#secret message

In addition to documenting marks of ownership and marks of use in our rare books, here at the MSU Provenance Project we also catalog loose ephemera found in books—handwritten notes, pressed flowers, advertising cards, etc. Last week a long-forgotten box of such “laid-in material” was dumped on my desk, and it contained a number of fascinating pieces.

One of the items was a mysterious typewritten note inviting the recipient to a clandestine meeting near Mary Lyon’s grave on the campus of Mount Holyoke College, an all-women’s college in Massachusetts. Handwritten at the bottom was the monogram or logo of an organization identified only as MHS. 

Folded up in the letter were five notecards, filled with manuscript notes in black ink. The cards make reference to student syndicalism (syndicalism was a revolutionary anti-capitalist philosophy that gained popularity in the early 20th century) and to William Z. Foster, an early 20th century radical labor organizer and chairman of the US Communist Party. A number of clues allow us to date the letter and the cards to 1923. Here are some excerpts from the handwritten notecards:

Criminal Student Syndicalist Act of Mass. Criminal Student Syndicalism = doctrine which advocates the emancipation of the undergraduate intellect from undigested dogma, from preconceived prejudice, and from convention, & which advocates the overthrow of everything that has been and is, and which advocates the installation of anything that might be… 

Everything that has been is defined as meaning what ever has had existence, in the metaphysical sense, within the last 147 yrs. That being the period of our life as a great and free republic of perfect institutions. Anything that might be = the category of events which might conceivably at some future date or in some unearthly place be substituted for what now is… 

William Z. Foster (alias Borden alias Hewes) is charged with violating the Criminal Student Syndicalist Act of the Commonwealth of Mass. On ground that he assembled with M.H.S. knowing that the party sought & advocated Stud. Syndicalism…

But what is MHS? Could it stand for Mount Holyoke Syndicalists? Was there such a group operating on the Mount Holyoke campus in the 1920s that might have had some connection to William Z. Foster? What is the connection between these notecards and this secretive typewritten invitation? The first half of the handwritten text comes across as sympathetic to the student syndicalist cause, while the last few cards sound antagonistic to Foster and the MHS. What went on at this clandestine meeting nearly 100 years ago?

Unfortunately, whoever pulled this material from its host book (likely 30+ years ago) failed to document what volume it came out of, so how Michigan State University came to possess these notecards is something of a mystery in and of itself. Put on your sleuthing caps and help us solve this fascinating historical puzzle!

~Andrew

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