Adeline Champney

Adeline Champney (1871 - April 6, 1945) was an American individual-anarchist writer. She was a frequent contributor to Mother Earth magazine — an American anarchist journal founded by famous Russian-born American anarchist Emma Goldman (1869 – 1940), and Liberty — an anarchist/socialist/libertarian periodical published by Benjamin Tucker from August 1881 to April 1908.

Adeline Champney was born in around 1871 in Townsend, Massachusetts, to William A Champney (1842 - 1926) and Mary A. Smith (1851 - ??).

In 1903, Champney authored The woman question: An address delivered before the Boston Social Science Club, covering marriage, women and socialism, and women's rights. The book, published by Comrade Co-operative Company, is now in public domain and available on Google Books.

In September 1907, she published The Price of Progress — a poem on individuality and progress. Two months later, in November, her article titled Even unto Desolation was published in Mother Earth magazine.

Champney had contributed several articles to Mother Earth magazine. One of her essays, What Is Worth While? A Study of Conduct, from the Viewpoint of the Man Awake was later published as a pamphlet by Mother Earth Publishing Association (55 West 28th Street, New York, New York) in 1911. The book confronts how children are raised to believe in the myths of society and the social ideals of honesty, respectability, and prosperity. Worship of these is called "duty" and she identifies three obligations: to God, to man, and to ourselves. The "man awake" has broken free from these constraints.

In March 1915, Champney's paper on anarcha-feminism and individualism titled Congratulations-Plus was published in Mother Earth Vol. X. The paper is a piece in praise of Emma Goldman. It was published to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Goldman's Mother Earth journal. The paper also talks about the importance of "sex-rationalism" — Champney credits Goldman for its spread during the Mother Earth tours. She commented, "No propaganda is more fearfully needed, none more far-reaching in its potentialities for human happiness than the propaganda of sex-rationalism, and Mother Earth is not the least of its prophets."

What Is Worth While?, The Price of Progress, and Congratulations-Plus were also featured in Infinite Variety: Writings By Individualist-Anarchist Women (Enemy Combatant Publications) alongside Why Women Need Egoism by Fraulein Lepper and My Debt to Anarchism by famous American suffragist Sara Bard Field. Some of the materials in the book originally appeared in Mother Earth. The book was edited by Cora Bell Lee.

Champney eventually quit political activism, stating, "Anarchism to me is a dynamic social factor, not a political expedient. I do not foresee the state overthrown and Anarchism established."

Champney lived in Cleveland, Ohio, with her partner Frederick (Fred) Schulder (1874 - 1961) — an individual, single-tax, and Tuckerite anarchist (Benjamin Tucker), known for authoring a pamphlet titled The Relation of Anarchism to Organization in 1899 (inscribed to American individualist anarchist/author Laurance Labadie by Schulder) .

Champney and Schulder described themselves as "philosophical anarchists," and had chosen not to marry. They lived in Cleveland, Ohio, and where she was a member of Cleveland Free thought Society. They had two children: Horace Champney (1905 - 1990) and Freeman F. Champney (1911 - 1998). Horace was a pacifist and anti-war radical involved with A Quaker Action Group, who sailed a boat full of medical supplies to North Vietnam during the American War.

Champney died on 6 April 1945 in Greene County, Ohio, USA.

Young brother, young sister, with the uplift gaze,
Would you follow the new vision, live the new life?
Have you conceived an ideal beyond old creeds and customs?
Does it call you? Would you follow? Count the cost!
Has poverty no terrors for you?
Can you be driven from shelter to shelter till “home” is an empty name,
And can you still be true?
Can you hunger while prostitution feasts and flourishes,
And keep your genius pure?
Have you reckoned with the world’s scorn, and counted it as naught?
Can you discount the averted gaze where once shone welcome?
Still I say to you — Count the cost!
Do you know the price you shall pay for your freedom?
A sword shall sever you from kindred, friends, lovers.
Not one who is not of the new, not one of the old can hold you or be held.
One by one you shall sacrifice them on the altar of your progress,
In a long-drawn agony of pain.
Your very blood shall cry out to you for cruelty.
Your throat shall ache with pity, but they will never understand.
The reproach in their eyes shall haunt your sweetest joys,
And your veriest triumphs shall ring with their defeats.
They whom you love, love, love!
Can you pay for your progress the price of their pain?
Then go on, on, on! and die, still going on!
For you shall never arrive!
But you shall gain? Strength that grows by resistance, power that is born of purpose;
A deeper insight, a clearer understanding, a greater love.
And here and there, along steep hillsides, beside yawning chasms,
A warm hand shall clasp yours,
Clear eyes shall look into yours with the look that knows and responds,
And you shall claim comrades, yours, your own!
You may not keep them with you, but you shall know
That somewhere on the pathway they too are climbing,
They too are pursuing the dream and the vision,
And in you shall be born a living, leaping Hope that into the pain and the yearning,
Into the world’s weariness and woe,
A new light shall dawn, a new day shall break;
That, whether you stand or fall, the world shall grow by your striving;
That slowly, but with onward sweep of endeavor,
On into Freedom and Joy-life, the World is advancing!