Actually, the union document was one of the cheaper items on the block at one of the most unusual auctions ever held at Swann, which has sold everything from Anne Frank letters ($165,000) to Joan Crawford’s plastic clothes brush ($431). The day’s biggest sale, $14,950, was an autographed copy of the plea for 1920s murderers Leopold and Loeb by Clarence Darrow, the renowned leftist lawyer. A letter from anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti, executed for allegedly killing a factory officer, went for $5,060. And an early American version of the Communist Manifesto went to the inevitable Japanese dealer for $1,610.
The “American Radicalism” collection was assembled by Bruce Rubenstein, 45, a Hartford, Conn., attorney who has been collecting since he first pinned on an antiwar button in the 1960s. The gallery took in a modest $137,000, but proved that, while the left may have its doubts about the market, there is clearly a market for the left. As prices rise on mainstream political memorabilia such as campaign buttons, collectors are moving to items from reform movements. Many of those most interested in areas such as women’s suffrage can now afford to buy. One man inspecting a book signed by singer and activist Paul Robeson mused that, with a rising black middle class and a paucity of documents, an investment might pay.
Still, most customers for this material aren’t investors, said Swann president George Lowry, but soul mates of the man who sold it. Rubenstein is the kind of American who proudly traces his roots to a great uncle who helped kill the last czar. He scans the papers for obituaries of radicals who’ve gone to that great Utopia in the sky but may have left some papers behind.
A stream of fellow travelers wandered through Swann’s exhibit hall last week, running into old comrades and joking about whether prices rise or fall with the “ism.” “This is great! It’s like a movement reunion,” said Roger Lowenstein, who wanted a pin for the “McNamara 8,” unionists accused of dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building during a 1910 strike. He lost out on the pin, but scored an autographed copy of Marxist Emma Goldman’s “The Social Significance of the Modern Drama.” Fitting. A freelance writer, his current assignment is with “L.A. Law.”
