Morrison I. Swift — Advent of Empire
Morrison Isaac Swift was a social theorist, organizer, pamphleteer, and writer whose politics combined anti-imperialism, socialism, and a strong defense of individual freedom. He wrote on unemployment, poverty, public ownership, marriage, and social reconstruction, moving between political argument and literary form. The Advent of Empire (1900), preserved in the project, belongs to his critique of American expansion at the turn of the century. Other surviving titles include Imperialism and Liberty and Marriage and Race Death. Swift's verse and polemic are difficult to separate: both use compressed assertion and prophetic address to intervene in public debate. His place in a Los Angeles poetry archive is therefore less about a conventional lyric career than about the city's history of radical pamphleteering and independently printed dissent.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Bibliography
Swift, Morrison I. The Ethics of Idealism as Represented by Aristotle and Hegel. PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1885.
———. The Plan of a Social University. Ashtabula, OH, 1890.
———. Problems of the New Life. Published by the author, 1891.
———. A League of Justice; or, Is It Right to Rob Robbers? Commonwealth Society, 1893.
———. Capitalists Are the Cause of the Unemployed. 1894.
———. What a Tramp Learns in California: Social Danger Line. Society of American Socialists, 1896.
———. Public Ownership Review. 1897–1901.
———. Anti-Imperialism. Public Ownership Review, 1899.
———. Imperialism and Liberty. Ronbroke Press, 1899.
———. Advent of Empire. Ronbroke Press, 1900.
———. The Monarch Billionaire. J. S. Ogilvie, 1903.
———. Human Submission. Liberty Press, 1905.
———. Can Mankind Survive. Marshall Jones, 1919.
———. The Evil Religion Does. Liberty Press, 1927.
———. There Must Be Revolution. Liberty Press, 1934.