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17, is that what we decided, OK, and it's 1979 and it's um. In Oakland, California. And I'm at the home of Francis Tandy. Interviewing her for the Radical elders Oral History Project and um we're at Francis's home. Um, and my name is Elaine Johnson. OK, Francis,

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um, when, what date, and where were you born? I was born in Denver, California, March 9, 1896, 1896. OK, in Denver. And what were your, um, what was your national ancestry? Oh, a mixture of uh my father was. Pretty purely English, um, and my mother was

00:01:03.130 - 00:01:21.370

mixture German, Irish American, you know, from considerable. I don't know all the ancestry, you know, all American melting pot sort of thing. Had they immigrated or have lived in the country of course my mother lived here all the time. My father came over here. I don't

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know what year. Um, 7. Well, I don't know as a as a as a very young man, I think he was 19 or thereabouts when he came here. And to make his fortune. Oh, that's when he came from England, uh-huh. And did he move, um, did

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he live on the east coast and then move into the Denver area? Well, he came to Canada where his brother was, then he went down, I think to Chicago and then to Denver. And what was your father's name? Francis. Oh, it was, that's nice. And your

00:02:09.910 - 00:02:40.300

mother's name? Ammel, yes uh-huh. And so when they should be left out because highly disapprove of this. Oh, she was. Um, and when, when, um. Were they married, your parents, do you know how they met when they? Well, they were both librarians. Oh, they were, yes,

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at that time, and they just fell in love, got married and she I suppose it must have been '91. I didn't look up their marriage. Mhm. In 1891 something I noticed there's a slip marriage in the in the stashed away but it doesn't it just has

00:03:04.570 - 00:03:29.589

the heading for a marriage license or or statement from the church and that's all that's left of it not on that. There are some papers around. I haven't back on that to any rate, the actual date isn't. But it would be yeah. Around 1891, I think

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about then at that time did um they both have to go to school in terms of being librarians did they have? No, my father had gone to the regular what they call the English school and public school in England is a private boarding school. They would

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call it private boarding school. His father was a clergyman who ran a Boarding school for young boys and then my father continued in school different schools. He went to school in Harrow. Um Until about a year before he came to this country and his father died.

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He came here to try and make a fortune. He came by himself then he traveled across by himself after his father died. I see. But he had a brother who was already in Canada and lived with him for a short time intended to come to this

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country I think. And what about your mother she was she grew up in this country and uh. Just Went to school and and then uh got a job at the library and went to high school in Denver. She was born in Detroit and then moved to

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Denver and she lived there but uh. Was it libraries um in grammar schools, public libraries, high schools, well, we didn't have libraries then as we do now. She was in the Denver library and I don't know. I'm sure schools must have had some libraries and there

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must have been some branch libraries, but I never knew anything but the main library in Denver. Denver was a major city, of course, but it was cities those days you're not like towns today, so uh. I don't know whether I don't know anything about branch libraries

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then. Well, when they met and we both librarians, did, uh, once they married, did she continue to work as a librarian? No, she quit her job. She quit her job and my brother was born a little over a year after their marriage. And what was his

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name? Well, another one who wouldn't want his name given it. Oh, no, no, my mother and brothers disagree with me very much on my opinions on that in that respect, we lived together in harmony, but you know. You had an older brother. My brothers were both

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older than I. Uh, the one I lived with here is the oldest of the three, and then one brother in between year and 50 days apart after the. And then you were the youngest. There were 2 brothers and then you and then they didn't have any

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other children after that. But all that's more personal. It makes some difference, of course, naturally in my attitudes, but it's not. You were um then uh raised in Denver till the age of about about 6. I'm not quite sure whether I was 6 then or not,

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but I think I was. You said that your grandfather was a clergyman, uh, were your parents are religious? No. My father, when he came to this country, of course, was poor. His father had died without leaving anything from any money. And so he very soon found

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that he had to get a job as a laborer, and he, he lay helped lane streets, he did. And I was very, very proud and the rest of his life that he was a member of the High carriers Union. I meant to look up and see

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if I couldn't find his union card, but uh. I don't, I haven't found it. I have to look. He did that before he started, he did that. Oh yes, he did that and some other work. I don't know what he did while he was in Canada,

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but he came when he went to Chicago. That's how he got a job and he lived in the slums and uh. I know he told Howard. He and another worker were sitting out on the steps of the of the uh. Slumhouse, I don't know, apartment house

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you'd call them, but like a tenement 10 in my chest tenement that um and the police because it was a hot day and they wanted to get cooled off and then. And the policeman came along and ordered them in because they were in their working clothes

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and they shouldn't be out disgracing the streets actually disgracing well, he felt that it was that it was making, you know, common labor is dirty people just coming home from work they were dirty probably from their work and just sat down to to cool off before

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they went in the hot house because those houses can get pretty miserable. And then you're right. That's one of the things that made him. It's the story he told most often and then he met other people. There was a lot of sentiment going around about that

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time. I don't know whether Emma Goldman was here then or not, but uh. The anarchist movement and the early socialist movements were both active among the working people at that time and my father got interested in all these things at the time. Do you know um

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If if he was politically active at that time in any of those movements, yeah, he became politically active for a while. Yeah, and then uh was he more interested in like the anarchists or the socialist uh-huh uh-huh so Emma Goldman and Alexander Bickman, he probably, well,

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uh, Benjamin Tucker was a lesser light. Did you ever hear of Benjamin Tucker? Well, I'm sure he was one of the lesser lights, but he was in the area where my father was, so my father knew him, and I think he was the one that. He

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was a he was a leader and wrote books or at least a book about anarchy at that time and uh convinced my father and uh what about your mother? Did she, was she involved in that and my father wasn't this was this was before he met

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her before he met her, yes, and. And I'm not sure. I think it was in Chicago this all started, yeah, well, there was the big Haymarket Square massacre in Chicago. I think that was 18. 86, let me see if there's a little piece of paper here

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that that mentions that maybe it's even earlier, the 1880s, um, the 1880s was still uh recent enough for him to hear a good deal about it and still not, uh, and that was, that was more or less my feeling. And the general attitude towards working people

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was bad in those days, and the unions were having a hard struggle to get started. So that uh. And he realized that he was getting a pretty bad deal and, and of course, among them were atheists and agnostics and so on, and he became an agnostic.

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Yeah, what was his grandfather or his father's religion? Church of England, Church of England that he was a clergy. But um my father just naturally changed his ideas and then after he got to Denver, I don't know just why he went to Denver or Whether he

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did any laboring work there, whether he went there to get a job, take this job in the library, but he had this sufficient education. Did he tell you any other stories about that early period? I was in Chicago. He told them, but I can't remember very

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much now, you know. I'm sorry, I should, I should be able to remember them, but he used to tell me and I was always very interested in the subject because when he was um. In the union itself they were just trying to start a union or

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the hard carriers union was already going and I think it was already gone. And was that an AFL union at that time? Well, union going then I guess it was and I think so. Did he ever mention the international workers of the world, the wobblies? Oh,

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to some extent, um. I think they didn't a bounce on didn't think too much of the lobbies and uh. Because he, it was, that was more like the anarchist in his thinking. I think his interest would be more, as I remember it, it was more friendly

00:13:14.219 - 00:13:42.429

towards them and that. As time went on. But uh I, I really don't uh. Surprising, I used to remember these things now I can't because I. I might have just been involved in other things too much sense. Well, when he moved um to Denver from Chicago,

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um, and then got a job as a librarian. Um, after that point he didn't ever go back to work. He stayed in the library until he started his own business. Oh, that's right, you mentioned that, but he did that. Um, did he stay at all of

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the vein of believing in anarchist philosophy? Well, he would say he was an anarchist in his belief? He wasn't. I guess he wasn't terribly deeply imbued in it. It was a philosophy with him, and he always said this is something you work on, and it won't

00:14:20.270 - 00:14:44.719

take it, probably won't take place for 1000, you may not for 1000 years. I can remember you saying maybe 1000 years, which is an awful long time, 10 centuries, but uh. He, he, uh, was still a strong individualist, but his idea of anarchy was associations of

00:14:44.719 - 00:15:10.380

people in industries where the people owned the industries and ran them and worked. But the industries then would work on an individual basis of the individual trusting to uh. Exchange on the um. Scarcity and, and so on and settling the prices. It's a regular, uh, way

00:15:10.380 - 00:15:41.880

of handling things, but still the people would work together for their common good. It wasn't just each man for himself, but each group for itself more or less trusting to exchange and. Scarcity or abundance to settlement and distribution of the wealth. What about um the government?

00:15:41.909 - 00:15:57.460

Did he want to as an anarchist see no more government either, that this would be the form of society that he wants to see. Uh, he always made it very clear that in their group they didn't mean anarchy, the kind it was in those times and

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all the talk was not against communist or socialist but against anarchists who were supposed to throw bombs and so on. He said he knew that there were one or two people who threw bombs, but they were disowned by the group and and. Very definitely discredited because

00:16:16.719 - 00:16:33.770

the group was a philosophical group and he met with them after he was in the library, I think after he was in business, but uh. But it was strictly on a on a once a week, I have no idea how often they met men and women,

00:16:36.010 - 00:16:53.150

mostly men in those days unfortunately, but they did believe in women's rights. I, I guess my mother sat in on meetings. She, she never was really interested. She went along because he was her husband, but she didn't. Uh, and I think that was the way with

00:16:53.150 - 00:17:21.739

most of the women that in, in his group, I, I never heard. I knew there was one man, only one man that I can remember at all, and that was uh John Svis who who came from old Russia, and he escaped from Siberia and uh. Because

00:17:21.739 - 00:17:42.579

he would tell about the conditions there. And so you would hear him speak sometimes and he would, he would just visit us and talk, tell us the story of the conditions that yeah, yeah, he was one speaker, he would go around and speak about anarchy, wouldn't

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he? Well, I don't remember very much. I don't remember whether he did or not, whether it was the same, same man might have been another John Spears I know, or it might have been the same man. Uh, he went away, I know for a long time,

00:18:01.930 - 00:18:20.880

he came back and he was busy then making uh. Well, he, he had a big. Display that he made for the World Fair. I've forgotten which welfare it was, but it was while we were still in Denver or after we went back, we came out here

00:18:20.880 - 00:18:42.959

and then went back and I think that was when. He did that later, a few years later. He, he made the um. What do you call it and make a miniature of a. But an area model, yes, uh, sort of thing of the hills and and

00:18:42.959 - 00:18:52.300

the people and the kind of houses they lived in and everything for display at at a World's Fair. Of his town in Russia and it's it's very well done. I can remember that very well because I wanted I wanted but it was like a little house

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yeah yeah well they were tiny they were this way, but they were all very nicely made and he made, he did that kind of work. So what were their beliefs on women's rights that they believed in women's rights. My father. My mother wanted to work. She

00:19:20.530 - 00:19:41.550

was, she was always for women's rights and uh progressive in that in many ways. And he agreed to it, but she had 3 of us very soon, you see, and she herself was, she wanted to work, but she didn't, she wasn't aggressive by nature, you know,

00:19:41.880 - 00:20:05.959

she was rather retiring and introverted type of person. I was very happy being a librarian. But she never did go to work after she got married, though she always wanted to. My father always said it was quite all right if she wanted to go, yes, and

00:20:05.959 - 00:20:30.089

he realized that and he always helped taking care of us. Yes, he would wash our clothes or put us to bed and do things and help around the house. So it uh Well, then, would you say that um your father was class conscious? Yes, uh, he

00:20:30.089 - 00:20:52.540

was definitely. But of course there was a combination because he spent his childhood in England. As a middle class. Person and middle class there in England was different than what you call middle class in this country, it's professional, and so on, the clergyman was considered a

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little higher class and. And many of the. Uh, professional people and running boarding schools also. Because it was his own, he owned it, but. And then when he came to this country, he was put into the poor and the working class, so he recognized that and

00:21:17.050 - 00:21:38.479

he didn't. He didn't uh stand on class, you know, he, he recognized the the neighbors and so on in class, but he also recognized them as a fact of life, as they were, and in fact, we lived in a little town in New York where he

00:21:38.479 - 00:21:56.050

said, and other people have said since there was no place in the United States where the class lines weren't as close to nearly. Nearest to England that have been places they've ever seen in this country. Oh, that's fascinating. It was a place in New York, a

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small town. Little small town. Um, Were your parents then, uh, you said your father was an agnostic, was he anti-religious? No, we were always taught to be respectful of other people's religion and so on, and uh he, he didn't think that that was the primary thing.

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He just thought it was a fact of life that But it was not an agnostic and I think most uh most uh. And he wasn't an atheist or he wasn't an agnostic he was an agnostic. And he liked to talk about it, he, uh. He'd been

00:22:46.839 - 00:23:06.359

brought up with religion, of course, in England, but his parents had been liberal, considering his father was a clergyman and apparently a very competent one. But they didn't. They weren't rig rigid, and they said working people who hadn't worked hard all week should be allowed to

00:23:06.359 - 00:23:30.619

go out and enjoy themselves on Sunday and so on and. That being the only time they had, and that was considered terribly advanced and almost improper. I mean, as compared to a lot of the Puritan religions that uh Church of India wasn't exactly puritanical, but it

00:23:30.619 - 00:23:50.790

was uh they, they were strict about the Sabbath. Oh, of course I had to go to church on Sunday and sometimes the boys would sneak off and then one boy would go and tell the others what the text was. They go their parents say, what was

00:23:50.790 - 00:24:09.849

the text today? they can always tell. That still goes on. Yes, I'm sure. Uh, what about your mother? Was she, uh, from a religious background? Well, she went to church. She was sent to Sunday school and church and the congregational church, and uh she had been.

00:24:11.160 - 00:24:29.369

A good religious, uh, uh, she believed her religion, went regularly to church and Sunday school so when she was going to marry my father, she was quite concerned about this and went to her minister. And the minister shrugged it out and said, oh, don't worry about

00:24:29.369 - 00:24:45.660

that. He'll get over that, you know, the old idea of this is just a young man's rebellion, and he'll he'll wait till the truth pretty soon and, and brush it off and this this shocked her. And she thought, well, if that's all he thinks of his

00:24:45.660 - 00:25:05.079

religion, he can't be very much, you know, and so she went along and. She never quite accepted it. I don't know how much, uh, whether she did at the time or not, but I know later she believed in an afterlife and that sort of thing. It's

00:25:05.079 - 00:25:26.819

uh whether she believed in a God or not, uh, she didn't say my parents were very loyal to each other in that respect they would never. So much any anything to. Cut down the other one in to us, you know, so that the children can play

00:25:26.819 - 00:25:45.329

one off the other that's right. I don't think they ever did to anyone else either. Do they have a close relationship then? Yeah, sounds like it. It really does. That's great. That's really nice, um. Can you describe your childhood and what stands out in your memory?

00:25:46.520 - 00:26:03.760

Your child well when we were little we were in. We moved around 2 or 3 several times in Denver and then we, my folks bought a house in sort of a suburb which is now, I believe, a part of the city of Denver. It's called Montclair

00:26:05.150 - 00:26:23.910

and there seems to be a certain type of place gets called Montclair everywhere you go, and it was just about just like Montclair here it was off and it was a sort of a middle class neighborhood. We had a very comfortable house there I don't remember.

00:26:25.810 - 00:26:42.300

Animals around there was a a small dairy farm up the road, supplied us with milk and eggs and things like that. We knew them, they were not far from our house and not. I used to go over there and play with their little boys, so it

00:26:42.300 - 00:27:08.660

was pretty close. And they had a wonderful. Kindergarten. In fact, Miss Johnson, who was the who ran the kindergarten with an assistant, was a household name wherever there were children around there because she was really a very, very competent woman. We still have pictures of our

00:27:08.660 - 00:27:33.290

birthday parties there and things that happened in the. In the kindergarten, so much so that I always wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. She really was good. She followed the old. Oh like a yeah, I think it's the name. Of the man who started the system,

00:27:33.540 - 00:27:56.589

uh, German educator. And we were, my brothers had gone to a small nursery school before my, because there were 3 of us so close together, my mother had been in the nursery school, a neighbor girl ran it when they were 2 1/2 and then we were

00:27:56.589 - 00:28:17.119

not supposed to start kindergarten start 1st grade until we had passed our 6th birthday. The same way and we passed the 2nd birthday, so I then when we got to my player and I was a good school, I was in in the Kindergarten for 3 years

00:28:17.119 - 00:28:39.239

I think 2 or 3 years I've quite a long time so they accepted you at an early age and then you stayed until I was ready before I was 3 and stayed till I was 6. I, I have memories of. Hopping around and uh uh of

00:28:39.239 - 00:29:01.439

our gathering and chairs around and hearing stories and parties and things of that sort and we have, I think there's still some little pieces of art things we did in. And nursery school and kindergarten still around. That stands out vividly is my father, we always went

00:29:01.439 - 00:29:18.099

out for a walk or a ride on Sunday. We didn't have a horse, but my father would occasionally hire a horse and buggy, old fashioned Surrey, to take us all out for a ride. Well, one day we were out for a ride and we passed over

00:29:18.099 - 00:29:35.640

a little bridge where there was a creek and some boy was throwing stones and he turned around and started to scare the horse, you know, trying to bother him. My father got mad and called him yell at him, Stop that, you fool. On the next day

00:29:35.640 - 00:29:56.979

I went. The kindergarten, the little kid was drug stoned. I said stop that, you fool. God, that's a king. Betsy where I was bit by my second name in those days, Elizabeth. I said yeah, that nickname was Bessy. Where did, where did you learn that awful

00:29:56.979 - 00:30:15.010

word, you know, who calls his brother a fool is in danger of hellfire. That's what she said. No, she didn't say that. It's in the it's a story. It's in the Bible and people used to believe that. So anyway. She called me in and washed out

00:30:15.010 - 00:30:31.229

my mouth, and she made me sit there while she was washing out some of our little. Dishes there in the sink all she was saying I was so embarrassed all the kids were going by and I could remember still being so embarrassed after she washed my

00:30:31.229 - 00:30:54.930

mouth from here my, my mouth, my lips would be cleaner than the rest. She does. They would everybody would know I had my mouth washed out and she she she said, Where did you learn that? And I said, Well, my papa taught me that. Uh, not

00:30:54.930 - 00:31:16.369

for me to use it, so she, but she, she did use soap because. Well, that's, that's funny. Yeah, that's, that's something I mean even in my childhood they talked about if you were bad, wash your mouth out with so yeah they things you shouldn't right.