Born December 28, 1883 in Hengelo, The Netherlands, Hendrik Meijer was the founder of the Meijer grocery store chain. By 1907, he had immigrated to the United States with his family and settled in the Holland area. His father worked in a mill for the Stork B.V. machine factory - hot on the heels of the Industrial Revolution, and around age 12, Hendrik joined his father in the factory. People in Europe were hard followers of the writings of Marx and Engels, and were very pro-union and pro-worker's rights.
Contrary to the modern American right-wing understanding of things, "socialism" isn't where we take all of your money and give it to others, taxes aren't punitive, and unions protect the worker and not just the lazy. Socialism is very pro-labor and, as an economic model, allows workers to thrive as the company does better. Seize the means of production and all that. When workers are laid off to improve shareholder profits, they really should get raises and bonuses when the company does better. More broadly, if you've ever taken advantage of, say, public works (municipal utilities), if you've gotten profit sharing checks or stock options from your private employer, or if you've benefited from collective bargaining, these are all modern manifestations of Marx's socialist ideas laid out in The Communist Manifesto. And, it's important to note that socialism and communism (like mercantilism or capitalism) are economic models not models of government. You can still have a Democratic Republic that has a socialist economy. In the United States, the word "socialism" has been tainted by 80+ years of Cold War propaganda, and some Austrian douchebag trying to "reclaim" the word for his own means.
Anarchism is more than the lack of government, it's a set of ideas based around community living and mutual aid - if you've ever volunteered at a soup kitchen or donated to a food bank, shoveled snow or mowed lawns for an infirm neighbor, these are examples of mutual aid. Anarchism seeks to remove power from a centralized government and disperse it to a community level - similar to how individual churches served as community hubs in the days of old. Whereas libertarianism says "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help,'" anarchism asks "You know how the government isn't doing a good job of things? What if the community did them properly instead?" Both ideologies (anarchism vs. libertarianism) rely on the concepts of smaller government, but libertarianism is couched in individual rights and personal responsibility, whereas anarchism relies on working in common with one another to elevate the group as a whole.
With that being said, Hendrik Meijer's brand of Dutch anarcho-socialism was borne on the back of the want for a classless society after seeing a self-perpetuating cycle of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer while working in the aforementioned Stork B.V. factory during his youth. While in Holland, Michigan, anarchists were regarded as "those people who throw bombs" (a reference to the 1886 Haymarket Riot in Chicago), a local Socialist party was well established by the time Meijer immigrated here. According to Dr. Swierenga's books, The Socialist Party In Holland was formed officially in 1897, making it one of the first organizations in the state. By 1914, there were at least 3 Socialist newspapers in Holland: Volksstem, first published in 1908; The Holland Progressive Worker, first published in 1910; and Voorwaarts, formed in 1914 as the only Dutch-language newspaper in North America (after Volksstem ceased publication). There's an entire section in Swierenga's books (p.1478-1484) about socialism in Holland, which I'm drawing heavily from for this article.
It's important, here, to understand the importance of worship and hard work in conservative Christian Reformed communities like Holland. The Reformed Church disavowed labor guilds and unions, as well as secret societies and pledges, which dovetailed out of Neo-Calvinist theology led by politician Abraham Kuyper (Swierenga, p. 1485). Calvinist ideals stated that "every square inch of culture" was meant to be claimed by King Jesus - this sequestered Calvinists/Reformed Christians, Catholics (due to Veneration of Saints), and Socialists/Trade Unionists (due to working towards common good, and not relying on God's will) into their own groups. There's a delicious bit of irony here in churches shunning the writings of Karl Marx when he quoted actual scripture whilst writing The Communist Manifesto.
Sundays were sacred; a day of rest. As God rested on the 7th day of Creation, so should we here on Earth. Hendrik Meijer wrote in a letter to his fiancee in 1907 "There is not much to do here on Sunday. You can see large groups of people going to church, not because they are so devout, but out of habit, because everybody does it." Churches devoted countless resources to "combat Sabbath desecration" (Swierenga, p.275). By the 1890s, interurban trains were coming from Grand Rapids and Saugatuck, or from places like Chicago or Kalamazoo, to Holland on the weekends, which the local church leaders saw as nigh blasphemous. In 1896, there's a recorded incident of religious zealots applying grease to the train tracks east of Zeeland to prevent people from coming in from Grand Rapids. Point is, locals in Holland and Zeeland loathed the idea that people would do stuff on Sundays that didn't involve church.
Given that Reformed Christians were vehemently opposed to secret societies, and given that they were busy holed up in their homes and churches worshiping on Sundays, that offered a great opportunity to actually form secret societies and hold meetings whilst the busybodies were in church. While the Holland Socialist Party were opposed to violence and extremism, Hendrik Meijer started up a chapter of The Modern Sons Of Marx, who met on Sundays to conceal their movements. How extreme were they? They assassinated a former Idaho governor! The Idaho chapter of The Modern Sons Of Marx sent a telegram back to Meijer in Holland after the event saying "Wage Slavery shall surely go. Congratulations on our victory." Through a fellow Socialist, Meijer got a job at Holland Furnace Company, which is where he found himself aligned with the Modern Sons of Marx.
Meijer worked a lot of odd jobs after he landed in Holland. By 1912, he was employed as a barber in Greenville, Michigan (north of Grand Rapids), where his fiancee moved to and were married on November 11, 1912 supposedly as an anarchist tribute to the Haymarket Riots. He ended up opening a grocery/thrift store adjacent to his barbershop in the mid 1930s as a result of the Great Depression. By 1936, Meijer's Grocery Store was in full operation, and Hendrik brought his 14-year-old son Frederick on as his first employee. And, finally, by 1949, the Meijer brand began growing - the idea of a self-service superstore came to light and Meijer's Thrifty Acres was born. Currently, Meijer operates in 5 states across the Midwest, and the Meijer family is currently among the wealthiest in Michigan.
In the biography of Hendrik Meijer entitled Thrifty Years, his grandson Hank notes that social mobility was substantially easier in the United States for Hendrik than it was in The Netherlands. Radicalism (in The Netherlands) seemed "like the one hope for altering the oppressive status quo" (Swierenga, p.1484), whereas in the United States, "radicalism was no match for the American dream." Hendrik Meijer was amazed at how easy it was to job-hop in the US...evidenced above by the fact that he held dozens of jobs and moved all around the country between when he landed in Michigan in 1907, and when he settled in Greenville in the 1930s. While Meijer's political opinions certainly softened over the years, he instilled progressive ideals in his children, with Frederik promoting unions inside his stores, and Hendrik's daughter Johanna becoming a lobbyist for civil rights and arms control.
Works cited:
From anarchist to millionaire – the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce in the United States. (n.d.). http://netherlands.org/articles/459/
Hendrik Meijer [1883-1964]. Hendrik Meijer :: New Netherland Institute. (n.d.). https://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/history-and-heritage/dutch_americans/hendrick-meijer
Swierenga, R. P. (2014). Holland Michigan: From Dutch colony to Dynamic City. Van Raalte Press ; William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1964). The Communist Manifesto. Washington Square Press.
Holland City News, "Holland City News, Volume 36, Number 30: August 1, 1907" (1907).
Holland City
News: 1907. 31.
https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/hcn_1907/31
Vanderveen, S. (2023, July 2). Hendrick Meijer had a case of wanderlust. Holland History. https://www.hollandsentinel.com/story/business/names-faces/2023/07/02/holland-history-hendrick-meijer-had-a-case-of-wanderlust/70366138007/
Lmarie. (2023, October 5). Michigan’s Wealth Elite: Forbes 400 reveals the state’s richest people. Cars 108. https://wcrz.com/richest-people-in-michigan/
Matthew 25:15 - The Parable of the talents. Bible Hub. (n.d.). https://biblehub.com/matthew/25-15.htm
Our history. Meijer Newsroom. (n.d.). https://newsroom.meijer.com/our-history
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