abadie spent much of his childhood living among the Pottawatomi Indians of Michigan, to whom his father served as interpreter for the Jesuit missionaries, and had only a few months of formal schooling.  With the help of his schoolteacher wife and on-the-job exposure as a printer, however, he developed into a lively, lucid and persuasive writer, tempering his outrage at injustice with witty and sarcastic commentary.

A prolific writer, his columns were widely published in the national labor and radical press as well as the Detroit News and other "capitalist" papers.  Many were written under the title, "Cranky Notions."  Labadie thought its apologetic name appropriate for his "stray thoughts…crude and 'jerky' because they come from an unlearned mechanic [craftsman] who has not had the time from the 'demnition grind' to polish them up."

• "What is Socialism?"
  

• "Uncle Sam, the Real Culprit"
  

• "Cranky Notions"--March 24, 1886"
  

• "Trades Unionism As I Understand It"
  

• "Different Phases of the Labor Question"
  

• "The Violent Hypocrites"