246 A Writer in her own Right

It was probably not a pleasant experience, but Rose Wilder Lane, a successful writer was outshone by her own mother of "Little House" fame whose work she selflessly edited. She was also very political, going from very liberal to what sounds like a libertarian in today's political scene, and considering the era she lived through, much makes sense today. Some of her writing is available on line at the WPA's Federal Writers' Project.

"The Federal Writers' Project materials in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division are part of a larger collection titled The U.S. Work Progress Administration Federal Writers' Project and Historical Records Survey. The holdings from Federal Writers' Project span the years 1889-1942 and cover a wide range of topics and subprojects. Altogether, the Federal Writers' holdings number approximately 300,000 items and consist of correspondence, memoranda, field reports, notes, graphs, charts, preliminary and corrected drafts of essays, oral testimony, folklore, miscellaneous administrative and miscellaneous other material."

In a WPA autobiography included in the above collection, Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote in 1938-39:

“Politically, I cast my first vote -- on a sample ballot -- for Cleveland, at the age of three. I was an ardent if uncomprehending Populist; I saw America ruined forever when the soulless corporations in 1896, defeated Bryan and Free Silver.

I was a Christian Socialist with Debs, and distributed untold numbers of the Appeal to Reason. From 1914 to 1920 -- when I first went to Europe -- I was a pacifist; innocently, if criminally, I thought war stupid, cruel, wasteful and unnecessary. I voted for Wilson because he kept us out of it.

In 1917 I became a convinced, though not practicing Communist. In Russia, for some reason, I wasn't and I said so, but my understanding of Bolshevism made everything pleasant when the Cheka arrested me a few times.

I am now a fundamentalist American; give me time and I will tell you why individualism, laissez faire and the slightly restrained anarchy of capitalism offer the best opportunities for the development of the human spirit. Also I will tell you why the relative freedom of human spirit is better -- and more productive, even in material ways -- than the communist, Fascist, or any other rigidity organized for material ends.”
( Federal Writers' Project 1936-1940, http://memory.loc.gov/wpa/15100107.html)