Charles Joseph Antoine Labadie (April 18, 1850 – October 7, 1933) was an American labor organizer, anarchist, Greenbacker, social activist, printer, publisher, essayist, and poet. Biography Early years Jo Labadie was born on April 18, 1850, in Paw Paw, Michigan, to Anthony and Euphrosyne Labadie, both descendants of seventeenth century French immigrants of the Labadie family who had settled on both sides of the Detroit River. His boyhood was a frontier existence among Potawatomi tribes in southern Michigan, where his father served as interpreter between Jesuit missionaries and Native Americans. His only formal schooling was a few months in a parochial school. Labadie began five years of "tramp" printing and then settled in Detroit as a printer for the Detroit Post and Tribune. He married his first cousin, Sophie Elizabeth Archambeau, in 1877, despite him being agnostic and her being Catholic. Their children were Laura, Charlotte, and Laurance, also a prominent anarchist essayist. The family was also involved in the film and the entertainment industry in the Detroit area. Political life Labadie joined the newly formed Socialist Labor Party in Detroit at the age of 27 and soon was distributing socialist tracts on street corners. As a printer, he was also a member of Detroit's Typographical Union 18 and was one of its two delegates to the International Typographical Union convention in Detroit in 1878. In 1878 Labadie organized Detroit's first assembly of the Knights of Labor, and ran unsuccessfully for mayor on the Greenback-Labor ticket. In 1880, he served as first president of the Detroit Trades Council, and continued issuing a succession of labor papers and columns for the national labor press, including the Detroit Times, Advance and Labor Leaf, Labor Review, The Socialist, and the Lansing Sentinel, which were admired for their forthright style. His column "Cranky Notions" was widely published. In 1883 Labadie embraced individualist anarchism, a non-violent doctrine. He became closely allied with Benjamin Tucker, the country's foremost exponent of that doctrine, and frequently wrote for the latter's publication, Liberty. Without the oppression of the state, Labadie believed, humans would choose to harmonize with "the great natural laws...without robbing [their] fellows through interest, profit, rent and taxes." Labadie supported localized public cooperation, and was an advocate for community control of water utilities, streets, and railroads. He also criticized capitalism and said that it "has had its day" and that "it must go." Although Labadie did not