INTELLECT SURVEILLED: THORSTEIN VEBLEN
AND THE ORGANS OF STATE SECURITY

By
Sylvia E. Bartley
Noyo Hill House
Fort Bragg, California

NOTES

1 H. L. Mencken, Prejudices, first series (NY: Knopf, 1919), pp. 64, 79.


2 See, for example, Frank J. Donner, The Age of Surveillance. The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System (NY: Vintage, 1981); Joel Kovel, Red Hunting in the Promised Land. Anticommunism and the Making of America (NY: Basic Books,1994); Robert K. Murray, Red Scare. A Study in National Hysteria,1919-1920 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955); Robert A. Pinkerton, "Detective Surveillance of Anarchists,"North American Review 173: 540 (November 1901): 609-617.


3 Donner, op. cit., pp. 32-34.


4 Ibid., pp. 34-35.


5 Report of the Attorney General (1917): 83. Cited in Donner, op.cit., p. 33.


6 Joan M. Jensen, The Price of Vigilence (Chicago, NY & San Francisco: Rand McNally, 1968), pp. 188-218. "Slacker" raids were directed at slackers, i.e. draft resisters and conscientious objectors who refused to register for the draft or otherwise participate in military service.


7 Donner, op. cit., p. 35.


8 Joseph Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen and His America, 7th edition (Clifton, NJ: Augustus M. Kelley, 1972 [1934]), p. 381. Cited hereafter as Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen.


9 U.S. National Archives and Records Service, Investigative Case Files of the Bureau of Investigation, 1908-1922. National Archives Microfilm Publications, Pamphlet Describing M1085 (Wash_ington, D.C.: National Archives Trust Fund Board, 1983), pp. 1-4.


10 Our FOIPA request, dated 13 April 1994, was acknowledged within two weeks. A subsequent communication from the FBI dated 4 May 1994 advised us that documents had been located "which may pertain to your request," that the request would be handled in the approximate order received, that as of the end of the pre_ceding month of March the backlog of pending requests numbered 11,300 and entailed the review of "an estimated 4.8 million pages." While the FBI had "over 200 employees assigned full time to comply with the disclosure provisions of the FOIPA," we were to understand that "delays in excess of one year are not uncommon."


11 Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen, p. 381.


12 Ibid.


13 Ibid.; "He Can't See the Irony," The New Republic (13 April 1918): 324-325.


14 Department of History, Trinity College, Hartford, CT, 23 January 1918. USNA, General Records of the Department of Justice (RG 60): Central Files and Related Records, Classified Subject Files. Correspondence, Box 72, File No. 9-12-239: Veblen, Thorstein. Subsequent references to documents from this file are identified by Record Group, Box and File nos.


15 Tanssig to Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., 26 January 1918. USNA, RG 60, Box 72, File No. 9-12-239.


16 O'Brian to Council of National Defense, Washington, D.C., 26 January 1918. RG 60, Box 72, File No. 9-12-239.


17 Crawford to Department of Justice, Decatur, AR, 25 February 1918. USNA, RG 60, Box 72, File No. 9-12-239.


18 O'Brian to Crawford, Washington, D.C., 9 March 1918. USNA, RG 60, Box 72, File No. 9-12-239.


19 Acting Agent in Charge [J. J. McLaughlin] to Postmaster, Columbia, Missouri, St. Louis, MO, 27 March 1918. USNA, Depart_ment of Justice, Bureau of Investigation, Investigative Case Files, 1908-1922, microfilm (M1085). Subsequent reference to these documents are cited as USNA, BIICF/M1085.


20 Report, J. J. McLaughlin, re: PROFESSOR THORSTEIN VEBLEN, Author book entitled Nature of Peace. Neutrality matter. St. Louis, MO, 2 April 1918. USNA, BIICF/Ml085.


21 McLaughlin to Bureau of Investigation, St. Louis, MO, 1 April 1918. USNA, BIICF/M1085. (The upper left quarter of the original letter with addressee information and any other annotations that may have been there was torn off prior to microfilming.)


22 "Chief," Bureau of Investigation to Miss G. I. Dodson, Washington, D.C., 3 April 1918. USNA, BIICF/M1085.


23 A.H.P. to Bielaski, Washington, D.C., 5[?] April 1918. USNA, BIICF/M1085.


24 Theodore Roosevelt, Letters, vol. 8: The Days of Armageddon,1914-1919. Edited by Ettig E. Morison, Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and Sylvia Rice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 1276.


25 U.S. Department of Justice, Report of the Attorney General (Washington, D.C., 5 December 1918), p. 21.


26 Ibid., p. 22.


27 Ibid., p. 23.


28 Ibid., pp. 14-15.


29 Jensen, op. cit., pp. 243-245.


30 Report No. 304, Captain Roy F. Britton, St. Louis, MO toChief, Military Intelligence Branch, Executive Division, War Department, 26 February 1918. USNA, War Department General and Special Staffs, RG 165: Military Intelligence Division (MID).


31 Report No. 358, Captain Roy F. Britton, St. Louis, MO to Chief, Military Intelligence, War Department, 7 March 1918. USNA, War Department, RG 165, MID.


32 Babe [Ann B. Veblen] to Ann T. Bradley, [Columbia, MO],[June?] 1918, p. 2. Carleton College Archives, Veblen Collection. Copy in author's possession.


33 Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen, p. 383.


34 Ibid.


35 Branner to Woodruff, Stanford, CA, 28 March 1918. J. C. Branner Papers, SC 34, Box 13, Folder 44: Letterbook (January-December 1918), p. 155. Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries. Hereafter cited as Branner Papers.


36 Branner to Woodruff, Stanford, CA, 28 March 1918, pp. 156-157. Branner Papers, SC 34, Letterbook (January-December 1918).


37 Woodruff to Branner, Ithaca, NY, 4 April 1918. Branner Papers, SC 34, Box 58, Folder 286.


38 "Report on Committee on Academic Freedom in Wartime,"Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors (February-March 1918): 29-47. Cited in Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen, p. 383.


39 Thorstein Veblen, Essays in Our changing Order. Edited by Leon Ardzrooni (NY: Viking, 1934), pp. 334-336.


40 Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen, p. 386.


41 Ibid.


42 Memorandum from "A.P.'1 to O'Brian, Washington, D.C., 13 April 1918, p. 1. USNA, BIICF/M1085.


43 See Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen, pp. 386-388.


44 "A.P." to O'Brian, loc. cit., p. 3.


45 Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen, p. 392.


46 Ibid., p. 395.


47 "Mr. Burleson, Section 481.5 B," The New Republic (17 May 1919): 77-78.


48 Cited in Donner, op. cit., p. 36.


49 Donner, op. cit., p. 36.


50 Ibid., p. 35.


51 T. B. Foster to W. H. Moran, Seattle, WA, 22 November 1919. USNA, BIICF/M1085.


52 J E. Murphy to F. Burke, Assistant Director, Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C., 28 November 1919. USNA, BIICF/ M1085.


53 F. Burke to E. J. Brennan [Chicago], Washington, D.C., l[?] December 1919; F. Burke to F. D. Simmons [Seattle], Washington, Page 38 D.C., 6 December 1919. USNA, BIICF/M1085.


54 J. Spolansky to Bureau of Investigation, Chicago, IL, 13 March 1920. USNA, BIICF/M1085.


55 Loebl to Bureau of Investigation, Chicago, IL, 16 March 1920. USNA, BIICF/Ml085.


56 A cursory examination of BI files on Veblen suggests that the Justice Department did not place him very high on their list of radical threats. For a more detailed account of federal sup_pression of radicals in this period, see William Preston, Jr., Aliens and Dissenters. Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903-1933 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963).


57 A. A. Hopkins to Bureau of Investigation, Los Angeles, CA, 16 March 1920. USNA, BIICF/M1085. Hopkins refers to a previous communication from SAC Frank L. Garbarino of the Seattle field office, a copy of which had been forwarded to him along with a photostat of the Secret Service report. Garbarino's communica_tion was not found in these files.


58 Ibid., p. 2.


59 Ibid.


60 Petrovitsky to Bureau of Investigation, Tacoma, WA, 21 March 1920. USNA, BIICF/M1085.


61 Thorstein Veblen, "Dementia Praecox," The Freeman 5 (21 June1922). Cited here in Essays in Our Changing Order, pp. 429-430.


62 Murray, op. cit. p. 255.


63 Dorfman to Department of Justice, New York, NY, 28 September 1932. USNA, RG 60, Box 72, File No. 9-12-239.


64 Dodds to Dorfman, Washington, D.C., 30 September 1932. USNA, RG 60, Box 72, File No. 9-12-239.


65 Dorfman to Attorney General, New York, NY, [2 October] 1932. USNA, RG 60, Box 72, File 9-12-239. In his rush to respond, Dorfman appears to have copied the date on Dodd's letter [30 September] rather than the actual date on which he was writing.


66 Dodds to Dorfman, Washington, D.C., 6 October 1932. USNA, BIICF/Ml085.


67 Lubin to Cummings, Washington, D.C., 16 December 1933. USNA, RG 60, Box 72, File 9-12-239.


68 Memorandum for Mr. Carusi from John Edgar Hoover, Director, Division of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice, Washinton, D.C., 26 December 1933. USNA, RG 60, Box 72, File 9-12-239.


69 Carusi to Lubin, Washington, D.C., 5 January 1934. USNA, RG 60, Box 72, File No. 9-12-239.

RETURN TO: VEBLEN FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM

RETURN TO: Correcting the history about Thorstein Bunde Veblen