Plowing My Own Furrow by Howard W. Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
An absorbing memoir by an extraordinary man. A farm boy in upstate New York, Howard Moore left school in 8th grade, and set off for New York City by himself with $11 in his pocket to seek his fortune. Entirely self-educated from that point on, he read voraciously: Ingersoll, Shaw, Debs, Veblen, steeped in firebrand socialism from street corner speakers and a level of indifference to organized religious faith. As the first world war rumbled into action in Europe, he determined that he would object from the basis of his own conscience that war was futile, economically driven, and to engage in war was to engage in moral bankruptcy. He would not serve in any capacity. He was an “absolutist” who refused all noncombat roles, and unusual in his individual stance outside more traditional religious peace structures like the Friends, Hutterites, and others. For his refusal to be inducted, he was court-martialed and sentenced to five years in prison – and was delivered to the confines of the disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas on the day the Armistice was declared. He was chained standing to his cell door 9 hours a day, in solitary confinement. His cell was 5 by 9, windowless, containing bare stone walls, a bucket, and a lot of rats and bedbugs. He and other CO’s were beaten, tortured, and starved. Only after Jane Addams personally visited the prison and spoke with the CO’s were they given a wooden board and a blanket to sleep on. He and a handful of other determined men stuck it out. Some died. The Secretary of War, Newton Baker, eventually banned the chaining, and some guards were disciplined for their cruelties – though Moore declined to press complaints against them, saying it was their bosses who were responsible for the mistreatment. (A Catholic chaplain who described this to a Knights of Columbus meeting as an example of “turning the other cheek” was thrown out of the KofC.) Moore was one of the last CO’s released, over two years after the war was over. He went on to help administer the WPA, become an organizational efficiency expert, and died at the age of 104, unshaken in his beliefs. He tells his story succinctly, with grace, self-effacement, and a sturdy honesty, and he made a lot of friends through what appears to be sheer smarts and a certain personal charm.
An important first-hand account of a not-very-well-known episode of American history.