B. O. Flower

Benjamin Orange Flower (October 19, 1858 – December 24, 1918), known most commonly by his initials "B.O.", was an American muckraking journalist of the Progressive Era. Flower is best remembered as the editor of the liberal commentary magazine The Arena, published in Boston, New York City, and Trenton, New Jersey by the Arena Publishing Co. from 1889 until 1909.

Biography

Early life and education

Benjamin Orange Flower was born in Albion, Illinois, on October 19, 1858, the son of Alfred Flower, a Disciples of Christ minister, and his wife Elizabeth, née Orange. His grandfather George Flower had emigrated from England with his friend Morris Birkbeck after speaking with Edward Coles, and with their followers founded the English settlement in the Illinois Territory. Benjamin Flower was first educated in a religious school in Albion before moving with his family to Evansville, Indiana, where he attended the public high school.

Early career After college, Flower returned to Albion where he launched a short-lived journal, the Albion American Sentinel, which was terminated in 1880. He then moved to Philadelphia, where he worked for a time as a secretary for his brother, a physician who operated a successful mail-order business. His wife was soon stricken with mental illness which forced her permanent institutionalization. This effort led to the formation of a new organization called the Union for Practical Progress, which attempted to establish itself on a national basis through the organization of local clubs. Local groups such as the Baltimore Union for Public Good received favorable coverage of their activities and publicity in The Arena. This effort failed to achieve critical mass and soon failed, however.

The Arena was an eclectic magazine, its pages open to writers of a wide range of ideological perspectives, ranging from advocates of cooperatives and populists to philosophical anarchists, socialists, and devotees of Henry George and the Single Tax. Uniting it all was Flower's evolutionary rather than revolutionary view of social change and his deep-seated faith in the perfectibility of mankind through enlightenment about the world and reasoned response to its problems. Flower advocated for kindergartens, libraries, and improved housing. He criticized ostentatious, costly, and encumbering women's clothing, "materialistic commercialism", and the wealthy class which monopolized society's economic resources.

The magazine consistently advocated for initiative and referendum, for prison reform, against capital punishment, and for the prohibition of alcohol. He then edited the St. Louis, Missouri-based magazine The Coming Age, moving it to Boston where it merged with The Arena in 1900. Flower believed that the body of socialist ideas was thoroughly utopian and unachievable, and that revolution would result only in chaos and destruction. Although initially a skeptic, Flower made note of anecdotal evidence of cases of illness cured through Christian Science-based treatment, which had baffled the medical practitioners of the day. Flower thus lent support to this growing Christian Science movement.

Later years, death, and legacy

Following the demise of The Arena, Flower launched a new publication in Boston dedicated to social reform called Twentieth-Century Magazine.

Flower was posthumously recognized for his leading place among the muckraking journalists of the Progressive era. In 1932, historian C. C. Regier remembered him as a man who "somewhat naively...believed that if people would but see the evil effects of their acts they would themselves mend their ways", a philosophy which led to upbeat and optimistic editorial tone in Flower's work. Flower was also recalled as one who was "sensitive to beauty in any form, loved painting, sculpture, and literature, and always kept flowers in his office."

Works Fashion's Slaves. Boston: Arena Publishing Co., 1892. Civilization's Inferno; or, Studies in the Social Cellar. Boston: Arena Publishing Co., 1893. Gerald Massey: Poet, Prophet, and Mystic. Boston: Arena Publishing Co., 1895. Whittier: Prophet, Seer and Man. Boston: Arena Publishing Co., 1896. The Century of Sir Thomas More. Boston: Arena Publishing Co., 1896. Persons, Places and Ideas: Miscellaneous Essays. Boston: Arena Publishing Co., 1896. How England Averted a Revolution of Force: A Survey of the Social Agitation of the First Ten Years of Queen Victoria's Reign. Trenton, NJ: Albert Brandt, 1903. In Defense of Free Speech: Five Essays from the Arena. New York: The Free Speech League, 1908. How England Averted a Revolution of Force: A Survey of the Social Agitation of the First Ten Years of Queen Victoria's Reign. Trenton, NJ: Albert Brandt, Publisher, 1909. Christian Science as a Religious Belief and a Therapeutic Agent. Boston: Twentieth Century Co., 1910. The Bubonic Plague. New York: National League for Medical Freedom, 1910. Progressive Men, Women, and Movements of the Past Twenty-Five Years. Boston: The Arena, 1914. Righting the People's Wrongs: A Lesson from History of Our Own Times. Cincinnati, OH: Standard Publishing Co., 1917.

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