VILLARD, OSWALD GARRISON 1872-1949

E ditor

Family Fame and Fortune

As the grandson of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and the son of Civil War correspondent, publisher, and railroad magnate Henry Villard, Oswald Garrison Villard inherited both crusading liberal views and the means to promote them. He was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, and educated in private schools in New York. After earning undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard in 1893 and 1896 respectively, he became a newspaper reporter and then took over as the editor of his father's New York Evening Post. He was dedicated to the advancement of blacks, equal rights for women, birth control, prison reform, and civil liberties. He opposed American entry into both world wars.

Unsettling New York

Villard's greatest exposé occurred in 1910, when his investigation of the New York State legislature president and Republican majority leader, Jotham P. Allds, uncovered rampant graft. It led to the first graft conviction of a New York legislator. In 1911 Villard was one of a handful of men to join in the first woman suffrage parade in New York City, and he gleefully suffered jeers from members of his own University Club as the parade passed under its windows. Villard supported Woodrow Wilson for president in 1912 but withdrew his support when the new administration mandated segregation for federal workers.

Against War

Villard applauded Wilson's restraint after the sinking of the Lusitania, when many people called for revenge against Germany. Later Villard blamed Wilson for drawing the United States unnecessarily into war through his increases in defense spending and preferential treatment for the Allies. He founded the League to Limit Armaments and campaigned against universal military service. When Wilson declared war, Villard proclaimed that his loyalty to American traditions mandated that he remain at peace. He wrote in dismay of the war's effects on his cherished agenda for domestic reform: "From the moment we embarked upon that crusade it was marked by a bitterness, a vindictiveness, a rage against all who opposed it, which in themselves should have given pause to those who really believed that out of such passions, out of wholesale murder, would come an all-cleansing spiritual victory." Villard feared prosecution for his views but only met with unofficial scorn and hostility.

A New Nation.

After bitter disputes with the prowar staff of the Evening Post, Villard sold the paper in 1918, but he kept the Nation, which was part of the Post company. It had long been a liberal political magazine but had recently turned more to fiction. Spending $150,000 the first year, he set out to restore political reporting to the weekly, adding foreign correspondents to the staff, as well as a widely admired book section. The editorial stance of the Nation, which argued that the United States should not interfere with the Russian Revolution, precipitated censure from the government. An issue criticizing labor leader Samuel Gompers was censored outright: postal workers supported Gompers's stand against labor unrest for the duration of the war. Villard himself covered the Versailles Conference and, despite his distaste for Wilson, was impressed with the reception the president received in Europe. He witnessed rampant political violence throughout Europe in 1919 and concluded that this was the natural result of four years of war. The Nation stood consistently and articulately against the political reppression that overtook the United States in 1919 and 1920 and was known as the "Red Scare."

Against the Concentration of Power

Villard railed against concentration of power until well into the mid twentieth century, whether agglomeration of business interests in the form of huge corporations or the increased power of the president in government. He did not greatly admire Franklin Delano Roosevelt but embraced the New Deal heartily. His opposition to U.S. entry into World War II sent him closer to the ranks of conservatives and isolationists than he had ever been in his long life. He died in 1949 at the age of seventy-seven, bitter that his principles had not been better realized.

Source:

Michael Wrezin, Oswald Garrison Villard: Pacifist at War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965).

Oswald Garrison Villard

Editor of the "Nation" magazine, Oswald Garrison Villard (1872-1949) was one of the foremost American liberals of the 20th century. He was noted for his moralistic, uncompromising commitment to pacifism and minority rights.

Oswald Garrison Villard was born in Germany on Mar. 13, 1872. From his father, who emigrated to America and became a journalist and then a wealthy railroad magnate and financier, he learned a commitment to capitalism and the ideas of 19th-century laissez-faire liberalism. From his mother, the favorite daughter of abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison, he acquired a rigid, almost puritanical, moralism. Villard was educated at private schools and Harvard. After a brief apprenticeship on a Philadelphia paper, in 1897 he joined the staff of the New York Evening Post, which his father happened to own. He soon rose to editorial prominence on the paper and, after his father's death, became owner and publisher.

During his time with the Post Villard carved out an unconventional political position. Along with many others of his class and outlook, he condemned America's imperial ambitions as displayed by the Spanish-American War, but he began to move toward pacifism. He joined his father in supporting the rights of women (his mother was a dedicated leader in this battle) but also championed the rights of African-Americans, Jews, and other minority groups. He departed from traditional laissez-faire thought and defended the right of workers to organize into labor unions and to strike.

A sincere pacifist, Villard opposed American participation in World War I. In 1918, with war fever at its height, the pressure on Villard and the Post to form "patriotic" readers and advertisers had become financially unbearable, and he was forced to sell it. When the war ended, he attacked the Treaty of Versailles, claiming that its unjust nature proved his contentions about the unjust nature of the war.

Villard had retained ownership of the weekly edition of the Post, the Nation, and continued to use this as the personal organ for his views until 1932, when he gave up ownership but continued to contribute. During the 1920s Villard's Nation was one of the few strong voices of liberalism in the United States. Although its circulation was only about 25, 000 its influence was great.

Villard remained a favorite of many liberals into the 1930s, when he supported Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. However, at the end of this decade his pacifism again isolated him. He refused to support rearmament and aid to the Allies during World War II, and in June 1940 the Nation stopped printing his weekly signed articles. He continued to oppose the war after Pearl Harbor and rapidly isolated himself from the mainstream. On Oct. 1, 1949, he died in New York City, a still uncompromising, but embittered, man.

Further Reading

The best biography of Villard is Michael Wreszin, Oswald Garrison Villard: Pacifist at War (1965), which contains a bibliography. Dollena Joy Humes, Oswald Garrison Villard: Liberal of the 1920's (1960), has useful summations of Villard's positions on various issues during the 1920's, but it is not as insightful as Wreszin's book, which covers Villard's whole career.

Additional Sources

Humes, Dollena Joy, Oswald Garrison Villard, liberal of the 1920's, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977, 1960. □

Villard, Oswald and Fanny Garrison, pacifists, antiracists, and feminists.This mother and son team carried on the political tradition of Fanny Garrison Villard's father, reformer William Lloyd Garrison.

Fanny Garrison (1844–1928) married the German‐born business entrepreneur and newspaperman Henry Villard in 1866. Her adult political work had begun with efforts to help newly freed slaves during Reconstruction. She continued her charity work through the Diet Kitchen Association (dedicated to improving nutrition for the poor), the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, and the Woman's Exchange. In 1898, both she and her youngest son, Oswald (1872–1949), spoke against the imperialist position taken by the United States in the Spanish‐American War. In 1914, both became active in the anti–World War I movement. Fanny acted through the Woman's Peace Party and the suffrage movement; Oswald, for a time, through the Fellowship of Reconciliation. More notably, Oswald, like his grandfather, voiced his antiwar sentiment as a journalist and publisher, first via the New York Evening Post and then the Nation (founded in part by his uncle, Wendell).

Fanny's voice continued from 1919 to her death in 1928 through the Women's Peace Society, an “absolutely” pacifist organization. Oswald also stood for pacifism to his death in 1949. Both were also among the founders and activists of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
[See also Peace and Antiwar Movements.]

Bibliography

D. Joy Humes , Oswald Garrison Villard: Liberal of the 1920's, 1960.
Michael Wreszin , Oswald Garrison Villard: Pacifist at War, 1965. (There is currently no biographical study of Fanny Garrison Villard.)

Harriet Hyman Alonso

Oswald Garrison Villard 1872–1949, American editor and author, b. Wiesbaden, Germany, grad. Harvard (B.A., 1893; M.A., 1896). The son of Henry Villard and the grandson, on his mother's side, of William Lloyd Garrison, he was a lifelong liberal and a pacifist. In 1897 he became an editorial writer on the New York Evening Post and after inheriting the paper from his father was its editor until he sold it in 1918. He retained its weekly edition, the Nation, and as its editor made it a leading liberal journal; he sold it in 1932, remaining as publisher and contributor until 1935, but finally severed all connections when the Nation became nonpacifist in 1940. His writings include John Brown: A Biography Fifty Years After (1910), Newspapers and Newspaper Men (1923), and an autobiography, The Fighting Years (1939).

Villard, Oswald Garrison (1872–1949), son of Henry Villard, born in Germany, was educated at Harvard and began his journalistic career in Philadelphia (1896). He was an editorial writer for the New York Evening Post (1897–1918), of which he was owner and president after his father's death. Villard purchased The Nation (1908), which, during his editorship until 1933, was established as a leading journal of liberal opinion. His books include John Brown, 1800–1859—A Biography Fifty Years After (1910), Some Newspapers and Newspaper Men (1923), an autobiography entitled Fighting Years (1939), and The Disappearing Daily (1944), the development of the U.S. press brought up to date from his 1923 volume.