Men Against the State

CHAPTER VII

Lysander Spooner, Dissident Among Dissidents

I

The economic and social concepts which formed the basis of American anarchist thought were first stated by Josiah Warren. Most of the significant contributions of others, especially of an economic nature, were made by men with varying degrees of relationship to Warren. There was one important exception, Lysander Spooner, an independent radical whose political and economic writings paralleled those of the better-known group for many years. Regardless of the use made of his works, Spooner remained apart from the individualists except for brief instances of association during his later life, when his most powerful tracts in support of anarchist principles were written. By the 1880’s however, his works were being widely read by the native anti-statists.

The career of Spooner is that of a man whose radicalism increased rather than decreased with advancing age. He was born January 19, 1808, in Athol, Massachusetts.1 The early part of his life was spent on his father’s farm, which he left at the age of 25 to become a clerk in the office of the registry of deeds in Worcester. He began the study of law shortly thereafter under John Davis and Charles A. Allen, jurists of considerable esteem in the state. Finding the practice of law closed to him by a statute which required three years of additional study on the part of non-college-trained bar candidates, he conducted a campaign which secured the repeal of the statute.

Spooner’s first seven years as a lawyer were spent in Ohio2 rather than in Massachusetts, however, during which time he participated in the rapidly spreading freethought campaign. His The Deist’s Reply to the Alleged Supernatural Evidences of Christianity became one of the better known pamphlets against religious orthodoxy.3 Its general tone gave an indication of his later disdain for constituted authority other than the church.4

The career of Spooner the jurist is far less important than that of Spooner the critic of the Constitution and legislative processes. His criticisms were both economic and political in nature. The two overlapped, and often came from his pen alternately, so that no clear separation can be observed. He regarded the Constitution primarily as a device which afforded opportunities to minority groups to exploit others through the instrument of special privileges. The opportunity might accrue to private citizens, or to a small group within the government at any particular time, but to him the important fact lay in the manipulation of the “fundamental law of the land” to the benefit of financial, commercial, and landed interests, and to select politicians.5

Where Spooner derived his interest in finance is not known. The 1837 panic undoubtedly was foremost among the sources. The principal impression he derived from the political controversy it produced was not the contest of personalities involved, but rather the nature of banking by private corporations and the increasing complication resulting from the activities of political and governmental bodies. To those interested in keeping credit open to competition and private pursuit, he issued a warning that a maze of artificial restrictions and legal escape-mechanisms was in the early stages of construction. Such was the message of his Constitutional Law Relative to Credit, Currency and Banking (1843), portions of which were still being incorporated in the free banking literature of the anarchist press a half century later.

“To issue bills of credit, that is, promissory notes, is a natural right. . . . The right of banking, or of contracting debts by giving promissory notes for the payment of money is as much a natural right as that of manufacturing cotton.”6 Such was Spooner’s premise in opening his attack upon the contention that state charters should be required to engage in the banking business. Banking was either a totally reprehensible activity and should be entirely suppressed, or all pretense at protection of the citizenry should be abandoned and the enterprise opened to all who wished to enter it. Spooner saw no escape from the logical conclusion that the intrusion of the federal government into matters of legal tender, bank chartering, and incorporation was based upon expediency.

Spooner assumed that the constitutional clause forbidding the impairment of the obligation of contracts was an acknowledgement of the natural right of men to make contracts.7 There was no doubt in his mind that creation of compulsory legal tender and granting of bank charters were direct infringements of contracts. The making of a contract, he said, was an “act of real persons,” and was of necessity restricted to persons, for there were no others who could do so. Therefore, he declared,8

The idea . . . of a joint, incorporeal being, made up of several real persons, is nothing but a fiction. It has no reality in it. It is a fiction adopted merely to get rid of the consequences of facts. An act of legislation cannot transform twenty living, real persons into one joint, incorporeal being. After all the legislative juggling that can be devised, “the company” will still be nothing more, less or other, than the individuals composing the company. The idea of an incorporeal being, capable of carrying on banking operations, is ridiculous.

The impact of such incorporation? Spooner said it freed men of contractual obligations as individuals. When profits accrued from banking operations, the stockholders in whose names the chartering had taken place appeared as individuals to collect; yet, the cloak of anonymity was there to protect them as individuals in the case of losses. Escape through the provision of a collective personality was at hand, when liability for their contracts, beyond their ability or desire to meet as individuals, presented itself to the banking company. Thus a hypothetical financial firm with total capital of $50,000 might signify its intention to enter the business of banking to the extent of $10,000, issue the sum of $40,000 in unconditional promises to pay, and then default on this latter sum, losing only the original amount which they intended to risk. The desire to limit the extent of promises either of companies or of individuals should be expressed in the contracts themselves, not in limited liability by law, for if law lessened the responsibility expressed in the contract, it impaired the obligation thereof.9 It was impossible to regard bank charters as anything else than artifices giving to certain individuals “the advantage of two legal natures,—one favorable for making contracts, the other favorable for avoiding the responsibility of them.”10

Thus Spooner laid the cause of the evils in the banking business of his time squarely on the doorsteps of the legislatures. In later writings he was to go into great detail on the part played by the national government in placing the country’s banks in the hands of a minority group. Meanwhile, a personal encounter with the federal government itself occupied his attention. From 1841 to 1845, steady inroads on the revenues of the federal post office department were made by private express companies. One of these was the American Letter Mail Company, which Spooner founded in 1844. Originally carrying letters between Boston and New York, the scope of the firm soon included Philadelphia and Baltimore.11 It was a source of embarrassment to the Democratic administrations of the period to see this company, as well as other letter mail companies, making profits from carrying letters for 5 and 10 cents each, while providing service somewhat more expeditious than that furnished by the federal postal system. Increasing complaint by patrons over the dilatory and expensive government operations finally provoked congressional action. A bill calling for reorganization of the post office system and proposing a new schedule of rates drew critical fire in the Senate from objectors who noted that private companies would still be furnishing cheaper service. Senator William D. Merrick of Maryland, sponsor of the bill,12 replied that there was to be no attempt at competing with these firms; they were to be put out of business by “penal enactment.”13

Again Spooner went to the Constitution for support of his thesis that the passage of such legislation would be a clear transcendance of the authority granted Congress. Article 1, Section 8 merely provided that Congress might establish post offices and post roads of its own. Said he: “The Constitution expresses, neither in terms, nor by necessary implication, any prohibition upon the establishment of mails, post offices, and post roads by the states or individuals.”14 Had Congress been granted the power to establish stage coaches and steamboats, this act would not have conferred exclusive rights to the operation and establishment of all stage coach and steamboat lines. The power to establish and the power to prohibit were distinct powers, and in the case of additional mail services Congress distinctly did not have the power to prohibit.15

Spooner also asserted that the establishment of a government monopoly over the mails, followed by the exclusion therefrom of such materials as it cared, was actually an infringement upon the freedom of the press. This latter meant not merely the freedom of printing papers and books but the freedom of selling and circulating them as well. This was a very important point, for without the latter, the former was of no value at all. Therefore this selling and circulating freedom implied the right of publishers to reach buyers in any manner they chose.16 Should the government be the sole carrier, it might ban the publications it did not approve of.

There were other considerations. Besides the social and commercial objections of slowness and costliness, Spooner advanced a moral objection to an exclusive national system. “Its immense patronage and power, used, as they always will be, corruptly, make it also a very great political evil.” Competition in this pursuit would provide a reduction both in costs and time spent in delivery as well as “the political benefits of a very material purification of the government.”17

The circulation of these ideas in a small booklet failed to be of any avail in the struggle against the government, however, and the independent companies were virtually eliminated in 1845 by a congressional act providing stiff fines for the carrying of mails by other than the government postal system. Spooner finally liquidated his own firm after exhausting his resources fighting the government over a seven month period.18 The gradual adoption of a rate of postage similar to that charged by his company nevertheless gave him a measure of personal satisfaction.19 Thus ended his one experience as a businessman. He had sought to expose the wastefulness of government operation, a perennial anarchist charge, while at the same time attempting to demonstrate the merits of completely free competition. This was good anarchist economics.

Up to this time Spooner had hardly begun his work as an economic pamphleteer. Primarily concerned with money, banking and credit, he later grew to be regarded by the anarchists as on a par with Greene as an advocate of free banking. Like Greene, he stressed the monetization of durable wealth other than specie and the opening of the business of banking to all who wished to enter it.

In 1846 Spooner published another essay indicting political interference with free processes and accusing the judiciary of gross dereliction in permitting widespread violations of the laws of contracts and the principles of natural law. His Poverty: Its Illegal Causes and Legal Cure set forth his basic beliefs with respect to the relation between men and the production of wealth, and the reasons for the lack of harmony in these relations. The “economical propositions”20 he set forth to establish hinged on the proposition that it was a principle of natural law that every man was entitled to “all the fruits of his own labor.”21 That this might be feasible, it was necessary that every man be his own employer or work for himself in a direct way, since working for another resulted in a portion being diverted to the employer. To be one’s own employer, it was necessary for one to have access to one’s own capital or to be allowed to obtain it on credit. This postulated the presence of men with surplus capital to loan, and a rate of interest sufficient to induce them to do so. It was to the interest of the potential self-employed laborer, however, to seek capital at the lowest possible rate of interest, and that required that free banking be allowed, implying, as a result, the monetization of many types of wealth:22

As the materials for banking credit are abundant, . . . it is obvious that if free competition in banking were allowed, the rate of interest would be brought very low, and bank loans would be within the reach of everybody whose business and character should make him a reasonably safe person to loan to.

This could not be, said Spooner, because of two judicial dicta upholding “arbitrary and unconstitutional” statutes, providing for the legalization of the banking business by the state and fixing the rate of interest, the so-called “usury laws.” The first placed the granting of credit into the hands of a few, the second restricted the recipients of credit in a similar manner. It was not possible to determine an arbitrary rate of interest and expect it to operate to the best advantage of the less fortunate. Interest rates depended upon the character of the security tendered the “capitalist” in payment for the loan. The greater the degree of risk involved, the higher would be the rate of interest charged. But the standardization of a fixed rate of interest served to tie this rate of interest to the most approved security,23 and those unable to tender this approved security obtained no credit. The result? A violation of the right to make contracts, and the granting of a monopoly of the right of borrowing money to those few able to present the type of security deemed safest.24 It was a pernicious statute, warned Spooner, which allowed one man to borrow enough capital to employ a hundred laborers, but which forbade the individual laborers the facility of borrowing enough to employ themselves independently.25

From such materials was fashioned the industrial system, as well. The collection of scattered loanable capital under the control of single bank directories, and its subsequent loan to a few individuals in large sums, brought about the familiar hiring pattern, with “compulsory” selling of one’s labor to the privileged employer.26 Thus the usury laws, on first glance a protection of the less fortunate from exorbitant rates of interest, but actually operating to keep them from achieving economic independence in self-employment and placing them at the mercy of a favored employing group.27

The legal structure of debts and the way they were incurred was condemned as the other chief cause of poverty. Here again legal construction was responsible. Spooner declared that a debt had no legal obligation, and usually no moral one, beyond the means and ability of the debtor to pay at the time the debt became due. If this principle were adopted, it would put to an end an entire class of contracts, which, he said were “fraudulent and immoral” from the beginning. “The law requires no impossibilities from any man,” he explained. “If a man contract to perform what proves to be an impossibility, the contract is valid only for so much as is possible,” and thus to insist on the fulfillment of a manifest impossibility was absurd.28 Freedom to contract for any interest rates would give creditors an opportunity to insure against the possibilities of non-payment in full by charging extra interest, almost in the nature of an insurance premium against default. This was not permitted, but the courts allowed creditors to harass the debtors indefinitely until the amount originally due was obtained. This process merely created another “class tension” within society without enhancing the creditor’s chance of getting paid.29 Furthermore, as things stood, the legal structure actually was providing a type of special protection not afforded the remainder of the community. It was the responsibility of the creditor to judge for himself the capacity of the debtor before taking the risk of entrusting property to him. To grant the former permission to indefinitely pursue until satisfaction had been received, amounted, in Spooner’s opinion, to protection “against the legitimate consequence of his own negligence.” Mutual benefit was the only foundation for entry into contracts; at least the particular contract in question “should contemplate no injury to either party.” Therefore, if the debtor had “faithfully exercised his best ability for its preservation,” the binding nature of this and all similar contracts was at an end when it reached the limit of the debtor’s means.30

Extremes of wealth brought about by “positive legislation” also underlay most crimes against property and provided the foundation for fraud and vice in general. The tendency for society to separate into “castes” on the basis of their unequal wealth brought about most of society’s diseases. What was the influence of reform?31

Legislatures, courts, prisons, churches, schools, and moral associations of all sorts are sustained at an immense cost of time, labor, talent, and money. Yet they only mitigate, they do not cure the disease. And like all efforts to cure diseases, without removing the cause, they must always be inadequate to the end in view. The causes of vice, fraud, crime, excessive wealth and excessive poverty, must be removed, before society can be greatly changed.

While Spooner pointed out the infringement by statute law on the right of contract, he had no formula to offer as a solution, nor any recommendation to make along positive lines. “Each man has the natural right to acquire all he honestly can, and to enjoy and dispose of all that he honestly acquires; and the protection of these rights is all that anyone has a right to ask of government in relation to them.”32 This was his only concession to state interference with the economic life of the people, that each person’s rights might be consistent with the equal rights of all the others. A government interfering with this formula of natural right, as they had in the matter of contracts, did so for the benefit of some at the expense of others, and in this class of action he placed nearly all statute law applying to men’s “pecuniary interests”:33

Nearly all the positive legislation that has ever been passed in this country, either on the part of the general or state governments, touching men’s rights to labor, or their rights to the fruits of their labor, . . . has been merely an attempt to substitute arbitrary for natural laws; to abolish men’s natural rights of labor, property, and contract, and in their place establish monopolies and privileges; to create extremes in both wealth and poverty; to obliterate the eternal laws of justice and right and set up the naked will of avarice and power; in short, to rob one portion of mankind of their labor, or the fruits of their labor, and give the plunder to the other portion.

These were not the words of a proletarian at the barricades but of an established lawyer in a staid community, and they illustrate the degree of affection for natural law as well as aversion for the legislative process and its product. The abolition or disregard of all this intricate mass of legislation, and insistence by the judiciary upon the simple principles which he had outlined would suffice to bring the government into proper focus with relation to the people. It would no longer be an engine of “plunder, usurpation, and tyranny.” Otherwise “the ignorant, the weak, and the poor,” he said, would be the continual victims of government.34

Spooner’s research in finance resulted in his proposal in 1861 for a decentralized banking structure strikingly similar to that of Greene’s a dozen years before, and of Samuel Adams’ and the Massachusetts Land Bank associates of 1740, although he indicated no knowledge of either at this time. It was based on the same principle: that currency should represent an invested rather than a specie dollar, and that mortgages on “property of a fixed and permanent nature” were to comprise the backing. Thus the currency would represent a certain amount of property, fulfilling Spooner’s belief that sound money need not be backed by specie but by any type of durable, tangible wealth.35

Intended for operation in local areas, the Spooner bank plan incorporated a number of safeguards which were to provide assurance to the public that the mortgages behind the mutual money would always be ample. In the first place, the record of the mortgages were to be open to public inspection, so that each individual might judge for himself as to the sufficiency of the backing. The articles of the banking association were to be circulated in a widespread manner, in which were to be reproduced copies of the mortgages and the certificates of the appraisers, whom Spooner asserted would be “entitled to confidence” if they were selected from the community for their character and judgment. The amount of currency issued was to be restricted to from one-third to one-half of the total value of the real property involved in mortgages. Finally, in the articles of association it was to be made plain that all mortgages were to be made mutually responsible for each other; an insufficient mortgage had to be made good by the banking company. The effect of this provision was expected to make the bank founders examine each others’ mortgages carefully and thus guarantee the integrity of all, since no one would wish to put in a good mortgage in the knowledge that one or more worthless ones were also entered.36 Freedom from fraudulent appraisal was essential, therefore, making it necessary that free access to the records be provided to all for scrutiny at their pleasure. A sound mutual banking system would be provided when those who were to use the currency had the opportunity to know fully by what it was backed and by whom the mortgages which it represented had been appraised. Thus a democratic type of certification, said Spooner, would replace certification by one man or by agents of the state.

Spooner advanced much the same arguments for his bank as had Greene. It would furnish a stable, abundant currency with a low interest rate guaranteed by competition and limited only by the amount of real property, which was exceedingly more plentiful than specie. It would break up the monopoly of money by opening its possession to all who had something to mortgage. It would distribute credit equally through the community and by its abundance would bring about cash payments universally. It would diversify industry by affording credit for engaging in the production of new commodities as fast as they were invented.37

Adhering to his long-held premise that the state governments had no constitutional power whatever to prohibit any kind of banking which was “naturally just and lawful,” he maintained that the system could be introduced lawfully and at the same time bypass chartering or special legislation. The arrangement of the association in the form of a stock company put it in the category with all other kinds of businesses.38 The very fact that the conventional banking system required so much special legislation in its favor and the large volume of surveillance necessary thereafter was “sufficient evidence,” charged Spooner, that it was naturally vicious and deserved abolition.39

Spooner’s New System of Paper Currency attracted the attention of Amasa Walker, one of the nation’s outstanding financial conservatives. Walker questioned Spooner’s standing as an exponent of finance, but admitted his plan was an honest one with no element of fraud or deception in its make-up. He noted also its similarity to that of Greene’s but concluded with finality that neither would ever succeed.40 Spooner, who designated Walker as “the highest authority in the country in opposition to all paper currency that does not represent gold and silver actually on hand,” considered his objections beside the point, and was incensed and bitter at the condemnation received from such high conservative quarters.41 He expected the economist to oppose any type of paper which represented property other than coin even though of equal market value, but what was particularly irking was to find himself compared with John Law. This notorious eighteenth century speculator had made no attempt to make his notes redeemable, it was pointed out, while the currency issued under his plan was backed by double its face value in mortgages on property which were appraised in terms of their values in gold dollars.42

Spooner introduced his bank project twice more, in 1864 and 1873, at which times federal activity in finance drew his excoriation. His mastery of vituperation became evident as he marshalled objections to the growth of practices and policies which benefited a narrowing minority. Two of the prominent measures by which the administration financed the Civil War, the Legal Tender Acts and the National Banking Act, came under especially bitter fire. He condemned the legal tender acts as clearly unconstitutional on two counts; (1) for interfering with the right of contract, (2) for exceeding the grant of power to Congress.

Congress was delegated nowhere in the Constitution to provide a national currency, or to establish a legal tender which everyone was under obligation to accept and use in the contraction and payment of debts. The power to coin money and to regulate its value did not include the power to make its use universal and mandatory. The parties to a contract alone had the power to fix the tender. What the debtor agreed to pay and the creditor to receive was the legal tender, and Congress had no authority to alter this arrangement. Parties had no legal obligation to make their contracts payable in coin. “They are at perfect liberty to make them payable in wheat, corn, hay, iron, wool, cotton, pork, beef, or anything else they choose.” The real purpose in coining money and establishing it as legal tender was not to force it upon parties to contracts, but to provide commodities whose qualities and quantities might be precisely ascertained, and which would be available for use by all who cared to do so. Congress did not make its money legal tender; the persons who used it as such made it so. To assert that Congress could fix the tender in payment of a debt, in a manner which made it independent of the agreement of the parties concerned, was to establish the power of Congress to make part of the contract, and that they clearly did not possess. Thus, he concluded, the general government was exceeding its commission and infringing on the right of contract by forcing into circulation its own currency and that of the banks it chose to authorize, to the exclusion of all others.43

The National Banking Act of February 25, 1863 was also a governmental creature in the interests of a privileged group. Congress had no more power to guarantee the notes of bankers than it had those of farmers, workers or merchants, nor to print their bank notes any more than to furnish their physical properties or pay the bank officers’ salaries.44 Congressional protection of private banks from liability for debts because they were at the same time engaged in performing services to the government also came under fire. The section of the act imposing a ten per cent tax upon all bills in circulation not authorized by Congress was declared even more reprehensible, especially in its potentialities, for by an extension of this principle, he saw nothing in the way of bringing the entire industry and commerce of the land under arbitrary control of congressional favorites.45

The appearance of A New Banking System in 1873 was not a response to the financial panic of that year but to the serious fire which devastated part of Spooner’s adopted home city of Boston. He proposed that a plan be adopted to help rebuild by making use of the large reservoir of loanable capital in the form of real property in the state, and brought out once more his now familiar arguments in favor of the decentralized mutual banking scheme. Interwoven among the outlines were new blasts at government control of finance, pointing up evils which he painted in lurid shades and, with tendencies toward overstatement, laid directly at the door of the banking act of a decade before.46

It pained Spooner to hear constantly of the “National banking system” in tones which suggested a huge impersonal mechanism divorced from humanity and clothed with awesome characteristics. He went to the opposite extreme in denouncing the entire structure as palpably private in all respects and worthy of little reverence. The legal person known as a bank Spooner defined as a group of about 50 people, the actual lenders of money. It was his estimate that in a nation of nearly 40 millions, some 100,000 controlled all credit, and thus exercised similar power over the nation’s property and labor:47

The “National” system so called, is in reality no national system at all; except in the mere fact that it is called the national system and was established by the national government. It is, in truth, only a private system; a mere privilege conferred upon a few, to enable them to control prices, property, and labor, and thus swindle, plunder and oppress all the rest of the people.

Spooner recited the catalog of objectionable consequences, which included not only the limited supply of loanable capital but the accompanying high rates of interest. American manufacturers borrowed from the banks and then passed the high interest rates on to the ultimate consumers of their products. They could do so safely because the scarcity of money capital would preclude competitive action while the tariff walls would effectively restrain foreign competition to a minimum. The return to specie payments, in view of this situation, he charged, was a false issue, for the real purpose behind the hard money argument was to make credit even harder to obtain and thus insure the continued oligarchical control of the national financial structure.48

Spooner’s Our Financiers, Their Ignorance, Usurpations and Frauds, which first appeared in Tucker’s Radical Review in 1877,49 summarized most of his previous stands in which he attacked the federal government as the real power upholding a privileged banking system. Protesting the prohibition by the government through taxation of any other than its own money, and the mass of regulatory and licensing legislation attending the entry into the banking business, he now mustered his choicest polemics for an attack upon the nation’s financiers and their part in encouraging monopoly in business and industry. This was now inevitable in view of the increasing centralization of finance. “The establishment of a monopoly of money is equivalent to the establishment of monopolies in all the businesses that are carried on by means of money,”50 he insisted, “equivalent to a prohibition upon all businesses except such as the monopolists of money may choose to license” through possessing the power of denying credit. For over twenty years after Spooner’s death, the pages of Tucker’s Liberty were to propagate this declaration, the “money monopoly” becoming the bête noire in Tucker’s critical evaluation of maturing American capitalism.51

II

The evolution of Lysander Spooner’s philosophy to that of unalloyed anti-statism cannot be adequately observed through an examination of his economic thought alone. A long series of political writings paralleled his others. Through these runs the thread of persistent concern over the concepts of natural law, natural justice, and natural rights which eventually led him to denounce all man-made government as superflous and the legislative process as pure chicanery.

In two small books titled The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, the first of which appeared in 1845,52 he advanced interpretations of law, justice, and government which became basic premises for his attack upon statute law and the nature and functions of the institutions of majority rule. He was not yet a confirmed anti-statist and his preoccupation in these essays was not with the authority of the Constitution but with its interpretation. He criticized Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison as guilty of grave inconsistency for holding the Constitution to be a slavery-supporting document. It was as an independent slavery-hating lawyer and not as an active participant in political abolitionism that Spooner wrote these works, however. Despite extended relations with Gerrit Smith53 and the fact that some of his writings became Liberty Party campaign materials in the late 1840’s,54 there is no evidence of his membership in the party at any time, nor of political affiliation with Smith. His books are important for an entirely different reason than as contributions to the literature of the anti-slavery movement.

Spooner was unsatisfied with the use of the word “law” except when defined as “an intelligible principle of right”55 which existed in the nature of man and things. It of necessity had to be a permanent, universal and inflexible rule, incapable of being established “by mere will, numbers, or power.” If this was the case, then, natural law was paramount to whatever rules of conduct might be established by man acting alone or in groups: “There is, and can be, correctly speaking, no law but natural law.” In later writings he was to define natural law as “the science of men’s rights,”56 which were in their possession as such strictly on their standing as individuals. There were no such things as group rights, declared Spooner; “Society is only a number of individuals.”57

Looking about him, he had to admit, nevertheless, that the definition which had come to be universally adopted was not that of the principle of “natural justice” but that of statute or decree. This latter he conceded to be nothing but the prescriptions of “self-styled governments, who have no other title to the prerogative of establishing such rules than is given them by the possession or command of sufficient physical power to coerce submission to them.” This he condemned as an undisguised corruption of the term “law,” which achieved dignity among the general populace because of the latter’s “blind veneration for physical power.” Such tacit approval of crime masquerading as law suggested to him an earlier age of human life when another type of superstition had “allowed falsehood, absurdity and cruelty to usurp the name and throne of religion.”58

Taking up Noah Webster’s definition of municipal law,59 which appeared to be that generally understood as sufficient to cover all usages in ordinary life, Spooner engaged in a structural analysis of it clause by clause, with the intent of demonstrating that it was in reality a shield for reprehensible behavior. He took particular exception to the phrase “supreme power of the state” as the evident source of the status of law. This expression apparently meant force in its largest concentration, which might be in the person or persons of one or several men. This rendered the principle of law extremely uncertain, and, in cases of wide dispersal of power through various factions, actually served to nullify it.60 If law stemmed from the physical force requisite to obtain obedience thereto, then there was no real distinction between law and force, a condition which deprived it of all “moral character” and rendered it exceptionally unpalatable to a considerable audience. Another implication of this definition, said Spooner, was that a command to commit an injustice was as legal as a commission to perform justice, as long as it emanated from a source sufficiently strong to effect coercion.

If the concept of “law” was unsatisfactorily vague and impermanent, that of the “state” was even more so. Politically or sociologically, there appeared nothing fixed in its nature, character, or boundaries. Again it was the “will and power of individuals” which determined its establishment, and perpetually subject to abolition or incorporation within that of another, if overcome by individuals of greater strength. “A ‘state,’” he pronounced, “is simply the boundaries within which any single combination, or concentration of will and power are efficient, or irresistible, for the time being.”61 Natural law, which recognized the validity of contracts “which men have a natural right to make,”62 permitted the foundation of government on this basis, but only if the contract was that of an association of individuals, entered into consciously and voluntarily by each as an individual. This governmental contract might authorize means such as statutes “not inconsistent with natural justice for the better protection of men’s natural rights,”63 but under no conditions might it sanction the destruction of natural rights while ostensibly acting in a manner which might be interpreted as furthering them:64

. . . if the majority, however large, of the people enter into a contract of government called a constitution by which they agree to aid, abet or accomplish any kind of injustice, or to destroy or invade the natural rights of any person or persons whatsoever, this contract of government is unlawful and void. It confers no rightful authority upon those appointed to administer it. The only duties which anyone can owe to it, or to the government established under cover of its authority, are disobedience, resistance, destruction.

The idea that there was any inherent authority or sovereignty in a government as such Spooner scouted as an imposture, as he also did the belief in the right of a majority to restrain individuals from “exercise” of natural rights through the utility of “arbitrary enactments.” These doctrines he placed in the same category as that of divine right of kings. Judicial tribunals were bound to declare the government or the majority acting in an illegal capacity, whenever involved in promoting anything which subverted natural law and its underlying principle, natural justice, which he defined in one place as “the rendering of equivalents.”

Wendell Phillips’65 reaction to Spooner’s political philosophy, apart from his position on the constitutional status of slavery, produced a number of expected categorical rejections, but none more strong than that dealing with the duty of the judiciary. The purpose of a civil government of necessity required that the majority decide what was law, he said. Under Spooner’s conception, not only was it an impossibility to conceive of “regular” government, but its adoption was “the first step toward anarchy.”66 In view of the fact that this latter term was not yet used in its scientific concept, the remark had a prophetic quality, in considering the extremity to which Spooner’s logic carried him twenty years later.67 It was Phillips’ idea that people were bound to obey all legislative statutes, however unjust, until the body responsible for their passage arrived at their repeal. He did admit that revolution was a proper step in opposition to the “bad laws of a State,” but that the laws remained on the statute books, and that judges were bound to enforce them until necessity was removed by the occurrence of a revolt.68 In some ways the discussion tended to concern two different things, which at times was more or less admitted. Phillips said, “Mr. Spooner is at liberty to say that much of what the world calls law is not obligatory because it is not just. . . . But to assert that because a thing is not right it is not law, as that term is commonly and rightfully used, is entering into the question of what constitutes the basis of government among men.”69

But Spooner pointed out that as a consequence of this belief, it would be impossible to distinguish between constitutional and unconstitutional laws, in the conventional sense, since those that were constitutional were binding only until repealed. This would therefore give illegal statutes the same status as the legal, and end by cancelling out the constitution and substituting the unlimited power of the government. Furthermore, while waiting for the repeal of a hateful enactment, the government might take such steps in the curtailment of civil rights and interruption of suffrage as to put it beyond popular power to have any effect in righting the evil condition.70

Where his previous theorizing had been confined primarily with an evaluation of the state as a political organism stemming from origins laid in force, with its effectiveness depending on the application of still more force when functioning through a government, Spooner now took up the matter of the composition of government. Aiming to neutralize Phillips’ constant dwelling upon law and government as reflections of the majority will, he undertook to precipitate the majestic conception along lines of his own. Looking at the United States Constitution, he declared that the convention delegates represented only one-twentieth of the whole population in the country, and that statutory legislation was produced by men who represented only half of that number.71 In view of the fact that voters chose a particular representative on the basis of his views on a limited number of “topics,” this person was required to legislate on hundreds of others, therefore on such occasions he represented no one but himself. He charged constitutional and statutory law were “manufactured in a ridiculous and fraudulent manner,” and especially so when they invaded or destroyed “the natural rights of large bodies of the people.”72 The judges who presided over their enforcement he considered hardly above the level of “felons.”73 This attack upon representative government he incorporated almost intact in avowedly anarchist writings after the Civil War. Its inclusion in an anti-slavery pamphlet obviously intended to defend the Constitution from charges of being a slavery-protecting document74 indicates the direction of his thought. The Spooner of 1887 was hardly more an anarchist than the Spooner of 1847.

By 1852, his attack upon government entered a new phase with the publication of An Essay On The Trial By Jury. This was a heavily-documented book which undertook to supply a radical revisionist study of this institution and its place in the state of his time. It was still being reprinted in an abridged form by the radical press as late as 1912.75 The work had for its core the thesis that any legislation either in England or the United States which was in conflict with the common law was summarily invalid.76 Its subject matter was the evolution of trial by jury from the times of Magna Charta to the mid-nineteenth century and its transformation into a piece of machinery of the state.

In establishing his objections, he made known that it was his understanding that juries in criminal cases over this long period of time were established to function in four specific capacities. There had been “no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law” than the recognized role of the jury in judging the facts of the case, what the law was, and the “moral intent of the accused.” But, a fourth though rarely mentioned mission remained, their “primary and paramount duty”:77

. . . to judge of the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid that are in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless, in violating or resisting the execution of such laws.

Trial by jury, declared Spooner, indicated a fundamental attitude among Anglo-Saxon people toward their institutions, a distrust of the government. This was reflected in the numerous impediments placed in the way of unrestrained exercise of power by a few, which the governmental conception made feasible and inviting. Unsatisfied by the machinery of obstruction placed within the governmental structure itself, another restraint on the exercise of power was reserved for erection outside it, this being the trial by jury. This, he said, was a trial “by the country,” in contra-distinction to a governmental tribunal. Its ideal objective was to define and locate popular liberties against the government, rather than allowing the government to set its own limits of operation. It was an impossibility for the people to have any liberties apart from those graciously granted them by the government, unless they were allowed to determine the nature of them through a process free from any degree of governmental interference.

On one particular matter Spooner was emphatic, and that was on defining the term “jury” and interpreting its origin. It was a technical term, he insisted, derived from the common law; hence when the American constitutions, federal or state, provided for the jury trial, it was in the spirit of the common law that this tribunal was to be constructed, and not merely a facsimile which the government chose to devise in its image. In other words, it was the “thing” and not the “name” which was to be provided, thus making it obligatory that jury selection be made according to common law principles.78

Of these, two were absolutely essential: (1) in the particular geographical area in question, all the adults were eligible for selection thereon; (2) when the time of actual selection for any particular case was at hand, it should take place in such manner as to bar all possibility of its choice by the government, or governmental interference in the selection.79 Any legislation which infringed on these two principles was “unconstitutional,” therefore, and the judgments of juries which owed their existence to such special circumstance were absolutely “void,” since trial by jury had been “abolished” by the first intrusion of the government into such affairs. Spooner charged that in the England and United States of his time, there existed sufficient evidence that the “true” trial by jury did not exist at all, nor had it done so for many years. In England the establishment of property qualifications restricted the selection to less than the whole, an illegality exceeded only by the removal from the people of the right of selecting the sheriffs. Formerly popular officials in charge of the selection of juries, now, said Spooner, they were little more than the king’s “tools,” and allowed for virtual selection by the king of such juries as he might wish.80 In the United States, things were hardly any better. He declared that there was no state in which all the names of “adult males” living within its bounds were placed in a box for jury selection. The fact that jurors were selected by sheriffs who owed their appointments to state governors, or by county court judges and clerks of circuit or county courts, was conclusive proof of the “illegality” of the operation of the system in this country.81 On the basis of common law criteria, he believed that there never had been a single legal jury trial in the history of the country since the adoption of the Constitution. Hence juries were of no use in controlling the government or preserving popular liberties. Nor was this all; protested Spooner:82

If the real trial by jury had been preserved in the courts of the United States—that is, if we had had legal juries, and the jurors had known their rights,—it is hardly probable that one-tenth of the past legislation of Congress would ever have been enacted, or at least, that, if enacted, it could never have been enforced.

Later anarchist hatred of legislation carried no more implications than did this.83 His proposal included two specific recommendations for rectifying this trend away from popular control. First he proposed appointment of jurors from the names of all adult males contained in a common jury-box for the area regardless of the size of the unit, without those chosen learning that fact from the officials designated to select. Secondly, and also in line with common law conceptions as he saw them, all judges presiding over juries in criminal trials should of necessity be chosen by the people, and not appointed by the government acting in either its executive or legislative capacity.84

Spooner had other things in mind besides the guaranteeing of fairness to any particular individual seeking justice through the jury trial system. He was convinced that a jury, obtained in such a way as to preclude the possibility of the government learning its composition, made it exceedingly difficult for the government to pack it with its partisans.85 Therefore, the jury “veto” was a much sounder guarantee against the perpetuation of “unjust and oppressive” laws than reliance upon repeal by a succeeding legislature brought into power by the exercise of the franchise:86

As unanimity is required for a conviction, it follows that no one can be convicted, except for the violation of such laws as substantially the whole country wish to have maintained. The government can enforce none of its laws (by punishing offenders, through the verdicts of its juries), except such as substantially the whole people wish to have enforced.

Spooner, obsessed with the importance of the struggle for the preservation of minority rights, felt that at best the “government” was a portion or “faction” of the people, interested in the support of its program. The legislators involved were “irresponsible” during the period for which they were elected, generally free from fear of removal and neither accountable nor “punishable” when their term in office had elapsed. Hope of a greater degree of honesty on the part of a succeeding legislature was not sound; if the group they were elected to replace could be proved to have been elected for “motives of injustice,” it merely demonstrated that a portion of society had desired to establish injustice, and might succeed in more effective manner at a subsequent date. Change was no guarantee of betterment; it might even result in a worsening of conditions. A government that could enforce its laws for one day without making recourse to the “whole” people directly or through one of its representative tribunals was an absolute government. Trial by jury served the function of demanding that the government obtain its consent before punishing the violators of the laws it passed. It was the further supposition that twelve men chosen by lot from the mass of the people constituted a more representative cross-section of “the country” than any group representing “the government.” Trial by jury gave to anyone the freedom of choice to violate any of the government’s laws, should such individual be willing to allow the jury to decide whether the law broken was a just one. Should even a “reasonable doubt” exist as to the justice of the law, the benefit of such doubt should be given to the defendant and not to the government.87

In one sense, said Spooner, trial by jury was a formal establishment of the right of revolution, which no government ever willingly acknowledged. Government never admitted the injustice of its laws, and revolt was possible only by such elements as actually established a degree of physical strength superior to the government. If they should prove un-successful, regardless of the justifiability of the rebellion, they were always subject to punishment for treason, since the government in power alone judged the nature of treason.88 Trial by jury in the sense in which he was speaking of it was the only real support for this “right of resistance.” Constitutions were no effective limit to the power of the government, if those in power felt that the people would not compel them to remain within its restrictions. “If the people are as good as their word, they may keep the government within the bounds they have set for it; otherwise it will disregard them.”89 Granted the existence of a jury trial system which still remained in complete popular control, resistance to governmental overbearing was thus made available, and neutralization of “tyrannical” legislation made possible without recourse to violence.

Spooner dismissed the argument that the government was an instrument created by the people for the purpose of furthering their own interests, and that to allow the jury, a popularly chosen and representative body, to invalidate acts of the government, was to pit the people against themselves. He pointed out that regardless of the degree of faith in the impartiality of the government existing among the people as a whole, there already were a number of “tribunals” before which acts of the government were required to undergo review. To add the jury to both houses of the national legislature, the president, and the judges of the federal court system was no significant deviation.90

In his mind, the real issue was even more basic than this. It was imperative that the jury once more be installed in its previous position of theoretical dominance to preserve the small amount of political liberty wrung from past despotisms.91 The divine right of kings, he said, was “fast giving place” to another fetish, the belief that in a given area, the larger number of the people had a right to govern the smaller. Granted that majority rule might be less onerous than rule by a single tyrant, still the principle was no more true. “Obviously there is nothing in the nature of majorities that insures justice at their hands,” he declared; they had the same frailties as minorities, and had no qualities which made it evident that they were immune from acting in an oppressive manner. The “question of right” remained far above the matter of political tactics, and was no more determined in a situation where two men ruled one than where one man ruled two. To take for granted the coincidence of justice and majority will, he warned, “is only another form of the doctrine that might makes right.”92

Another implication stemmed from the assumption of the virtuousness of majority rule. Minorities had no rights in the government. This was a necessary concomitant, in view of the fact that the majority determined what rights the minority were to enjoy, without hindrance from the latter. This was an intolerable situation; the minority should have at least one weapon available unqualifiedly at its disposal:93

It is indispensable to a free government . . . that the minority, the weaker party, have a veto upon the acts of the majority. Political liberty is liberty for the weaker party in a nation. It is only the weaker party that lose their liberties when a government becomes oppressive. The stronger party, in all governments, are free by virtue of their superior strength. They never oppress themselves. Legislation is the work of the stronger party; and if . . . they have the sole power of determining what legislation shall be enforced, they have all power in their hands, and the weaker party are the subjects of an absolute government.

Nor would Spooner countenance majority rule on the basis of the argument that the side of superior numerical strength was a more or less valid indication of probability of being “right.” The “lives, liberties and properties of men” were of too great esteem to risk them to possible destruction unless the action in which men engaged was based on “certainty beyond a reasonable doubt,”94 and this was insured only by the unanimity which the jury principle made obligatory. In one sense, this process enabled the minority to “defeat the will” of the majority, but only in a negative capacity. No possibility of passage of laws by the minority existed; the refusal to back laws which they found undesirable to themselves was all that the trial by jury might reinforce, at best.95

Such was the gist of Spooner’s plea on behalf of the reinstatement of a system of trial by jury which confirmed anti-statists of a later generation, as well as Spooner himself during his last years, viewed as the only sure protection from governmental oppression short of violent revolutionary action. Trial by Jury also marked the end of his political writing which retained any noticeable element of restraint. In a series of pamphlets titled No Treason96 which he began publishing a short while after the close of the Civil War, he compounded an attack on the conduct of the war, the Republican Party, and eventually the entire structure of political democracy. While the earliest of the series reflected in part the disillusionment of a portion of the intellectual fringe of the New England anti-slavery element, and dwelt at some length upon the material consequences of the war,”97 the last developed into an attack upon the institutional state and the United States Constitution which surpassed in extremity and daring any similar document written and published by a native American. Many of the arguments and much of the spirit of No Treason were revived fifteen years later, when a fully-developed anarchist press was in full bloom.

Spooner’s anti-government sentiments were thoroughly aroused by boasting on the part of elements of the North over the crushing of Southern “dissent” in the name of “liberty and free government.” He said it resembled a holy war fought in the interests of establishing a state religion, and in actuality took the form of a repudiation of government by consent.98 The idea of a government by consent implied an important principle: consent from each individual person who was required to furnish support to the government either through the paying of taxes or supplying some type of personal service. Without this, it must be admitted that the government in question is not founded on consent at all. To obtain the consent of only so many as was necessary to obtain control over the remainder was not establishing a government by consent; rather, it was the fruition of “a mere conspiracy of the strong against the weak.” Consent could not be presumed in any case whatsoever, despite the prevailing tendencies of governments to do so. Spooner held that the surest sign that a government was not “free” was the prevalence of coercion in securing support of any number of persons, no matter how small. “There is no other criterion,” he charged, “by which to determine whether a government is a free one, or not, then the single one of its depending, or not depending, solely on voluntary support.”99

Having expressed his conception of the anarchist foundation of society, the voluntary organization through free association, he went on to hammer away at the orthodox understandings of government by consent and the sensitive problem of treason. He considered the South “equally erroneous” with the North concerning allegiance. The latter he claimed insisted that each individual was held in allegiance to the federal government, the former similarly claimed such adherence was due the state government. Spooner disavowed the owing of “involuntary” allegiance on the part of the individual to either of these political structures.100 The very word “allegiance” itself appeared nowhere in the Constitution. Nor did any similar word, implying the existence of such “services” as fidelity or obedience to the government, occur in the document. His examination of the preamble to the Constitution convinced him that the latter “professes to rest wholly on consent,” and that any material relation or spiritual attitude toward the government on the part of the individual persons stemmed wholly from this condition of consent. Duty or obligation were not a part of this matter, nor could either be so at a later time.101

In addition to this, several facts convinced him that at best the Constitution could not be construed in any sense but that of an “association during pleasure.” Those who made it had no power to contract for others than themselves in political or any other matters. To maintain that a group of men might make political agreements binding on future generations was as valid as to believe that they also possessed the power to make business or marriage contracts mandatory upon them. In the case of those who adopted the Constitution, no evidence existed to indicate the period of time for which they pledged their support. Hence the “original parties” to this article of government were, at most, bound for no longer than the period during which they cared to give it their support, and certainly for no longer a time than their own life span.102 Spooner insisted that if the Constitution was to be considered the work of individual persons, there was “no escape” from such conclusions as these.

Viewed in this light, the issue of treason also underwent a qualification through definition. Governments not founded upon the principle of “consent” assumed the unwavering fidelity of all people living under them, and were inclined to view all resisters as treasonous. This was the addiction of the absolutist, said Spooner, and was a “false and calumnious” application.103 Treason properly designated meant only treacherous or deceitful conduct resulting in a wilful breach of faith; an open enemy in the act of rebellion could not be construed a traitor under any stretching of the meaning of the word.104 For this reason he dismissed the heated northern sentiment which leaned toward wholesale indictment of the South on this charge. Treason rested its entire case upon the supposition that the accused person had at one time granted his consent, and had subsequently acted in an unfaithful manner. Unless prior consent could be proved against the person involved in treachery accusations, the case could not stand, since it was impossible to be treasonous to a government if support to it had never been voluntarily yielded.105

Such tightly-wired theoretical arguments filled much of the No Treason pamphlets. Indulgence in personalities and specific citations was not prominent until the final number of the series appeared in 1870. In this he flatly rejected the entire Constitution and all the political usages that had grown under it throughout its existence, after a quarter century of writing about the problem created by its devious interpretation. It is true that in view of his doctrine of individual voluntary consent he had long been dubious of the process of adoption, due to the by-passing of the women, children, Negroes, and a large percentage of the nation’s white adult males through state property qualifications. Now his opposition was summary in nature. He was convinced that the instruments of government were being utilized almost wholly in the interests of a few favored segments of the population. Written in a provoking and inflammatory style, midway during the Reconstruction period, its sentiment was transmitted almost intact to a later time when conscious anarchists absorbed it into their propaganda.

Spooner recited his argument that the Constitution possessed no authority of itself, and that it merely represented a contract drawn up among persons now long dead, even though relatively few persons then living had been allowed to take formal part in expressing either approval or dissent at the time of its adoption. He denied the possibility of legally establishing its binding character upon generations since that time; “There is in the Constitution nothing that professes or attempts to bind the ‘posterity’ of those who establish it.” To assume as much amounted to making people the “slaves of their foolish, tyrannical and dead grandfathers.”106 Thus Spooner in a prominent sense was engaged in reviving the stand of the critics of Thomas Hobbes and the social contract theory, who held that the only persons bound to such an agreement were those actually participating in a pact of submission to a ruler. Therefore, being unable to act for anyone but themselves, they could certainly be unable to bind their posterity to an unchanging order.107

The principal onslaughts in this last pamphlet were directed at the voting, taxpaying, and lawmaking functions performed under the representative democracy. It was his contention that neither participation in elections nor the paying of taxes were valid evidence of either support or attachment to the Constitution, despite general assertions in the affirmative. The manner in which these functions were performed precluded such an interpretation. A voluntary vote indicated support of the basic document of government; however, denoted Spooner, the restricted number allowed access to the ballot made the process the obvious workings of a minority. Without citing actual statistics, he estimated that no more than one-sixth of the entire nation’s population had access to the voting booths, and only a fraction of those qualified actually performed the act of voting. Therefore, all those failing to vote technically withheld their support of the Constitution, and thus the government was clearly a conscious product of a minority. This was not his only argument. He questioned the possibility of determining those who actually voted voluntarily, as well as specifically locating the “voluntary supporters” of any given government:108

As everybody who supports the Constitution by voting . . . does so secretly, and in a way to avoid all personal responsibility for the acts of his agents or representatives, it cannot legally or reasonably be said that anybody at all supports the Constitution by voting. No man can reasonably or legally be said to do such a thing as to assent to, or support, the Constitution, unless he does it openly, and in a way to make himself personally responsible for the acts of his agents, so long as they act within the limits of the power he delegates to them.

The secret ballot he looked upon as a source of two kinds of evil. It enabled groups of people who were not in accord to continue acting without an understanding, and to look forward with expectancy to belonging to the more numerous group in the hopes of thus forcing their desires and wills upon the other. In addition it permitted the rise of an office-holding group which operated in an irresponsible vacuum, blessed with anonymity through the secret ballot, which destroyed the possibility of planting specific responsibility. “The secret ballot makes a secret government,” charged Spooner: “Open despotism is better than this. The single despot stands out in the face of all men and says: I am the State: my will is law; I am your master. I take the responsibility of my acts; . . . But a secret government is little better than a government of assassins.”109

The combination of the secret ballot and Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution served to demolish any notions remaining that a government of open responsibility was intended. Elected to office by people whom they did not know, senators and representatives were protected by this part of the Constitution from responsibility for any legislation which they might subsequently pass while in this office. The right to vote out incumbents every two, four, or six years was no “remedy” for this situation; they were merely replaced by others who exercised similar “absolute and irresponsible” power.110 A person injured by the passage of legislation was unable to place responsibility upon a single person either inside or outside the legislative halls, and least of all the latter: “these pretended agents of the people, of everybody, are really the agents of nobody.”111 The claim of legislators to being the representatives of the people, while at the same time being granted immunity by the Constitution for their actions as legislators, he decried a contradiction, since one could not be responsible and irresponsible for the same thing at the same time.

In like manner, the payment of taxes was no more a valid method of determining voluntary support112 to the Constitution than participation in voting. The theory that taxes were paid voluntarily was involved in this interpretation, disregarding the “practical fact” that most tax remittances were made “under the compulsion of threat.” Taxpayers acceded to the policies of the abstraction “the government” through fear of jail, confiscation, or violence should they make physical resistance.113 Unable to determine the nature of the “government,” the individual knew only the tax-collector, another person representing himself as an “agent” of this “government,” and payment was made with no comprehension of the destination of eventual disposal of his money. He warned that a tax structure of this kind was a serious threat to “liberty,” since all political power eventually depended upon money, and the entity controlling the money collected in taxes might pursue a course of action ruinous to the very supplier of the funds thus utilized. That taxes might be justified on the basis that collection was made by some men from other men, for the purpose of “protecting” them, he labeled as “perfect absurdity.” He considered individuals competent enough to make their own arrangements of this kind, and certainly no warrant existed for the protection of anyone against his will.114 Advised Spooner, “the only security men can have for their political liberty consists in keeping their money in their own pockets, until they have assurances perfectly satisfactory to themselves that it will be used for their benefit.”115

The No Treason blast touched other items of controversial content. Oaths given by governmental officials, soldiers, naturalized persons and the late rebels of the South he dismissed as “of no validity or obligation” due to the inability of specifically designating to whom they were given. Pledges to support the Constitution in the name of “the people of the United States” or similar generalities were written off as ineffective and inadequate.116 Nor did he believe that the governments of European countries entertained degrees of political virtue lacking in his own land. The monarchies of Europe he described as corrupt alliances between “discredited royalties” and large continental banking houses. Since the latter supplied the funds which equipped and paid the various armies, the power of the national states of Europe logically lay in the control of finance capitalism. It was impossible for a ruling house to survive in any other way. Adequate credit relations had to be maintained with the banks to remain in power, while these latter received the benefits derived from the exploitation of the taxpayers, trade relations with weaker neighbors and satellites, and the regimentation of the submerged colonial peoples of the respective countries.117 Our diplomatic relations with these lands were thus involving the United States government with even less worthy individuals acting in a supposed representative capacity on their own part.118

In spite of the extremity and provocativeness of his attacks upon both the theory and practice of government in the United States, it is unlikely that Lysander Spooner’s writings excited more than local intellectual curiosity. For over ten years after the completion of the No Treason series his writings in defense of anarchism were buried in a number of treatises on free banking. Due to his preference for non-associative criticism, it is probable that Spooner might have remained in obscurity for the remainder of his time had not the great increase of anarchist writing and periodical publication of the period after 1880 brought some of his defenses of anti-statism to the attention of a wide international reading audience of radical bent.

The publication of his pamphlet Natural Law119 in 1882 came to the attention of anarchist groups both in the United States and Europe. A short while later, as an independent contributor to Liberty, his standing in the anarchist camp grew rapidly. Natural Law was an essay in political and social philosophy primarily, but written to establish the thesis that human legislation was impotent and futile when made in ignorance, conscious or otherwise, of the “principle of justice” embodied in “natural law.”

Spooner’s primary objective was to establish the principles of natural law and what he termed the “science of justice,” which, he said, stemmed from the phenomenon of “natural rights.” Each person either came into the world with these rights, or else he passed his existence without them, for clearly they were not capable of being manufactured and distributed by men at some undesignated time later on.120 What was known as justice merely defined what rights all obtained at birth, and to deny that such was the case put all discussions of justice and rights forever off the agenda of humanity. If there was no natural principle of justice, then the possibility of a moral standard121 did not exist, and the concepts of “justice” and “injustice” themselves were absolutely meaningless. Furthermore, the concept of crime was mere imagination, and all that transpired on earth resembled natural occurrences such as rainstorms and the growth of vegetation.122 “If justice be not a natural principle,” he deduced, “governments have no reason to take cognizance of a non-entity, and all their professions of establishing justice or of maintaining justice are simply the gibberish of fools.”123

On the other hand, if it were admitted that there was such a thing as a natural principle of justice, then it must of necessity be no more susceptible to alteration or change than gravitation. Thus there was no place for the legislation of men in this situation either, for it was an “assumption of authority and dominion” where the right to do so did not exist, nor where the necessity for such was needed. Thus there was a “science” of justice, “that each should live honestly toward each other,”124 which was capable of being learned as were the other sciences. In fact, he insisted that for the most part, the fundamentals of the science of justice were often learned and practiced before the words which were used to describe it were understood.125

How, then, were governments and legislation to be accounted for? To Spooner, both were subversions of natural justice and natural law, growing from an attempt of a portion of mankind to live off the production of the remainder, and extended as far back in history as the period when the systematic cultivation of the soil made possible an accumulation of material wealth in excess of that needed for daily needs on the part of the cultivators.126 From the actual slavery of both the producer and his product there evolved an emancipation from the former condition. The retention of ownership of land and the means of production made it mandatory that the newly freed in body “sell” their labor, which practically restored the former situation. The relative mobility of the non-owning group and the tendency for the earning of a living to become lodged in a groove of unending insecurity promoted a large volume of social disruptions such as stealing. This prompted the passage of numerous laws defining such activities as crimes, “to keep these dangerous people in subjection.” There was just one purpose for the formation of the historic state, “simply to keep one class of men in subordination and servitude to another.”127 As unpalatable as such an interpretation might prove to be among other shades of society, conservative, liberal, or radical, the fact that Natural Law went into three editions in three years128 indicated the acceptability of its message among the anarchists.

Spooner, now living in retirement in Boston, contributed two final additions to the anti-state literature which, although producing little new thought, were the most amazing and daring of all in that they were addressed to prominent public figures in American political life. Shortly after the appearance of Natural Law, his Letter to Thomas F. Bayard was featured in Liberty.129 Using the veteran Delaware senator as a symbol of the representative government which he despised so thoroughly, the unregenerate Boston anarchist summed up his arguments against the delegation of legislative power,130 the secret ballot, the passage of legislation, and the validity of the Constitution.131

In the summer of 1885 Tucker began the publication of Spooner’s A Letter to Grover Cleveland: On His False, Self-Contradictory, and Ridiculous Inaugural Address,132 which ran through 19 lengthy installments and ended shortly after the Haymarket133 explosion, when the first genuine crisis in American radical activities was precipitated. This was the most elaborate of the summations which he was to contrive, and like his manifestoes addressed to Bayard, synthesized his early contributions with little new material added. To the readers of Liberty it was a work of contemporary freshness, and it achieved sufficient popularity among them to warrant publication shortly afterward in book form.134

His association with the growing number of Tuckerites stimulated him to even more drastic repudiations of the state. He inveighed against the right of the state to take the life of anyone, or interfere with men’s individual private contracts, or erect monopolies of land or money to the benefit of some at the expense of others.135 He went on to ridicule the concept of “public rights,” as he had long before, and several other generalities and platitudes from the Cleveland inaugural speech.136 He denied the existence of a “public trust,” generally cited as the well-spring of authority vested in the presidency, and declared that the devotion to the “public welfare” would inevitably lead to the destruction of men’s individual rights under the guise of promoting their prosperity.137 He reserved his most eloquent contempt for the party system,138 which he thought a type of game which stimulated artificial relationships of antagonism among men naturally undisposed to belligerency, promoting synthetic conflict for the purpose of aggrandizing crafty leaders. In no less vigorous manner did he depreciate the activities transpiring in what the President had described as “the halls of national legislation.” To Spooner these were mere cockpits to which the lawmakers invited the representatives of all conceivable conflicting interests, where the former might “favor or oppose, . . . according as they can better serve their own personal interests and ambitions by doing the one or the other.”139 At the same time, he commented acidly on the patronizing attitude of the political elements in taking credit for such material prosperity as was enjoyed, while continuing the process of vitiating the efforts of non-political individuals and encouraging an increasing degree of dependence upon the ability of the government, now fully engaged in supplying a favorable state of affairs wherein the favored monopolies might function.140

Spooner’s death in 1887141 brought to an end both his pamphleteering and his anonymous contributions to Liberty at the time when the nation-wide loose affiliation of anti-government intellectuals was at its peak. With this group his prestige grew with the passing of time, so that some twenty years later, examining their antecedents, those with a historical bent were willing to admit that Spooner’s contributions to American anarchism were fully as important as Josiah Warren’s.142 The underrated egoistic doctrines of Max Stirner were already looming in the writings of the Tucker group, intruding on the earlier basis of anarchist thinking, and altering some of the tenaciously-held concepts, especially those dealing with the abstraction of natural right. The flowering of American anarchism under the leadership of Benjamin Tucker, and the gradual swing to intellectual egoism, is a many-sided and personality-filled account best considered in relation to new circumstances which tended to modify the contributions of its important forerunners.

 

___________

143.  Brief biographical data can be located in Dictionary of American Biography, XVII, 466-467, and Appleton’s Cyclopedia, V, 634-635. See also the entry in Sprading, Great Libertarians, 258, and Liberty, IV (May 28, 1887), 4-5. Tucker’s six column obituary notice is a short biography in itself, incorporating much material which appears in no other work. Tucker, as the executor of Spooner’s literary effects, had access to valuable documentary items and unpublished manuscripts, all of which were destroyed by fire in 1908.

144.  While living in Ohio, Spooner collaborated with another lawyer, Noah H. Swayne, in an attempt to prevent the state board of public works from “draining” the Maumee River. See Spooner vs McConnell et al. An Argument Presented to the United States Circuit Court in Support of a Petition for an Injunction to Restrain Alexander McConnell and Others from Placing Dams in the Maumee River, Ohio (n.p., 1839); Liberty, IV (June 18, 1887), 8.

145.  Albert Post, Popular Freethought in America, 1825-1850, p. 288. Spooner authored a similar treatise which appeared two years earlier. The Deist’s Immortality and an Essay on Man’s Accountability for His Belief (Boston, 1834).

146.  Said Spooner, “All men of common sense disregard authority.” Deist’s Reply, 41. The Deist’s Reply was run serially in Underbill’s Cleveland Liberalist during part of 1836. Post, Popular Freethought, 63.

147.  Spooner did not believe that the Constitution was a class document; his earlier criticisms centered around its interpretation to the advantage of one element of the populace or another. After the Civil War, his attacks bore directly upon the very authority of the Constitution, and grew in audacity and antagonism.

148.  Spooner, Constitutional Law Relative to . . . Banking, 24.

149.  “It is obvious that all these arguments in favor of laws controlling the obligation of contracts are urged almost entirely by men who have been in the habit of regarding the legislative authority as being nearly absolute - and who cannot realize the idea that ‘the people’ of this nation . . . should ordain it that their natural right to contract with each other, and ‘the obligations of contracts’ when made, should not be subjects of legislative caprice or discretion.” Constitutional Law Relative to . . . Banking, 16.

150.  Constitutional Law Relative to . . . Banking, 20.

151.  Constitutional Law Relative to . . . Banking, 21.

152.  Constitutional Law Relative to . . . Banking, page cited above.

153.  Liberty, IV (May 28, 1887), 4.

154.  S. 51; for text see Congressional Globe, 28 Cong., 1 Sess., XIII, 431-432. Sections 10-14 provided for the outlawing of the private mail companies. The arguments on the part of proponents of the bill did not concern the issue of revenues, but of furnishing a “great governmental instrument of service,” and heavy subsidization was expected to equalize heavy deficit operational expenses anticipated. There was no stress on its political significance as far as a source of sympathetic supporters at election times, while it was brought out that in most areas the postmasterships were not attractive financially.

155.  Remarks by Merrick in Congressional Globe, 28 Cong., 2 Sess., XIV, 206.

156.  Spooner, The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails, 5.

157.  Private Mails, 19, 22.

158.  Private Mails, 16. He asserted that the concept of “freedom of speech” included the freedom of transmission of manuscript correspondence.

159.  “Government functionaries, secure in the enjoyment of warm nests, large salaries, official honors and power, and presidential smiles—all of which they are sure of so long as they are partisans of the President—feel few quickening impulses to labor, and are altogether too independent and dignified personages to move at the speed that commercial interests require. They take office to enjoy its honors and emoluments, not to get their living by the sweat of their brows. . . . The consequence is, as we now see, that a cumbrous, clumsy, expensive and dilatory government system is once established, it is nearly impossible to modify or materially improve it. Opening the business to rivalry and free competition is the only way to get rid of the nuisance.” Private Mails, 24.

160.  Liberty, IV (May 28, 1887), 5. Fifty years after its publication, Spooner’s pamphlet attacking the restriction of the private mail companies was still being sold to the readers of Liberty, along with 21 of his other publications. Liberty, X (May 19, 1894), 12.

161.  In a letter to Stephen Pearl Andrews, Spooner expressed disappointment that editors such as Horace Greeley downgraded Spooner’s private mail company and tried to minimize his influence. “The latter may think it was their editorials that caused the reduction,” Spooner commented, “But I affected the debates in Congress, and the votes in 1843, 1844, and 1845 show that something besides editorials, or the example of English postage, caused the disturbance in Congress, and forced them (for they acknowledged themselves forced), to a reduction.” Spooner to Andrews, July 4, 1851, Baskette Collection. See also Spooner, Who Caused the Reduction in Postage? (Boston, 1851). Tucker called him “the father of cheap postage in America.” Spooner has come in for recognition in a recent popularized treatment of the early days of the federal postal system; see Ernest A. Kehn, Henry M. Goodkind, and Elliott Perry, “Look Before You Lick,” in Readers Digest, L (June, 1947), 125-127. A recent evaluation sympathetic to the private companies is Frank Chodorov, The Myth of the Post Office (Hinsdale, 111., 1948).

162.  Spooner, Poverty, 8, 23.

163.  Poverty, 7-8.

164.  Poverty, 15.

23.   Poverty, 8-9.

165.  Poverty, 9-10.

166.  “Of all the frauds by which labor is cheated out of its earnings by legislation . . . probably no one is more purely tyrannical or more destructive . . . than that monopoly of the right to borrow money.” Poverty, 12-13.

167.  Poverty, 15-16.

168.  “. . . almost all fortunes are made out of the capital and labor of other men than those who realize them. Indeed, large fortunes could rarely be made at all by one individual, except by his sponging capital and labor from others. And the usury laws are the means by which he does it.” Poverty, 11.

169.  Poverty, 65-67.

170.  Poverty, 18-19, 46-47.

171.  Poverty, 22, 73.

172.  Poverty, 54.

173.  Poverty, 59.

174.  Poverty, 59-60.

175.  Poverty, 61-62.

176.  The plan of this bank had actually been written in 1860, but was published along with A New System of Paper Currency a year later as Articles of Association of a Mortgage Stock Banking Company. For the details of the operation of the bank see Spooner, New Paper Currency, 9-13.

177.  New System of Paper Currency, 14-15, 21-23. It was his belief that a local bank founded on fraudulent mortgages would be discredited at home, and get no circulation in other places at all. Having no credit at home, it certainly would get none “abroad,” hence there would be no danger of swindling of the public by bad banks.

178.  New System of Paper Currency, 5, 15, 17-20.

179.  “. . . it seems plain enough that government has constitutionally no more power to forbid men’s selling an invested dollar than it has to forbid the selling of a specie dollar. It has constitutionally no more power to forbid the sale of a single dollar, invested in a farm, than it has to forbid the sale of the whole farm.

The currency here proposed is not in the nature of a credit currency, . . . it constitutes simply of bona fide certificates of Stock, which the owners have the same right to sell that they have to sell any other Stocks.” New System of Paper Currency, 17.

180.  New System of Paper Currency, 47-51.

181.  Amasa Walker, “Modern Alchemy,” in The Banker’s Magazine and Statistical Register, XI, new series, 407-413.

182.  See Spooner’s remarks of twelve years later in A New Banking System: The Needful Capital for Rebuilding the Burnt District, 75-77, 413.

183.  “The property that is represented by the paper, and which constitutes the real money, is just as real substantial property as is gold or silver, or any other money or property whatever. And it is really an incorrect and false use of the term to call such money paper money, as if the paper itself were the real money; or as if there were no money, and no value, outside of the paper. A dollar’s worth of land, wheat, iron, wool, or leather is just as much a dollar in real value as is a dollar of gold or silver; and when represented by paper, it is just as real money, as far as value is concerned, as is gold and silver.” Spooner, “Gold and Silver as Standards of Value,” in Radical Review, I, 765. This article was later translated and reprinted in the French language Costa Rican anarchist periodical Le Sémeur, I (October, 1927), 1-6. Stress is Spooner’s.

184.  Spooner, Considerations for Bankers and Holders of United States Bonds, 37-49, 67-68.

185.  Considerations, 73-78.

186.  Considerations, 81-84.

187.  Spooner, New Banking System, 5-6, 16-17, 25-33, 55-56.

188.  New Banking System, 19-20.

189.  New Banking System, 68-74.

190.  This was reprinted as a separate pamphlet this same year; page citations are from this latter edition.

191.  Spooner, Our Financiers, 12.

192.  For late critical writings and support of the localized free banking system by Spooner, see Our Financiers, 3-13, 16-18; The Law of Prices: A Demonstration of the Necessity for an Indefinite Increase of Money, 3, 11-13; Universal Wealth Shown to be Easily Attainable, 3-9, 18-20.

193.  The Unconstitutionality of Slavery; Part Second followed in 1846, and the two were combined in 1847, in a single work. Subsequent editions appeared in 1853, 1856 and 1860. Spooner’s other writing on the slavery question, again hinging on the legal aspect, was confined to a slim volume titled A Defence for Fugitive Slaves Against the Acts of Congress of February 12, 1793 and September 18, 1850, published in Boston in this latter year. Page citations from the first of the works on the unconstitutionality of slavery are from the 1845 edition, while from the second, the edition of 1856 has been used, the 1846 edition being especially scarce.

194.  Smith had high praise for Spooner’s thesis, and remarked at one time that he believed it to be “unanswerable.” Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, 202. For later legal relations between Spooner and Smith, see Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 417-422.

195.  See for instance its unanimous approval at the 1849 convention of the Liberty Party. Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, 190. For the failure of the formal inclusion of his main point in the Liberty Party creed, due to lack of support in the Midwest, consult Theodore C. Smith. The Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the Northwest (New York, 1897), 89, 98-101, 118-119.

196.  Spooner, Unconstitutionality (1845), 5.

197.  In his Poverty: Its Illegal Causes and Legal Cure of 1846, Spooner had pronounced, “Natural law is the science of men’s rights. . . . It is impossible that men can have any rights (either in person or in property), in violation of natural law,—for natural law is justice itself. . . . The nature of justice can no more be altered by legislation than the nature of numbers can be altered by the same means.” Poverty, 63.

198.  Spooner, The Law of Intellectual Property, or, An Essay On the Right of Authors and Inventors to Perpetual Property in Their Discoveries and Inventions, 103; same author, Poverty, 64.

199.  Unconstitutionality (1845), 11-12.

200.  Of the twenty-five definitions for the word “law,” Spooner extracted the second, “municipal law”; “a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power of a state, commanding what its subjects are to do, and prohibiting what they are to forbear; a statute.” An American Dictionary of the English Language; Exhibiting the Origin, Orthography, Pronunciation, and Definitions of Words (New York, 1839), 488.

201.  Unconstitutionality (1845), 12-14.

202.  Unconstitutionality (1845), 15.

203.  Unconstitutionality (1845), 8.

204.  “This is the legitimate and true object of government: . . . rules and statutes not inconsistent with natural justice and men’s natural rights, if enacted by such government, are binding, on the ground of contract, upon those who are parties to the contract which creates the government, and authorizes it to pass rules and statutes to carry out its objects.” Unconstitutionality (1845), 9.

205.  Unconstitutionality (1845), 9-10.

206.  On the background of the publication of Phillips’ Review of Lysander Spooner’s Essay on the Unconstitutionality of Slavery, see Carlos Martyn (ed.), Wendell Phillips the Agitator (Boston, 1890), 216-217.

207.  Review, 15.

208.  “Mr. Spooner’s idea is practical no-governmentism. It leaves everyone to do ‘what is right in his own eyes.’ After all, Messrs. Goodell and Spooner . . . are the real no-government men; . . .” Review, 10.

209.  Review, 25.

210.  Review, 9.

211.  See the extended development of this point in Spooner, Defence for Fugitive Slaves, 28.

212.  Unconstitutionality (1856), 153-154.

213.  “The whole object of legislation, excepting that legislation which merely makes regulations, and provides instrumentalities for carrying other laws into effect, is to overturn natural law, and substitute for it the arbitrary will of power. In other words, the whole object of it is to destroy men’s rights. At least, such is its only effect, . . . Yet the advocates of arbitrary legislation are continally practising the fraud of pretending that unless the legislature make the laws, the laws will not be known. The whole object of the fraud is to secure to the government the authority of making laws that never ought to be known.” Unconstitutionality (1856), 142.

214.  Unconstitutionality (1856), 137, 152.

215.  There was of course a fundamental disagreement between Spooner and Phillips as to the sanction of slavery. Phillips maintained that it was recognized and allowed under English common law, which Spooner denied. He rejected Phillips’ proof through utilizing the assumption that the villein of Magna Charta times was the equivalent of the 19th century slave. It was Spooner’s opinion that the common law was improperly designated when assumed to be that prevailing in early 13th century England. Actually, he said, it predated the beginning even of the royal state, and that no subservience of one man to another predated the establishment of such superior and inferior relationships by the state, in one capacity or another. Hence, he concluded, to observe that government abolished slavery at any particular time was merely to witness the undoing of a vicious condition which it had established under different circumstances in the first place. Spooner, Law of Intellectual Property, 170-173, 226-227; Phillips, Review, 94-95. For contradictory interpretations of slavery and origins of English common law, see William S. Holdsworth, A History of English Law (12 vols. London, 1922), II, 1, 30-31. It is beyond the scope of a work of this kind to enter into extended discussion of the complicated matter of the natural law doctrine and its implications. Of great value, especially with relation to the United States, are Charles G. Haines, The Revival of Natural Law Concepts (Cambridge, Mass., 1930); Benjamin F. Wright, American Interpretations of Natural Law (Cambridge, Mass., 1931). See also Hans Kelsen, General Theory of Law and State (Anders Wedberg, translator) (Cambridge, Mass., 1945).

216.  An abbreviated edition of this work, edited by Victor Yarros, appeared in Boston in 1890 under the title Free Political Institutions, after having been printed serially in Liberty from June 8 through December 28, 1889. A second edition in book form was published in London in 1912, under this same title. See the brief interpretation by A. John Alexander, “The Ideas of Lysander Spooner,” in New England Quarterly, XXIII (June, 1950), 200-217, which stresses this work.

217.  Spooner, Trial by Jury, introduction, i.

218.  Trial by Jury, 5. Spooner believed that if the jury had no right to judge “of the justice of the law,” it would be no protection to the accused person, since the government might easily go on from there to dictate the “laws of evidence” and the weight that might be given to such evidence as they cared to admit in any given trial.

Many ideas expressed in this work had already been given by Spooner in others written in 1850. See for example Defence for Fugitive Slaves, 5-6, 18-25, 67-70; Illegality of the Trial of John W. Webster, 3-15.

219.  Trial by Jury, 142.

220.  Trial by Jury, 143.

221.  Trial by Jury, 155.

222.  Trial by Jury, 156.

223.  Trial by Jury, page cited above.

224.  By this time Spooner was convinced that the study of statutory and constitutional law was not one of a definite science of abstract and permanent principles, but one of a technique of language. Like Warren, he objected to the uncertainty and nebulousness of wording which made statutes capable of a wide variety of interpretations. This only strengthened his suspicions that the “government of law” which he heard constantly mentioned in platitudinous speeches in actuality depended upon the judgment, in many situations, of a single man as to what the law really was.

225.  Trial by Jury, 156, 164.

226.  Spooner castigated the practice of the government, on empanelling juries, of inquring of prospective jurors whether they had scruples against finding verdicts of guilty in cases of a specific crime. Mentioning as examples the fugitive slave laws and capital punishment, he was convinced that in such cases the government was clearly overstepping its bounds. Trial by Jury, 8-9.

227.  Trial by Jury, 7.

228.  Trial by Jury, 13-15, 178-180, 189-190.

229.  Trial by Jury, 16.

230.  Trial by Jury, 19.

231.  Trial by Jury, 12.

232.  One of Spooner’s special distastes was the doctrine that “ignorance of the law excuses no one,” a “preposterous” device which the courts asserted as a means of preserving “absolute power in the government.” The right of the jury to judge the statutes of the government and to decide whether they infringed on the rights of the citizens was thus vitiated. Trial by Jury, 181.

233.  Trial by Jury, 206-207.

234.  Trial by Jury, 214-215.

235.  Trial by Jury, 208. Spooner would probably have been delighted by Ibsen’s assertion that the majority was always wrong.

236.  “It will be said that if the minority can defeat the will of the majority, then the minority rule the majority. But this is not true in any unjust sense. The minority enact no laws of their own. They simply refuse their assent to such laws of the majority as they do not approve. The minority assume no authority over the majority; they simply defend themselves. They propose a union; but decline submission.” Trial by Jury, 218-219.

237.  This series was to have consisted of six numbers, but only 1, 2 and 6 ever were published. In the foreword to the sixth series, Spooner revealed that the previous three were non-existent, but gave no reason for the hiatus.

238.  Despite his hatred of things political, Spooner and a few associates in the East formed a curious little group known as the Free Constitutionalists, with the aim of defeating the Republican Party in the 1860 election. Convinced that the Republican stand on the slavery issue was hypocritical, the Spooner group believed that a defeat would cause a rupture in the party and a reforming of lines with all those not entirely opposed to slavery no longer part of its structure. The issue of slavery in the territories was a blind to cover the real issue, whether a man was a slave in any of the states in the Union. Spooner contended that if he was a slave in one state, he was in the same status in all, and if free in one, he was a free man in all the remainder. See the interesting Address of the Free Constitutionalists to the People of the United States (Boston, 1860), 2-4, 7-19, 30, 38-46, 53-54. Spooner underestimated the capacity of the South for rebellion. Five years before the war began, he predicted that the South would not secede. Deploring force, he was unable to comprehend the possibility of its utility in settling the matter of slavery or sectional controversy, which he continued to consider in abstract and legal or constitutional dress. See his Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1856), 293-294.

239.  Spooner, No Treason (No. I, The Suppression of the Rebellion Finally Disposes of the Pretence That the United States Government Rests on Consent), 3-6, 10. Spooner later entered into a thoroughgoing economic interpretation of the war. He asserted that control of Southern markets was the real motive behind Northern business participation in the war, and not any love of abstract liberty or justice. The loan of enormous sums of money at high rates of interest to the North was now going to be repaid by the Republican administration through a large-scale tax program, with an extra advantage thrown to the manufacturers in the form of high tariffs. He labeled Grant “the chief murderer of the war,” and the “agent” of the “new policy” of high tariffs, high taxes and monopoly of the currency through the creation of the new banking system. No Treason (No. VI, The Constitution of No Authority), 54-58. See also Curti, Peace or War, 71, 134.

240.  No Treason (No. I), 6-8; No Treason (No. II, The Constitution), 13.

241.  No Treason (No. II), 13.

242.  No Treason (No. II), 11.

243.  No Treason (No. II), 3-5, 11, 16.

244.  No Treason (No. I), 12-14. The American Revolution, said Spooner, was the result of separate voluntary actions taken by individuals; the colonial governments had no right to absolve the people from allegiance to the king, and when acting as legislatures, it was in the capacity of individual revolutionists only. Therefore George III erred in calling the colonists traitors, since they had not declared their allegiance to him as individuals, and betrayed nobody.

245.  No Treason (No. II), 7-8.

246.  No Treason (No. II), 8, 11-12.

247.  No Treason (No. VI), 3-6. Nearly a half century before, Thomas Jefferson declared, “Can one generation bind another in succession forever? I think not. . . . Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things. . . . A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when it has disappeared, another majority is in place, hold all the rights and powers their predecessors once held, and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves.” Thomas Jefferson to Major John Cortwright, June 5, 1824, in Andrew A. Lipscomb (ed.), The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (19 vols. Washington, 1904), XVI, 48.

248.  Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (New Haven, 1946), 173-175.

249.  No Treason (No. VI), 11. If people wished to conduct a government on the order which the Constitution provided for, then there was no reason why they should not sign the “instrument” itself, so as to openly certify their wishes and also to make themselves individually responsible for such governmental acts as might transpire. It was Spooner’s belief that the reason the people at large were not asked to sign the Constitution was the fear that if given the opportunity as individuals, they would have rejected it. No Treason (No. VI), 26-27.

250.  No Treason (No. VI), 28-29.

251.  No Treason (No. VI), 23.

252.  No Treason (No. VI), 25.

253.  Said Spooner on this matter in 1852, “Trial by the country, and no taxation without consent were the two pillars of English liberty . . . and the first principles of the Common Law. It was a principle of the Common Law, as it is of the law of nature, and of common sense, that no man can be taxed without his personal consent. The Common Law knew nothing of that system . . . of assuming a man’s own consent to be taxed because some pretended representative, whom he had never authorized to act for him, has taken it upon himself to consent that he may be taxed. This is one of the many frauds on the Common Law . . . which have been introduced since Magna Charta. Having finally established itself in England, it has been stupidly and servility copied and submitted to in the United States.” Trial by Jury, 222-223.

254.  No Treason (No. VI), 14-15.

255.  No Treason (No. VI), 15-17.

256.  No Treason (No. VI), 17.

257.  No Treason (No. VI), 35-36, 39-41.

258.  He was especially outspoken in his denunciation of the “National Debt,” which he dismissed as a fiction, declaring that the war had been actually paid for as it had been fought, and that the whole debt might be defaulted by the mere act of individuals refusing to pay taxes. Not a penny of actual wealth would be destroyed by this process, concluding that the Republican slogan “maintaining the National Honor” was a “mere shibboleth,” designed to mask a gigantic levy upon the taxpayers in order to pay the interest on the loans of the Northern bankers. No Treason (No. VI), 56, 58-59.

259.  No Treason (No. VI), 42-43, 47-51.

260.  The full title of this pamphlet was Natural Law; or the Science of Justice; a Treatise on Natural Law, Natural Justice, Natural Rights, Natural Liberty, and Natural Society, Showing That All Legislation Whatsoever Is an Absurdity, a Usurpation and a Crime. For a reprint see Liberty, I (March 18, 1882), 4.

261.  Natural Law, 12.

262.  Natural Law, 11, 15.

263.  “All comparisons as honesty vs. dishonesty, justice vs. injustice, etc., postulate a natural principle, otherwise they are meaningless words and admit that the greatest force and fraud are the only laws for governing the relations of men with each other.” Natural Law, 14.

264.  Natural Law, 10.

265.  Natural Law, 6. He foresaw the need of voluntary associations, however, “for the maintenance of justice” and “protection against wrong-doers,” the former among themselves, the latter a defense against outside molesters. He retained the Warranted principle of respecting the individual right of choice to remain outside the association, holding coercion unjustified under any circumstances.

266.  This he believed could be observed in the conduct of young children, especially in the reactions to theft and bodily aggression. Natural Law, 8-9.

267.  Natural Law, 17.

268.  Natural Law, 18, 20-21. For the similarity of Spooner’s interpretation to the sociological concept of the state as developed by later students, compare with that of Franz Oppenheimer, The State, 15-21, 274-289.

269.  Natural Law was read eagerly by European anarchists, and furnished the inspiration for the series of articles published in the Swiss anarchist periodical Le Révolté under the title “Law and Authority.” These sought to establish in the minds of the readers of the anti-statist press the relative novelty of codified law in the whole of human history, and to disprove the beneficial character ascribed to civilizations noted for extended legal systems. For a friendly American commentary see Liberty, I (July 22, 1882), 1.

270.  As “A Letter to Thomas F. Bayard: Challenging His Right and the Right of All Other So-called Senators and Representatives in Congress—To Exercise Any Legislative Power Whatever Over the People of the United States,” it was first published in Liberty, II (May 27, 1882), 2-3, and then in pamphlet form. Bayard, a senator from 1869 until his resignation in 1885 to enter Cleveland’s cabinet, provoked Spooner into writing “A Second Letter to Thomas F. Bayard,” after the latter read a speech delivered in Brooklyn on April 6, 1884, which appeared in Liberty, II (May 17, 1884), 6-7. For Bayard’s speech see Boston Herald, April 6, 1884; for his senatorial tenure, Congressional Globe, 41 Cong., 1 Sess., LXII, 1; Congressional Record, 49 Cong., 1 Sess., XVII, 4. For biographical material consult Charles C. Tansill, The Congressional Career of Thomas Francis Bayard, 1869-1885 (Washington, 1946).

271.  “. . . under the pretence that this instrument gives them the right of all arbitrary and irresponsible dominion over the whole people of the United States, Congress has now gone on, for ninety years and more, filling great volumes with laws of their own device, which the people at large have never read, nor even seen, nor ever will read or see; and of whose legal meanings it is morally impossible that they ever should know anything. Congress

272.  Letter to Bayard, 3-6, 8-10.

273.  The Letter appeared in Liberty almost without interruption from June 20, 1885 through May 22, 1886. Its actual writing was completed May 15.

274.  The relations between Tucker and the American anarchists and the Hay-market group are discussed in Chapter VIII.

275.  As a book of 112 pages it came out July 3, 1886 under a slightly different title: A Letter to Grover Cleveland, On His False Inaugural Address, the Usurpations and Crimes of Lawmakers and Judges and the Consequent Poverty, Ignorance and Servitude of the People. Citations are from this edition or from the serial articles in Liberty.

276.  Spooner, Letter to Cleveland, 31-80.

277.  For the text of the President’s address see Congressional Record, 49 Cong., 1 Sess., XVII, 2-3; James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897 (10 vols. Washington, 1898), VIII, 299-303.

278.  Liberty, III (June 20, 1885), 2-3; (July 18, 1885), 2; Letter to Cleveland, 7-8, 11.

279.  Liberty, III (August 15, 1885), 2; (September 12, 1885), 2; (October 3, 1885), 2; (October 24, 1885), 2; Letter to Cleveland, 15-16, 22, 24, 27, 30.

280.  Liberty, III (August 15, 1885), 2; Letter to Cleveland, 17.

281.  The influence of Tucker’s hammering at the monopoly-granting power of the government is evident in the following: “. . . if a government is to ‘do equal and exact justice to all men,’ it must do simply that and nothing more . . . if it gives monopolies, privileges, exemptions, bounties or favors to any, it can do so only by doing injustice to more or less others. It can give to one only what it takes from others; for it has nothing of its own to give to anyone. No honest government can go into business with any individuals, can give no one any special aid to competition, or protect anyone from competition. It can do no one any favor, nor render to any one assistance which it withholds from another. It must take no cognizance of any man’s ‘interests.’“ Liberty, III (August 15, 1885), 3; Letter to Cleveland, 15.

282.  A 3½ hour memorial meeting was held in Boston on May 29, 1887, at which one of the speakers was the old abolitionist friend of Spooner, Theodore Dwight Weld. See report of this gathering in Liberty, IV (June 18, 1887), 7-8.

283.  See for instance the article “The First American Anarchist” by Clarence Lee Swartz in Liberty, XV (February, 1906), 53-54.

• 1It has been evident to thoughtful observers for more than two generations that the words “anarchist,” “anarchism,” and “anarchy” have been used so loosely by writers and the general public alike that they have practically ceased to have any definite meaning. The problem here is similar to that existing in many other cases where abstract terms or generalizations having no or little substance have been overused or misused. Nor has the use of these terms by scholars tended to promote any greater degree of understanding. In too many cases the tendency has been to resemble the weaknesses of the general observer. Here the situation has been usually created by the repeated interpretation of expressions of hostility to the status quo as evidence of anarchist thought.
• 2It has been evident to thoughtful observers for more than two generations that the words “anarchist,” “anarchism,” and “anarchy” have been used so loosely by writers and the general public alike that they have practically ceased to have any definite meaning. The problem here is similar to that existing in many other cases where abstract terms or generalizations having no or little substance have been overused or misused. Nor has the use of these terms by scholars tended to promote any greater degree of understanding. In too many cases the tendency has been to resemble the weaknesses of the general observer. Here the situation has been usually created by the repeated interpretation of expressions of hostility to the status quo as evidence of anarchist thought.
• 3The idea has long been prevalent that violent conduct is characteristic of anarchists, and that anarchism is a doctrine of destruction. There exists little justification for such a stand, in actuality. In addition, the rejection of one particular variety of authority in favor of its replacement by another finds continual identification with anarchism, while social philosophies which are utterly opposed to it are on occasion labeled “anarchistic.” This merely adds to the already large amount of confusion existing on the subject, setting up extremely vague limitations and permitting the inclusion of many elements which are quite controversial.
• 4Since 1880 and thereabouts people have almost universally thought of anarchists in terms of violence and conspiracy. The result has been the regarding of anarchist literature as a product of a handful of criminals. In Europe the advent of this revolutionary movement was accompanied by a number of sensational acts which led to the identification of anarchism with socially pathological developments. In the United States there have been similar implications, to the point where even governmental policy incorporated the layman’s conception of anarchism and anarchists. The definition of anarchism employed by the Department of Justice in modern times is essentially derived from this earlier period.
• 5Although the tendency to blame destruction of property and loss of life during industrial disputes on “agitators,” “doctrinaires,” and “communists” prevailed for some time previous to the celebrated Haymarket incident in Chicago in May, 1886, such predilections received a powerful stimulus from this event. The now-familiar stereotype of the black whiskered, bomb-throwing vandal came into being at this time and created a new political symbol which has been used to manipulate mass opinion with an impressive degree of success. As a consequence of this and other factors, anarchism became so tainted with diabolism that rational study of its place in American history has rarely taken place.
• 6Although the tendency to blame destruction of property and loss of life during industrial disputes on “agitators,” “doctrinaires,” and “communists” prevailed for some time previous to the celebrated Haymarket incident in Chicago in May, 1886, such predilections received a powerful stimulus from this event. The now-familiar stereotype of the black whiskered, bomb-throwing vandal came into being at this time and created a new political symbol which has been used to manipulate mass opinion with an impressive degree of success. As a consequence of this and other factors, anarchism became so tainted with diabolism that rational study of its place in American history has rarely taken place.
• 7The attempt to link these varied phenomena into a logical sequence has been undertaken by others as well, with less success. It now appears that the assumption that American anarchism stemmed from Puritan Antinomianism and was associated with the peculiar variety of resistance to the state found in the non-resistant and “no government” sentiments of the Garrison school of “Christian Anarchist” abolitionists is untenable. It is more probable that, rather than being a derivative of native American conditions, the real source of the anti-statist evidences observed in Antinomianism and other varieties of early colonial dissidence and unrest can be discovered in the radicalism, both religious and socio-economic, already developing in England before the times of Charles I, and which found expression through lower class spokesmen at the time of the English Civil War. Concerning other aspects of this matter, it can be argued quite effectively that the designation “Christian Anarchist” is really a contradiction in terms, and that religious rebellion along individualist lines can be interpreted as anarchism only under highly specialized circumstances. The rejection of one variety of religious authority in favor of its replacement by another can hardly be related to anarchism, which categorically rejects authority. In another connection, the interpretation of American anti-statism as an evolutionary process, passing from religious to economic spheres, is also open to serious objections. There is not only lack of continuity in influence, but no logical sequence in the elaboration of a program of propaganda. In searching the field it becomes more apparent that the elements of a radical movement with a fully developed propaganda structure can be found in one of the sub-areas only. It is the contention of this work that individualist anarchism can be seen to satisfy the requirements mentioned elsewhere. Not only is it the only part of the radical movement native to America with a propaganda, but it has depended on natives for its promotion. Furthermore, it is unique in that members of the group actually attempted under practical conditions to try out its theory.
• 8In the United States there seems to have been little notice of an extensive literature hostile to the state and its functions until after Haymarket. The dominant conception of anarchism after the violence in Chicago was in accord with the inflammatory utterances of the European-born revolutionaries now gathered in the several large Northern cities. Lack of attention had resulted in the failure to note that a serious split had been developing within the worldwide anarchist movement, and that various distinct elements could now be recognized.
• 9The semantic smokescreen raised up by the moral uproar here and overseas after Haymarket and a number of sensational assassinations in Europe covered over in the process the uncompromising stand taken by the American individualist anarchists, who deplored the use of force, or “direct action,” and asserted as before their traditional hope of the eventual adoption of noncoercive individualist equity as a result of education and rational conviction. Much of what they had to say had been propagated here for nearly a half century before there developed a competing body of beliefs put forward by followers of Bakunin and Kropotkin. In the form in which it appeared during the 80’s and 90’s, but especially as broadcast by Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and other Russians after the turn of the century, it is possible to see emerging the full outlines of what has since become known as communist anarchism. It has since received its best statement by Italian and Spanish radicals. (Further examination of the famed Haymarket Germans suggests a serious question as to whether these men were not far closer to state socialism, actually, than anarchism.)
• 10The semantic smokescreen raised up by the moral uproar here and overseas after Haymarket and a number of sensational assassinations in Europe covered over in the process the uncompromising stand taken by the American individualist anarchists, who deplored the use of force, or “direct action,” and asserted as before their traditional hope of the eventual adoption of noncoercive individualist equity as a result of education and rational conviction. Much of what they had to say had been propagated here for nearly a half century before there developed a competing body of beliefs put forward by followers of Bakunin and Kropotkin. In the form in which it appeared during the 80’s and 90’s, but especially as broadcast by Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and other Russians after the turn of the century, it is possible to see emerging the full outlines of what has since become known as communist anarchism. It has since received its best statement by Italian and Spanish radicals. (Further examination of the famed Haymarket Germans suggests a serious question as to whether these men were not far closer to state socialism, actually, than anarchism.)
• 11The two groups differed sharply on basic issues. The communist anarchists rejected private property, and taught the ideal of the collective autonomous commune. A portion of their number advocated the overthrow of the State by violence. The individualist anarchists held that the collective society in any form was an impossibility without the eventuality of authoritarianism, and ultimately, totalitarianism, and adhered resolutely to the concept of private property insofar as the term could be defined as the total product of a given individual’s labor, but not more broadly than this. They abandoned the idea of an equalitarian utopia, and worked for a world free from arbitrary restrictions on opportunity and legal privilege, which breakdowns they claimed “laissez faire” really produced. No other radical group denounced the prevailing system more vigorously than the spokesmen for individualist anarchism.
• 12The two groups differed sharply on basic issues. The communist anarchists rejected private property, and taught the ideal of the collective autonomous commune. A portion of their number advocated the overthrow of the State by violence. The individualist anarchists held that the collective society in any form was an impossibility without the eventuality of authoritarianism, and ultimately, totalitarianism, and adhered resolutely to the concept of private property insofar as the term could be defined as the total product of a given individual’s labor, but not more broadly than this. They abandoned the idea of an equalitarian utopia, and worked for a world free from arbitrary restrictions on opportunity and legal privilege, which breakdowns they claimed “laissez faire” really produced. No other radical group denounced the prevailing system more vigorously than the spokesmen for individualist anarchism.
• 13The individualist anarchists had no blueprint for the future of social organizations under conditions free from coercion. The direction to be taken by voluntary associations was left for the future, and no predictions of a static millennium filled their writing. The group had within their number adherents to a system of decentralized local communities of small size, and at the same time proponents of free associations of producers and consumers within large urban industrial centers. The best known of this group of native radicals, Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner, Stephen Pearl Andrews, William B. Greene, Ezra Heywood, and Benjamin R. Tucker, came in for a measure of attention during the peak of the furor over radicalism reached at about the time of the Spanish-American War. But the greater part of the attention of the time was focussed on their German and Russian contemporaries, with whom they were already at variance in many respects. Those most familiar with the individualist suggestions for the solution of the currency, labor and other pressing problems dismissed them as the fulminations of a group of irresponsibles, dreamers and cranks. Their work along practical lines at an earlier time was practically unknown in any circles, and much of what they had to say later on was mostly forgotten when the stage was taken over by the Industrial Workers of the World, The Socialist Party and the First International.
• 14.  George Warren, “Josiah Warren,” 1. This brief biographical reminiscence of Warren by his only son is an unpublished manuscript written in Evansville, Indiana in 1893, apparently at the request of Lockwood, who was engaged in preparing his study of the New Harmony communities. See Warren MSS., Workingmen’s Institute, George B. Lockwood to George W. Warren, November 10, 1893. Many of the early dates mentioned in this manuscript have proven inaccurate.
• 15.  George Warren, “Josiah Warren,” above. This lamp was patented February 28, 1821, but Warren paid little attention to this matter after becoming part of the New Harmony community. Dictionary of American Biography, XIX, 483. See also note 80, below.
• 16.  The standard work on Owen’s life is Frank Podmore, Robert Owen, A Biography (2 vols. London, 1906). Other works of value are William L. Sargant, Robert Owen, and His Social Philosophy (London, 1860); Lloyd Jones, The Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen (2 vols. London, 1890); G. D. H. Cole, The Life of Robert Owen (London, 1930). Owen’s autobiography, The Life of Robert Owen by Himself (New York edition, 1920), is a valuable source.
• 17.  A brief, concise statement of Owen’s stand on this matter may be found in George Milton Janes, Who Should Have Wealth and Other Papers (Milwaukee, 1925), 48. Owen’s “Five Fundamental Facts of Human Nature” are reproduced by Podmore, Robert Owen, 481-482. Page citations are from the one volume edition (New York, 1910).
• 18.  Owen was born at Newtown, Montgomeryshire, Wales, on May 14, 1771. He purchased and began operating the mills at New Lanark in 1798. See the brief, approved biographical sketch in his periodical The New Moral World (London and Leeds, 1834-1845), I (November 1, 1834), 7. This publication was a continuation of The Crisis (London, 1832-1834), which is an extremely important source for the origin and early operations of the renowned Labor Exchanges. Other indispensable periodicals for material concerning Owen are Robert Owen’s Journal (London, 1850-1852), and Robert Owen’s Millennial Gazette (London, 1856-1858). The biography by Podmore contains the most adequate bibliography of Owen’s works, among the standard treatments, which may be supplemented by National Library of Wales, A Bibliography of Robert Owen, the Socialist 1771-1858 (Aberystwyth, Wales, 1914).
• 19.  A brief account stressing the accomplishments of the Rappites at New Harmony is Jacob Schneck and Richard Owen, The History of New Harmony, Ind. (Evansville, Ind., 1890). See also Lockwood, New Harmony Movement, 19-57; John S. Duss, George Rapp and His Associates (Indianapolis, 1914), an account by a specialist in Rappite history.
• 20.  Podmore, Robert Owen, 288; Lockwood, New Harmony Movement, 75; Robert Dale Owen, Threading My Way. Twenty-Seven Years of Autobiography (New York, 1874), 211. Owen claimed that the purchase price was $140,000. The New Harmony Gazette, II (August 15, 1827), 353.
• 21.  Owen’s brief stopover in Cincinnati on his way to New Harmony on December 9, 1824 did not include a speaking engagement there, according to his son William, who was with him on this journey. Joel W. Hiatt, ed., “Diary of William Owen from November 10, 1824, to April 20, 1825,” in Indiana Historical Society Publications, IV, 61. Owen left New Harmony January 7, 1825, and spoke in Cincinnati on his way to Washington where he addressed the House of Representatives in February and March. Hiatt, ed., “Diary,” 97. For further corroboration consult The Diaries of Donald Mac-Donald 1824-1826 (Indiana Historical Society Publications, vol. XIV) (Indianapolis, 1942), 236, 296.
• 22.  The name of the community was not decided upon at first, the space being left blank in the preamble. Warren’s suggestion that the association adopt the title “Commonwealth of New Harmony” was negatived, and William Owen’s motion that the space remain blank was carried. The name “New Harmony Community of Equality” was adopted February 5, 1826. See “Minutes of the Convention for Forming a Constitution for the Society of New Harmony held Jan. 25, 1826,” February 2, 1826, February 5, 1826. The preamble is reproduced in the minutes for February 1, 1826. In the valuation list prepared at the direction of the select committee on February 8, 1826, Warren and his family were assigned $169 per annum. Warren might have arrived in the spring of 1825. MacDonald reported that several families arrived at New Harmony from Cincinnati between April 13 and April 24, but did not mention Warren specifically. MacDonald Diaries, 292.
• 23.  The first entry of the Warren family in the account book of the community store is dated March 8, 1826. The family pass books have never been located, and constitute another Warren document of considerable interest for which search continues. For a description of the account books see William Pelham to William Creese Pelham, September 7, 1825, in Harlow Lindley, ed., Indiana as Seen by Early Travellers (Indiana Historical Collections, vol. Ill) (Indianapolis, 1916), 371.
• 24.  The first entry of the Warren family in the account book of the community store is dated March 8, 1826. The family pass books have never been located, and constitute another Warren document of considerable interest for which search continues. For a description of the account books see William Pelham to William Creese Pelham, September 7, 1825, in Harlow Lindley, ed., Indiana as Seen by Early Travellers (Indiana Historical Collections, vol. Ill) (Indianapolis, 1916), 371.
• 25.  Warren MSS. notebook, Labadie Collection, University of Michigan, undated, unpaginated. This is another obscure Warren source, unrelated to the series of notebooks which are apparently in the nature of a diary, containing entries through June, 1873, and of which only one has so far been located. See note 13. For mention of the above document elsewhere, consult R. C. Stewart, “The Labadie Labor Collection,” in Michigan Alumnus Quarterly Review, LIII (May 10, 1947), 250.
• 26.  Periodical Letter, II (July, 1856), 55; Warren, Practical Details in Equitable Commerce, showing the workings in actual experiment, during a series of years, of the social principles expounded in the works called “Equitable Commerce” by the author of this and “The Science of Society,” by Stephen P. Andrews, 71, cited hereafter as Practical Details. A second edition from the same plates was published in 1854. Although this book was not published until 1852, some of the material existed in manuscript for twenty-five years before revision and release under the above title. For the most part, this latter work is the principal source of information concerning the decision to leave New Harmony and the events of the three years following. Any account of Warren’s early experiments in social reform is bound to rely upon it heavily.
• 27.  Warren’s views have been summarized adequately in Ely, Labor Movement, 238. A fuller treatment by Warren is contained in Periodical Letter, 2nd. series, I (December, 1856), 34.
• 28.  Periodical Letter, II (July, 1856), 55-56. Dr. Lyman O. Warren has raised some interesting points in speculating upon the intellectual origins of Josiah Warren’s unorthodox thinking. He has called attention to the observation of the famous philosopher George Santayana in his Persons and Places that the Brighton Warrens, of whom Josiah was a member, were “a dissentient family.” Santayana was a boyhood friend of the uncles of Dr. Warren. The record for independent intransigence appears to go back at least as far as his first American ancestors. John Warren of the Arbella is noted in Bond’s History of Watertown as having been arrested on one occasion for nonattendance at church and for harboring Quakers on another. Further investigation into the family prior to migration to America, itself an act of extraordinary self-assertion and independence, might establish a much longer record of nonconformism. A future biographer of Josiah Warren might well consider the pertinence of this durable tradition.
• 29.  Six years after leaving New Harmony, Warren wrote, “It is the influence of surrounding circumstances which . . . divided society into rich and poor, which enables some to command and others unable to do otherwise than obey. It is the influence of circumstances which produces different classes in society, and that influence only, which divides men into different political parties and ranges them under different banners of religion. . . . It will be seen that this knowledge warrants us in making a critical examination into our own condition, and all the circumstances which have surrounded us from birth, to see whether they have been . . . such as are most favorable to our happiness, and it teaches us not to reverence or perpetuate bad circumstances simply because we are born under them. . . . This knowledge therefore lays a broad, rational and consistent foundation for unlimited improvement; . . .” The Peaceful Revolutionist, I (February 5, 1833), 5. This short-lived Warren periodical continues to be considered the first anarchist publication in existence.
• 30.  Warren MSS., Labadie Collection, undated entry in notebook. It is thought from the arrangement of the material that this notebook was intended as reference at impromptu meetings in private homes, where Warren was a more convincing speaker than he was on the public lecture platform.
• 31.  The idea of paper money representing a certain amount of labor rather than a certain precious commodity was held in common and developed separately by several radical economic thinkers in the first half of the nineteenth century as well. Besides Owen in England, similar conceptions on a different scale can be found in the writings of John Gray, A Lecture on Human Happiness (London, 1825); William Thompson, An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness (London, 1824; another edition, 1850); John Francis Bray, Labour’s Wrongs and Labour’s Remedy; or, the Age of Might and the Age of Right (Leeds, 1839). Johann Karl Rodbertus in Germany and Pierre Joseph Proudhon in France evolved similar monetary substitutions. Short summaries of their theories can be found in Edward C. K. Gonner, The Social Philosophy of Rodbertus (London, 1899); Dennis W. Brogan, Proudhon (London, 1934); Henry Cohen, Proudhon’s Solution of the Social Problem (New York, 1927). The simplicity of application of this idea by Warren is unique during a time confined almost entirely to theorizing about this matter.
• 32.  These were later published as a bound collection under this title. (Manchester, Eng. 1837). A contemporary edition appeared in London in 1813 under the title A New View of Society; or, Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, with separate pagination.
• 33.  Consult Edger A. J. Johnson, Predecessors of Adam Smith (New York, 1937), Chapters XII-XIII, for a development of the background of the labor cost theory. Whether Warren was acquainted with the writings of Adam Smith is not known but unlikely. However Proudhon, developing a similar line of thought to Warren in a French environment, mentioned Smith, along with the Bible and Hegel as his three principal sources of inspiration. Zenker, Anarchism, 35.
• 34.  The following extract from the diary of William Owen, referring to his father’s visit in Kentucky on the way to New Harmony in the late fall of 1824, is of great interest in the effort to assign proper credit for the labor note idea: “We walked through the town-Mayesville [sic] and found a good front and a tolerable second street. Hunter and my father bought mits and Mr. Owen had a bantering conve[r]sation with the storekeeper regarding money and labor notes. He told us that a gallon of whisky, which will make twelve individuals quite drunk, can be bought for 12½ cents.” Hiatt, ed., “Diary of William Owen,” 61. Italics are the present writer’s.
• 35.  John R. Commons and Associates, A Documentary History of Industrial Society, V, 79.
• 36.  Practical Details, 75.
• 37.  It should be remembered that Warren’s continual use of the term “equitable commerce” occurred with the understanding that the word “commerce” was being used in its overall sense as the sum total of human activities and not merely economic considerations alone. There is no doubt that Warren believed that major reforms in the economic sphere were the most important, nevertheless.
• 38.  The first systematic and extended arrangement of Warren’s convictions was his Equitable Commerce: a new developement [sic] of principles for the harmonious adjustment and regulation of the pecuniary, intellectual and moral intercourse of mankind, proposed as elements of New Society (New Harmony, Ind., 1846), hereafter cited as Equitable Commerce.
• 39Warren’s complete program was a cumulative affair which did not receive definitive statement for almost twenty years. A part of this period of growth was his growing disregard for constituted authority, partially a product of attachment to a number of attitudes which convinced him that institutional government was a superfluous part of human society. His primary source of dissatisfaction with what he called the “communistic experiments” in New Harmony was the combination of interests. This combination required, as he saw it, a government based on authority and demanding obedience which resulted in the death of individual liberty. The alternative which he proposed and crusaded for was a system based on voluntary coöperation, but at no place rising above any individual within its structure; “the sovereignty of the individual” had to be preserved at all costs. This matter he considered more important than any artificial arrangement of individuals which demanded the fidelity of all. There was no compensation which could equate the sacrifice of this principle of individuality. There is a frontier flavor to his own blunt declaration of individualist war upon the hobbling tendencies of institutionalism which still commands at-tention:
• 40Warren’s complete program was a cumulative affair which did not receive definitive statement for almost twenty years. A part of this period of growth was his growing disregard for constituted authority, partially a product of attachment to a number of attitudes which convinced him that institutional government was a superfluous part of human society. His primary source of dissatisfaction with what he called the “communistic experiments” in New Harmony was the combination of interests. This combination required, as he saw it, a government based on authority and demanding obedience which resulted in the death of individual liberty. The alternative which he proposed and crusaded for was a system based on voluntary coöperation, but at no place rising above any individual within its structure; “the sovereignty of the individual” had to be preserved at all costs. This matter he considered more important than any artificial arrangement of individuals which demanded the fidelity of all. There was no compensation which could equate the sacrifice of this principle of individuality. There is a frontier flavor to his own blunt declaration of individualist war upon the hobbling tendencies of institutionalism which still commands at-tention:
• 41Warren’s complete program was a cumulative affair which did not receive definitive statement for almost twenty years. A part of this period of growth was his growing disregard for constituted authority, partially a product of attachment to a number of attitudes which convinced him that institutional government was a superfluous part of human society. His primary source of dissatisfaction with what he called the “communistic experiments” in New Harmony was the combination of interests. This combination required, as he saw it, a government based on authority and demanding obedience which resulted in the death of individual liberty. The alternative which he proposed and crusaded for was a system based on voluntary coöperation, but at no place rising above any individual within its structure; “the sovereignty of the individual” had to be preserved at all costs. This matter he considered more important than any artificial arrangement of individuals which demanded the fidelity of all. There was no compensation which could equate the sacrifice of this principle of individuality. There is a frontier flavor to his own blunt declaration of individualist war upon the hobbling tendencies of institutionalism which still commands at-tention:
• 42Using this concept of individualism, then it appeared logical to him that interests, responsibilities and actions all had to be confined to this level.
• 43To solve this problem Warren brought forth the labor exchange idea which he had absorbed from Owen and which remained firmly planted in his mind. This became his initial action in the effort to promote adoption of a satisfactory method of effecting equitable exchanges, paying little attention to the complexities which had grown upon this branch of human relations through centuries of changing ethical approaches. Nevertheless, an economy based on the exchange of equivalents, or as he termed it, “labor for labor,” became the basis for the new society he projected. His formula therefore rejected the idea of paying for such goods of the earth as were not the product of human labor. Unlike later adherents to native anarchism, Warren continued to think land a fit subject for sale, an obvious inconsistency. On other matters, which he occasionally referred to as “spontaneous fruits of nature,” the raw materials derived from labor on the land, he held that such were no more fit subjects for monopoly and sale than sunshine or air.
• 44As regards compensation, Warren saw nothing fundamentally wrong with the original Owenite proposal to exchange labor time on an equal hour-for-hour basis. One of the perennial stumbling blocks to the realization of the labor cost theory, the problem of determining the relative intensities and production of the hour’s work being exchanged, did bother him somewhat. But he assumed that the principle of individual sovereignty being preserved at all times, each individual would make what he considered the necessary exceptions to the hour-for-hour yardstick without causing any noticeable disaffection among those involved in the labor exchange group.
• 45Josiah Warren was no aimless manipulator of theories. All his life he manifested a tireless interest in proof through demonstration. Scarcely had the reluctant admission of failure in Indiana appeared in the New Harmony Gazette in May 1827, when Warren gathered his family, his scant goods and savings together and returned to Cincinnati, anxious to try out his economic scheme in an actual social situation. He decided that the best means of effecting proof of the workability of his views was through the operation of a retail store, observing that such a trial was bound to affect a wide variety of persons, and its operations would thus become a type of laboratory exhibit.
• 46The venture was carefully planned. Warren had no intention of continuing in the capacity of storekeeper if what he thought proved to be successful. His intention was to close the store abruptly and begin a model village at once on the outskirts of Cincinnati. The residents he hoped to recruit from among the more enthusiastic of the group of co-operators. This was to be done as quietly as possible, publicity being kept to a bare minimum. His strategy involved the practical demonstration of every element of non-coercive equity on the autonomous local community level in such a manner as to leave no doubt as to their value and practicability. Following the explanation of the manner in which the process had been accomplished, Warren believed that a rapid growth of mutualist villages would take place. Like Robert Owen, he anticipated great things for the betterment of mankind, although the structure he contemplated was far less complex.
• 47Thus the anarchist vision of a world composed of autonomous local communities, in which individuality would be one sacred principle and economic life regulated by the mutual exchange of goods and services on a cost basis, found its expression on the trans-Allegheny frontier two decades before similar European conceptions made their appearance. Furthermore, while the present-day modified coöperative movement looks to Rochdale, England and the earlier London Labor Exchanges, the first venture in coöperative marketing had an uncontestably American setting, predating either of these more widely known English events and in some respects providing the inspiration for them.
• 48The original stock of the store consisted of three hundred dollars’ worth of groceries and dry goods which were in greatest demand. Warren posted the bills of purchase within view of all potential customers, that all might see what had originally been paid for the goods on sale. Accompanying them was a notice stating that the cost price would be charged plus a seven per cent mark-up to pay what he called “contingent expenses.” This constituted the first part of the transaction. He made it plain that no element of the cash price consisted of his profit or return as storekeeper. The customer was first to pay this cost price, plus the seven per cent, which was to defray shipping cost and general overhead of the store. But for the portion which represented his own labor, Warren merely required the customer to present him with a labor note. This note promised to repay an equal amount of time, in the customer’s occupation, to the storekeeper, as he had consumed of the storekeeper’s time in effecting the transfer of the merchandise. The principal distinction between Warren’s store and those of his neighbors was this simple feature, the separation of the merchant’s compensation from the cost of the goods sold.
• 49The original stock of the store consisted of three hundred dollars’ worth of groceries and dry goods which were in greatest demand. Warren posted the bills of purchase within view of all potential customers, that all might see what had originally been paid for the goods on sale. Accompanying them was a notice stating that the cost price would be charged plus a seven per cent mark-up to pay what he called “contingent expenses.” This constituted the first part of the transaction. He made it plain that no element of the cash price consisted of his profit or return as storekeeper. The customer was first to pay this cost price, plus the seven per cent, which was to defray shipping cost and general overhead of the store. But for the portion which represented his own labor, Warren merely required the customer to present him with a labor note. This note promised to repay an equal amount of time, in the customer’s occupation, to the storekeeper, as he had consumed of the storekeeper’s time in effecting the transfer of the merchandise. The principal distinction between Warren’s store and those of his neighbors was this simple feature, the separation of the merchant’s compensation from the cost of the goods sold.
• 50The original stock of the store consisted of three hundred dollars’ worth of groceries and dry goods which were in greatest demand. Warren posted the bills of purchase within view of all potential customers, that all might see what had originally been paid for the goods on sale. Accompanying them was a notice stating that the cost price would be charged plus a seven per cent mark-up to pay what he called “contingent expenses.” This constituted the first part of the transaction. He made it plain that no element of the cash price consisted of his profit or return as storekeeper. The customer was first to pay this cost price, plus the seven per cent, which was to defray shipping cost and general overhead of the store. But for the portion which represented his own labor, Warren merely required the customer to present him with a labor note. This note promised to repay an equal amount of time, in the customer’s occupation, to the storekeeper, as he had consumed of the storekeeper’s time in effecting the transfer of the merchandise. The principal distinction between Warren’s store and those of his neighbors was this simple feature, the separation of the merchant’s compensation from the cost of the goods sold.
• 51Often asked by people who failed to understand what he was trying to do, why he did not charge a blanket percentage to cover the entire matter of costs and profit, Warren patiently explained that failure to disconnect the two operations would destroy the principle he was trying to illustrate. No percentage could be accurately assigned to serve either the seller’s or the buyer’s interest; no particular relation existed between the profit and the labor expended in production of the article vended. Thus for instance twenty percent profit on needles would soon result in the storekeeper’s ruination, while the same percentage on broadcloth would net him a return of probably two dollars for a scant ten minutes work, obviously inequitable. A storekeeper, he went on, might buy and sell one barrel or a hundred barrels of flour in the same time; thus the correct basis upon which he should be paid was solely the amount of time expended in conducting the transaction.
• 52Warren was convinced that nothing was superior to the direct exchange of commodities and services; if agreement as to labor content existed, it was preferable to any system involving elements of confidence and risk, which he was convinced the use of currency necessarily provoked. Realizing that specialization and diversity of tastes made this only a partial solution to the continual problem of exchange, the adoption of the labor note paper bills served the function of completing all exchanges not available to settlement by direct exchange. There was a difference in the application of this device by Warren as compared to its original purpose as conceived by Owen. Where the latter had intended it as a means of effecting transactions among the different communities at New Harmony, the former reduced the scope to the local function of a limited currency, but valid among all those who engaged in any part of the business at the time store.
• 53The name “time store” was a popular designation, not an original appellation of Warren’s, and had come into general use by the end of the third month of the store’s existence. The circumstances responsible for this have aroused the interest and curiosity of several commentators, but Warren’s own explanation is the clearest.
• 54This was an innovation. It was to the interest of the customer to take up as little of the storekeeper’s time as possible, since time was one of the elements in the price settlement. Thus wrangling and higgling over prices, which Warren considered a particularly degrading feature of ordinary commerce, was eliminated in time store operations, a matter of considerable significance at a time when such functions were an almost fundamental part of merchandising. Transactions were expedited by the open display of goods and prominence of list prices, another unprecedented feature.
• 55It is interesting to note that before the store was terminated, Warren succeeded in reducing the commerce in such staples as flour, meal, beans, beef, pork and shoes to a modified labor exchange level. A set of actual labor prices based on an average estimate of the labor cost of production of each of these commodities evolved, which was posted in the store, and these changed from time to time as labor estimates fluctuated. The partial realization of an economy resting exclusively on exchange of labor notes thus took place independent of the use of legal currency.
• 56Warren’s methods of doing business were adopted by a neighboring merchant, while he declared that the new methods permitted him to sell as much merchandise in an hour as normally was retailed in a day. This increased activity forced him to close part of the day to rest and to furnish information as to how the labor exchange store functioned. There was a mixed reception to the new shop. Some, who considered the principles equitable, thought them a thing of the future. Others circulated rumors that Warren was an accomplice of big merchants, helping them dispose of their damaged and inferior stocks of goods. One opponent, still remembering New Harmony and the suspicion it had aroused among conservative folk, asserted that Warren was an agent of Robert Owen and had been commissioned to engage in a plot to undermine the United States. No one seemed to realize that Warren’s system was a direct blow at the money economy and the power that such a system had in determining the nature of production and the incidence of distribution. The time store founder was not to feel the full impact of a large-scale whispering campaign for some time in the future, not until the time of the founding of the much-discussed individualist colony on Long Island.
• 57Warren, in his anxiety to extend the labor exchange method in as many ways as possible, gave music lessons in the evenings to young men who understood the operation of the plan and agreed to enter as participants. He and a group of his mutual customers succeeded in securing a teacher for their children who also accepted compensation in labor notes. In 1829 he asserted that three physicians had already purchased goods on these same principles, promising professional services on demand. An agnostic, he took pleasure in telling at a later time of an influential Methodist convert to the time store principles who had interrupted an argument about a point of faith and charity with the following observation: “Well, brothers, people have been disputing for eighteen hundred years about what is true Christianity. Now, if you will go down to the corner of Fifth and Elm Streets, you will see it in operation for the first time in the world.”
• 58Warren, in his anxiety to extend the labor exchange method in as many ways as possible, gave music lessons in the evenings to young men who understood the operation of the plan and agreed to enter as participants. He and a group of his mutual customers succeeded in securing a teacher for their children who also accepted compensation in labor notes. In 1829 he asserted that three physicians had already purchased goods on these same principles, promising professional services on demand. An agnostic, he took pleasure in telling at a later time of an influential Methodist convert to the time store principles who had interrupted an argument about a point of faith and charity with the following observation: “Well, brothers, people have been disputing for eighteen hundred years about what is true Christianity. Now, if you will go down to the corner of Fifth and Elm Streets, you will see it in operation for the first time in the world.”
• 59Warren borrowed money to aid in the development of the store in its early days, but insisted on giving the lenders notes which were payable on demand. He never explained whether such payments had ever been requested or whether he had ever agreed to pay interest, or how immediate payment was possible if the sum obtained through loan had been invested in fixed capital by the time demand for its return had been made. There is no doubt, however, that he received the necessary backing, in view of the prolonged period of operations.
• 60Warren was opposed to enlarging the scope of his activities. He stressed continually that he was not attempting to put retail storekeepers out of business but trying to demonstrate principles of mutualism. He did double the capacity of the original store before the end of the first year, employing the labor of seven carpenters on the familiar exchange procedure; still he insisted on keeping the business on the same simple relationship between keeper and customer and never expanded to the extent of hiring clerks. This action would have been in the nature of a partnership under his conception of the plan, and such combination of interests was diametrically opposed to the principle of individuality which he unequivocally professed.
• 61The introduction of still another aspect of labor exchange opened his eyes to other inequalities in the economic system which he believed called for reparation. This was what he called the “report of demand.” A large sheet of paper was posted on one wall of the store on which those with particular needs made them known, and those with labor and services available for exchange stated the nature of their particular ability or capacity. At the same time he posted a list of commodities for which he would exchange the same, in an attempt to produce a “leveling” of supply. Warren’s conception of the terms “supply” and “demand” had little relation to their use in economic terminology of the present day. In his simple system, the declared desire to have a given object constituted “demand” for it, and no relation whatever to the possession of ability to pay on the basis of theoretical graduated price curves, in a money economy. He was convinced that existing economic relationships were exactly reversed in operation, to that demanded by distributive justice. The only way to bring about equity was to adapt supply to what he called “demand,” and thus eliminate the occasion for speculation in human need.
• 62The great number of requests for employment in unwanted occupations distressed him considerably, as did the observation that the labor return of children and women was artificially depressed below the level existing among adult men engaged in similar activities. This led to an investigation and condemnation of the apprentice system, which he called an “obsolete barbarity,” a deliberate and artificial restriction of employment which curtailed demand for many services and products. Thus began a full-scale campaign to spread information about all types of skills, a matter of vital concern at a time previous to the widespread adoption of automatic machinery. Warren reasoned that the cost-basis economy required the production of all goods at the lowest possible labor cost. This could only be accomplished by the employment of each in the activity he could do best, and therefore cheapest, from the point of view of labor time involved. It was at this time also that he observed another harrassing element in the labor exchange operation. This was the problem of determining intensity of relative hours of labor, further complicated by the fact that the most repulsive types of labor were generally the poorest paid. This matter he wrestled with for the remainder of his life, and was never able to satisfy himself as to the best method of solution.
• 63Warren’s activities in marketing spread over a wide range. He sold almost any product or article which he thought would demonstrate his theory. In all transactions, he attempted a drastic underselling of his competitors to provide the greatest possible contrast between the profit system and the coöperative system. This occasionally involved practices which were not strictly in accordance with equity, such as purchases in wholesale lots, often at public auctions. Such were sacrifices and not exchanges of equivalents. He justified this action by asserting that other retailers bought as much as he, but failed to pass on the saving to their patrons.
• 64Warren’s activities in marketing spread over a wide range. He sold almost any product or article which he thought would demonstrate his theory. In all transactions, he attempted a drastic underselling of his competitors to provide the greatest possible contrast between the profit system and the coöperative system. This occasionally involved practices which were not strictly in accordance with equity, such as purchases in wholesale lots, often at public auctions. Such were sacrifices and not exchanges of equivalents. He justified this action by asserting that other retailers bought as much as he, but failed to pass on the saving to their patrons.
• 65The Cincinnati Time Store was finally liquidated in May, 1830. Warren had long been satisfied that his plan was sound and that he had succeeded in regulating his business by principles without utilizing what he called “the customary machinery of organization,” or the “erection of any power over the individual.” In fact, he thought that this had been proven in the first six months. The original intent to start communities based on such principles he found more difficult to promote than expected. As early as November, 1827, he had contemplated beginning on a holding of 1500 acres of land in Logan County, Ohio, which had been offered for the purpose by an enthusiast named Samuel Hyde Saunders. Nothing was done at this time, nor even a year later when he considered moving outside the city and forming a model village.
• 66The Cincinnati Time Store was finally liquidated in May, 1830. Warren had long been satisfied that his plan was sound and that he had succeeded in regulating his business by principles without utilizing what he called “the customary machinery of organization,” or the “erection of any power over the individual.” In fact, he thought that this had been proven in the first six months. The original intent to start communities based on such principles he found more difficult to promote than expected. As early as November, 1827, he had contemplated beginning on a holding of 1500 acres of land in Logan County, Ohio, which had been offered for the purpose by an enthusiast named Samuel Hyde Saunders. Nothing was done at this time, nor even a year later when he considered moving outside the city and forming a model village.
• 67The Cincinnati Time Store was finally liquidated in May, 1830. Warren had long been satisfied that his plan was sound and that he had succeeded in regulating his business by principles without utilizing what he called “the customary machinery of organization,” or the “erection of any power over the individual.” In fact, he thought that this had been proven in the first six months. The original intent to start communities based on such principles he found more difficult to promote than expected. As early as November, 1827, he had contemplated beginning on a holding of 1500 acres of land in Logan County, Ohio, which had been offered for the purpose by an enthusiast named Samuel Hyde Saunders. Nothing was done at this time, nor even a year later when he considered moving outside the city and forming a model village.
• 68A third and final decision to begin a village was made in April, 1829. Despite the hundreds of customers who had made purchases in the time store, all involving the acceptance and utility of labor notes, Warren ruefully recalled that only four people were ready to take part in this adventure. Warren learned, as had Owen before him, that the inertia of the status quo was a formidable antagonist to such a sweeping reorganization of human affairs as he entertained. He was too practical to think that such a plan as he proposed could succeed if supported only by the poor, the needy, and others at the bottom of the economic ladder, even though it was one of the principal reasons for starting in the first place, to eliminate the perpetuation of this by-product of what he called “legalized cannibalism.” He remarked that hundreds were interested in his proposition who were too poor to afford the loss of the month’s income which removing and changing positions would occasion. Others had different objections. Some feared inability to obtain employment under the new conditions. Others did not look favorably upon the equitable compensation of women and children or the proposal to teach the secrets of carefully guarded trades in a few days or weeks. Those with means admitted in private conversations the worth of some of his proposals yet abstained entirely from offering assistance.
• 69A third and final decision to begin a village was made in April, 1829. Despite the hundreds of customers who had made purchases in the time store, all involving the acceptance and utility of labor notes, Warren ruefully recalled that only four people were ready to take part in this adventure. Warren learned, as had Owen before him, that the inertia of the status quo was a formidable antagonist to such a sweeping reorganization of human affairs as he entertained. He was too practical to think that such a plan as he proposed could succeed if supported only by the poor, the needy, and others at the bottom of the economic ladder, even though it was one of the principal reasons for starting in the first place, to eliminate the perpetuation of this by-product of what he called “legalized cannibalism.” He remarked that hundreds were interested in his proposition who were too poor to afford the loss of the month’s income which removing and changing positions would occasion. Others had different objections. Some feared inability to obtain employment under the new conditions. Others did not look favorably upon the equitable compensation of women and children or the proposal to teach the secrets of carefully guarded trades in a few days or weeks. Those with means admitted in private conversations the worth of some of his proposals yet abstained entirely from offering assistance.
• 70Warren felt at the time that those who participated in his time store still lacked the capacity to understand the nature of the proposals the way he had explained them. Many years later, however, he became convinced that, looking back on the wreckage of several community attempts, failure had been due more to the planned efforts of an element among the business community, which he claimed had everywhere created difficulties and placed obstacles in the way of success of his non-profit community projection. In spite of the mounting gloom occasioned by the unresponsiveness of his former coöperators to the call to form a village, the plan was persevered in, and the land was selected upon which to move, in the spring of 1829.
• 71Warren felt at the time that those who participated in his time store still lacked the capacity to understand the nature of the proposals the way he had explained them. Many years later, however, he became convinced that, looking back on the wreckage of several community attempts, failure had been due more to the planned efforts of an element among the business community, which he claimed had everywhere created difficulties and placed obstacles in the way of success of his non-profit community projection. In spite of the mounting gloom occasioned by the unresponsiveness of his former coöperators to the call to form a village, the plan was persevered in, and the land was selected upon which to move, in the spring of 1829.
• 72Warren felt at the time that those who participated in his time store still lacked the capacity to understand the nature of the proposals the way he had explained them. Many years later, however, he became convinced that, looking back on the wreckage of several community attempts, failure had been due more to the planned efforts of an element among the business community, which he claimed had everywhere created difficulties and placed obstacles in the way of success of his non-profit community projection. In spite of the mounting gloom occasioned by the unresponsiveness of his former coöperators to the call to form a village, the plan was persevered in, and the land was selected upon which to move, in the spring of 1829.
• 73At this point the strange interlude of Warren’s relations with Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright occurred. Owen, the gifted son of the New Harmony patron, and the brilliant Scotswoman, champion of a dozen unpopular causes ranging from Negro equality to anti-clericalism, had moved the center of operations of the intellectual radical movement associated with New Harmony from Indiana to New York City. There they had renewed publication of the celebrated community newsorgan, The New Harmony Gazette, under the name The Free Enquirer, devoting most of the space now to the propagation of the general sentiments of freethought, with generous portions of acrimonious controversy with adherents of various brands of orthodoxy as a special feature. Althought more concerned with their protracted joust with biblical fundamentalists, and in particular, the wave of emotional revivalism then sweeping through some elements of Protestantism, the two young liberals retained a sympathetic interest in all attempts at community organization. This was understandable, since most of this activity during this period was primarily a backwash of the parent essay at New Harmony.
• 74At this point the strange interlude of Warren’s relations with Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright occurred. Owen, the gifted son of the New Harmony patron, and the brilliant Scotswoman, champion of a dozen unpopular causes ranging from Negro equality to anti-clericalism, had moved the center of operations of the intellectual radical movement associated with New Harmony from Indiana to New York City. There they had renewed publication of the celebrated community newsorgan, The New Harmony Gazette, under the name The Free Enquirer, devoting most of the space now to the propagation of the general sentiments of freethought, with generous portions of acrimonious controversy with adherents of various brands of orthodoxy as a special feature. Althought more concerned with their protracted joust with biblical fundamentalists, and in particular, the wave of emotional revivalism then sweeping through some elements of Protestantism, the two young liberals retained a sympathetic interest in all attempts at community organization. This was understandable, since most of this activity during this period was primarily a backwash of the parent essay at New Harmony.
• 75At this point the strange interlude of Warren’s relations with Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright occurred. Owen, the gifted son of the New Harmony patron, and the brilliant Scotswoman, champion of a dozen unpopular causes ranging from Negro equality to anti-clericalism, had moved the center of operations of the intellectual radical movement associated with New Harmony from Indiana to New York City. There they had renewed publication of the celebrated community newsorgan, The New Harmony Gazette, under the name The Free Enquirer, devoting most of the space now to the propagation of the general sentiments of freethought, with generous portions of acrimonious controversy with adherents of various brands of orthodoxy as a special feature. Althought more concerned with their protracted joust with biblical fundamentalists, and in particular, the wave of emotional revivalism then sweeping through some elements of Protestantism, the two young liberals retained a sympathetic interest in all attempts at community organization. This was understandable, since most of this activity during this period was primarily a backwash of the parent essay at New Harmony.
• 76The Ohio activities of Josiah Warren had attracted the attention of the land and labor reform press of New York City, where slums were already a problem, and depressed segments of the population a feature of the urban social structure. It is not unusual, then, to find the editors of The Free Enquirer becoming concerned to the point of proposing collaboration in achieving the aims of Warren’s non-political scheme for alleviating the evidences of economic distress which had come to his attention during the few years of his reform career.
• 77Owen prevailed upon Warren to postpone the beginning of his community in Ohio in favor of a similar beginning in the vicinity of New York. This was made to appear extremely attractive through the promise of considerable financial and material support already at the former’s bidding. Owen, as had his father, had in mind a much larger unit than Warren. This was apparently to be publicized through a press campaign, intending no doubt to include the pages of the Free Enquirer, in a broad program of propaganda to advertise its potential advantages. Dazzled by this offer, Warren abandoned the proposed movement to the outskirts of Cincinnati, and thus the decision came about to continue the time store into a third year.
• 78Owen’s existing business precluded the immediate start of the New York village, and what was intended to be a temprary lull dragged on. Thus the time store celebrated a third anniversary before Warren liquidated the remaining stock and began the momentous journey to New York, anticipating memorable results. But still another delay intervened; Owen was called to Europe and the plans languished. Yet there still remained a strong spirit of affirmation of the previous support of Warren on his part and that of Fanny Wright as well. The Free Enquirer continued to express confidence in the eventual success of a Warrenite colony, and Warren himself was still hopeful, but the summer found him somewhat subdued. In mid-July he addressed a communication to his Cincinnati associates, confessing that nothing tangible had been accomplished, but asserting that the call to begin practical operations would come at an early date.
• 79Owen’s existing business precluded the immediate start of the New York village, and what was intended to be a temprary lull dragged on. Thus the time store celebrated a third anniversary before Warren liquidated the remaining stock and began the momentous journey to New York, anticipating memorable results. But still another delay intervened; Owen was called to Europe and the plans languished. Yet there still remained a strong spirit of affirmation of the previous support of Warren on his part and that of Fanny Wright as well. The Free Enquirer continued to express confidence in the eventual success of a Warrenite colony, and Warren himself was still hopeful, but the summer found him somewhat subdued. In mid-July he addressed a communication to his Cincinnati associates, confessing that nothing tangible had been accomplished, but asserting that the call to begin practical operations would come at an early date.
• 80Turning from presses to type faces, he brought out two small volumes in 1844 which made use of a revived interest in an early eighteenth century stereotyping process. This involved the substitution of a composition of unusual hardness in the place of metal, which reduced printing costs markedly and furthered the contest with publishers in general. These pioneer booklets, which sought to revolutionize the system of musical notation and thereby enable aspiring musicians to reduce the expense and duration of training, met no better fate than any of his other earlier accomplishments, other than to further the development of what he later designated as “Universal Typography.”
• 81Turning from presses to type faces, he brought out two small volumes in 1844 which made use of a revived interest in an early eighteenth century stereotyping process. This involved the substitution of a composition of unusual hardness in the place of metal, which reduced printing costs markedly and furthered the contest with publishers in general. These pioneer booklets, which sought to revolutionize the system of musical notation and thereby enable aspiring musicians to reduce the expense and duration of training, met no better fate than any of his other earlier accomplishments, other than to further the development of what he later designated as “Universal Typography.”
• 82Turning from presses to type faces, he brought out two small volumes in 1844 which made use of a revived interest in an early eighteenth century stereotyping process. This involved the substitution of a composition of unusual hardness in the place of metal, which reduced printing costs markedly and furthered the contest with publishers in general. These pioneer booklets, which sought to revolutionize the system of musical notation and thereby enable aspiring musicians to reduce the expense and duration of training, met no better fate than any of his other earlier accomplishments, other than to further the development of what he later designated as “Universal Typography.”
• 83Warren compromised his principles in respect to previous unyielding theoretical opposition to patents. At the urging of Owen’s sons and his old friend, the midwestern scientific agricultural pioneer Solon Robinson, the process was patented in the spring of 1845. Robinson not only brought the documents to the Patent Office at this time, but acted as agent for Warren. While travelling through the Midwest, he publicized its merits, which were recognized by editors with whom he came in contact all along the Ohio. The inventor himself illustrated his ability as an engraver with numerous examples of his artistry, several of which embellished the heretofore stark pages of New Harmony’s weekly journal.
• 84Warren compromised his principles in respect to previous unyielding theoretical opposition to patents. At the urging of Owen’s sons and his old friend, the midwestern scientific agricultural pioneer Solon Robinson, the process was patented in the spring of 1845. Robinson not only brought the documents to the Patent Office at this time, but acted as agent for Warren. While travelling through the Midwest, he publicized its merits, which were recognized by editors with whom he came in contact all along the Ohio. The inventor himself illustrated his ability as an engraver with numerous examples of his artistry, several of which embellished the heretofore stark pages of New Harmony’s weekly journal.
• 85Warren compromised his principles in respect to previous unyielding theoretical opposition to patents. At the urging of Owen’s sons and his old friend, the midwestern scientific agricultural pioneer Solon Robinson, the process was patented in the spring of 1845. Robinson not only brought the documents to the Patent Office at this time, but acted as agent for Warren. While travelling through the Midwest, he publicized its merits, which were recognized by editors with whom he came in contact all along the Ohio. The inventor himself illustrated his ability as an engraver with numerous examples of his artistry, several of which embellished the heretofore stark pages of New Harmony’s weekly journal.
• 86Regardless of patent protection and the attendant publicity, no attempt was made to plumb the commercial possibilities of the composition cast method of stereotyping. To Warren it meant more as an opportunity to expand his own printing activities, especially in broadcasting the message of equitable commerce. Since he had contemplated for some time publishing a comprehensive summary of his philosophy and explorations in social matters, it now was possible to fulfill these aspirations with a minimum of expense. Despite the interruptions caused by the handicaps of working without help in an endeavor where the benefits of division of labor were obvious, the work persevered. The difficulties were not all mechanical; Warren was not a literary man, and wrote painfully, in a simple but often stilted style, which was further burdened by a somewhat archaic vocabulary, even in the estimate of his contemporaries. The final product of two years of collation and revision of a mass of notes taken sporadically for almost twenty years, all its imperfections considered, was a document of undeniable simplicity. Published in April, 1847, Josiah Warren’s Equitable Commerce became the first important publication of anarchist doctrine in America, and with minor deletions, additions and revisions, went into more editions within the next thirty years than any other product of native anarchist thought to this time.
• 87Regardless of patent protection and the attendant publicity, no attempt was made to plumb the commercial possibilities of the composition cast method of stereotyping. To Warren it meant more as an opportunity to expand his own printing activities, especially in broadcasting the message of equitable commerce. Since he had contemplated for some time publishing a comprehensive summary of his philosophy and explorations in social matters, it now was possible to fulfill these aspirations with a minimum of expense. Despite the interruptions caused by the handicaps of working without help in an endeavor where the benefits of division of labor were obvious, the work persevered. The difficulties were not all mechanical; Warren was not a literary man, and wrote painfully, in a simple but often stilted style, which was further burdened by a somewhat archaic vocabulary, even in the estimate of his contemporaries. The final product of two years of collation and revision of a mass of notes taken sporadically for almost twenty years, all its imperfections considered, was a document of undeniable simplicity. Published in April, 1847, Josiah Warren’s Equitable Commerce became the first important publication of anarchist doctrine in America, and with minor deletions, additions and revisions, went into more editions within the next thirty years than any other product of native anarchist thought to this time.
• 88Regardless of patent protection and the attendant publicity, no attempt was made to plumb the commercial possibilities of the composition cast method of stereotyping. To Warren it meant more as an opportunity to expand his own printing activities, especially in broadcasting the message of equitable commerce. Since he had contemplated for some time publishing a comprehensive summary of his philosophy and explorations in social matters, it now was possible to fulfill these aspirations with a minimum of expense. Despite the interruptions caused by the handicaps of working without help in an endeavor where the benefits of division of labor were obvious, the work persevered. The difficulties were not all mechanical; Warren was not a literary man, and wrote painfully, in a simple but often stilted style, which was further burdened by a somewhat archaic vocabulary, even in the estimate of his contemporaries. The final product of two years of collation and revision of a mass of notes taken sporadically for almost twenty years, all its imperfections considered, was a document of undeniable simplicity. Published in April, 1847, Josiah Warren’s Equitable Commerce became the first important publication of anarchist doctrine in America, and with minor deletions, additions and revisions, went into more editions within the next thirty years than any other product of native anarchist thought to this time.
• 89Equitable Commerce as an expression of social discontent catches much of the flavor of the world-wide revolt sentiment of the mid-nineteenth century. In an apocalyptic discourse reminiscent of, but anticipating Marx’s Communist Manifesto, Warren also looked out upon a civilization approaching a revolutionary crisis, but with the battle lines being drawn on a broad parasite-producer rather than the more limited capitalist-industrial worker line:
• 90The Warrenite program, however, discarded familiar reform interpretations and solutions, all varieties of collectivism, paternalism, violent revolutionary and political action. Elaborating on some of the ideas already expressed in other writings and further confirmed by experience and convictions produced thereby, he launched a delineation of the individualist stand on the proper reward of labor, security of personal property and freedom of the individual. Summed up in the two slogans “Sovereignty of the Individual” and “Cost the Limit of Price,” Equitable Commerce concentrated on preparing a case for this kind of individualism. The belief in the absolute inviolability of the individual personality expressed in its pages placed him in a camp opposite from the advocates of reform through legislation or violence.
• 91In Warren’s estimation, liberty and security were complementary, not opposites; liberty was the foundation upon which security of both person and property rested, and as long as there was one insecure person, there was potential insecurity for all others. This called for location in proper relation of power, which for each individual extended over his own person and property, and not beyond. This was expected to result in the undermining of the structure of all authority obtained from any other source than that of voluntary grant. To admit boundless individuality in nature and then to create institutions requiring agreement contrary to one’s will appeared the height of contradiction. Personal differences were an inseparable part of the individual personality, which he refused to see by-passed in the “pursuit of policy and expediency.” On this basis he rejected institutional activity which ultimately depended upon compliance on the part of the members unable to see it conducive to their best interests to do so, or which compromised them by demanding conformity as the price for favors allegedly furnished.
• 92In Warren’s estimation, liberty and security were complementary, not opposites; liberty was the foundation upon which security of both person and property rested, and as long as there was one insecure person, there was potential insecurity for all others. This called for location in proper relation of power, which for each individual extended over his own person and property, and not beyond. This was expected to result in the undermining of the structure of all authority obtained from any other source than that of voluntary grant. To admit boundless individuality in nature and then to create institutions requiring agreement contrary to one’s will appeared the height of contradiction. Personal differences were an inseparable part of the individual personality, which he refused to see by-passed in the “pursuit of policy and expediency.” On this basis he rejected institutional activity which ultimately depended upon compliance on the part of the members unable to see it conducive to their best interests to do so, or which compromised them by demanding conformity as the price for favors allegedly furnished.
• 93In Warren’s estimation, liberty and security were complementary, not opposites; liberty was the foundation upon which security of both person and property rested, and as long as there was one insecure person, there was potential insecurity for all others. This called for location in proper relation of power, which for each individual extended over his own person and property, and not beyond. This was expected to result in the undermining of the structure of all authority obtained from any other source than that of voluntary grant. To admit boundless individuality in nature and then to create institutions requiring agreement contrary to one’s will appeared the height of contradiction. Personal differences were an inseparable part of the individual personality, which he refused to see by-passed in the “pursuit of policy and expediency.” On this basis he rejected institutional activity which ultimately depended upon compliance on the part of the members unable to see it conducive to their best interests to do so, or which compromised them by demanding conformity as the price for favors allegedly furnished.
• 94In Warren’s estimation, liberty and security were complementary, not opposites; liberty was the foundation upon which security of both person and property rested, and as long as there was one insecure person, there was potential insecurity for all others. This called for location in proper relation of power, which for each individual extended over his own person and property, and not beyond. This was expected to result in the undermining of the structure of all authority obtained from any other source than that of voluntary grant. To admit boundless individuality in nature and then to create institutions requiring agreement contrary to one’s will appeared the height of contradiction. Personal differences were an inseparable part of the individual personality, which he refused to see by-passed in the “pursuit of policy and expediency.” On this basis he rejected institutional activity which ultimately depended upon compliance on the part of the members unable to see it conducive to their best interests to do so, or which compromised them by demanding conformity as the price for favors allegedly furnished.
• 95In the vein of his earlier writings on law, Warren continued to castigate legislation as one aspect of this denial of individual freedom. He objected particularly to the demand of unconditional fealty from all, enthusiastic or hesitant, to the wishes of the larger number. Warren saw no virtue in majorities; to him right was not a quantitative matter to be determined by sheer numbers. Should a thing be an evil when espoused by a few, the support of a larger number at a later time did not automatically change its nature, making what had been reprehensible now respectable and desirable. He refused to consider the manipulation of verbal symbols “laws” in the same sense:
• 96In the vein of his earlier writings on law, Warren continued to castigate legislation as one aspect of this denial of individual freedom. He objected particularly to the demand of unconditional fealty from all, enthusiastic or hesitant, to the wishes of the larger number. Warren saw no virtue in majorities; to him right was not a quantitative matter to be determined by sheer numbers. Should a thing be an evil when espoused by a few, the support of a larger number at a later time did not automatically change its nature, making what had been reprehensible now respectable and desirable. He refused to consider the manipulation of verbal symbols “laws” in the same sense:
• 97In the vein of his earlier writings on law, Warren continued to castigate legislation as one aspect of this denial of individual freedom. He objected particularly to the demand of unconditional fealty from all, enthusiastic or hesitant, to the wishes of the larger number. Warren saw no virtue in majorities; to him right was not a quantitative matter to be determined by sheer numbers. Should a thing be an evil when espoused by a few, the support of a larger number at a later time did not automatically change its nature, making what had been reprehensible now respectable and desirable. He refused to consider the manipulation of verbal symbols “laws” in the same sense:
• 98Warren thus attached to law, by virtue of its perpetual uncertainty, the blame for the great majority of crimes. Statute law could hardly be expected to do anything except aggravate and expand the diseases of society over a larger area. Warren scorned the explanation of laws and government by political theorists who sought to relate them to reality as manifestations of a common desire for the protection of life and possessions. He refused to believe that human history revealed such realization, and was convinced that the state had failed in its basic mission in providing protection for its citizens. What was worse, in his mind, was the effect of the governing process, which had been precipitated into a struggle for control of the governing privilege. This was the result, he explained, of the discovery that in an environment characterized by insecurity, the least insecure were the persons who were successful in obtaining control of the governing power. Thus rulers and ruling groups, protected temporarily by virtue of holding power, punished crimes by death and imprisonment without realizing that these were consequences of their own acts. The increasing complexity of laws and lawmaking succeeded in increasing the volume of violations rather than producing the security of the society which they purported to represent. On still another level, there was the spectacle of a government involving its citizens in group responsibilities from which many may have preferred to remain apart, and in extreme situations, such as wars, compelling them to desert their own interests and even die without recourse of any sort.
• 99Warren thus attached to law, by virtue of its perpetual uncertainty, the blame for the great majority of crimes. Statute law could hardly be expected to do anything except aggravate and expand the diseases of society over a larger area. Warren scorned the explanation of laws and government by political theorists who sought to relate them to reality as manifestations of a common desire for the protection of life and possessions. He refused to believe that human history revealed such realization, and was convinced that the state had failed in its basic mission in providing protection for its citizens. What was worse, in his mind, was the effect of the governing process, which had been precipitated into a struggle for control of the governing privilege. This was the result, he explained, of the discovery that in an environment characterized by insecurity, the least insecure were the persons who were successful in obtaining control of the governing power. Thus rulers and ruling groups, protected temporarily by virtue of holding power, punished crimes by death and imprisonment without realizing that these were consequences of their own acts. The increasing complexity of laws and lawmaking succeeded in increasing the volume of violations rather than producing the security of the society which they purported to represent. On still another level, there was the spectacle of a government involving its citizens in group responsibilities from which many may have preferred to remain apart, and in extreme situations, such as wars, compelling them to desert their own interests and even die without recourse of any sort.
• 100Warren thus attached to law, by virtue of its perpetual uncertainty, the blame for the great majority of crimes. Statute law could hardly be expected to do anything except aggravate and expand the diseases of society over a larger area. Warren scorned the explanation of laws and government by political theorists who sought to relate them to reality as manifestations of a common desire for the protection of life and possessions. He refused to believe that human history revealed such realization, and was convinced that the state had failed in its basic mission in providing protection for its citizens. What was worse, in his mind, was the effect of the governing process, which had been precipitated into a struggle for control of the governing privilege. This was the result, he explained, of the discovery that in an environment characterized by insecurity, the least insecure were the persons who were successful in obtaining control of the governing power. Thus rulers and ruling groups, protected temporarily by virtue of holding power, punished crimes by death and imprisonment without realizing that these were consequences of their own acts. The increasing complexity of laws and lawmaking succeeded in increasing the volume of violations rather than producing the security of the society which they purported to represent. On still another level, there was the spectacle of a government involving its citizens in group responsibilities from which many may have preferred to remain apart, and in extreme situations, such as wars, compelling them to desert their own interests and even die without recourse of any sort.
• 101Warren thus attached to law, by virtue of its perpetual uncertainty, the blame for the great majority of crimes. Statute law could hardly be expected to do anything except aggravate and expand the diseases of society over a larger area. Warren scorned the explanation of laws and government by political theorists who sought to relate them to reality as manifestations of a common desire for the protection of life and possessions. He refused to believe that human history revealed such realization, and was convinced that the state had failed in its basic mission in providing protection for its citizens. What was worse, in his mind, was the effect of the governing process, which had been precipitated into a struggle for control of the governing privilege. This was the result, he explained, of the discovery that in an environment characterized by insecurity, the least insecure were the persons who were successful in obtaining control of the governing power. Thus rulers and ruling groups, protected temporarily by virtue of holding power, punished crimes by death and imprisonment without realizing that these were consequences of their own acts. The increasing complexity of laws and lawmaking succeeded in increasing the volume of violations rather than producing the security of the society which they purported to represent. On still another level, there was the spectacle of a government involving its citizens in group responsibilities from which many may have preferred to remain apart, and in extreme situations, such as wars, compelling them to desert their own interests and even die without recourse of any sort.
• 102Warren thus attached to law, by virtue of its perpetual uncertainty, the blame for the great majority of crimes. Statute law could hardly be expected to do anything except aggravate and expand the diseases of society over a larger area. Warren scorned the explanation of laws and government by political theorists who sought to relate them to reality as manifestations of a common desire for the protection of life and possessions. He refused to believe that human history revealed such realization, and was convinced that the state had failed in its basic mission in providing protection for its citizens. What was worse, in his mind, was the effect of the governing process, which had been precipitated into a struggle for control of the governing privilege. This was the result, he explained, of the discovery that in an environment characterized by insecurity, the least insecure were the persons who were successful in obtaining control of the governing power. Thus rulers and ruling groups, protected temporarily by virtue of holding power, punished crimes by death and imprisonment without realizing that these were consequences of their own acts. The increasing complexity of laws and lawmaking succeeded in increasing the volume of violations rather than producing the security of the society which they purported to represent. On still another level, there was the spectacle of a government involving its citizens in group responsibilities from which many may have preferred to remain apart, and in extreme situations, such as wars, compelling them to desert their own interests and even die without recourse of any sort.
• 103Warren proposed a solution which dispensed with government other than that of each person over himself; “. . . never shall man know liberty until each and every individual is acknowledged to be the only legitimate sovereign of his or her person, time and property, each living and acting at his own cost; . . . The only ground upon which man can know liberty is that of disconnection, disunion, individuality.” American radical writing has few expressions which match the determination found in this piece of anti-statist literature, even though the complexity of human relationships in modern urban industrial society make its message of separation of interests sound of little use or pertinence. Other than this course, Warren predicted, would only increase conflicts and consequently would require more direction from the “outside,” more mediation, more intervention, which he termed “government.”
• 104Warren proposed a solution which dispensed with government other than that of each person over himself; “. . . never shall man know liberty until each and every individual is acknowledged to be the only legitimate sovereign of his or her person, time and property, each living and acting at his own cost; . . . The only ground upon which man can know liberty is that of disconnection, disunion, individuality.” American radical writing has few expressions which match the determination found in this piece of anti-statist literature, even though the complexity of human relationships in modern urban industrial society make its message of separation of interests sound of little use or pertinence. Other than this course, Warren predicted, would only increase conflicts and consequently would require more direction from the “outside,” more mediation, more intervention, which he termed “government.”
• 105The next part of the exposition of the ideal equitable society described the process whereby the aims of the individual and the needs of society were to be blended. The dog-eat-dog kind of “individualism” Warren saw all about him caused him considerable concern. His aim was to avoid the initiative-destroying propensities of the community of property, with which he was all too familiar. Keeping in mind physical and intellectual variables present among persons, he built up his version of an economy geared to a system of exchanges which used the labor cost of production as its sole guide. He proposed an economic structure consisting of producing members, acting either alone or in groups organized entirely on the principle of voluntary cooperation to make the most from the known advantages of division of labor. In all cases there was to be full individual responsibility, a condition to be arrived at by agreement where more than one person was involved. Only under such circumstances would it be possible for a group to live socially without the committal of powers of decision into the hands of an arbiter, judge, politician or other representative of outside agency claiming to operate in the interests of the group, in which he included the churches. No halfway process would be of any avail, because it was impossible to surrender a definite quantity of one’s liberty. Once erected, a government always tended to encroach upon what it did not control, due to its control over the interpretation of the language which delegated the powers it first obtained.
• 106The next part of the exposition of the ideal equitable society described the process whereby the aims of the individual and the needs of society were to be blended. The dog-eat-dog kind of “individualism” Warren saw all about him caused him considerable concern. His aim was to avoid the initiative-destroying propensities of the community of property, with which he was all too familiar. Keeping in mind physical and intellectual variables present among persons, he built up his version of an economy geared to a system of exchanges which used the labor cost of production as its sole guide. He proposed an economic structure consisting of producing members, acting either alone or in groups organized entirely on the principle of voluntary cooperation to make the most from the known advantages of division of labor. In all cases there was to be full individual responsibility, a condition to be arrived at by agreement where more than one person was involved. Only under such circumstances would it be possible for a group to live socially without the committal of powers of decision into the hands of an arbiter, judge, politician or other representative of outside agency claiming to operate in the interests of the group, in which he included the churches. No halfway process would be of any avail, because it was impossible to surrender a definite quantity of one’s liberty. Once erected, a government always tended to encroach upon what it did not control, due to its control over the interpretation of the language which delegated the powers it first obtained.
• 107The next part of the exposition of the ideal equitable society described the process whereby the aims of the individual and the needs of society were to be blended. The dog-eat-dog kind of “individualism” Warren saw all about him caused him considerable concern. His aim was to avoid the initiative-destroying propensities of the community of property, with which he was all too familiar. Keeping in mind physical and intellectual variables present among persons, he built up his version of an economy geared to a system of exchanges which used the labor cost of production as its sole guide. He proposed an economic structure consisting of producing members, acting either alone or in groups organized entirely on the principle of voluntary cooperation to make the most from the known advantages of division of labor. In all cases there was to be full individual responsibility, a condition to be arrived at by agreement where more than one person was involved. Only under such circumstances would it be possible for a group to live socially without the committal of powers of decision into the hands of an arbiter, judge, politician or other representative of outside agency claiming to operate in the interests of the group, in which he included the churches. No halfway process would be of any avail, because it was impossible to surrender a definite quantity of one’s liberty. Once erected, a government always tended to encroach upon what it did not control, due to its control over the interpretation of the language which delegated the powers it first obtained.
• 108The next part of the exposition of the ideal equitable society described the process whereby the aims of the individual and the needs of society were to be blended. The dog-eat-dog kind of “individualism” Warren saw all about him caused him considerable concern. His aim was to avoid the initiative-destroying propensities of the community of property, with which he was all too familiar. Keeping in mind physical and intellectual variables present among persons, he built up his version of an economy geared to a system of exchanges which used the labor cost of production as its sole guide. He proposed an economic structure consisting of producing members, acting either alone or in groups organized entirely on the principle of voluntary cooperation to make the most from the known advantages of division of labor. In all cases there was to be full individual responsibility, a condition to be arrived at by agreement where more than one person was involved. Only under such circumstances would it be possible for a group to live socially without the committal of powers of decision into the hands of an arbiter, judge, politician or other representative of outside agency claiming to operate in the interests of the group, in which he included the churches. No halfway process would be of any avail, because it was impossible to surrender a definite quantity of one’s liberty. Once erected, a government always tended to encroach upon what it did not control, due to its control over the interpretation of the language which delegated the powers it first obtained.
• 109The way of life which Warren sought to inaugurate according to Equitable Commerce incorporated a number of considerations which were bound to make the entire project unpalatable to most of the affluent and comfortable members of society among his readers, and to all those with ambitions of carving out for themselves a higher position in the existing order. The ultimate re-organization of society on the basis of decentralized local communities in which the needs and capabilities of all might be readily learned, was expected to lead to the circumvention of political boundaries and the placing of all inter-community relations on a voluntary level as well. It was assumed that community services would be supplied in a superior manner by individuals who contracted to furnish them when called for by those who wanted and paid for such conveniences. Warren mentioned nothing concerning the problem of inter-community transportation and communication. Furthermore, this system was predicated on the theory that there was an optimum community size, following the attainment of which it was expected that additional communities would develop nearby to the parent. In developing this matter, Warren appeared to be thinking in terms of the experiences of the last year at New Harmony during its Owenite phase, although Owen himself had stated before New Harmony the necessity of limiting the size of the community.
• 110The way of life which Warren sought to inaugurate according to Equitable Commerce incorporated a number of considerations which were bound to make the entire project unpalatable to most of the affluent and comfortable members of society among his readers, and to all those with ambitions of carving out for themselves a higher position in the existing order. The ultimate re-organization of society on the basis of decentralized local communities in which the needs and capabilities of all might be readily learned, was expected to lead to the circumvention of political boundaries and the placing of all inter-community relations on a voluntary level as well. It was assumed that community services would be supplied in a superior manner by individuals who contracted to furnish them when called for by those who wanted and paid for such conveniences. Warren mentioned nothing concerning the problem of inter-community transportation and communication. Furthermore, this system was predicated on the theory that there was an optimum community size, following the attainment of which it was expected that additional communities would develop nearby to the parent. In developing this matter, Warren appeared to be thinking in terms of the experiences of the last year at New Harmony during its Owenite phase, although Owen himself had stated before New Harmony the necessity of limiting the size of the community.
• 111The way of life which Warren sought to inaugurate according to Equitable Commerce incorporated a number of considerations which were bound to make the entire project unpalatable to most of the affluent and comfortable members of society among his readers, and to all those with ambitions of carving out for themselves a higher position in the existing order. The ultimate re-organization of society on the basis of decentralized local communities in which the needs and capabilities of all might be readily learned, was expected to lead to the circumvention of political boundaries and the placing of all inter-community relations on a voluntary level as well. It was assumed that community services would be supplied in a superior manner by individuals who contracted to furnish them when called for by those who wanted and paid for such conveniences. Warren mentioned nothing concerning the problem of inter-community transportation and communication. Furthermore, this system was predicated on the theory that there was an optimum community size, following the attainment of which it was expected that additional communities would develop nearby to the parent. In developing this matter, Warren appeared to be thinking in terms of the experiences of the last year at New Harmony during its Owenite phase, although Owen himself had stated before New Harmony the necessity of limiting the size of the community.
• 112The way of life which Warren sought to inaugurate according to Equitable Commerce incorporated a number of considerations which were bound to make the entire project unpalatable to most of the affluent and comfortable members of society among his readers, and to all those with ambitions of carving out for themselves a higher position in the existing order. The ultimate re-organization of society on the basis of decentralized local communities in which the needs and capabilities of all might be readily learned, was expected to lead to the circumvention of political boundaries and the placing of all inter-community relations on a voluntary level as well. It was assumed that community services would be supplied in a superior manner by individuals who contracted to furnish them when called for by those who wanted and paid for such conveniences. Warren mentioned nothing concerning the problem of inter-community transportation and communication. Furthermore, this system was predicated on the theory that there was an optimum community size, following the attainment of which it was expected that additional communities would develop nearby to the parent. In developing this matter, Warren appeared to be thinking in terms of the experiences of the last year at New Harmony during its Owenite phase, although Owen himself had stated before New Harmony the necessity of limiting the size of the community.
• 113One of the primary requirements of the self-sufficient society was his insistence on the decentralization of manufactures, to be confined to the production for satisfaction of local needs exclusively. Among other things, this was considered beneficial in order to fix responsibility for the utility and quality of the products, which were variables over which consumers in a profit economy far removed from the site of production had practically no control.
• 114With respect to machinery, the position taken in some ways anticipated Henry George. Warren did not look upon it as a separate factor of production, but merely a combination of the two he recognized, land, or raw materials, and the labor which went into its production. The combined labor of producing the materials incorporated in the machine, in addition to that needed to construct the machine itself equalled what he called the “cost” of the machine, and belonged to the laborers and inventors who conceived and built it. Machinery was a social benefaction only so long as it made products available priced to consumers in terms of cost of production. The displacement of labor resulting from the introduction of machinery might seek employment in other activities not yet fully mechanized, having benefited from the cheapened product now resulting from the technological innovation. Warren looked forward to a future work day of two or three hours through the abolition of craft monopolies and the social sharing of the benefits of machine production. He did not believe that needs were indefinitely expansible, and thought that if technical production was geared to needs, there would be none of the pernicious effects of speculative manufacture with its disastrous accompaniments of “over-production” and subsequent destruction for the purpose of preserving price levels.
• 115With respect to machinery, the position taken in some ways anticipated Henry George. Warren did not look upon it as a separate factor of production, but merely a combination of the two he recognized, land, or raw materials, and the labor which went into its production. The combined labor of producing the materials incorporated in the machine, in addition to that needed to construct the machine itself equalled what he called the “cost” of the machine, and belonged to the laborers and inventors who conceived and built it. Machinery was a social benefaction only so long as it made products available priced to consumers in terms of cost of production. The displacement of labor resulting from the introduction of machinery might seek employment in other activities not yet fully mechanized, having benefited from the cheapened product now resulting from the technological innovation. Warren looked forward to a future work day of two or three hours through the abolition of craft monopolies and the social sharing of the benefits of machine production. He did not believe that needs were indefinitely expansible, and thought that if technical production was geared to needs, there would be none of the pernicious effects of speculative manufacture with its disastrous accompaniments of “over-production” and subsequent destruction for the purpose of preserving price levels.
• 116Warren’s opposition to the private ownership of machinery on the basis of a patent monopoly or any other contingency except actual construction was no more resolute than his opposition to the acquisition of land for speculative purposes. While fifteen years before he had questioned land titles themselves, he now was willing to accept the prevailing division, providing all land sales subsequent to the original purchase involved no addition to what he called the “prime cost” beyond expenses resulting from surveying, drawing up of contracts, and even taxes, to which there was no expression of resistance, a remarkable concession.
• 117Warren’s opposition to the private ownership of machinery on the basis of a patent monopoly or any other contingency except actual construction was no more resolute than his opposition to the acquisition of land for speculative purposes. While fifteen years before he had questioned land titles themselves, he now was willing to accept the prevailing division, providing all land sales subsequent to the original purchase involved no addition to what he called the “prime cost” beyond expenses resulting from surveying, drawing up of contracts, and even taxes, to which there was no expression of resistance, a remarkable concession.
• 118Equitable Commerce contained the now-familiar exposition of the labor note currency, with variations resulting from discrepancies which previous trial now exposed. Warren sought to solve the problem caused by the refusal of some members in his previous labor exchange to participate in accepting similar amounts of any member’s time. This came as a result of his declaration that work of greatest repugnance was worthy of the highest remuneration, since distastefulness must be considered one of the elements of “cost” if anyone was to perform the unpleasant tasks in a non-coercive society. It was felt that the undermining of this principle destroyed the whole basis of the labor exchange plan. Another novelty in the statement of the labor notes bore on the issue created by persons with different evaluations of labor time. Although Warren had repudiated gold and silver and all other commodity-backed moneys as inferior to the direct matching of labor for labor, in Equitable Commerce he decided that there should be an alternative to the acceptance of the actual labor of the person presenting any given note. This resulted in the concession to back the labor currency with “Indian” corn, which was judged to be superior to metals with respect to ease of determining its cost of production in man hours. All subsequent labor notes bore guarantees of payment in a number of pounds of corn.
• 119Equitable Commerce contained the now-familiar exposition of the labor note currency, with variations resulting from discrepancies which previous trial now exposed. Warren sought to solve the problem caused by the refusal of some members in his previous labor exchange to participate in accepting similar amounts of any member’s time. This came as a result of his declaration that work of greatest repugnance was worthy of the highest remuneration, since distastefulness must be considered one of the elements of “cost” if anyone was to perform the unpleasant tasks in a non-coercive society. It was felt that the undermining of this principle destroyed the whole basis of the labor exchange plan. Another novelty in the statement of the labor notes bore on the issue created by persons with different evaluations of labor time. Although Warren had repudiated gold and silver and all other commodity-backed moneys as inferior to the direct matching of labor for labor, in Equitable Commerce he decided that there should be an alternative to the acceptance of the actual labor of the person presenting any given note. This resulted in the concession to back the labor currency with “Indian” corn, which was judged to be superior to metals with respect to ease of determining its cost of production in man hours. All subsequent labor notes bore guarantees of payment in a number of pounds of corn.
• 120Warren had no intention of creating a sensational incident and a focus for violent language by placing his ideas and the results of his investigations and experiences within the perusing reach of those with polemical predispositions. The concluding pages had a note of abdication on his part in the event of such incidence, which in many ways was the index of Warren’s personality and a source of criticism at a later time:
• 121The discovery of a colonial precedent neither detracted from Greene’s enthusiasm for his project nor cast any suspicions upon his independent status as an innovator. With the financial writings of others, however, he was already familiar, particularly Kellogg and Proudhon. It is highly probable that he learned from both, even though later editions of his works carried sharp criticisms of some of their theories. Favorable quotations of Kellogg in several of his works indicated a thorough reading at one time of Labor and Other Capital. His knowledge of Proudhon appears to have been somewhat less thorough until after a stay in France in the late ‘50’s, during which time he became personally acquainted with the internationally-known French anarchist. It is most inaccurate to speak of Greene simply as a proponent of Proudhonian principles.
• 122Coming at a time when the labor and consumer groups were experimenting with “associated workshops” and “protective union stores,” Greene suggested that the mutual bank be incorporated in the movement, forming what he called “complementary units of production, consumption, and exchange, . . . the triple formula of practical mutualism.” This program of mutualism he considered best adapted to local community level. In times of economic distress, the mutual money would prove the bulwark against inflationary or deflationary pressures: “the town cannot fail disastrously, for the real property is always there, rooted in the very ground.”
• 123For some time the campaign ran strongly to obtain a charter from the Massachusetts General Court for the establishment of a mutual bank. Greene, now in Boston, argued the case before the Town and Country Club of which he was a member, along with such notables as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, Henry James, the elder, W. H. Channing, Octavius B. Frothingham, William D. Ticknor, Charles Sumner, E. R. Hoar, Henry Giles, John Orvis, and George B. Loring. Repeated petitions to the General Court were made in 1850-51 both under his sponsorship and that of groups of inhabitants of Brookfield, Ware and Warren. In 1857 he restated his financial arguments in a volume titled The Radical Deficiency of the Existing Circulating Medium, and the Advantages of a Mutual Currency, under the stimulation of the new panic assailing the nation’s economy. Apathy was the principal response. Shortly thereafter Greene left for France, where he became interested for a time in mathematics, concern over social matters abating until after the war.
• 124For some time the campaign ran strongly to obtain a charter from the Massachusetts General Court for the establishment of a mutual bank. Greene, now in Boston, argued the case before the Town and Country Club of which he was a member, along with such notables as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, Henry James, the elder, W. H. Channing, Octavius B. Frothingham, William D. Ticknor, Charles Sumner, E. R. Hoar, Henry Giles, John Orvis, and George B. Loring. Repeated petitions to the General Court were made in 1850-51 both under his sponsorship and that of groups of inhabitants of Brookfield, Ware and Warren. In 1857 he restated his financial arguments in a volume titled The Radical Deficiency of the Existing Circulating Medium, and the Advantages of a Mutual Currency, under the stimulation of the new panic assailing the nation’s economy. Apathy was the principal response. Shortly thereafter Greene left for France, where he became interested for a time in mathematics, concern over social matters abating until after the war.
• 125Greene’s Equality contained other than his money and banking theories. Some of his sociological ideas, albeit evidencing little logical organization and often contradictory, appeared here and there in its pages. One was his assertion that as an individual, a man received certain rights at creation, but that the right of property was not one of them. This was a social creation, and was not absolute. “Society gives me . . . proprietorship . . . because it is for its own interests to do so; my right to my watch is not a natural, but a social right. I own it, not because I earned it, . . . but by the free grace and favor of society.” Greene’s conception of individualism, however, was religious in nature. Although failing to describe the rights which the individual received from God, he condemned coercion of any kind as a contention against God Himself. It was therefore “profoundly immoral” to make a man dependent upon his neighbors or upon public opinion, which made him “subservient to his accidents, instead of supreme over them.”
• 126Greene’s Equality contained other than his money and banking theories. Some of his sociological ideas, albeit evidencing little logical organization and often contradictory, appeared here and there in its pages. One was his assertion that as an individual, a man received certain rights at creation, but that the right of property was not one of them. This was a social creation, and was not absolute. “Society gives me . . . proprietorship . . . because it is for its own interests to do so; my right to my watch is not a natural, but a social right. I own it, not because I earned it, . . . but by the free grace and favor of society.” Greene’s conception of individualism, however, was religious in nature. Although failing to describe the rights which the individual received from God, he condemned coercion of any kind as a contention against God Himself. It was therefore “profoundly immoral” to make a man dependent upon his neighbors or upon public opinion, which made him “subservient to his accidents, instead of supreme over them.”
• 127In another respect he was much less indefinite. Equality contained one of the first of the anarchist arraignments of socialism as a system of societal organization. Socialism, averred Greene, was the only political system in which he could see no “good points.” In other types he saw a few privileged groups such as nobles, slaveholders, or “usurers” who managed to gather some advantages as compared to the volume of evil endured by “the mass of the people,” but no one appeared to gain under socialism:
• 128Greene’s career after his advocacy of the mutual bank was as much an account of irreconcilables as that which had previously transpired. Although abhorring government beyond the local level, he joined the Democratic party. At the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1853 he championed minority representation and woman suffrage. He was also an outspoken abolitionist. Wealthy by inheritance and marriage, he returned from his stay in France at the outbreak of the Civil War, and became commander of the 14th Massachusetts Regiment, later resigning after a quarrel with Governor Andrew.
• 129Greene’s career after his advocacy of the mutual bank was as much an account of irreconcilables as that which had previously transpired. Although abhorring government beyond the local level, he joined the Democratic party. At the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1853 he championed minority representation and woman suffrage. He was also an outspoken abolitionist. Wealthy by inheritance and marriage, he returned from his stay in France at the outbreak of the Civil War, and became commander of the 14th Massachusetts Regiment, later resigning after a quarrel with Governor Andrew.
• 130Activity in the ranks of the intellectual radicals once more absorbed his interest at the end of the war. He restated most of his social philosophy in a small book titled Sovereignty of the People, at about the time Heywood’s Worcester group began to demonstrate interest in the mutual bank literature. The reprinting of an enlarged edition of Mutual Banking, the formation of the Labor Reform Leagues, and Heywood’s publication of The Word all found in Greene a ready supporter and participant. In the latter part of 1872 he became a member of the French Section of the Marxian International Working People’s Association in Boston. Shortly afterward he became president of the New England Labor Reform League. This affiliation placed the N. E. L. R. L. as a whole under suspicion as a branch of the International. The aims of the former were alleged to be a mere restatement of those of “the foreign communists.” Although he collaborated with French members in the formulation of an address outlining the principles of the International Working People’s Association, which was subsequently read before the N. E. L. R. L. at the 1873 convention, it appears that neither he nor the League continued relations. This is borne out by Greene’s critical writings concerning communism and his first translations of Proudhon’s writings.
• 131Activity in the ranks of the intellectual radicals once more absorbed his interest at the end of the war. He restated most of his social philosophy in a small book titled Sovereignty of the People, at about the time Heywood’s Worcester group began to demonstrate interest in the mutual bank literature. The reprinting of an enlarged edition of Mutual Banking, the formation of the Labor Reform Leagues, and Heywood’s publication of The Word all found in Greene a ready supporter and participant. In the latter part of 1872 he became a member of the French Section of the Marxian International Working People’s Association in Boston. Shortly afterward he became president of the New England Labor Reform League. This affiliation placed the N. E. L. R. L. as a whole under suspicion as a branch of the International. The aims of the former were alleged to be a mere restatement of those of “the foreign communists.” Although he collaborated with French members in the formulation of an address outlining the principles of the International Working People’s Association, which was subsequently read before the N. E. L. R. L. at the 1873 convention, it appears that neither he nor the League continued relations. This is borne out by Greene’s critical writings concerning communism and his first translations of Proudhon’s writings.
• 132Activity in the ranks of the intellectual radicals once more absorbed his interest at the end of the war. He restated most of his social philosophy in a small book titled Sovereignty of the People, at about the time Heywood’s Worcester group began to demonstrate interest in the mutual bank literature. The reprinting of an enlarged edition of Mutual Banking, the formation of the Labor Reform Leagues, and Heywood’s publication of The Word all found in Greene a ready supporter and participant. In the latter part of 1872 he became a member of the French Section of the Marxian International Working People’s Association in Boston. Shortly afterward he became president of the New England Labor Reform League. This affiliation placed the N. E. L. R. L. as a whole under suspicion as a branch of the International. The aims of the former were alleged to be a mere restatement of those of “the foreign communists.” Although he collaborated with French members in the formulation of an address outlining the principles of the International Working People’s Association, which was subsequently read before the N. E. L. R. L. at the 1873 convention, it appears that neither he nor the League continued relations. This is borne out by Greene’s critical writings concerning communism and his first translations of Proudhon’s writings.
• 133Activity in the ranks of the intellectual radicals once more absorbed his interest at the end of the war. He restated most of his social philosophy in a small book titled Sovereignty of the People, at about the time Heywood’s Worcester group began to demonstrate interest in the mutual bank literature. The reprinting of an enlarged edition of Mutual Banking, the formation of the Labor Reform Leagues, and Heywood’s publication of The Word all found in Greene a ready supporter and participant. In the latter part of 1872 he became a member of the French Section of the Marxian International Working People’s Association in Boston. Shortly afterward he became president of the New England Labor Reform League. This affiliation placed the N. E. L. R. L. as a whole under suspicion as a branch of the International. The aims of the former were alleged to be a mere restatement of those of “the foreign communists.” Although he collaborated with French members in the formulation of an address outlining the principles of the International Working People’s Association, which was subsequently read before the N. E. L. R. L. at the 1873 convention, it appears that neither he nor the League continued relations. This is borne out by Greene’s critical writings concerning communism and his first translations of Proudhon’s writings.
• 134Between 1872-1876 Heywood and the League made several attempts to obtain a charter for a mutual bank from the Massachusetts General Court, but to no avail. The earliest of these was buried in the Committee on Banks and Banking, three of whose seven members were bankers themselves. The general treatment received strengthened the convictions of prominent members of the League that “legislatures are made up of capitalists who draw pay for serving their own interests, not the people’s.” Greene participated in general criticism of the legislature but gave no evidence of entertaining hope that opposition might be overcome.
• 135Greene returned to Europe in the spring of 1878. His premature death in Weston, England during this same year brought to an end the career of the ablest native American anarchist writer and theorist on finance. Mutual Banking remained prominent in the individualist propaganda thereafter without additions or abridgement. It was widely read by those interested in radical currency, and has been reprinted repeatedly up to the present day.
• 136Greene returned to Europe in the spring of 1878. His premature death in Weston, England during this same year brought to an end the career of the ablest native American anarchist writer and theorist on finance. Mutual Banking remained prominent in the individualist propaganda thereafter without additions or abridgement. It was widely read by those interested in radical currency, and has been reprinted repeatedly up to the present day.
• 137.  Liberty, III (June 20, 1885), 2-3; (July 18, 1885), 2; Letter to Cleveland, 7-8, 11.
• 138.  Liberty, III (August 15, 1885), 2; (September 12, 1885), 2; (October 3, 1885), 2; (October 24, 1885), 2; Letter to Cleveland, 15-16, 22, 24, 27, 30.
• 139.  Liberty, III (August 15, 1885), 2; Letter to Cleveland, 17.
• 140.  The influence of Tucker’s hammering at the monopoly-granting power of the government is evident in the following: “. . . if a government is to ‘do equal and exact justice to all men,’ it must do simply that and nothing more . . . if it gives monopolies, privileges, exemptions, bounties or favors to any, it can do so only by doing injustice to more or less others. It can give to one only what it takes from others; for it has nothing of its own to give to anyone. No honest government can go into business with any individuals, can give no one any special aid to competition, or protect anyone from competition. It can do no one any favor, nor render to any one assistance which it withholds from another. It must take no cognizance of any man’s ‘interests.’“ Liberty, III (August 15, 1885), 3; Letter to Cleveland, 15.
• 141.  A 3½ hour memorial meeting was held in Boston on May 29, 1887, at which one of the speakers was the old abolitionist friend of Spooner, Theodore Dwight Weld. See report of this gathering in Liberty, IV (June 18, 1887), 7-8.
• 142.  See for instance the article “The First American Anarchist” by Clarence Lee Swartz in Liberty, XV (February, 1906), 53-54.
• 143 An example of the problem involved in the matter of accurately using such specialized words can be found in the interesting study by Arthur E. Bestor, Jr., “The Evolution of the Socialist Vocabulary,” in Journal of the History of Ideas, IX (June, 1948), 259-302.
• 144 Ernest A. Vizetelly, The Anarchists (London, 1911), and Peter Latouche, Anarchy! An Authentic Exposition of the Methods of Anarchists and the Aims of Anarchism (London, 1908), are prime examples of popular writing concerned with anarchism primarily as a program of calculated terrorism aimed in particular to those in high places. Latouche, in his zeal to lay all prominent international political assassinations at the door of the anarchists, even included those of Presidents Lincoln and Garfield. Anarchy!, 238. For vindication of the employment of violence by anarchists, see Peter A. Kropotkin, article “Anarchism,” Encyclopedia Britannica, XI ed., (29 vols. London, 1910), I, 916.
• 145 There is virtually no credible evidence for the assumption that violence is a basic element of the strategy of the anarchists. In distinguishing between the doctrine and the coercive action sometimes associated with it, the non-anarchist German observer and critic Ernst Victor Zenker remarked, “That the theory of Anarchism is not merely a systematic incitement to robbery and murder, we need hardly to repeat. . . . Proudhon and Stirner . . . never once preached force. . . . The doctrine of propaganda which since Proudhon’s time has always accompanied a certain form of anarchist theory, is a foreign element, having no necessary or internal connection with the fundamental ideas of anarchism. It is simply a piece of tactics borrowed from the circumstances peculiar to Russia, and accepted moreover only by one fraction of the Anarchists, and approved by very few indeed in its most crude form; it is merely the old tactics of all revolutionary parties in every age.” Anarchism, a Criticism and History of Anarchist Theory (English translation, New York, 1897), 306.
• 146 Zenker, Anarchism, 6. An early and exhaustive inquiry into the matter is Césare Lombroso, Gli Anarchici (Turin, 1894). A German edition was published in Hamburg the next year under the title Die Anarchisten. Eine Kriminal Psychologische und Sociologische Studie. Lombroso’s methods and techniques as well as most of his conclusions have been discarded for some time.
• 147 Henry David, The History of the Haymarket Affair, continues to be the most thorough account of this unfortunate occurrence. In American history the identification of anarchism with terroristic activities dates from this time, an impression which neither time nor attempts at rectification of the injustice inflicted at the time have succeeded in erasing.
• 148 An accompanying attitude has been the double standard which has tacitly been adhered to with respect to the employment of extra-legal violence. No public condemnation accompanied the use of coercion on the part of industrialists and local groups of citizènry, acting in a vigilante capacity, in disputes with strikers and radicals, until very recently. For an account of this matter see Robert Hunter, Violence and the Labor Movement (New York, 1914), 276-326.
• 149 See especially David W. Petegorsky, Left Wing Democracy in the English Civil War; A Study of the Social Philosophy of Gerrard Winstanley (London, 1947), Chapters I-V, and Mildred A. Gibb, John Lilburne, The Leveller (London, 1947), introduction. See also Mosca, Ruling Classes, 271-272, for the advancement of a cyclical theory dealing with the persistence of anarchist and allied sentiments in the ancient literature of China, India, Persia, Israel, Greece and Rome, and continuing down through the Christian Fathers and the Muslims. The influence of Merriam’s view on subsequent writers dealing with anarchism in the United States is readily observable, however.
• 150 The 1880’s saw the presence in the United States of anarchists in numbers almost equal to those of socialists. Morris Hillquit, Loose Leaves from a Busy Life (New York, 1934), 4.
• 151 For a presentation of this matter as it came to a head at the time of the badly-ignored Anarchist convention in Pittsburgh in 1883, see Chester McA. Destler, “Shall Red and Black Unite? An American Revolutionary Document of 1883,” in Pacific Historical Review, XIV (December, 1945), 434-451.
• 152  For brief expert summaries of both “schools” from the individualist point of view see Victor Yarros, article “Individualist or Philosophical Anarchism,” 41-45, and Clarence Lee Swartz, article “Anarchist Communism,” 45-50, in William D. P. Bliss and Rudolph M. Binder, (eds.), The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform (New York, 1908). For an admirable and sympathetic treatment of the European anarchist philosophy and its exponents by a conservative, consult Alvan F. Sanborn, Paris and the Social Revolution (Boston, 1905), Chapters I-VII.
• 153  For other aspects of this conflict consult Ernest Armand, Formas de Vida en común sin Estado no Autoridad (Carlos Espinosa, trans.) (Madrid, 1934); Rudolf Rocker, Nationalism and Culture (Los Angeles, 1937); same author, La Juventud de un Rebeide (Buenos Aires, 1947); Helmut Rüdiger, Federalismen (Stockholm, 1947).
• 154  “In a world where inequality of ability is inevitable, anarchists do not sanction any attempt to produce equality by artificial or authoritarian means. The only equality they posit and will strive their utmost to defend is the equality of opportunity. This necessitates the maximum amount of freedom for each individual. This will not necessarily result in equality of incomes or of wealth but will result in returns proportionate to service rendered. To base society on the supposition that the laborer of great capacity will content himself, in favor of the weak, with half his wages, furnish his services gratuitously, and produce for that abstraction called “society,” in the words of Proudhon, ‘is to base society on a sentiment, . . . which, erected systematically into a principle, is only a false virtue, a dangerous hypocrisy.’ A hypocrisy, unfortunately, eagerly subscribed to by a weak, downtrodden, and misguided portion of the populace.” Quoted from Laurance Labadie, Anarchism Applied to Economics (a leaflet). Emphasized portions are his.
• 155  For example, the presence at the Warrenite colony of “Modern Times” of such a wide variety of the most extreme types of unconventional behavior has resulted in the estimation of this experiment in anarchist voluntarism as a gathering of spiritualists, Fourierites, free lovers, Comtean Positivists, and even Swedenborgians. Scarcity of contemporary accounts is in a large way responsible for the confusion of interpretations.
• 156The details concerning Warren’s birthplace and parentage are still obscure. Beyond the knowledge of his birth in 1798, practically nothing of an authoritative nature exists. One thing is quite definite, nevertheless; sharing an illustrious colonial name did not mean a similar sharing of the general good fortune of the Warren clan. The year 1819 found him making the familiar trek westward and southward down the Ohio which a vast number of Americans continued to make until the midway point in the century was reached, with the principal aim in view of bettering their economic conditions. Warren and an elder brother, George, had shown considerable promise as musicians while still very young, and had become members of the “Old Boston Brigade Band” while still boys of school age. When he and his recently-acquired wife settled in Cincinnati, Josiah continued to earn his livelihood as a musician and teacher of music, an activity he never completely deserted.
• 157The change of locale seems to have sharpened a native inventive genius. Here he began a restless career of invention and innovation in the fields of illumination, printing-press manufacture, stereotyping and musical notation worthy of closer examination in connection with contributions of the Ohio valley to the growing industrial consciousness of the nation. His first contribution was a lamp of revolutionary construction, devised to burn lard instead of the much costlier tallow. It had unusual success, and led to the construction and operation of a factory devoted to its production which prospered, lard oil not yet being known.
• 158It is highly probable that with this background and bent, Josiah Warren might have become one of the early men of wealth in the growing Midwest, had not the personality of Robert Owen intruded and so impressed him with the exciting and disturbing spirit of social reform. Owen’s attempt to remake the pattern of mankind’s affairs is doubtless an occurrence without comparison in the social history of the new West. One of the few early industrial millionaires, the Welsh textile magnate and philanthropist conceived of a new world on a scale which was lavish far beyond the imagination of his time.
• 159Owen was an environmental determinist. Beginning with the assumption that human nature was a constant, he related all behavior patterns to subsequent reactions to environmental forces. The core of his doctrine was that man’s character was a product of exterior stress which he as an individual had no appreciable part in forming. Thus the social system was responsible for its wayward folk, and desirable modes of conduct could be brought about by proper education and supervision. Owen decried the idea of personal responsibility, believing the tenet absurd and productive only of harm; praise and blame on a personal level formed no part of his working social vocabulary.
• 160Having already partially developed his environmental thesis in his model factory town of New Lanark, Scotland, which enjoyed unsurpassed living and working conditions, Owen was determined to put it into operation on an even more striking level, with a new continent as a backdrop. He purchased the colony of Harmony, Indiana from its founders and occupants, a divergent German Lutheran sect known as Rappites. A communal venture with a deeply religious flavor, this group had developed an extensive and strikingly productive estate out of raw wilderness on the Indiana bank of the Wabash River some fifty miles upstream from its juncture with the Ohio. Desiring once more to return to their earlier home in western Pennsylvania, they sold the tract of 30,000 acres of land and the sturdy buildings thereon to Owen for the sum of $150,000. He then renamed it New Harmony and brought in settlers sympathetic to his philosophy and anxious to experience practical success. It was the largest and most promising experiment in environmentalism in the nineteenth century.
• 161Having already partially developed his environmental thesis in his model factory town of New Lanark, Scotland, which enjoyed unsurpassed living and working conditions, Owen was determined to put it into operation on an even more striking level, with a new continent as a backdrop. He purchased the colony of Harmony, Indiana from its founders and occupants, a divergent German Lutheran sect known as Rappites. A communal venture with a deeply religious flavor, this group had developed an extensive and strikingly productive estate out of raw wilderness on the Indiana bank of the Wabash River some fifty miles upstream from its juncture with the Ohio. Desiring once more to return to their earlier home in western Pennsylvania, they sold the tract of 30,000 acres of land and the sturdy buildings thereon to Owen for the sum of $150,000. He then renamed it New Harmony and brought in settlers sympathetic to his philosophy and anxious to experience practical success. It was the largest and most promising experiment in environmentalism in the nineteenth century.
• 162Having already partially developed his environmental thesis in his model factory town of New Lanark, Scotland, which enjoyed unsurpassed living and working conditions, Owen was determined to put it into operation on an even more striking level, with a new continent as a backdrop. He purchased the colony of Harmony, Indiana from its founders and occupants, a divergent German Lutheran sect known as Rappites. A communal venture with a deeply religious flavor, this group had developed an extensive and strikingly productive estate out of raw wilderness on the Indiana bank of the Wabash River some fifty miles upstream from its juncture with the Ohio. Desiring once more to return to their earlier home in western Pennsylvania, they sold the tract of 30,000 acres of land and the sturdy buildings thereon to Owen for the sum of $150,000. He then renamed it New Harmony and brought in settlers sympathetic to his philosophy and anxious to experience practical success. It was the largest and most promising experiment in environmentalism in the nineteenth century.
• 163Warren was to know the exhilaration and dejection of the founding and decline of the Owenite interlude at New Harmony before striking out on his own as a social radical. Although unable to hear Owen speak until 1825, he was a member of the first group gathering for the purpose of forming a community of property at the appointed place. By the fall of this same year he was taking active party in the Preliminary Society, and was a participant in the drafting and approving of the first constitution of the New Harmony Community of Equality in February, 1826. His musical training was soon employed; as leader of the community’s band, he was long remembered by the first settlers. By the late winter Warren, his wife and baby daughter were an established family unit of the settlement, and were to remain there for over a year.
• 164Warren was to know the exhilaration and dejection of the founding and decline of the Owenite interlude at New Harmony before striking out on his own as a social radical. Although unable to hear Owen speak until 1825, he was a member of the first group gathering for the purpose of forming a community of property at the appointed place. By the fall of this same year he was taking active party in the Preliminary Society, and was a participant in the drafting and approving of the first constitution of the New Harmony Community of Equality in February, 1826. His musical training was soon employed; as leader of the community’s band, he was long remembered by the first settlers. By the late winter Warren, his wife and baby daughter were an established family unit of the settlement, and were to remain there for over a year.
• 165Warren was to know the exhilaration and dejection of the founding and decline of the Owenite interlude at New Harmony before striking out on his own as a social radical. Although unable to hear Owen speak until 1825, he was a member of the first group gathering for the purpose of forming a community of property at the appointed place. By the fall of this same year he was taking active party in the Preliminary Society, and was a participant in the drafting and approving of the first constitution of the New Harmony Community of Equality in February, 1826. His musical training was soon employed; as leader of the community’s band, he was long remembered by the first settlers. By the late winter Warren, his wife and baby daughter were an established family unit of the settlement, and were to remain there for over a year.
• 166Warren made a quick and incisive deduction as to the cause of the debacle which placed him at once in a camp far removed from that in which the faithful Owenites would henceforth gather. He felt that the common property scheme of the New Harmony colony had been instituted by Owen as a means and not as an end; that what had been desired was a social situation in which the interests of the different individuals would coöperate instead of clash one with the other. Even though thirty years of retrospection upon the experience continued to bring back pleasant memories of what had transpired there, the management of financial and property affairs convinced him of the failure of their mission; “but for property considerations the experiments never would have commenced,” was his pithy summation of the situation. Why did an amicable settlement of material affairs fail to become a reality? Warren blamed it upon the submergence of the individual within the confines of the community. The consequences of such a procedure, said Warren, were inevitable. Not only was individual initiative stifled by failure to provide a place within the structure for personal rights and interests beyond the sphere of religious matters, but the elimination of individual property rights resulted in almost total dissipation of responsibility for the occurrence of individual incapacity, failure, and short-comings of other kinds. This was not all. He had noted that the expressions of natural differences of opinion were increasingly looked upon as unfortunate developments and obstacles to success, which had damaging effect on the continuance of courtesy and tolerance. Thus, despite frequent reorganizations, failures became more abrupt and chaos drew nearer. Warren summed up the whole matter in one vigorous outburst:
• 167Warren made a quick and incisive deduction as to the cause of the debacle which placed him at once in a camp far removed from that in which the faithful Owenites would henceforth gather. He felt that the common property scheme of the New Harmony colony had been instituted by Owen as a means and not as an end; that what had been desired was a social situation in which the interests of the different individuals would coöperate instead of clash one with the other. Even though thirty years of retrospection upon the experience continued to bring back pleasant memories of what had transpired there, the management of financial and property affairs convinced him of the failure of their mission; “but for property considerations the experiments never would have commenced,” was his pithy summation of the situation. Why did an amicable settlement of material affairs fail to become a reality? Warren blamed it upon the submergence of the individual within the confines of the community. The consequences of such a procedure, said Warren, were inevitable. Not only was individual initiative stifled by failure to provide a place within the structure for personal rights and interests beyond the sphere of religious matters, but the elimination of individual property rights resulted in almost total dissipation of responsibility for the occurrence of individual incapacity, failure, and short-comings of other kinds. This was not all. He had noted that the expressions of natural differences of opinion were increasingly looked upon as unfortunate developments and obstacles to success, which had damaging effect on the continuance of courtesy and tolerance. Thus, despite frequent reorganizations, failures became more abrupt and chaos drew nearer. Warren summed up the whole matter in one vigorous outburst:
• 168Warren made a quick and incisive deduction as to the cause of the debacle which placed him at once in a camp far removed from that in which the faithful Owenites would henceforth gather. He felt that the common property scheme of the New Harmony colony had been instituted by Owen as a means and not as an end; that what had been desired was a social situation in which the interests of the different individuals would coöperate instead of clash one with the other. Even though thirty years of retrospection upon the experience continued to bring back pleasant memories of what had transpired there, the management of financial and property affairs convinced him of the failure of their mission; “but for property considerations the experiments never would have commenced,” was his pithy summation of the situation. Why did an amicable settlement of material affairs fail to become a reality? Warren blamed it upon the submergence of the individual within the confines of the community. The consequences of such a procedure, said Warren, were inevitable. Not only was individual initiative stifled by failure to provide a place within the structure for personal rights and interests beyond the sphere of religious matters, but the elimination of individual property rights resulted in almost total dissipation of responsibility for the occurrence of individual incapacity, failure, and short-comings of other kinds. This was not all. He had noted that the expressions of natural differences of opinion were increasingly looked upon as unfortunate developments and obstacles to success, which had damaging effect on the continuance of courtesy and tolerance. Thus, despite frequent reorganizations, failures became more abrupt and chaos drew nearer. Warren summed up the whole matter in one vigorous outburst:
• 169Warren made a quick and incisive deduction as to the cause of the debacle which placed him at once in a camp far removed from that in which the faithful Owenites would henceforth gather. He felt that the common property scheme of the New Harmony colony had been instituted by Owen as a means and not as an end; that what had been desired was a social situation in which the interests of the different individuals would coöperate instead of clash one with the other. Even though thirty years of retrospection upon the experience continued to bring back pleasant memories of what had transpired there, the management of financial and property affairs convinced him of the failure of their mission; “but for property considerations the experiments never would have commenced,” was his pithy summation of the situation. Why did an amicable settlement of material affairs fail to become a reality? Warren blamed it upon the submergence of the individual within the confines of the community. The consequences of such a procedure, said Warren, were inevitable. Not only was individual initiative stifled by failure to provide a place within the structure for personal rights and interests beyond the sphere of religious matters, but the elimination of individual property rights resulted in almost total dissipation of responsibility for the occurrence of individual incapacity, failure, and short-comings of other kinds. This was not all. He had noted that the expressions of natural differences of opinion were increasingly looked upon as unfortunate developments and obstacles to success, which had damaging effect on the continuance of courtesy and tolerance. Thus, despite frequent reorganizations, failures became more abrupt and chaos drew nearer. Warren summed up the whole matter in one vigorous outburst:
• 170Although Warren broke sharply with Owen’s collective plans for producing the good life, in other respects the cleavage was not so clearly marked. Indeed, his championing of individual sovereignty was to posit a dilemma which was never satisfactorily reconciled. His writings continued to put forth the doctrine of environmentalism, but liberally interleaved with a persistent promotion of belief in free will and individual responsibility which Owen would have categorically dismissed as prime heresy. Conventional society lost Warren forever, despite all this. For almost half a century he followed a course of ceaseless activity, attempting several experiments embracing his own conception of societary reorganization. He never repudiated Owen in an overt way, his attitude toward the founder of New Harmony remaining one of deep respect to his last days. Many years after the break took place Warren declared:
• 171Although Warren broke sharply with Owen’s collective plans for producing the good life, in other respects the cleavage was not so clearly marked. Indeed, his championing of individual sovereignty was to posit a dilemma which was never satisfactorily reconciled. His writings continued to put forth the doctrine of environmentalism, but liberally interleaved with a persistent promotion of belief in free will and individual responsibility which Owen would have categorically dismissed as prime heresy. Conventional society lost Warren forever, despite all this. For almost half a century he followed a course of ceaseless activity, attempting several experiments embracing his own conception of societary reorganization. He never repudiated Owen in an overt way, his attitude toward the founder of New Harmony remaining one of deep respect to his last days. Many years after the break took place Warren declared:
• 172One element of Owen’s thought found ready acceptance, in contrast to the lukewarm attitude toward social experimentation. In the hands of Warren and a large number of Warren’s followers throughout the remander of the century, the basic economic doctrine of coöperation met no opposition whatever, despite the serious trouble encountered in putting it into action. This was the proposal to exchange all labor employed in the production of goods and services equally, hour for hour, substituting for the state or privately controlled currency based on metallic commodities a circulating medium consisting of “labor notes.” These were simply bills issued in the form of currency, limited in issue and signed by the issuer, promising to furnish labor at specified occupations or activities for specific periods, in exchange for services desired of and rendered by another. These were to be issued on the basis of hours of labor or fractions of hours, depending upon the amount of another’s labor consumed.
• 173Owen had been mulling over the labor theory of value before coming to America. His four Essays on the Formation of Human Character, published in New Lanark in 1812-1813, contained indications of his whole-hearted conversion to this doctrine. The contention that the true price of a thing is the amount of labor expended in its production had been espoused by political economists generations before Adam Smith, although Smith had stated it in classic form in 1776. Owen’s labor note idea was a ground-breaker in the direction of practical realization of this idea, and this he also had fully developed in his own mind before reaching New Harmony.
• 174Owen had been mulling over the labor theory of value before coming to America. His four Essays on the Formation of Human Character, published in New Lanark in 1812-1813, contained indications of his whole-hearted conversion to this doctrine. The contention that the true price of a thing is the amount of labor expended in its production had been espoused by political economists generations before Adam Smith, although Smith had stated it in classic form in 1776. Owen’s labor note idea was a ground-breaker in the direction of practical realization of this idea, and this he also had fully developed in his own mind before reaching New Harmony.
• 175Owen had been mulling over the labor theory of value before coming to America. His four Essays on the Formation of Human Character, published in New Lanark in 1812-1813, contained indications of his whole-hearted conversion to this doctrine. The contention that the true price of a thing is the amount of labor expended in its production had been espoused by political economists generations before Adam Smith, although Smith had stated it in classic form in 1776. Owen’s labor note idea was a ground-breaker in the direction of practical realization of this idea, and this he also had fully developed in his own mind before reaching New Harmony.
• 176Warren became a permanent convert to this new system, propagandizing for its adoption both verbally and through practical attempts for almost forty-five years. Its operation was never realized at New Harmony, so Josiah Warren became the first person to employ the device in everyday economic intercourse. His Cincinnati Time Store of 1827-1830 became the first scientific experiment in coöperative economy in modern history, despite its limited objectives as such, as well as its obscurity resulting from the modest unsophisticated structure employed and the stark utilitarianism which prevailed during its existence.
• 177While Warren was forming his own philosophy, rejecting part of Owen’s convictions and accepting another part, his New Harmony experiences as a member of the original Community of Equality were producing other repercussions. His observation of human differences, among other things, shattered his faith in the ideal of economic equality. Basing his conclusions on the assumption that different persons put differing amounts of energy and time toward the accomplishment of various ends, and satisfied with the motivational drives which “enlightened self-interest” might supply, he proposed the substitution of the ideal of equal opportunities to the access to land, raw materials and credit. Equal opportunities being provided, individual differences and completely free competition would gradually work toward the establishment of an equitable society, in which returns would be measured by the amount of work performed, both quantitatively and qualitatively. To Warren the striving for equity was the highest possible goal of human effort.
• 178While Warren was forming his own philosophy, rejecting part of Owen’s convictions and accepting another part, his New Harmony experiences as a member of the original Community of Equality were producing other repercussions. His observation of human differences, among other things, shattered his faith in the ideal of economic equality. Basing his conclusions on the assumption that different persons put differing amounts of energy and time toward the accomplishment of various ends, and satisfied with the motivational drives which “enlightened self-interest” might supply, he proposed the substitution of the ideal of equal opportunities to the access to land, raw materials and credit. Equal opportunities being provided, individual differences and completely free competition would gradually work toward the establishment of an equitable society, in which returns would be measured by the amount of work performed, both quantitatively and qualitatively. To Warren the striving for equity was the highest possible goal of human effort.
• 179Warren’s complete program was a cumulative affair which did not receive definitive statement for almost twenty years. A part of this period of growth was his growing disregard for constituted authority, partially a product of attachment to a number of attitudes which convinced him that institutional government was a superfluous part of human society. His primary source of dissatisfaction with what he called the “communistic experiments” in New Harmony was the combination of interests. This combination required, as he saw it, a government based on authority and demanding obedience which resulted in the death of individual liberty. The alternative which he proposed and crusaded for was a system based on voluntary coöperation, but at no place rising above any individual within its structure; “the sovereignty of the individual” had to be preserved at all costs. This matter he considered more important than any artificial arrangement of individuals which demanded the fidelity of all. There was no compensation which could equate the sacrifice of this principle of individuality. There is a frontier flavor to his own blunt declaration of individualist war upon the hobbling tendencies of institutionalism which still commands at-tention:
• 180.  Ely, Labor Movement, 238; Warren, Practical Details, 13.
• 181.  An admirable summation of Warren’s philosophy of individualism is that of Thomas Low Nichols, Forty Years of American Life, II, 39. Nichols’ relations with Warren and the anarchists at “Modern Times” will be found in Chapter III.
• 182.  Warren, Practical Details, 13. Capitalized portions are Warren’s.
• 183.  Practical Details, above.
• 184.  Practical Details, 14.
• 185.  Practical Details, above.
• 186.  On his return to Cincinnati, Warren leased the tract of land bounded by Elm, John, Fifth and Ninth Streets from Nicholas Longworth for 99 years. His return of the lease to Longworth is anomalous, in view of the fact that he still conceived of land as a commodity and subject to purchase and sale. The loss of this tract as a bargaining weapon must have been keenly felt at the time consideration of a colony site was taking place. See George Warren, “Josiah Warren,” 2, for a summary of this curious incident.
• 187.  Practical Details, 14.
• 188.  The earliest proposal for the employment of labor notes in England similar to those which enjoyed widespread use in Warren’s Cincinnati store is that of the Brighton Co-Operative Benevolent Fund Association, in November, 1827, six months after their successful introduction in the Ohio pioneer venture. The operation of the store and the determination of the value of the labor notes differed slightly from that already functioning in America. One of the plates from which the English labor notes were printed is in the collection of the Workingmen’s Institute. See the description of the English plan in Podmore, Robert Owen, 386, quoting from the Cooperative Magazine of November, 1827.
• 189.  Quarterly Letter, I, 6.
• 190.  Quarterly Letter, I, above. The amount charged to pay this item was a variable in Warren’s plan. By the fifth month of the first year the amount added to original cost had been reduced to four per cent. Twenty years later he recommended adding six per cent to the original cost. Practical Details, 22; Equitable Commerce, 61.
• 191.  Practical Details, 15.
• 192.  Practical Details, 29.
• 193.  The Peaceful Revolutionist, I (February 5, 1833), 6. Warren skirted barter economy but briefly, even though he saw nothing particularly invidious about its operation if the need of either party involved did not constitute a margin sufficiently noticeable to promote exploitation one by the other.
• 194.  Quarterly Letter, I, 6.
• 195.  Warren, True Civilization an Immediate Necessity and the Last Ground of Hope for Mankind. Being the Results and Conclusions of Thirty-nine Years’ Laborious Study and Experiments in Civilization as it is, and in Different Enterprises for Reconstruction, 88, hereafter cited as True Civilization an Immediate Necessity; Practical Details, 15.
• 196.  Warren MSS., Labadie Collection, “A Scrap of History,” undated and un-paginated. This brief manuscript appears to be part of another attempted publication, but a comparison with his published works indicates that it remained unused.
• 197.  Practical Details, 24; Peaceful Revolutionist, I (April 5, 1833), 15,
• 198.  Practical Details, 22, 25, 31.
• 199.  This was Richard Folger, who with John Pickering, were among the earliest supporters of equity. Pickering later broke with Warren at the time of the commencement of “Utopia,” some twenty years later. Practical Details, 33; Periodical Letter, I, 2nd. series, supplement 2, p. 2; Peaceful Revolutionist, II (May, 1848), 13-15.
• 200.  Peaceful Revolutionist, I (February 5, 1833), 6.
• 201.  See Warren’s letter to the Mechanic’s Free Press (Philadelphia, 1827-1831), May 10, 1828, p. 2, quoted in Commons, Documentary History, V, 133-137.
• 202.  Practical Details, 16; Peaceful Revolutionist, I (February 5, 1833), 7.
• 203.  Practical Details, 27, 29.
• 204.  Compare prices reported by Warren in 1827 in Practical Details, 21, 23, 27.
• 205.  The following is a representative example: “Bought three barrels of rice at Haydn & Co’s. auction at 1½ cents a pound, and am selling it out at 1¾, while the customary price for so good an article has uniformly been 8 cents a pound; people are coming from all directions to get it . . .” Practical Details, 26.
• 206.  This has been a controversial point among interested observers, although Warren leaves no doubt about the matter. For confirmation of the three year duration see Peaceful Revolutionist, I (February 5, 1833), 7; The Herald of Equity, I (February, 1841), 6.
• 207.  Practical Details, 40.
• 208.  Practical Details, 23. Saunders later wrote for the Free Enquirer under the pseudonym “Philanthropos.” Free Enquirer, I, new series, (December 31, 1829), 79; Periodical Letter, I, 2nd. series, (January, 1858), 98-101.
• 209.  Ely stated that Warren did a total business of $150,000 during the operation of the time store, but Warren’s contemporary accounts were much more modest than this. In March, 1829 he revealed that he had never utilized more than $4,000 in the proceedings up to that time, and that he had retailed a total of about $30,000 worth of goods. Warren had actually begun the process of liquidation of the store at this time, but shortly revived it again. It is unlikely that his volume quintupled in the next year of operations. Ely, Labor Movement, 239; Practical Details, 31-32.
• 210.  Practical Details, 41.
• 211.  Practical Details, 42.
• 212.  True Civilization an Immediate Necessity, 107-108.
• 213.  Practical Details, 43.
• 214.  The fullest work on the most famous of Owen’s sons is Richard W. Leopold, Robert Dale Owen, A Biography (Cambridge, Mass., 1940). This stresses his later life as an Indiana political figure and convert to spiritualism and largely dismisses his activities as a reformer and freethinker. For another treatment with differing interpretations see Elinor Pancoast and Anne E. Lincoln, The Incorrigible Idealist, Robert Dale Owen in America (Bloomington, Ind., 1940).
• 215.  The most recent work of extensive character is the sympathetic study by Alice J. G. Perkins and Theresa Wolf son, Frances Wright, Free Enquirer (New York, 1939). Of considerable use also is William R. Waterman, Frances Wright (Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, vol. CXV, no. 1) (New York, 1924).
• 216.  A valuable account of this journal may be found in Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines 1741-1850 (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), 536-538.
• 217.  This was also true of Philadelphia, where The Mechanic’s Free Press had already made Warren’s views known to the workingmen of the city. Three stores involving Warren’s plan had begun operating in this city before the Cincinnati store completed its second year. Mechanic’s Free Press, May 17, September 20, 1828; March 14, 1829.
• 218.  Practical Details, 43.
• 219.  Waterman notes the influence of Warren in Frances Wright’s proposed reconstruction of society. Frances Wright, 251. When the two first became acquainted is uncertain; no evidence exists to support the contention that their association dates from New Harmony days, as Warren undoubtedly left the colony before Fanny’s residence was established. However, they had begun exchanging ideas in Cincinnati before she left for New York. Shortly before Warren undertook his own trip to the East, she recalled being at his home in Cincinnati in 1828, the occasion for this comment being the appearance of a lamp in the New York scene which she claimed was a theft of the earlier one patented by Warren in 1821. The Free Enquirer, II (May 22, 1830), 240. See also her favorable sketch of Warren and his accomplishments in The Free Enquirer, II (October 23, 1830), 412. It is interesting to observe that this comment, somewhat uncritical and ignorant of several facts concerning the Warren venture, was written after he had left New York and returned to the West. There is no indication that Robert Dale Owen had lost any confidence in the eventual success of a coöperative village from the spirit of this communication.
• 220.  Warren’s short notice was headed “To the Friends of the Equal Exchange of Labor in the West” and was dated July 4, 1830. The Free Enquirer, II (July 17, 1830), 301-302.
• 221.  The old clay cast method was employed in constructing the stereotype plate, and the substitution of a mixture of shellac, tar and sand for type metal was an unusual departure. Still another mixture, consisting of clay, sand, beeswax, tallow, oil, gum arabic and stearine for the purpose of making fine-surface engravings was also perfected at this time. For a comparison with the earlier stereotyping devices, see Thomas Hodgson, An Essay on the Origin and Progress of Stereotype Printing (Newcastle, England, 1820), 13-14; Theodore L. De Vinne, Printing in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1924), 6; New Harmony Gazette, I, 255, the latter for a description of the Lanefelder process developed in Austria in 1826, which aroused the attention of the Owenites while Warren was a member of the community.
• 222.  A full description of the compositions involved can be found in Kubler, History of Stereotyping, 301.
• 223.  Warren’s first work, A New System of Musical Notation, published in New Harmony, was closely followed by the other that same year, A Collection of the Most Popular Church Music Written Upon Geometric or Scientific Principles, a group of excerpts from 56 popular church hymns of the 1840’s printed in a form adapted for use by brass bands. Speaking of his father’s innovation, George Warren, himself a widely known band leader in southern Indiana in later years, explained, “He dispensed with the sharp and flat signatures, and the tier and length of the stem gave the length of the note, and the piano or forte power was designated by the size of the note itself.” “Josiah Warren,” 4-5.
• 224.  Patent No. 4479 on “Composition for Stereotype Plates” was issued to Warren on April 25, 1846. C. S. Partridge, Stereotyping the Papier Mache Process (Chicago, 1892), 130. A certified copy of this patent, signed and sealed by Thomas Eubank, Commissioner of Patents, August 26, 1850, is in the Warren MSS. in the Workingmen’s Institute Library.
• 225.  Herbert A. Kellar, Solon Robinson Pioneer and Agriculturist (Indiana Historical Collections, vol. XXI) (2 vols. Indianapolis, 1936), II, 504-507. For references to Warren’s process in other papers see Prairie Farmer, V (June, 1845), 155-156; Daily Cincinnati Gazette, July 23, July 30, 1845; Indiana Statesman, July 26, September 13, September 20, October 4, 1845, the latter issues also carrying reprints from articles on this subject in the New York Sun, New York Morning News, Vincennes (Ind.) Gazette and Princeton (Ind.) Chronicle. Other notices appeared from time to time in other stopping-off places along Robinson’s route, including Evansville, and Shawneetown, Illinois.
• 226.  Indiana Statesman, July 4, August 16, October 11, December 27, 1845; January 31, February 14, 1846. The cut in the last issue cited was a superb five column spread, eight inches high, of the map of the disputed Oregon Territory.
• 227.  One of Waren’s interesting controversies was that carried on with the editor of the Indiana Statesman, during the time following the closing of the New Harmony time store. Although he respected Warren as a technical innovator in the printing and engraving field, Burns refused to print his articles on the labor exchange, calling them “long-winded stories,” and marvelling that in the obscurity Warren was able to develop any kind of a clearly expressed idea. Indiana Statesman, February 15, 1845.
• 228.  The title page carried the date 1846 as the date of publication. All citations below are from this rare original edition unless otherwise noted. A selection from this edition is included in Irving Mark and Eugene L. Schwab, (eds.), The Faith of Our Fathers; An Anthology of Americana, 1790-1860 (New York, 1952), 380-384.
• 229.  A second edition appeared in 1849 while Warren was at “Utopia” (Smith’s Landing), Ohio, while a third was published in New York in 1852. A slightly altered version, with the addition of an editor’s preface and a different appendix, under the title True Civilization: A Subject of Vital and Serious Interest to All People but Most Immediately to Men and Women of Labor and Sorrow, printed under Warren’s direction in diffondale, Mass., in 1869, became the fourth appearance of this work. The fifth edition, posthumously released by Benjamin Tucker at Princeton, Mass., in 1875 bore the same title and content as the 1869 edition. Other Warren works incorporated the first two words of the title of this latter version, which has been the cause of a considerable amount of confusion among bibliographers.
• 230.  Equitable Commerce, introduction, iii.
• 231.  The five basic principles of the Warrenite community were re-phrased a number of times, receiving their most concise statement in 1863:
• 232.  Equitable Commerce, 10.
• 233.  “The security of person and property requires that each and every individual should be the supreme law to himself and his own. That one should have no power over another’s person or property.” Equitable Commerce, 24.
• 234.  Warren believed that the fact that human beings were characterized by individual peculiarities and that it still was acknowledged and remained “un-smothered” made this the starting place for what he termed the “ascent towards order and harmony.” Equitable Commerce, 4.
• 235.  Equitable Commerce, 4-5.
• 236.  Equitable Commerce, 7.
• 237.  Warren averred that the term “sovereignty of the people” could mean nothing else except the sovereignty of each individual; “Where is the sovereignty of a people when the sovereignty of every individual is surrendered to votes of majorities, or to a few men appointed to interpret and administer laws and institutions?” Practical Details, 40.
• 238.  Equitable Commerce, 23.
• 239.  Warren was unconvinced that statute law had produced any decline in the number of violent crimes. He inveighed against capital punishment for murder as just another variety of murder, an act which did not perform the function of a deterrent to fresh crimes of the same type. Equitable Commerce, 22.
• 240.  Warren accused governments of having been responsible for more bloodshed and violence throughout history than could have possibly occurred in the absence of all governments. The indictment of government as an agent of destruction and mass murder has become a much-repeated anarchist arraignment in almost every land which has developed an anarchist press. Equitable Commerce, 19.
• 241.  Equitable Commerce, 22, 24.
• 242.  “. . . neither rulers nor ruled can tell how the laws will be interpreted or administered till they have been repeatedly infringed and punishment has been inflicted,” Warren observed, seeking to discover the precise moment when law began to disintegrate. Equitable Commerce, 20.
• 243.  Wars he described as “probably the greatest of all destroyers of property,” and professed to be able to find only two roots from which all wars had originated; “direct or indirect plunder” and “the privilege of governing.” Warren denied the right of any government to force its citizens to fight against their will. Equitable Commerce, 21, 44.
• 244.  Equitable Commerce, 27-28. The right to complete individual freedom, according to Warrenite principle, was qualified only by the responsibility of each to respect the individuality of each. Infringement of another’s sovereignty carried with it all consequences of such action. Warren believed that a harmonious society was impossible unless each member became individually responsible for his acts. The similarity of Warren and Herbert Spencer’s later “law of equal freedom” can be detected at this point, despite the divergent points of origin.
• 245.  Warren made no distinction between “government” and “state” as the classic anarchist writers of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries have generally done; a connotation of voluntarism has been imparted to the former and coercion to the latter of these terms.
• 246.  Equitable Commerce, 30-31.
• 247.  Equitable Commerce, 25, 28. There is no existing evidence that Warren at any time was a believer in biological or racial inequality.
• 248.  Equitable Commerce, 16, 41-42. It is important to observe the change in Warren’s attitude toward organized religion in the twenty years between the first time store and the publication of the first summary of his social philosophy. Once non-committal, he now classed all churchmen as non-producers with a personal interest in the preservation of the existing order.
• 249.  Equitable Commerce, 27, 31.
• 250.  Equitable Commerce, 34. Warren intimated that the existing basis of the “present” system of exchanges was more ideological than scientific, unworthy of satisfactory apology or incapable of prolonged resistance to an opposing system.
• 251.  Warren admitted that his idea of individual sovereignty would produce chaos if attempts were made to force it to function within the national state system, but he believed that it would prove successful in a world lacking national consciousness. Equitable Commerce, 24.
• 252.  Equitable Commerce, 26.
• 253.  Equitable Commerce, 67. The MacDonald Diaries reveal that Owen suggested a maximum community population of about 2000 while on board ship bound for America in the fall of 1824.
• 254.  Thus he gave voice to the complaint of the bilked consumer everywhere; “. . . there is scarcely an article of food, clothing, tools, or medicines that is fit for use . . . the vender does not make them but imports them beyond the reach of responsibility.” Equitable Commerce, 42-43.
• 255.  Equitable Commerce, 11-12, 17, 40-41, 45. Warren’s conception of machines was not as producers of unemployment but as reducers of the work day for all and social engines whose output should be shared on an equitable plan.
• 256.  Equitable Commerce, 41-42.
• 257.  Equitable Commerce, 16-17. His opposition to the taking of interest on money was as rigid as to the stand on rent.
• 258.  Equitable Commerce, 44-45. The occupation-and-use concept of land was a product of later theorists in the individualist anarchist group.
• 259.  “We must admit the claims of the hardest labor to the highest reward, or we deny our own rights, extinguish the little light we have obtained, and throw everything back into confusion.” Equitable Commerce, 52.
• 260.  Equitable Commerce, 77.
• 261.  Equitable Commerce, 75.
• 262.  Greene thought very highly of Proudhon, although critical of some character traits; “He was too fond of vainglorious distinction and notoriety, and his amiability . . . led him too often, notwithstanding the violence of his writings, to listen favorably to proposals of compromise for the sake of peace and friendship.” The Word, II (April, 1874), 4.
• 263.  Mutual Banking (1850 ed.), 3 6-38.
• 264.  Mutual Banking (1850 ed.), 27-28; Radical Deficiency, introduction, vii, xi, xix; Higginson, Yesterdays, 175-176; The Word, XVIII (December, 1889), 2; Spirit of the Age, II, 51-52, 61, 69-71.
• 265.  See his published works on the subject; An Expository Sketch of a New Theory of Calculus (Paris, 1859); Explanation of the Theory of Calculus (Boston, 1870).
• 266.  Equality, 55-56.
• 267.  Equality, 73. Greene used the word “accident” in a way which might be applied to circumstances, environment, or to both.
• 268.  Equality, 70-71.
• 269.  Greene introduced over 30 separate petitions signed by several thousand women requesting permission to vote on the amendments and alterations to the state constitution. Consult appendices in Official Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the State Convention, Assembled May 4th, 1853, to Revise and Amend the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (3 vols. Boston, 1853); Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Begun and Held in Boston on the Fourth Day of May, 1853 (Boston, 1853).
• 270.  Higginson is responsible for the account describing Greene’s resignation from the Union Army as the result of a political quarrel. Conflicting stories are found in other sources. See Record of the Massachusetts Volunteers, 18611865 (2 vols. Boston, 1868), I, 470; James L. Bowen, Massachusetts in the War 1861-1865 (Springfield, Mass., 1889), 250, 724; Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Civil War (7 vols. Norwood, Mass., 1932), V, 554-556.
• 271.  Greene reprinted a translation of Proudhon’s famous essay, The State, from the Voix du Peuple of December 3, 1849, in which the latter first used the term “anarchy” as a synonym for the stateless society, in The Word, I (August, 1872), 2.
• 272.  The Word, IV (March, 1876), 3.
• 273.  Fragments, 227. See pp. 237-261 in same work for a verbatim account of the address delivered before the N. E. L. R. L.
• 274.  His translation of Proudhon’s What Is Property? began appearing in The Word in January, 1874, at which time he declared, “You will perceive that Proudhon and our friend Josiah Warren smite on substantially the same anvil.” Warren abruptly repudiated the comparison. The Word, II (January, 1874), 4; The Word, II (March, 1874), 2. It would appear that Warren was aware of Proudhon two decades before this. In the first number of the Periodical Letter, I (July, 1854), 22, Warren wrote the following: “It has been said by ‘Reformers’ that ‘all property was robbery’ but this idea followed out would give every one as much claim upon the products of labor as the producer himself had—of course this would constitute universal robbery and world wide confusion.” It would appear from the context that Warren was referring to Proudhon’s Qu’est ce que la Propriete? but it is unlikely that he had read this work, and would have to be charged with misunderstanding Proudhon’s position.
• 275.  The most famous of these petitions, that of April 6, 1873, signed by John Orvis, William B. Wright, Greene, Heywood and Tucker, is reprinted in Fragments, appendix. See also The Word, II (May, 1873), 2.
• 276.  See obituary in The Word, VII (July, 1878), 2.
• 277.  The most recent edition is that of the Modern Publishers of Indore, India, under the auspices of the Indian Sociological Review, in 1946.
• 278His association with the growing number of Tuckerites stimulated him to even more drastic repudiations of the state. He inveighed against the right of the state to take the life of anyone, or interfere with men’s individual private contracts, or erect monopolies of land or money to the benefit of some at the expense of others. He went on to ridicule the concept of “public rights,” as he had long before, and several other generalities and platitudes from the Cleveland inaugural speech. He denied the existence of a “public trust,” generally cited as the well-spring of authority vested in the presidency, and declared that the devotion to the “public welfare” would inevitably lead to the destruction of men’s individual rights under the guise of promoting their prosperity. He reserved his most eloquent contempt for the party system, which he thought a type of game which stimulated artificial relationships of antagonism among men naturally undisposed to belligerency, promoting synthetic conflict for the purpose of aggrandizing crafty leaders. In no less vigorous manner did he depreciate the activities transpiring in what the President had described as “the halls of national legislation.” To Spooner these were mere cockpits to which the lawmakers invited the representatives of all conceivable conflicting interests, where the former might “favor or oppose, . . . according as they can better serve their own personal interests and ambitions by doing the one or the other.” At the same time, he commented acidly on the patronizing attitude of the political elements in taking credit for such material prosperity as was enjoyed, while continuing the process of vitiating the efforts of non-political individuals and encouraging an increasing degree of dependence upon the ability of the government, now fully engaged in supplying a favorable state of affairs wherein the favored monopolies might function.
• 279His association with the growing number of Tuckerites stimulated him to even more drastic repudiations of the state. He inveighed against the right of the state to take the life of anyone, or interfere with men’s individual private contracts, or erect monopolies of land or money to the benefit of some at the expense of others. He went on to ridicule the concept of “public rights,” as he had long before, and several other generalities and platitudes from the Cleveland inaugural speech. He denied the existence of a “public trust,” generally cited as the well-spring of authority vested in the presidency, and declared that the devotion to the “public welfare” would inevitably lead to the destruction of men’s individual rights under the guise of promoting their prosperity. He reserved his most eloquent contempt for the party system, which he thought a type of game which stimulated artificial relationships of antagonism among men naturally undisposed to belligerency, promoting synthetic conflict for the purpose of aggrandizing crafty leaders. In no less vigorous manner did he depreciate the activities transpiring in what the President had described as “the halls of national legislation.” To Spooner these were mere cockpits to which the lawmakers invited the representatives of all conceivable conflicting interests, where the former might “favor or oppose, . . . according as they can better serve their own personal interests and ambitions by doing the one or the other.” At the same time, he commented acidly on the patronizing attitude of the political elements in taking credit for such material prosperity as was enjoyed, while continuing the process of vitiating the efforts of non-political individuals and encouraging an increasing degree of dependence upon the ability of the government, now fully engaged in supplying a favorable state of affairs wherein the favored monopolies might function.
• 280His association with the growing number of Tuckerites stimulated him to even more drastic repudiations of the state. He inveighed against the right of the state to take the life of anyone, or interfere with men’s individual private contracts, or erect monopolies of land or money to the benefit of some at the expense of others. He went on to ridicule the concept of “public rights,” as he had long before, and several other generalities and platitudes from the Cleveland inaugural speech. He denied the existence of a “public trust,” generally cited as the well-spring of authority vested in the presidency, and declared that the devotion to the “public welfare” would inevitably lead to the destruction of men’s individual rights under the guise of promoting their prosperity. He reserved his most eloquent contempt for the party system, which he thought a type of game which stimulated artificial relationships of antagonism among men naturally undisposed to belligerency, promoting synthetic conflict for the purpose of aggrandizing crafty leaders. In no less vigorous manner did he depreciate the activities transpiring in what the President had described as “the halls of national legislation.” To Spooner these were mere cockpits to which the lawmakers invited the representatives of all conceivable conflicting interests, where the former might “favor or oppose, . . . according as they can better serve their own personal interests and ambitions by doing the one or the other.” At the same time, he commented acidly on the patronizing attitude of the political elements in taking credit for such material prosperity as was enjoyed, while continuing the process of vitiating the efforts of non-political individuals and encouraging an increasing degree of dependence upon the ability of the government, now fully engaged in supplying a favorable state of affairs wherein the favored monopolies might function.
• 281His association with the growing number of Tuckerites stimulated him to even more drastic repudiations of the state. He inveighed against the right of the state to take the life of anyone, or interfere with men’s individual private contracts, or erect monopolies of land or money to the benefit of some at the expense of others. He went on to ridicule the concept of “public rights,” as he had long before, and several other generalities and platitudes from the Cleveland inaugural speech. He denied the existence of a “public trust,” generally cited as the well-spring of authority vested in the presidency, and declared that the devotion to the “public welfare” would inevitably lead to the destruction of men’s individual rights under the guise of promoting their prosperity. He reserved his most eloquent contempt for the party system, which he thought a type of game which stimulated artificial relationships of antagonism among men naturally undisposed to belligerency, promoting synthetic conflict for the purpose of aggrandizing crafty leaders. In no less vigorous manner did he depreciate the activities transpiring in what the President had described as “the halls of national legislation.” To Spooner these were mere cockpits to which the lawmakers invited the representatives of all conceivable conflicting interests, where the former might “favor or oppose, . . . according as they can better serve their own personal interests and ambitions by doing the one or the other.” At the same time, he commented acidly on the patronizing attitude of the political elements in taking credit for such material prosperity as was enjoyed, while continuing the process of vitiating the efforts of non-political individuals and encouraging an increasing degree of dependence upon the ability of the government, now fully engaged in supplying a favorable state of affairs wherein the favored monopolies might function.
• 282Spooner’s death in 1887 brought to an end both his pamphleteering and his anonymous contributions to Liberty at the time when the nation-wide loose affiliation of anti-government intellectuals was at its peak. With this group his prestige grew with the passing of time, so that some twenty years later, examining their antecedents, those with a historical bent were willing to admit that Spooner’s contributions to American anarchism were fully as important as Josiah Warren’s. The underrated egoistic doctrines of Max Stirner were already looming in the writings of the Tucker group, intruding on the earlier basis of anarchist thinking, and altering some of the tenaciously-held concepts, especially those dealing with the abstraction of natural right. The flowering of American anarchism under the leadership of Benjamin Tucker, and the gradual swing to intellectual egoism, is a many-sided and personality-filled account best considered in relation to new circumstances which tended to modify the contributions of its important forerunners.
• 283Spooner’s death in 1887 brought to an end both his pamphleteering and his anonymous contributions to Liberty at the time when the nation-wide loose affiliation of anti-government intellectuals was at its peak. With this group his prestige grew with the passing of time, so that some twenty years later, examining their antecedents, those with a historical bent were willing to admit that Spooner’s contributions to American anarchism were fully as important as Josiah Warren’s. The underrated egoistic doctrines of Max Stirner were already looming in the writings of the Tucker group, intruding on the earlier basis of anarchist thinking, and altering some of the tenaciously-held concepts, especially those dealing with the abstraction of natural right. The flowering of American anarchism under the leadership of Benjamin Tucker, and the gradual swing to intellectual egoism, is a many-sided and personality-filled account best considered in relation to new circumstances which tended to modify the contributions of its important forerunners.