The trial coverage starts in January 1895. Paflinski is now referred to as the "Trainrwrecker" by the press. The rest of the characters are Judge Bardeen, district attorney prosecutors Porter and Anderson, court appointed defense Van Hecke, a jury "composed of well to do farmers and business men," Soo superintendent Willard, bridge foreman Wallworth, roadmaster Collins, former sheriff Patzer, conductor Lewis, Hazelton and Paflinski.

Leverette Hazelton, twenty years old during the robbery, confessed to his part in the robbery. Under oath he "gave a complete history of his acquaintance with Paflinski...corroborating the confession he made" in October. Hazelton claimed Paflinski "represented to him the vast amount of money they were to get." Hazelton got the lesser sentence of twenty years in the the State Prison in Waupun. Four years later he would die there of tuberculosis.

Paflinski is set up as the mastermind of the robbery. He claims to have been in Rhinelander when it happened but he can't produce a witness. His sentence was twenty five years at the Northern Hospital for the Criminally insane in Winnebago (Oshkosh). He died there in 1927. The newspapers emphasize Hazelton's age (he "is only 20 years old"), Paflinski seems like a corrupting force. He is also shifty, "testified in his own behalf, and belied his looks in that he proved to been an expert witness." Paflinski during the trial is disinterested. During the verdict he became "nervous." He was a "stolid man, and apparently devoid of shame." The press coverage reflects an unfavorable stigma surrounding the case.

Conclusion

The most frustrating part of ANMiH is the lack of sourcing. Entz probably realized this as he is returning to an academic medium with footnotes. The best parts of this project are the Notable Individuals and the Town Origins series. They are unique instances contextualized by an experienced historian. It is as good as other cultural studies radio programs like Letter from America or From Our Own Correspondent. As a historical program AMiNH doesn't have the gravitas of University of the Air, the rigor of Mike Duncan's Revolutions or Dan Carlin's Hardcore popularity.

The real Soo Line event was probably a poorly planned robbery, well planned pair of murder attempts against Engineer Dutch or state-censored anarchist propaganda of the deed. The easiest to prove in court was the poorly planned robbery and incidental killing of Fireman Conttrell. This would result in a de facto life sentence. Historians like Entz would report a justice narrative "Hazelton and Williams were convicted of murder and sentenced to the state penitentiary." This closely resembles the narrative from period newspapers: Hazelton was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to the state penitentiary where he died of Tb and Williams was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to the state hospital with an annual regime of cruel and unusual punishment until he died. Even this post-structural Foucault-ian Discipline and Punish revision doesn't include the Lucy Parsons part about revolutionary Tramps starving the North East before winter. That doesn't mean it didn't (sic) happen.