Men Against the State

CHAPTER VIII

Benjamin R. Tucker and the Age of Liberty I

1. Intellectual Heir of Native Anarchist Traditions

The name of Benjamin R. Tucker has of necessity appeared repeatedly in the discussion of the latter years of the pioneer native American anarchists. A full account of none of his predecessors is possible without bringing in the circumstances under which contact with Tucker occurred, since he was to become the synthesizer of their varied thought, and eventually to acquire the reputation of being the most talented speaker and writer of the entire group. Much of his anarchist thought, although derived almost entirely from others, has received the stamp of originality from those unacquainted with the mature influences of his young manhood, while his contributions as a publisher, translator, and literary figure between 1875 and 1908 have been generally overlooked. To understand the imposing prominence of Tucker in the American anarchist propaganda picture during the period of its greatest height, a generous measure of consideration must be given the occasion of his first acquaintances with anti-government thought, and the men whom he cited as the sources of most of his ideas.

Tucker was born in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, a town adjoining New Bedford, April 17, 1854. He was the son of parents described as “radical Unitarians” of “comfortable circumstances.”1 After attending Friends Academy in New Bedford, he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he spent three2 years in desultory study. He became successively a prohibitionist, a woman suffragist, a supporter of the eight hour movement, and a religious radical. It was in the pages of The Index and the Investigator, both published locally, that he first learned of materialism and atheism.

By 1872 his interest in engineering studies lapsed in favor of politics, when he founded a Greeley-Brown Club in New Bedford while still three years too young to vote himself.3 The year 1872 brought with it another experience, however, which ended his political aspirations and commenced his associations with anarchism. At the spring meeting of the New England Labor Reform League in Boston, he met Josiah Warren and William B. Greene for the first time, and a life-long career as an anti-statist thinker was begun.

In November of this same year Tucker began corresponding with Ezra Heywood. Articles by Tucker, published in The Word, brought an acquaintance with this prominent intellectual.4 Through this paper, primarily, he became familiar with Warren’s labor exchange and labor theory of value, Greene’s free mutual banking, J. K. Ingalls’ land occupation and use, and Heywood’s intense literary style. To the ideas of these Americans he added something from Proudhon, Bakunin, Max Stirner and Herbert Spencer, and produced a redoubtable amalgam which proved almost impenetrable through a stormy 27 year period of exposition in the pages of Liberty.

In addition, he became friendly with Warren, Spooner, and Greene despite considerable disparity in age.5 Tucker later called his paper “the foremost organ of Josiah Warren’s doctrines”6 and acclaimed Spooner “one of the profoundest political philosophers that ever added to the knowledge of mankind.”7 He took no credit for originality in his espousal of free banking: “I am indebted to Col. Greene’s Mutual Banking more than to any other single publication for such knowledge as I have of the principles of finance—the most compact, satisfactory, keen and clear treatise upon mutual money extant.”8 Ingalls was probably the first of the Americans to write for Tucker under his own name,9 while the expressions of both Andrews and Heywood are present in Tucker’s writings, those of the latter especially as the result of close publishing association.10

Tucker’s first public discussion of his newly-adopted beliefs dealt with the Warren-Greene theory of interest and money. It was, strangely enough, carried in the pages of Francis Abbot’s religious Index, with the editor himself furnishing the formidable opposition. Although the controversy was a matter almost wholly foreign to the paper, it lasted nearly the entire year of 1873,11 with little observable result except the introduction of Tucker to a type of polemic which was to become extremely popular in his own journal a decade later. Tucker applied the Warrenite fundamental, that in any exchange of labor12 or its products exact equivalents must be sought in the transaction, to the act of lending money. Using the term “interest” in the ordinary sense, “a sum of money paid to the lender in return for the benefit conferred upon the borrower,” he maintained that “cost to the lender” was all that could equitably or “morally” be taken. He later came to label interest-taking a “crime,” as did Heywood. Tucker adopted the latter’s fondness for quoting biblical remonstrances against this practice and continually upbraided ministers for failing to stress such social teachings of the scrip-tures.13

Under the influence of Greene, Tucker made the first of several trips to Europe14 in August, 1874, returning in mid-January of the next year after spending some time in the study of Proudhon’s writings in both published and manuscript form. With this background, Heywood engaged him as associate editor15 of the Word in April, 1875, and a long career as an anarchist writer was fully commenced. His direct association with Heywood lasted until December, 1876, during which period he attracted particular attention by two actions. One of these was his quixotic repetition of the celebrated refusal of Henry David Thoreau to pay taxes, a symbolic gesture in the attempt to illuminate his intellectual opposition to taxation by compulsion. On August 9, 1875, Tucker publicly announced his refusal to pay the poll tax of the town of Princeton,16 Mass., the home of Heywood and the publishing office of the Word. Later in the month he was incarcerated in the Worcester County Jail for so doing, but his release took place in short order under anti-climactic conditions.17 This was his only clash with the machinery of the state during a long period of literary attack upon it. His sympathizers wrote off the incident as “foolhardy” and a consequence of youthful and impetuous idealism.18

Of much more importance to the anarchist element was the announcement in January, 1876 of the publication of Tucker’s translation of Proudhon’s famous What Is Property? An octavo tome of 500 pages, it was a serious and worthy contribution for a young man of 21 years of age, and ended his misgivings as to the attention accorded him due to his youth.19 Henceforth his stature among the anti-statists grew20 until he became the acknowledged literary power among them.

Tucker’s restlessness and dissatisfaction with Heywood’s policy in conducting the Word resulted in his resignation in December, 1876. He charged that Heywood was devoting too much time and space to “love reform,” and not enough to “labor reform.”21 “I wish to give myself first and emphatically to the advocacy of justice to labor,” announced Tucked as he severed his connections22 with the Heywood group and began plans for his own venture, the Radical Review, the following month.23

The Radical Review was an undertaking of wide scope and intentions. Its policy was definitely extended in making public the political and economic tenets of American anarchism, and during its short life it became the one organ in which the prominent pioneer expositors were united. Andrews, Spooner, Greene, Heywood and Ingalls all contributed articles of importance and value. Tucker had serious literary ambitions for his journal as well, and a group of other personalities24 became attached to the fortunes of the Radical Review during its brief period of publication. Begun in May, 1877,25 the final number came out in February, 1878. This was probably due more to a personal decision on the part of Tucker than to failure. Ezra Heywood’s first conviction under the Comstock laws took place during the summer of 1878. Tucker, anxious to do his part in the struggle to keep the radical periodical press alive, took charge of the Word in his absence. Moving its editorial and publication offices to Cambridge, he directed its fortunes from there from August, 1878, until Heywood’s release from prison late in December of the same year.26 In the meantime, Tucker’s own venture languished, and it never resumed publication under his name or management.

For over two years thereafter he remained inactive on the propaganda line, although engaged in journalism in Boston as a means of livelihood. The observation that such former stalwarts as Andrews and Heywood were straying away from the “plumb-line” may have impressed upon him the need for a periodical27 devoted entirely to the dissemination of anarchism rather than every shade of unorthodoxy. At any rate, on August 6, 1881, the first issue of Tucker’s famous broadsheet Liberty appeared, accompanied by a statement of principle and editorial policy which must have appealed to all the extreme individualist anarchists on his first mailing list:28

It may be well to state at the outset that this journal will be edited to suit its editor, not its readers. He hopes that what suits him will suit them; but if not, it will make no difference. No subscriber, or body of subscribers, will be allowed to govern his course, dictate his policy, or prescribe his methods. Liberty is published for the very definite purpose of spreading certain ideas, and no claim will be admitted on any pretext of freedom of speech, to waste its limited space in hindering the attainment of that object.

It is true that an examination of Liberty during its long period of publication reveals that this ideal was only partially realized. Tucker proved to be easily stimulated into argumentation, and numerous pages of Liberty were henceforth to be devoted to disputes of many kinds. Much of it was wrangling and hair-splitting of little or no value which in the later days gave the paper the tenor of a debating society. Despite its shortcomings, however, Liberty preserved sufficient vitality to become the longest-lived of any radical periodical of economic or political nature in the nation’s history, and certainly one of the world’s most interesting during the past two centuries.

2. Theoretical Anarchism Matured

The crystallization of anarchist thought which took place during the period of Tucker’s prominence as the literary focal point of the native American demonstration can be found illustrated in both political and economic senses throughout Liberty. Tucker himself, however, left no doubt as to which aspect of the struggle against the state he considered the most important. Production, distribution and exchange were all subjects of long study on his part, and he came to the conclusion that the political and social structures29 of American culture could better be dealt with after economic problems had been settled. “Liberty, to be effective, must find its first application in the realm of economics,” he declared,30 and on this matter of the economic basis of life he drummed continually.

Tucker’s contribution to the thought of his associated anti-statists was his articulate presentation of the concept of the four monopolies which he saw as productive of all the evils of society. The anarchist approach was similar to the general theory of the many-branched socialist movement in that it postulated the existence of an element of surplus wealth. Queried Tucker in his first issue, “Somebody gets the surplus wealth that Labor produces and does not consume. Who is the Somebody?” After a rapid survey of the varied means of obtaining “property,” during which such methods as work, gift, discovery, gambling, beggary, and the violent or forceful means of appropriation, as individuals, were all dismissed as effecting the accumulation of but a minor portion of the world’s wealth, Tucker, by his process of elimination, inexorably arrived at the culprit, whom he labeled the “usurer.” Said Tucker, “There are three forms of usury, interest on money, rent of land and houses, and profit in exchange. Whoever is in receipt of any of these is a usurer.” Furthermore, under existing conditions, there hardly lived a single soul who did not come under this classification in one way or another. Not only were bankers, manufacturers, merchants and landlords usurers under this definition, but so were all workingmen who placed their savings in interest-bearing positions, either in banks or elsewhere. Anyone who “exchanges his labor for more than an equivalent” was a “usurer,” but those guilty of this and the other economic peculations previously listed did not equally benefit. “Only the chief usurers accumulate,” he observed; “in agricultural and thickly-settled countries, the landlord; in industrial and commercial countries, the bankers. Those are the Somebodies who swallow up the surplus wealth.”31

To Tucker these were not the effects of natural economic processes but the by-products of privilege,32 privilege derived from the possession of power and enjoyed by a few. The source of the power he traced to monopoly, a term which he defined in relation to competition.33 This in turn rested on his interpretations of cost and value, or in his own terms, the “reward of labor,” which was two-fold, “scientific” and “actual.” In a state of absolutely free competition, these would be practically identical, “the product of an equal amount of equally arduous labor.”34 From this analysis stemmed Tucker’s definition of a monopolist:35

. . . any person, corporation, or institution whose right to engage in any given pursuit of life is secured, either wholly or partially, by any agency whatsoever—whether the nature of things or the force of events or the decree of arbitrary power,—against the influence of competition.

Despite the leeway granted in this statement, he did not hesitate in locating the monopolies and the sources thereof which created the grave dislocations of economic society. Here he entered his concept of the four monopolies in the creation of which the state was “the chief of sinners,” and two of which were by far the most evil, “the monopoly of land and the monopoly of credit.” The other two, the monopoly of the tariffs and the monopoly of patents and copyrights, were frankly stateconducted, he said, and completed the process enabling the extraction of profit in exchange. With reference to the first pair of monopolies, Tucker was very explicit:36

Ground-rent exists only because the State stands by to collect it and to protect land titles rooted in force or fraud. Otherwise the land would be free to all, and no one could control more than he used. Interest and house rent exist only because the State grants to a certain class of individuals and corporations the exclusive privilege of using its credit and theirs as a basis for the issuance of circulating currency. Otherwise credit would be free to all, and money, brought under the law of competition, would be issued at cost.

Thus he concluded that “the usurer is the Somebody” and that “the State is his protector,” and only the abolition of the power to create such monopolies of land, money, patents and copyrights would ever make it possible for “laborers” to retain the full return from their production. Tucker’s writings never neglected this program, the fight against the state as the backbone of monopoly37 continuing in the pages of Liberty for over twenty-five years, and under a number of different forms. For this reason he rejected the reform fight against trusts at a later time, declaring that the trusts existed through the agency of legality in the first place and confining his remedy to the suggestion that the laws creating trusts be repealed, instead of new laws being passed to neutralize the evils resulting from the previous ones.

Of these monopolies, Tucker singled out for his particular attention and life-long attack that of money,38 or the centralization of the financial system by the federal government. Utilizing the ideas of Greene and Spooner, he evolved an argument which differed little from theirs, though more blunt in its phrasing. “The first point of attack should be the power of legally privileged capital to increase without work. And as the monopoly of the issue of money is the chief bulwark of this power, Liberty turns its heaviest guns upon that.”39 State and national banks were looked upon as “law-created and law-protected monopolies,” and were “equally objectionable” to the advocates of free banking, whose chief aim was “to secure the right of all wealth to monetization without prior conversion into some particular form of wealth limited in amount and without being subjected to ruinous discounts.”40 He fought the gold standard just as bitterly as had his predecessors, asserting at one time that it was the “king of commodities” and a “privileged product,” and that free trade was incomprehensible in a world using it universally. “The nation which absorbs it—that is, the nation whose exports largely exceed its imports—will surely govern the world.”41 Tucker realized that there existed stiff penalties on the statute books to prevent just what he was advocating. In fact, he had himself participated in an effort to have that of Massachusetts repealed while associated with Heywood, to no avail. However, he kept the issue before his readers and critics constantly, despite his failure to suggest a means of by-passing the state.

Writings on finance filled the major part of many single issues of the paper. In fact, little lessening took place in the prominence of the money question among the matters before discussion until the mid-90’s, by which time about everything constructive on the subject had been expressed. Tucker argued that everything not labor which played a part in production was capital, and money, being one of these things, was capital.42 Every kind of wealth had a right to exercise its “natural and legitimate monetary function,” and the fact that money was arbitrarily limited in amount was the cause of practically all existing “social injustices.” The arbitrary decision as to the actual volume of money acted to keep its total amount below the demand for it, and thus tended to raise the rate of interest.43 He did not attack the measure or standard44 of value; without one, arrived at through force, selection or mutual agreement, it mattered not which, the idea of money was “not only impossible, but unthinkable.” Security might not be essential to the institution of a money system, he granted, but “it is an essential of steady production and stable commerce.” The use of insecure money was a sure road to “general bankruptcy”: “When products can be had for the writing of promises and the idea gets abroad that such promises are good money whether kept or not, the producers are very likely to stop producing.” The ultimate of all this, then, would be the existence of many more claims upon production in the form of money than there were products to buy with it.45

The need of evidence of security for money through some system of organized credit did not require sanction of some particular commodity as the sole medium with which to keep the promises. Subscribing to the Greene ideas, he thought it perfectly sound to retain the gold or silver dollar, arrived at through agreement on an arbitrary weight in ounces, as a standard. However, the idea of monetizing other commodities with relation to their values as expressed in specie dollars remained topmost in his considerations:46

What the friends of free money are fighting for is the right both of individuals and of coöperators to issue money when and as they choose, and what they are fighting against is the laws which in any way make it impossible for either individuals or coöperators to exercise this right. This, and nothing else, is the free money theory.

The volume theorists with whom Tucker debated maintained that an increase in the amount of money by mutual banking was no solution. As the volume increased, its purchasing power decreased, the ratio of the aggregate purchasing power of money to commodities in exchange remaining unchanged.47 The Tuckerite mutualists rejoined that such a stand assumed that the volume increase took place at the expense of the standard of value, the backing becoming debased as more money was introduced into the economy. But mutual banking would have no such result. The standard of value would remain the specie dollar, only other property than specie would be monetized at the same standard and measure. Therefore the purchasing power of the gold and silver dollars would not be affected. Tucker theorized that the increased distribution would facilitate the distribution of wealth, and the increased distribution would stimulate the demand for more wealth. The increased demand would encourage the increase in production, and therefore, an increase in the abundance of capital. This increase in the abundance of capital would tend to lower interest rates “up to the point where interest disappears entirely.”48 He never lost sight of his primary purpose, the destruction of the ability of capital to return to its owner an income without the application of labor by its owner. Capital was already “rewarded,” he declared, merely by its ownership. If the owner was to lend it and the borrower “damages, destroys or consumes” a portion or all of it, then it was the right of the owner to have that fully restored. Any surplus beyond its return “intact,” on the other hand, was “payment for a day’s work a second time,”49 for he defined capital as “a day’s work already done” and embodied in the form of tangible property. Tucker did not censure the taking of interest as such, but with Proudhon, believed that if the power to take it were extended to all men equally, it would eventually cancel itself out. Its persistence was due, therefore, to the fact that it continued to be a burden upon a portion of society unable to make use of it through the location of the money system in the hands of a monopoly by the state, and which free banking would shatter.50

Tucker’s philosophical and political ideas covered areas which previously had been little touched upon by his predecessors, in contrast to his convictions relating to money, credit and banking. A deep strain of religion had remained in the conclusions of all the prominent previous exponents excepting Warren. Tucker, reflecting the influence of Michael Bakunin and other continentals, brought the issue out resolutely in asserting that anarchism, as an impetus toward the realization of liberty and freedom, necessarily had to conduct the fight against authority everywhere. He saw the church and state as twin forces whose outlines remained, even in those who felt no qualms in making the most outspoken specific criticism of them in operation in particular areas of human society. “The purpose of liberty, boiled down to its ultimate essence, is the abolition of authority,” he summarized, and no headway would be made toward this goal as long as there remained the belief that authoritarian institutions of some kind were necessary. Church and state he conceived as a “double-headed monster” which maintained itself by keeping the masses of the people “drugged with the superstititious reverence for the fiction of authority.”51

It was his conviction that the fight against the church was being won, but that its power was being absorbed by the state, with even more serious consequences. Of the three forms of authority which threatened liberty, that of the Christian churches and their offshoot autocracy was the less to be feared and parliamentarianism and the authoritarian socialism of Karl Marx the more dangerous. It was in the latter two that he observed the transference of worship from the supernatural to the organs of the state:52

It is human authority that hereafter is to be dreaded, and the State, its organ, that in the future is to be dreaded. Those who have lost their faith in gods only to put it in governments, those who have ceased to be Church-worshippers only to become State-worshippers; those who have abandoned pope for king or czar; and priest for president or parliament;—have indeed changed their battle ground, but none the less are foes of liberty still.

Thus Tucker, finding the core of authoritarianism laid deep in the origins of theocracy, came to the conclusion that for his own time the emphasis had changed: “This century’s battle is with the State,” was his blunt estimation of the issue. Like Spooner and Warren, he repudiated the idea of society as possessing personality. “Society is not a person or a thing but a relation, and a relation can have no rights”; society consisted of individuals, and only individuals possessed rights.53 The greatest right he thought men might hold was liberty, equally held by each. “Equal liberty,” he explained, “means the largest amount of liberty compatible with equality and mutuality of respect, on the part of individuals living in society, for their respective spheres of action.”54 Tucker felt that the basis of anarchism rested on this concept, which he described elsewhere as “the greatest amount of liberty compatible with equality of liberty, the fundamental law of social expediency,”55 after contact with Stirner’s teachings had convinced him that the concept of natural rights was false, and contract a far more satisfactory basis upon which to erect a sound human social system.

Of the prominent American anarchist writers, Tucker was the most careful in defining his terms, especially the expressions “the State,” and “government.” “The anarchist defines government as invasion, nothing more or less,” he stated flatly, while considering the impasse resulting from critics failing to understand anarchist terminology. “Protection against invasion, then, is the opposite of government. Anarchists, in favoring the abolition of government, favor the abolition of invasion, not protection against invasion.”56 Granting the right of individuals and voluntary associations the right to resist invasive behavior on the part of others, he continued, did not imply sanction of the state as one of these associations. On the contrary, anarchists everywhere saw the state only as a compulsory, usurpatory institution, “whose real purposes are offense and invasion; an institution to which all are forced to belong and which all are compelled to support.”57 The philosophy of equal liberty as advanced by anarchists did not preclude “regulation,” but regulation which might be thought necessary should come from “selection and voluntary assent.” The security of life and property, which, said Tucker, appeared to be the pretext under which government theoretically was established, actually served to invite the circumvention of the “normal processes of Nature” by the utilization of “artificial expedients.” Here he made a distinction, at a later time, between voluntary contracts and the assumption of authority and exercise of power on the understanding that consent had been tendered.58 It was his conviction that society merely reflected the general intercourse of individuals in what he chose to call “experimental association,” and that it was and would continue to remain very fluid, depending upon whether or not “artificial intervention” took place. When it did, it sought its expression through the exercise of authority, and this, said Tucker, in its organized phase, was “government.” The reduction in liberty resulting from this change in the conduct of affairs was inevitably increased. “The most lamentable spectacle today,” he observed, “is the short sighted reformer attempting to secure greater liberty by advocating the method of greater authority, more intervention, more government.”59

Before the state or its visible element the government could disassociate from its long-established role of coercive agent, it had to abandon what Tucker called “The primary act of invasion,” the collection of taxes by force. This act, along with the legal sanction granted monopoly development, composed the primary invasive practices of the state, and when both were abandoned as policies, then the peoples of all countries could look forward to a change in social conditions “far more efficiently protective against invasion than any machinery of restraint.” The abolition of compulsory taxation would mean the abolition of the state as well, Tucker asserted, and the form of society succeeding it would be on the line of a voluntary defensive institution, prevented from becoming invasive through threats of deprivation of contributions from its members. Thus the demand of the members of the group would act as a device for keeping down the scope of its organization, and make difficult the growth of agencies within itself vying for power.60

In the matter of taxation, Tucker from the beginning advised a program of resistance to payment, in an effort to determine the extent to which the government would go in the process of collection. It was his conviction that if one-fifth of any given nation’s people were to resist taxation, the cost of collection would be greater than the remaining four-fifths would consent to pay, and thus bring its conduct to a crisis.61 Any other course of behavior than passive resistance was frowned on, however. The old concept of spontaneous revolution and armed resistance was outmoded in the new era of military discipline; improved firearms and artillery relegated all this to the past. In fact, he was unable to conceive any force succeeding other than that of passive resistance by inoffensive people, refraining from providing even the provocation of public demonstrations.

In fact, Tucker was not concerned with the abolition of the existing state, either in his own land or elsewhere. His preoccupation was with the concept of the state as an institution, and he became more and more convinced that it never would be disturbed by such measures as armed rebellion. His concern was with the creation of “some considerable measure and solid weight of absolute and well-grounded disbelief in it as an institution.” In its absence, an existing state might be overthrown, but another was sure to rise in its place, and this would be perfectly natural, due to the fact that the belief in its necessity would remain undamaged by mere demonstration of force. The job of the anarchist, said Tucker, was “to create a public sentiment” rendering the collection of taxes, or any other act construed as invasion, either extremely difficult or impossible. The state was “an instrument of aggression,” and its demise would be brought about only by individuals who by their various acts of non-coöperation and obstruction could “succeed in stripping the State of its invasive powers.” This, said Tucker, was the very best any anarchist might hope to bring about.62

Tucker was as convinced of the ineffectiveness of the ballot as he was of the bayonet and bullet. Even Spooner did not exceed him in his deprecation of the system of government by majority rule. No people should delegate power of any dimension which could not be revoked by any “interested individual.” “Personal government is the only true government,” he declared. The laws of a majority might be fully as destructive to liberty as those of a royal tyrant. The people living under a system of majority legislation should not be blind to the fact, he pointed out, that “the thing done” was not absolved by “the form of doing.”63 Tucker held that boss rule was the inevitable outcome of the voting process, and its continuation merely perpetuated the very evils its reformers sought to check. The anarchist could not countenance the principle that the majority might rule the minority through the ballot box; “the oppression housed in ballot boxes is the same deadly genius that lurks in the palace,” pronounced the new intellectual leader of the native American anti-statists.64 Furthermore, persons securing power through the ballot were no more immune to arbitrary exercise of that power than any other. If any single reason for Tucker’s opposition to the voting procedure stood out, it was the conviction that the office corrupted the man, and that all those performing the function of governing resembled each other within a short time, regardless of the principles entertained by one or the other prior to taking office.65

Of the many types of criticism which he received during the dissemination of his convictions, Tucker was the most vulnerable to those which reproached him for his program of destructive criticism, accusing him of offering no suggestions in the way of a substitute for the existing system of government which he so abominated. Of many well-conceived replies the following is characteristic:66

Now, so far from not offering anything in the place of what is now falsely called government, we have something very tangible to offer,—something very rational, practical, and easy of application. We offer coöperation. We offer non-compulsive organization. We offer associative combination. We offer every possible method of voluntary social union by which men and women may act together for the furtherance of well-being. In short, we offer voluntary scientific socialism in the place of the present compulsory unscientific organization which characterizes the State and all of its ramifications . . .

There were two methods of government, said Tucker. One was that of “drivership,” the coercive conduct of the state in forcing the individual where he did not willingly wish to go. The other was the anarchist method of “leadership,” inducing the individual towards the “goal of an ideal civilization” through persuasion and “attraction.”67 All suggested re-organization of society fell within these two broad categories: “Government, Archism, invasion, are used as equivalent terms; whoever invades, individual or State, governs, and is an Archist; whoever defends against invasion, individual or voluntary association, opposes government and is an Anarchist.”68

Under Benjamin Tucker’s direction, then, we find a synthesis of the many strains of objection to government voiced by his predecessors and teachers, with the accent placed heavily upon the economic factors responsible for buttressing the strength of the arms of government. Two aims of anarchist activity, the abolition of compulsory taxation and the abolition of legally-protected money and land monopolies, form the main theme of his critical writing, and of nearly 50 associates, resulting in the production of an astonishing volume of literature for over three decades. Summarized Tucker on behalf of his compatriots:69

The Anarchists believe . . . that the greater part, if not all, of the necessity for the existence of the State is the result of an artificial limitation of the freedom of civil society, and that the completion of industrial freedom may one day so harmonize individuals that it will no longer be necessary to provide a guarantee of political freedom . . . it is undeniable that the most important freedoms, those without which all other freedoms are of little or no avail, the freedom of banking and the freedom to take possession of unoccupied land, exist nowhere in the civilized world; that the existing State . . . is unquestionably based upon a compulsory tax that is itself a denial of equal freedom, and is daily adding to ponderous volumes of statutes the bulk of which are either sumptuary and meddlesome in character or devised in the interest of privilege or monopoly.

3. Tucker, the Radicals, and Reform

Liberty under the editorship of Tucker was a vehicle for many things besides the precise definition of anarchism and its aims. As the organ of a segment of intellectual radicalism of more than ordinary articulation, it carried much material of both sympathetic and critical nature referring to other portions of the whole movement for economic change after 1880. Thus Tucker’s writings furnish many illuminations of the anarchist attitude toward the various radical groups of his day; the Social Democrats, nihilists, socialists, communists, Single Taxers, as well as the labor unions, and lesser-known fragments of reform sentiment. A study of the relations between Tucker and these other groups illustrates the development of divergent paths as well, demonstrating the reason for the failure of establishment of any radical common front.

It is interesting to note that no differentiation was made in the beginning between the European and American exponents of anarchism. Tucker considered theirs a common fight against reaction at first, and gave the activities especially of the Russians a great amount of publicity and sympathy. Tucker personally gave evidence of having been strongly influenced by Michael Bakunin’s God and the State, which he sold in its French edition until exhausted, then translated it into English, a landmark in anarchist propaganda.70 The picture of Sophie Perovskaya, assassin of Czar Alexander II, was prominently displayed on the first page of Liberty’s initial issue, and an undisguised program of apology for the actions of the Russian nihilists was featured for over three years thereafter.

The enthusiasm for Peter Kropotkin was no less marked, as well as for Eliseé Reclus, and Kropotkin’s Swiss anarchist paper, Le Révolte. Tucker regarded them as “among the most prominent anarchists in Europe,” and the paper “the most scholarly Anarchist journal in ex-istence.”71 He devoted the whole issue of Liberty of February 17, 1883 to the trial in Lyons, France of Kropotkin and 51 fellow anarchists, an event which he accused the English language press of covering up. “Anarchism knows no frontiers,” he declared, prophesying “grave troubles” if the Russian ex-nobleman and his compatriots were convicted.72

Numerous other prominent Continental revolutionaries of anarchist persuasions received publicity and friendly support from Tucker. Tucker wrote an indignant condemnation of the Italian government when the anarchist Amilcare Cipriani received a 25 year prison sentence in the spring of 1882. The rise of the Italians Errico Malatesta and Carlo Cafiero as anti-statist journalists was noted with pleasure, and widespread attention was given to the Paris trial of another woman of note among their number, Louise Michel.73 Tucker personally undertook the establishment of a Boston fund collection agency for a group of Russian nihilist refugees in Paris led by Vera Sassulich and Pierre Lavroff. He welcomed the arrival in the United States of Leo Hartmann, instigator of the so-called Moscow Mine Conspiracy. He even saw fit to speak approvingly of the entry at New York of his subsequent bitter enemy Johann Most, the fiery German instigator.74

Dazzled temporarily by the very concept of rebellion, Tucker’s defense of its many facets was indiscriminate for some time, despite an indication that he already noticed differences, and occasionally mildly reproved the sanction of certain courses by the Europeans. “It is reverence for office,” he wrote, “that has kept. . . and still nurtures that foul ulcer, czardom, on the face of humanity, which the Nihilists alone are ready to tear out by the roots, and bury out of sight forever. Success to the Nihilists! They are the only men and women in Russia who do not assent.”75 Tucker justified their use of dynamite as a measure in self-defense. He reduced the whole conduct of the struggle with the czar’s police to a contest of “force used for oppression versus force used for resistance,” and saw great potentialities in the publicity which the anarchist cause was obtaining through their “propaganda of action.” Describing it as “an investment in sacrificed tyrants,” he went on to point out that media previously closed to them were now accepting and publishing articles on socialism, anarchism, and communism which had not long before been consigned to waste baskets. An enormous amount of investigation and discussion was the other prominent result, while the “masses” were gradually realizing, he believed, “that emperors and prime ministers have no more right to murder their subjects than the latter have to murder them.”76

Tucker met the revival of the International Working People’s Association in London, July 16, 1881 with undisguised enthusiasm, showing especial satisfaction over its re-establishment in accordance with “strictly anarchistic principles.” A note of doubt tempered his ardor for the cause, nevertheless, as he showed apprehension over the decision to subordinate the program of intellectual propaganda to that of direct action. “A revolution, to be permanent, must first be mental,” he warned. This observation did not prevent Tucker from strongly supporting the “Socialistic-Revolutionary Congress” held in Chicago on October 21-23 that same year for the purpose of forming an American federation of the I.W.P.A. He recommended that all “Socialistic groups weary of compromise,” and desiring “to accomplish the social revolution by means other than political action,” send notice of attending to August Spies. J. H. Swain, Liberty’s representative at the meeting, reported a “cordial reception” of “Josiah Warren’s American socialism,” and also the selection of Liberty as the English language organ of the new group.77

Two events in America were to shatter the solidarity which did exist between the Tuckerites and the Europeans. One of these was the ill-fated Pittsburgh “Anarchist Congress” of October, 1883, and the other the Haymarket affair. These occurrences split the anti-statists asunder, and a reconciliation on any basis at all never took place thereafter. The steps which led to the widening of the breach between the two wings deserve close attention, since the theoretical dispute has been carried on in the respective journals to this day. Although Tucker later interpreted anarchism of the period after 1880 as a revolt against “state socialism,” and the twofold path taken by anarchists a result of the Jurassian Federation meeting of the same year, the American incidents accomplished the separation of the Tuckerite “anti-authoritarians” from the “Kropotkinians.”78

The arrival of Most in America signalled the beginning of an energetic anarchist press advocating the program of the European Social Revolutionaries, with the stress on inflammatory addresses and exhortations to violence. The most sensational of these was the German language paper Freiheit, edited by Most himself in New York. A second was The Alarm, published by A. R. Parsons in Chicago. A third was Truth, emanating from San Francisco under the direction of Burnette G. Haskell. Along with Kropotkin’s Révolte,79 these formed the intellectual fare of a growing number of radicals whose bent was in the direction of direct action. This, in addition to the avowed support of re-organization of society along communal lines of decentralism,80 alienated Tucker and other American individualists, who found the attempt to specify formulae for social organization extremely distasteful. Although favoring the discarding of political states, Tucker was convinced that free choice was the only basis for determining the new social order. It was his belief that the cardinal plank of the Social Revolutionaries should be that “in all subsequent social coöperation no manner of organization or combination whatsoever shall be binding upon any individual without his consent,”81 and to decide in advance upon a communal structure violated this maxim from the start.

The attempt of Haskell to bring about a convention which would succeed in “reconciling the various schools of Socialists,” as Tucker phrased it, was described by the latter as “perhaps the most foolishly inconsistent piece of work that ever came to our notice.” A few days before the scheduled date of meeting, October 14, 1883, Tucker advised the individualists through the columns of Liberty that they should exercise great caution in examining any document brought before the group before indicating assent by signing. He called Haskell’s plan “specious and plausible” but resolutely stated that he would not be a partner to such a “marriage.”82 This brought to a head a controversy between the two which had begun at an earlier time, when Tucker had berated Haskell’s policy of printing long excerpts from the works of Marx, Proudhon, Bakunin and other socialists and anarchists without any attempt at discrimination or interpretation, in the hope of creating the impression of their essential sameness.83

The split with Haskell was never healed. Anarchist journals lined up along the theoretical lines of individualists or communists thereafter, with occasional concessions to the views of the other side. Tucker gave his rivals plenty of space in Liberty, but no longer shared any exhilaration over their struggle. Now he became careful to point out any doctrinal differences to an almost painful degree, as for example at the time of the publication of Eliseé Reclus’ An Anarchist on Anarchy.84 At this time also began his continued emphasis on the primacy, from the point of view of time, of the American, or “mutualist” anarchists. Newer opposition anarchist papers spoke of Tucker as the “pope” of the movement,85 although occasionally there were organs of anarchist communism which took no offense at his stand. Said one, “Tucker is a logical man, and as long as he retains his present opinion of Communism, he can’t logically call us anarchists. Certainly no paper that I know of has exposed the shams, humbugs and crimes of our present miscalled social order more ruthlessly than Liberty.”86

The circumstances connected with the Haymarket affair completed the job of destroying the ties between Tucker, the Americans and the revolutionary groups of both native and immigrant origin. The rift developed somewhat in advance of 1886, despite Tucker’s original glance of favor at the arrival of Most from England, where he had been recently imprisoned. It was Henry Appleton, an editorial associate of Tucker, who led the attack upon both Haskell and Most. Appleton named them specifically as leaders of “a class of ranting enthusiasts who falsely call themselves anarchists,” who never had repudiated the idea upon which the state had been founded. They proposed to follow the overthrow by violence of the existing order with the establishment of even more repressive centralization. Most he dismissed as “a quack masquerading as an anarchist,” opposed to the prevailing system, but wishing to supplant it by a machine backed by force of his own particular brand. Sincerely convinced, as was Tucker, that human institutions had to evolve and should be allowed to do so, Appleton charged that Most, no more than other believers in government, wanted to “institute.” He condemned communism of all types as “at war with nature,” and the natural enemy of anarchism. Most, he declared, occupied a “ridiculous position”; “a Communist sailing under the flag of Anarchism is as false a figure as could be invented.”87

Up to the eve of the Chicago tragedy, Tucker had refrained from taking the initiative in the intellectual struggle between the two factions, despite his assumption of responsibility for Appleton’s attacks. On March 27, 1886, however, Tucker came out with a full page condemnation of Most and the New York Germans. He accused Most of shielding the fact that the German section of the I. W. P. A. and members of the Social Revolutionary group were setting fire to their property for the purposes of collecting the insurance premiums. He called upon every “honorable” newspaper in the country, especially those of anarchists, to place this matter before their readers, and declared that it was up to Most to repudiate these arsonists and sever their connections with Freiheit in the interests of the movement. Lashed Tucker, “It is one thing to kill the Czar of Russia; it is quite another . . . to set fire to a tenement house containing hundreds of human beings.”88

This incident created a tremendous scandal in radical circles, and the public press received it avidly. Despite Most’s denial of any relation with the matter, and counter charges of petty motives in making the exposé, Tucker held to his original stand tenaciously. On April 17, he replied, “I have nothing to retract. On the contrary, I reiterate all my charges as emphatically as before.”89 He felt that he would be vindicated by subsequent investigation, which for the most part did substantially corroborate the charges made in Liberty.

It was in this atmophere of perturbation that the bomb throwing incident took place,90 followed by the arrest of the celebrated defendants in Chicago and Most himself in New York, all of whom bore the taint of close association with the inflammatory German-language revolutionary press. Tucker’s sympathy for the accused men pushed aside all other considerations for the time being. Rushing to the defense of Most as quickly as he had condemned him four weeks earlier, he described the latter as “a victim of authority-ridden maniacs,” and professed to be far more impressed by the “violence of the agencies of the state” than by the action of the “Chicago Communists,” especially noting the severe condemnation of the clergy, newspapers and police, “shameful in the savagery of their reaction.”91

In other affairs connected with the case, Tucker was inclined to disbelief of both the stories of the police and of August Spies, Fielden and Albert Parsons. Convinced that the accused were innocent, he advanced the opinion that the person who had thrown the deadly bomb had been seeking an opportunity to do so, since it was not customary to carry such arms on one’s person. Thus the argument that the absence of police provocation would have prevented its discharge was an unwarranted assumption. Despite his great respect for Spies and Parsons, Tucker believed that Adolph Fischer alone of the eight accused men was an anarchist; the others were merely “State Socialists” masquerading as such.92

Tucker was, in fact, far more interested in the psychological problem which the actions of the Chicago revolutionaries and of Most presented the radical cause as a whole. The general inadvisability of armed revolt, the day of which he believed was gone forever due to the ease with which it could be suppressed, he considered amply proven. There was no doubt in his mind as to the righteousness of resistance to oppression by recourse to violence, but his concern now was with its expedience; “Bloodshed in itself is pure loss.” Now he was absolutely convinced that the desired social revolution would be possible only through the utility of peaceful propaganda and passive resistance, for to use violence was merely to mark time, historically. Hence the lack of vigor in defending the Haymarket group:93

The Chicago Communists have chosen the violent course, and the result is to be foreseen. Their predicament is due to a resort to methods that Liberty emphatically disapproves. As between them and the State, Liberty’s sympathies are with them. But as they by their folly are doing their utmost to help the State, Liberty cannot work with them or devote much energy to their defense.

Tucker’s actual conduct belied his negative declarations, few radical publications devoting as much space to the defense of the accused men as did Liberty. Copious references to the case continued to appear for over ten years thereafter, and he never discarded his conviction that the men were innocent. His only reproach was on the grounds of the incendiary language of their literature and journals, which was a direct invitation to the state to retaliate in the manner which had transpired. The feud with Johann Most continued unabated after the latter’s release from jail, and the bitterness toward Most never disappeared from his writing. “The revolutionary Communism which Most has preached is as far removed from Anarchism as Catholicism,” observed Tucker, while Most labeled the individualist philosophy as “Tuckerism.”94 It was Most’s conviction that Tucker, by his insistence upon private property, was sanctioning the exploitation of labor, since he did not think the concept compatible with mass production. Along with his rejection of Tucker’s esteemed mutual banking scheme, such attitudes earned him a degree of coolness which survived him and which the newcomers Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman inherited and felt as long as Tucker continued active in radical journalism.95

Tucker’s condemnation of the programs of Most and Kropotkin was far milder than the protracted assault aimed at the various groups of Marxian and other socialists. Some degree of common ground was shared with the former; the latter he considered the diametrical opposite of everything the anti-statist represented. The “voluntary Communism” possible under Kropotkin he thought far superior to that championed by Marx and Lassalle; in an economic sense he thought Proudhon eminently right in describing Marxian socialism as “the religion of poverty.”96 So great was his fear of the state as an engine in the hands of a group seeking to bring about nationalization that he refused to concede anything in favor of socialism beyond the intelligence and good intentions of the men advocating it.

In actuality, he looked upon anarchism as a branch of the general socialist movement,97 and was inclined at one time to less sharply define the antagonistic elements the two opposite wings incorporated. Anarchism, declared Tucker, was “the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished”; “Anarchism is for liberty, and neither for nor against anything else.” Socialism, on the other hand, was “the belief that the next important step in progress is a change in man’s environment of an economic character that shall include the abolition of every privilege whereby the holder of wealth acquires an anti-social power to compel tribute.” Thus, the battle of socialism was with “usury,” that of anarchism with authority, and the two tended to overlap.98

“State Socialism,” however, was an altogether different matter. The emphasis here swung around from strategy to tactics, ending up with the centering of all economic production and exchange in the hands of the state. Thus the movement for socialization became a drive for nationalization by compulsion. Such a conclusion was inevitable if one were to keep in mind the fact that the State, according to the anarchist, was a coercive institution and the very embodiment of the concept of invasion. Hence to utilize the state, or the government of the state, to effect the objectives of socialism was to promote a campaign of physical force as the means whereby it might be done. A system of government-managed monopolies supported by compulsory taxation was a potentiality Tucker contemplated with considerable pain.99

Thus Tucker from time to time severely criticized such widely-separated exponents of socialism and nationalization as Edward Bellamy, Laurance Gronlund and Daniel De Leon at times when their names appeared prominently, or when irritated by a serious discussion of their proposals.100 Generally disturbed by the content of their ideas, he did not incline to indulge in personal diatribes, and his fairness to even implacable opponents was evident. One prominent example was his treatment of Karl Marx. In a full page summary of the latter’s importance in the radical movement following his death, Tucker declared that “the cause of labor has lost one of the most faithful friends it ever had,” and that every anarchist was bound to “hold his memory in respect.” Marx, he declared, however, was the most bitter of all the enemies of anarchism, and the anarchists would henceforth continue to regard him as such, that no one more than he “represented the principle of authority which we live to combat.”

Willing to concede his importance as a progenitor of socialism, Tucker refused to accept him as an original thinker, and offered to present specific proof of Proudhon’s primacy in a consideration of any portion of Das Kapital. Convinced that the labor unions and labor press were exaggerating the importance of Marx as the originator of the economic principles on which all brands of socialism, including the anarchist variety, were based, Tucker insisted that Proudhon be placed in the foremost position by the anti-government group. For their benefit he presented a brief comparison of the two to illustrate why Proudhon deserved their consideration:101

The vital difference between Proudhon and Marx is to be found in the respective remedies which they proposed. Marx would nationalize the productive and distributive forces; Proudhon would individualize and associate them. Marx would make the laborers political masters; Proudhon would abolish political mastership entirely. Marx would abolish usury by having the State lay violent hands on all industry and business and conduct it on the cost principle; Proudhon would abolish usury by disconnecting the State entirely from industry and business and forming a system of free banks which would furnish credit at cost to every industrious and deserving person, and thus place the means of production within the reach of all. Marx believed in compulsory majority rule; Proudhon believed in the voluntary principle.

Although over-simplified, the comparison between anarchism and socialism was typical of the several similar presentations which he made in order to illustrate the fundamental cleavage between the two. This he probably did best of all in his State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree and Wherein They Differ, written for public consumption shortly after the Haymarket explosion to vindicate the individualists from imputations of violence or “revolutionary” intentions.102

If Tucker’s indictment of the various apostles of collectivism was severe, it was no more so than that of the modified individualism of Henry George and his followers, and no more protracted dispute took place than that between Tucker and his associates and the many articulate Georgists. As with Marx, his concern at first was with the content of the Single Tax theories and Georgist economics, and not with personalities. Tucker conceded George unusual ability, and professed “great esteem” for him as a man, a writer, and a reformer, considered the first two books of Progress and Poverty a “stirring indictment of capital” and a “masterly riddling of Malthusian sophistry,” but beyond that he disagreed. He admitted George’s literary style “singularly lucid and expository,” and credited him with having done more “to stimulate economic thought” than any other writer in the English language up to the time of his death.103

With large portions of the Georgist doctrine he was in violent disagreement, and these he raked over constantly, especially in the early 80’s. Ignoring the basis of most criticisms of George, Tucker spearheaded that of the anarchists, which centered around the fear of land nationalization resulting from the widespread adoption of a uniform land taxation system. Tucker adhered to the argument that land had a legal and not a natural value. Therefore, in short, the course of action was not in supporting a scheme to tax the legal value but in favor of abolishing those laws which established it.104

“Anarchism holds that land belongs not to the people but to the occupant and user,” he asserted. As long as the occupant refrained from “invading” his neighbors, it was his right to do as he pleased with the land he occupied. The Single Tax advocates, on the other hand, punished by taxation anyone who did not “use his land in accordance with the wishes of his neighbors.”105

The fundamental argument of the anarchists with the Georgian concept of rent tax collection was its theory of the community; “That there is an entity known as the community which is the rightful owner of all land Anarchists deny. I . . . maintain that “the community” is a nonentity, that it has no existence, and is simply a combination of individuals having no prerogatives beyond those of the individuals themselves. This combination of individuals has no better title to the land than any single individual outside it.”106 Tucker maintained that when exacting “economic rent” the community was merely exercising its “right of the strongest,” and that there was no logical reason why it should stop here but not proceed on to complete socialism and the most minute regulation of individual conduct: “. . . it is absurd to maintain that, if rent collection by government is proper, then interest collection, wages collection and profit collection are not also logically proper.”107 The major fault of the Georgian plan, according to Tucker, was failure to determine the “just basis of possession” before beginning investigations of economics. It was not the Ricardian concept of varying degrees of fertility of various soils that accounted for rent, but the simple fact of monopoly. Affirming his complete accord with J. K. Ingalls, “who really favors free land,” he announced: “I oppose the land-tax scheme because it would not make land free, but would simply make a change of landlords, and because it would enormously increase the power of a worse foe to labor than the landlord,—namely, the State.”108

On other matters Tucker also disagreed strongly with George, especially on finance, about which he thought the latter knew essentially nothing. He claimed that George had never been able to answer adequately his argument that land was practically useless to labor which was unprovided with capital.109 Lack of money, he claimed, was far more important in hindering the production of wealth than inaccessibility of “natural opportunities.”110 Tucker, pre-occupied with interest as a term for the payment upon the loan of capital, paid no attention to the Georgian explanation, and differed from him by playing heavily upon the money question while relegating that of land to a subordinate position.111

A personal element entered the question after the Haymarket case, when Tucker bitterly condemned George for supporting rather than protesting the conviction of the defendants. He declared that George’s Standard was the only labor paper to his knowledge which did not protest the Illinois Supreme Court decision in the anarchist trial, and suggested that the editor’s hope of success in seeking political office had been the deciding factor in motivating him to go along with the court’s verdict.112 For this reason he scouted apologies for George’s public behavior offered by supporters who mentioned his private plea that clemency be shown the condemned men. Tucker climaxed a ten year disparagement of George by publishing in 1896, a year before the latter’s death, the bitter Henry George, Traitor, in which he set forth his objections to the Single Tax leader, for whom he now entertained a violent dislike.113

On the behavior of labor unions, Tucker had no hardened convictions. Alternately pleased and dissatisfied with their conduct, he was impressed more with their potentialities than their operation in his time. “Labor unions are a crude step in the direction of supplanting the State,” he declared. Although severely critical of their organization, which he thought little different from that of any political organization in their utilization of the “element of force and authority,” their movement in the future he felt involved a tendency “for self-government on the part of the people, the logical outcome of which is ultimate revolt against those usurping political conspiracies,” which he saw manifested in the judicial and legislative branches of government. He justified strikes, and believed “capital” always the instigator, but saw little chance of success for the strikers except through protracted “consolidated passive resistance.” The hope of labor legislation of lasting nature he thought futile, “as long as labor is dependent upon capital, so long will it be outraged with impunity.”

Specifically, however, Tucker had nothing encouraging to say to union labor or its program. The Knights of Labor was a target of his abuse for some time prior to Haymarket, and the struggle for the eight hour day was dismissed with a shrug. Speed-up techniques and similar tightening would soon dissipate what little might be gained by the shortening of hours, he thought. His real interest was the hope of observing the development of a union movement not founded “on compulsion, red tape and parliamentary hocus-pocus,” and above all, avoiding all compromise with the state. All organization ideally should be predicated upon “spontaneity, free agency and choice,” he declared, yet even in their contemporary form, he willingly admitted unions were “a potent sign of emancipation.”114

On a wide variety of other issues, Tucker was notable for his negative stand. He was implacably opposed to the public school system, and curiously enough, as an atheist, became a defender of Roman Catholic parochial schools115 as a force which served to produce a “real increase of freedom,” to determine the nature of education on a private basis. He looked on woman suffrage with contempt: “It will be a cold day for Liberty when woman takes the reins of power,” he commented disparagingly on observing the militancy of the movement. Another of his antipathies was compulsory taxation for community services such as street repairs, water works, sewerage facilities and fire and police departments, regardless of the size of the community. He believed such needs could be provided for on the basis of voluntary contribution, and with a smaller percentage of non-contributors than of delinquency of tax-paying in the cities of the United States.116

One of Tucker’s most aggravating stands was an outgrowth of his all-out struggle with the concept of authority. He stood fast by the assertion that children were “labor products” of the mother, not creatures with a separate and unique catalogue of rights. Since he did not believe in the institution of marriage, and since he could not, as an anarchist, place the responsibility of the child upon “society,” this was his only remaining logical alternative. Eschewing sentimentality and explaining this choice in terms of a “labor product” alienated several associates at a later time, among them J. William Lloyd.117

The religious radicals and freethought exponents of the Boston Liberal League, Thaddeus B. Wakeman, Horace Seaver, J. P. Mendum and his earlier opponent Francis Abbot were constant targets for his barbs, especially for their tendency to overwork the word “liberal,” which, remarked Tucker, was “a vague and much abused term.”118 Their struggle against the church was really part of Liberty’s campaign against the concept of authority, prodded Tucker, and to be really consistent, they should ally themselves with the anarchists. He was equally displeased with several other portions of the reform front. Fundamental change, not reform, was Tucker’s real interest. To adhere to the latter course, he said, was to abandon the “plumb line” for the “cork-screw.”

 

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119.  The best account of Tucker for his early background is still that of George Schumm, “Benj. R. Tucker—A Brief Sketch of His Life and Work,” in The Free Thinkers’ Magazine, XI (July, 1893), 436-440. Also valuable is Steven T. Byington, “Benjamin Ricketson Tucker,” in Man! VII (August, 1939), 517-518, and National Cyclopedia of American Biography, XII, 403, as well as the reminiscences in Joseph Ishill (ed.), Free Vistas, II, 261-308. Included are letters and sketches by such associates and acquaintances as George Bernard Shaw, Henry L. Mencken, John William Lloyd, Ernest Armand, George E. MacDonald, Clarence Lee Swartz and Henry Meulen.

120.  Tucker later became irritated because his stay at M. I. T. was often recorded as only two years. For corroboration of the three year duration consult Who’s Who in America (3rd ed. Chicago, 1903-1905), 1506. Additional biographical information may be found in the following subsequent editions of this work, 4th (1906-1907), 1811; 5th (1908-1909), 1915-1916.

121.  Schumm, “Benj. R. Tucker,” 438.

122.  Wrote Tucker, “I hope to do some work for the Labor Cause but first wish to study the question that I may thoroughly understand it. For this reason I send for your publications. I wish you would hold a convention in New Bedford. The Conservatives here need a little stirring up. They have not been shocked in a long time.” The Word, I (November, 1872), 3. See also his second dispatch written from 59 Temple Street, Boston, in The Word, I (February, 1873), 3.

It is probable that his association with Heywood was responsible for subsequent ties with Victoria Woodhull in the spreading of the left wing brand of feminism associated with her name. He later repudiated her as “a loathesome adventuress” and “a despicable renegade” for her disavowal of all action and propaganda which she had contributed to the “free love” movement, all of which he considered “great and useful work.” On the other hand he declared that he had no sympathy for those who “ignorantly abuse her out of mere prejudice against the radical doctrines which she taught.” See his article, and reprint of her letter of December 29, 1880 to the London Court Journal, in Liberty, VI (January 19, 1889), 4. For a much later uncomplimentary estimation of his early association with “The Woodhull,” see Sachs, Victoria Woodhull, Chapter XII.

123.  Warren was a visitor at Tucker’s home at one time. Tucker’s devotion to and admiration for Spooner was no less strong. See Liberty, VIII (March 21, 1891), 4.

124.  At the time when he was engaged in the publication of his paper Liberty, Tucker made a similar dedication to Proudhon: “Liberty is . . . a journal brought into existence almost as a direct consequence of the teachings of Proudhon. . .,” designating the French anarchist as the “profoundest political philosopher that has ever lived.” Liberty, I (January, 1882), 4. For the tribute to Warren see Liberty, IX (May 27, 1893), 1. Compare the honor given to Proudhon with that accorded Spooner in note below.

125.  Liberty, VII (June 28, 1890), 6.

126.  Liberty, VI (January 5, 1889), 1.

127.  See Chapter VI, note 38.

128.  Tucker’s famous definition of an American anarchist as an “unterrified Jeffersonian Democrat” was a direct borrowing from Heywood. See the latter’s work The Labor Party, 14, published in 1868, shortly after Tucker’s 14th birthday. For the source of Heywood’s borrowing see Andrews, Science of Society (No. 1), 39.

129.  The letters and replies ran from February through November, 1873. Tucker resented Abbot’s explaining to the readers that his opponent was a youth of just 19 years of age; “I cannot see the necessity of calling attention to my age. Many people think the ideas of a young man not worth looking into, and will pay no attention to his argument.” The Index, IV, 423. A short sketch of Abbot as a free thought publisher may be found in Who Was Who in America (Chicago, 1942), 1.

130.  Tucker acquired a respect for Robert Owen through his relations with Warren. See his commemoration of Owen’s 111th birthday, “the man who did more perhaps than any other to give impulse to the consideration of industrial wrongs. All friends of labor should unite in doing honor to his memory.” Liberty, I (May 13, 1882), 1.

Warren’s ideas on land were not fully understood by Tucker, and he represented the former as opposed to the purchase and sale of land, which was not so. Compare Tucker’s reproach of Warren in The Word, III (September, 1875), 3, and Warren, Equitable Commerce (a leaflet), 3-4.

131.  The Index, IV, 72; The Word, II (May, 1873), 2.

132.  The Word, III (September, 1874), 2; IV (November, 1874), 2; (January, 1875), 2.

133.  The Word, IV (April, 1875), 2.

134.  The Word, IV (August, 1875), 2; (October, 1875), 3.

135.  The tax was paid by a friend of Tucker’s, a matter which made him somewhat angry. The identity of the unknown benefactor was never divulged. See long account of the affair in Worcester Evening Press, October 26, 1875, reprinted in The Word, IV (December, 1875), 2.

In May, 1888, Tucker made another public incident of the poll tax while living in Revere, Mass. He paid it under protest while registering opposition along the new line of giving in before superior force, as exemplified in the tax-collector as the agent of the state. See Liberty, V (May 26, 1888), 4.

136.  A letter to The Word by William B. Wright exhorted him “not to lose time in martyrdom,” suggesting that such a protest had already been done much better by Thoreau, and that Tucker continue his efforts in the line of translation of anarchist works rather than waste his energies in activities of this type. Wright suggested the commencement in the heart of Boston of a Warrenite equity store as a mean of again demonstrating the cost exchange idea, which Warren had done there himself two decades before. The Word, (November, 1875), 3-4.

137.  The Word, IV (February, 1876), 2-3. Tucker had apparently been engaged in this for some time. See also his letter to The Index of September 9, 1875, commenting on Saint Beuve’s discussion of the letters of Proudhon, as an indication of his new interest.

138.  Heywood and Tucker were especially pleased by an acrid review published by the Frankfort (Ky.) Weekly Yeoman, which they reprinted prominently;

“From a business note in this number, we learn that one of the editors, Mr. Tucker, is the translator of the works of that notorious French Communist (sic) and conspirator Proudhon, which would seem to indicate the poisonous fountain from which he had imbibed the incendiary principles that prompt the unholy . . . crusade he has set out to preach.” The Word, IV (January, 1876), 2. See also the review by Stephen Pearl Andrews in The Index, VII, 291.

139.  The anarchist conception of the term “labor reform” was not that generally understood, which involved the machinery of trade-unionism, strikes, boycotts, arbitration, profit-sharing, limitation of hours, and discussion of such terms as “fair wage” and “harmony between capital and labor.” All this they considered “conservative,” and would be satisfied with no less than “the abolition of the monopoly privileges of capital and interest-taking, and the return to labor of the full value of its production.” Victor Yarros, “Socialist Economics and the Labor Movement,” in Liberty, V (June 9, 1888), 6. See also the excellent comparison of the two outlooks on the term by Sidney H. Morse, the “Equity School” and the “Political, or Eight Hours School,” in The Word, IV (April, 1875), 1.

140.  The Word, V (December, 1876), 2.

141.  The Word, V (January, 1877), 2.

142.  Some of the other contributors were Elie Reclus, Tucker’s erstwhile controversialist Abbot, Samuel Longfellow, John Fiske, Octavius B. Frothingham, Edmund C. Stedman, as well as radicals of a variety of persuasions, John Orvis, Henry Edger, William Hanson, Dyer D. Lum, Henry Appleton and Cyrus H. Bartol.

Tucker also began his translation of Proudhon’s System of Economical Contradictions, which ran as installments in each issue. Tucker published the first volume of this work under his own imprint in 1888, and translated a few chapters of the second volume and sold them separately in paper covers. But he was “never able to complete the work,” he wrote to a young bibliophile and admirer nearly fifty years later. Tucker to Ewing C. Baskette, March 28, 1935, Baskette Collection. Proudhon’s “best book,” in Tucker’s opinion, was General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by Tucker’s friend John Beverly Robinson and published in English for the first time in 1923. (A new printing of this book appeared in 1969). Tucker to Baskette, November 7, 1934, Baskette Collection.

143.  Tucker was still engaged in his translations of Proudhon; for the Index he translated “The Malthusians” from Le Representant du Peuple of August 11, 1848, reprinted in The Index, VIII (August 30, 1877), 411-412.

Tucker succeeded in acquiring an almost complete file of Proudhon’s newspapers, which were subsequently purchased by the University of Michigan and housed in the General Library in Ann Arbor. See editorial note by Tucker in Liberty, VIII (July 11, 1891), 1, for acknowledgement to John Henry Mackay, who gathered them for him in Europe.

144.  See The Word, VII (August, 1878), 1-2, for an account of the circumstances under which Tucker assumed the editorship of the paper.

145.  Unlike his Radical Review, an expensive quarterly, for that time, which had a subscription price of $5 a year, the new venture was apparently nonprofit in nature. The four page broadsheet was published every two weeks, and the 26 annual issues constituted a volume. Commented Tucker, “Formerly the price of Liberty was eternal vigilance, but now it can be had for fifty cents a year.” Liberty, I (August 6, 1881), 1.

146.  Liberty, I (August 6, 1881), page cited above.

147.  For the discussion of ethical concepts in individualist anarchism, see Chapter IX, Parts 4 and 5.

148.  Liberty, VI (September 1, 1888), 5.

149.  See Tucker, “Who Is the Somebody?” in Liberty, I (August 6, 1881), 3-4.

150.  “The whole loaf rightfully belongs to those who raise the wheat from the soil, grind it into flour, and bake it into bread, and not the smallest taste of it to the sharpers who deceive the unthinking masses into granting them a monopoly of the opportunities of performing these industrial operations, which opportunities they in turn rent back to the people on condition of receiving the other half of the loaf.” Liberty, I (September 17, 1881), 2.

151.  The word “competition” has to be approached from a different point of view in order to understand the anarchist. Under a system of finance capitalism subscription to “free competition” must become lip service only, beyond a certain point, due to the destructive effect upon the price structure. The anarchist is concerned with no such reservation, and wishes to see competition carried out to its logical conclusion, which to him would mean the reduction of all price to zero, theoretically. What the entrepreneur, corporation management or political manager may look upon as “wasteful” or “unnecessary duplication” in business of either productive or distributive nature the anarchist regards as beneficial in the fight against all profit-making. Anarchists of both schools are not inclined to accept the marginal utility theory of value; Tucker declared, “In the absence of monopoly, the price of an article worth producing at all is governed, not by its utility, but by the cost of its production,” and only by the most universal application of competition can the lowest possible cost of production of any given article be learned. For this reason Tucker repudiated the “plane of James and William” illustration by which the French economist Bastiat attempted to justify the taking of interest, insisting that regardless of how James’ plane increased William’s plank production, James could not sell or lend it for more than its cost of production, unless he had a monopoly of the manufacture of planes. Liberty, VI (October 13, 1888), 4.

In anarchist economics, then, “free competition” means the “free and equal access” to raw materials, instruments of production and an absolutely unrestricted market. Granted such circumstances, the anarchist maintains that the price of all goods will tend to approximate “the effort necessary for their production,” which is in line with Warren’s “cost the limit of price.” For an excellent summary of this matter see Labadie, Anarchism Applied to Economics, (a leaflet).

152.  Liberty, III (October 3, 1885), 5.

153.  Liberty, II (September 6, 1884), 1.

154.  Liberty, I (August 6, 1881), 3-4.

155.  Tucker placed his economic program in the form of nine statements in logical order so that readers might understand his viewpoint:

“1.   The laboring classes are deprived of their earnings by usury in its three forms, interest, rent and profit.

  2.  Such deprivation is the principal cause of poverty.

  3.  Poverty, directly or indirectly, is the principal cause of crime.

  4.  Usury is dependent upon monopoly, especially of land and money.

  5.  These monopolies cannot exist without the backing of the State.

  6.  By far the larger part of the work of the State consists in establishing and sustaining monopolies by special legislation.

  7.  The abolition of these invasive functions of the State would gradually lead to the disappearance of crime.

  8.  The disappearance of crime would render the protective functions of State superfluous.

  9.  Thus the State would have been entirely abolished.” Liberty, I (August 19, 1882), 2.

156.  “The most fatal restriction upon trade now existing is the monopoly of the issue of money, the fountainhead of all tyrannies in these plutocratic days, and that is where Liberty . . . must strike first to strike effectively.” Liberty, III (November 22, 1884), 1.

157.  Liberty, III (January 9, 1886), 4.

158.  Liberty, IV (March 26, 1887), 4.

159.  Liberty, I (March 18, 1882), 1.

160.  Liberty, IX (August, 1893), 2-3. Liberty was now being published monthly in New York, and carried no day of publication.

161.  Liberty, VIII (May 16, 1891), 3.

162.  “The claim that a standard of value varies, and inflicts damage by its variations is perfectly sound, but the same is true, not only of the standards of value, but of every valuable commodity as well. Even if there were no standards of value, and therefore no money, still nothing could prevent a partial failure of the wheat crop from enhancing the value of every bushel of wheat.” Liberty, VIII (June 13, 1891), 2.

163.  Liberty, II (June 28, 1884), 4.

164.  Liberty, IV (July 30, 1887), 1.

165.  Tucker found most of his critics, especially of free money and banking, among the “hard money” men, whom he considered the backbone of the quantity theory. Liberty, VI (January 25, 1890), 1.

166.  Liberty, VII (July 26, 1890), 4.

167.  Liberty, IV (July 16, 1887), 4.

168.  Liberty, I (October 29, 1881), 3. Tucker believed that to forbid the taking of interest interfered with the right of persons to make any contracts they pleased, even those stipulating the payment of interest. To defend the right of contract did not mean that interest-taking was held to an “equitable transaction”; “In defending the right to take usury, we do not defend the right of usury.” Liberty, I (January 7, 1882), 3.

169.  Liberty, I (August 20, 1881), 2-3. On one occasion Tucker commented, “We anarchists are political abolitionists. We earnestly desire the abolition of the State.” Liberty I (August 19, 1882), 2.

170.  Liberty, I (August 6, 1881), 2. It was Tucker’s point that there was no logical stopping place, once the individual began the process of rejecting authority, short of total rejection and the counter-assertion of “self-sovereignty”; “The man who clings to that superstition known as the State, and boasts of having flung away the fetters of theology and priest-craft, does not understand himself.”

It is important to note that Tucker was not attacking religion as a personal guide of conduct; “We intend no disrespect to God as an ideal that any individual may hold dear. Any fancy or principle which may be formed into an ideal for the better conduct of life, provided such God assumes no authority over others, may be entertained without our protest. It is God the office-seeker and office-holder with whom we take issue, and it is only such a God that makes the politician possible.” Liberty, I (August 19, 1882), 3.

171.  Liberty, III (March 6, 1886), 1. Said Tucker ten years before: “In my view, the State is the result of a compact made between individuals in their individual capacities, and not as members of society. The duties of the indvidual to society are of a general nature, which each individual must define for himself.” The Word, IV (February, 1876), 2.

172.  Liberty, V (June 9, 1888), 5.

173.  Still another definition was this: “Liberty is simply and solely the freedom and power to choose. As long as moral philosophers . . . keep on trying to conceal this, the true ideal of Liberty, behind such misleading phrases as the “liberty to do right” and such hackneyed and irrational discrimination as that between “liberty and license,” we do not mean to often lose a chance to bring it to light.” Liberty, I (February 4, 1882), 4. Stress is Tucker’s.

174.  Liberty, V (January 28, 1888), 5. This was not meant to appear that Tucker was a non-resistant; on the contrary, he fully endorsed the use of force in protecting one’s person from “invasion.” Even the taking of life under such circumstances he thought not inconsistent, even though he refused to give assent to the right of capital punishment vested in the state. On the personal level, however, he stuck to his declaration that the invader forfeited any consideration from the invaded; “I insist that there is nothing sacred in the life of an invader.” Liberty, VII (August 30, 1890), 4.

175.  Liberty, I (September 16, 1882), 2.

176.  Tucker showed the influence of Spooner on this point, arguing that taking part in the functions of government, such as voting, bearing arms, paying taxes and serving on juries was merely “presumptive evidence” of consent;

“By what right am I thrust into the alternative of recognizing the machinery of the State as the only chance left me of rescuing my life, liberty, and possessions from invasion?” Liberty, II (December 9, 1882), 2.

177.  Liberty, I (August 6, 1881), 2.

178.  Liberty, VII (November 1, 1890), 4.

179.  Liberty, II (October 4, 1884), 5.

180.  “Our purpose is the abolition, not only of all existing States, but the State itself. . . . It is not a thing that can be especially defined by Russia, Germany, Great Britain or Massachusetts. The State is a principle, a philosophical error in social existence. The State is chaos, rioting under the guise of law, order and morality. . . . The State is not government, since it denies Liberty. The State becomes impossible the moment you remove from it the element of compulsion.” Liberty, I (April 15, 1882), 2-3. For further development of this argument see especially the discussions in Liberty, IV (July 16, 1887), 5; V (October 22, 1887), 4.

181.  Liberty, II (October 14, 1882) 2.

182.  Liberty, I (September 16, 1882), 3.

183.  Liberty, VI (September 15, 1888), 1.

184.  Liberty, II (October 14, 1882), 2.

185.  Liberty, I (May 27, 1882), 2.

186.  Liberty, V (August 27, 1887), 1.

187.  Liberty, VI (June 8, 1889), 4.

188.  Tucker’s first expression of admiration for Bakunin appeared in Liberty in the fall of 1881. A 4½ by 5 inch reproduction of an engraving of a photograph of Bakunin was featured on the front page of the ninth issue of the paper, November 26, 1881, plus a full page biographical sketch. The following spring he offered for sale a lithograph and biographical sketch of the famous Russian radical. In the summer of 1882 he began selling Bakunin’s Dieu et I’Etat, but apparently sold out the edition very soon. He offered the work in an English edition for the first time in October, 1883, and had reached the sixth edition by 1888. Although he later changed his estimate of Bakunin, claiming that he was really a communist, along with Kropotkin, there was no criticism of God and the State. Liberty, I (November 12, 1881), 1; (July 22, 1882), 4; II (October 6, 1883), 1; V (January 28, 1888), 7.

189.  Benjamin R. Tucker, Anarchism or Anarchy, a Discussion Between William H. Tillinghurst and B. R. Tucker, 10. Although Tucker thought Le Révolte worthy of great praise, and reprinted articles from it constantly during the first two years of Liberty, the Swiss paper rejected him as a “bourgeois.” Liberty, I (August 6, 1881), 1; II (July 26, 1884), 4.

190.  Liberty, II (February 17, 1883), 2-4; I (April 15, 1882), 1.

191.  Liberty, I (September 3, 1881), 1; (October 1, 1881), 1; II (July 21, 1883), 2-4. For Tucker’s remarks on the release of Louise Michel from prison in Paris in January, 1886, see Liberty, III (February 6, 1886), 1, 8.

192.  Liberty, I (August 6, 1881), 1; (January 21, 1882), 1; II (March 18, 1882), 2. Tucker enthusiastically approved of plans for the celebration of the 11th anniversary of the Paris Commune as “one of the grandest of revolutionary announcements.” Liberty, I (February 18, 1882), 1. For the announcement of arrival of Most and his scheduled speaking engagement in Cooper Union, see Liberty, II (December 9, 1882), 1.

193.  Liberty, I (September 17, 1881), 1.

194.  Liberty, III (February 28, 1885), 1; II (May 12, 1883), 2.

195.  Liberty, I (August 20, 1881), 2; (November 12, 1881), 4. Tucker was impressed with the I. W. P. A.’s program of “anarchistic socialism” in Europe, singling out Spain in particular as a land where anarchism was especially appealing to working people. Liberty, I (November 26, 1881), 2.

196.  See Tucker’s analysis in Liberty, XIII (May, 1897), 4.

197.  Tucker had long been aware that there were different approaches to the philosophy of anarchism; in 1881 he had noted that Cafiero and Malatesta held “communism in anarchy as the social ideal,” but did not feel it worthy of a definite discriminatory stand. Three years later he did designate Most and Le Revolte as belonging to the school of “anarchist communists,” and not of his kind. However, he condemned the suspension of Kropotkin’s paper by the Swiss authorities, and regretted that the other wing had lost this vigorous journal. Liberty, I (September 3, 1881), 1; II (May 17, 1884), 1; III (February 28, 1885), 4.

198.  Tucker rejected the Lyons manifesto at the time of the Kropotkin trial which declared equality to be a “primary condition to liberty.” Equality was a state of affairs which would have to be imposed, he objected, and hence meant a return to authority. Communal ownership also meant coercion; “Products can be rightfully possessed only by individuals and voluntary associations. The community, if it is anything, is a compulsory association, and can never possess anything except by the thief’s title.” Liberty, III (February 28, 1885), page cited above.

199.  Liberty, II (October 14, 1882), 2.

200.  Tucker examined this document, which had some circulation previous to the actual convention. See his notice in Liberty, II (October 6, 1883), 1.

201.  Truth was published from January 28, 1882 through the issue of December, 1884. Haskell later became editor of another short-lived labor paper, the Denver Labor Enquirer. On the shortage of funds leading to the discontinuation of the former paper see Burnette G. Haskell to John Francis Bray, February 2, 1885, Bray MSS., Labadie Collection.

Haskell and Tucker were embroiled over the refusal of Haskell to print an advertisement of Tucker’s translation of God and the State because it contained an attack on Marx. Liberty, II (October 6, 1883), 2-3; (December 15, 1883), 4. Tucker believed that Truth was responsible for the term “Boston Anarchists,” which became applied to the individualist group. Liberty, IV (June 19, 1886), 5.

202.  Liberty, II (May 31, 1884), 2; (June 14, 1884), 6-7; V (September 10, 1887), 1.

203.  See for instance the comment by Sigismund Danielewicz, editor of the communist-anarchist paper, The Beacon, II (January 31, 1891), 2-3. Tucker was amused by these designations, but disavowed plotting to set himself up as the last word on anarchism. “I am not the owner of anarchism. I do not believe in property in ideas. Anarchism existed before me as it will exist after me. I can only interpret it for myself.” Liberty, XI (November 30, 1895), 3.

204.  Solidarity, I (April 1, 1895), 4. Continued John H. Edelmann, the editor and author of this critique, with reference to Liberty, “It appeals more to the educated, professional classes than we do, and is for that reason more given to abstract discussion. But it is certain that just these classes must become radical before we can hope for success.”

205.  For a summary of Appleton’s critical articles see Liberty, II (September 16, 1884), 4; III (April 25, 1885), 4; (October 3, 1885), 4. See also Haskell’s defense addressed to Tucker in Truth, I, new series, 283-284.

206.  Liberty, III (March 27, 1886), 8; Benjamin R. Tucker, “John Most et Benjamin R. Tucker,” in L’Ere Nouvelle, III, 3rd series, 92-95.

207.  Liberty, IV (April 17, 1886), 4. For an account of the matter sympathetic to Most, see Rudolf Rocker, Johann Most, das Leben eines Rebellen, 298-302.

208.  Liberty’s issues for the month of May, 1886 appeared on the 1st and 22nd, so that Tucker’s comments on Haymarket had the benefit of two weeks’ observation of the developments surrounding the case.

209.  Liberty, IV (May 22, 1886), 4.

210.  Liberty, IV (February 26, 1887), 1. See also Fischer’s letter of February 1, 1887 to Dyer D. Lum, from the Cook County Jail, on page 6 of this same issue.

Tucker professed to have been impressed by the “heights of rational and moral culture attained by August Spies and Albert Parsons.” Liberty, V (August 4, 1888), 1. Tucker had been corresponding with Parsons on the subject of anarchism long before Haymarket. Liberty, I (March 4, 1882), 1.

211.  Liberty, IV (June 19, 1886), 4-5.

212.  Liberty, V (September 24, 1887), 1; VII (March 7, 1891), 1, 4. For other aspects of the Haymarket case see Part 6.

213.  Liberty, V (May 12, 1888), 4. See also the controversy between Tucker and Most, in which the German paper Der Sozialist joined with Most, concerning a German edition of Liberty, under the name Libertas, and edited by George and Emma Schumm. Liberty, V (April 14, 1888), 4; (April 28, 1888), 4.

214.  Liberty, I (September 3, 1881), 3.

215.  “Socialism properly includes all plans for the furtherance of human welfare which satisfy the two following conditions: 1. that of acting, not directly upon the nature of individuals, but upon their relations and environment; 2. that of acting upon relations and environment with a view to preventing possession of wealth from being a means of levying on the products of labor. Under this definition, an Anarchist may be a Socialist, and, as a matter of fact, almost all Anarchists are Socialists.” Liberty, V (January 14, 1888), 4.

216.  Liberty, V (March 10, 1888), 2; VI (March 8, 1890), 4.

217.  Liberty, II (May 17, 1884), 4; VI (March 8, 1890), 4. Tucker was of the opinion that as bad as things were under monopoly of private nature, under governmental management the services furnished would be poorer in nature and more expensive. Liberty, I (January 7, 1882), 2.

218.  Liberty, VII (April 19, 1890), 8; (May 24, 1890), 1; (June 28, 1890), 1, 8. Tucker quoted the Boston Labor Leader in this latter issue as designating him the “leading exponent voicing reactionary protest against the modern drift toward State Socialism.”

219.  The extended summary of Marx can be found in Liberty, II (April 14, 1883), 4. To the perennial Marxist charge that the anarchists were “bourgeois,” Tucker replied that such was true to some extent, for “great as is their detestation for a bourgeois society,” the anarchists “prefer its partial liberty to the complete slavery of State Socialism.” Twentieth Century, IV (May 29, 1890), 5.

220.  Tucker claimed to have been paid for this essay by the North American Review, but that this journal later refused to print it. For its first appearance in print see Liberty, V (March 10, 1888), 2-3, 6.

221.  Liberty, I (November 12, 1881), 2; (June 24, 1882), 3; XIII (December, 1897), 1-2.

222.  Liberty, V (December 17, 1887), 1.

223.  Liberty, X (May 19, 1894), 1. Tucker used the term “rent” as a synonym for ground rent, which anarchists considered “an immoral tax.” He occasionally applied it to house rent, when monopolistic practices made the building of houses difficult and allowed owners of buildings to continue collecting rent in excess of the original cost of the building.

224.  Liberty, VI (October 27, 1888), 4-5.

225.  Liberty, I (June 24, 1882), 2-3; VI (January 19, 1889), 5.

226.  Liberty, V (November 5, 1887), 6.

227.  Liberty, V (October 24, 1887), 4.

228.  “‘To produce wealth in the shape of coal,’ says Henry George, ‘nothing is needed but a bed of coal and a man.’ Yes, one thing else is needed, — a pickaxe. This neglect of the pickaxe and the means of obtaining it is a vital flaw in Mr. George’s economy. It leads him to say that what hinders the production of wealth is not the lack of money to pay wages with, but the inability of men who are willing to work to obtain access to natural opportunities. That this lack of access, in the proportion that it exists, is a hindrance to production is undisputable, but in this country it is but a molehill in labor’s path compared with the mountain that confronts labor in consequence of the lack of money. In fact, the lack of access is largely due to the lack of money.” Liberty, IV (July 30, 1887), 5.

229.  Tucker maintained that laborers were paid out of the product of the labor of men who had previously worked, not out of their own production, and which he said was in the form of “accumulated capital,” “monetary titles owned by the employer.” For this restatement of the wages fund theory, see Liberty, IX (May 20, 1893), 2.

For a recent critique of George’s explanation of interest by a prominent student of Georgist economics, see Harry Gunnison Brown, “Henry George and the Causation of Interest,” in Henry George News, II (October, 1948), 1, 4-5, 8.

230.  Liberty, V (October 8, 1887), 1; (September 29, 1888), 1; (January 5, 1889), 1. Concerning the possibilities of George as an office holder Tucker commented acidly: “I hope that Henry George will be elected mayor of New York. The laboring men who vote for him will then have a chance to see how little difference it makes to their welfare. . . . There is nothing like a few successes in politics to demonstrate its failure to do more than feather the nests of a few schemers. I cast no reflections upon the character of Henry George, but I distrust the gang at his back. The only difference that I have ever detected between labor politicians and the politicians of the other parties is the usual readiness of the former to sell themselves at a lower price than the latter insist upon.” Liberty, IV (September 18, 1886), 1.

231.  This was reprinted separately after first appearing in Liberty, XII (November, 1896), 2-3. See also the attack on George for his silence in the Haymarket case in Liberty, X (November 17, 1894), 1.

232.  For Tucker’s theoretical estimates of the labor movement see Liberty, I (February 4, 1882), 3; (April 1, 1882), 2; (June 10, 1882), 2-3; VII (May 24, 1890), 1. For his estimate of the unions of his time see Part 6.

233.  Liberty, III (January 9, 1886), 4. Tucker’s opposition to compulsory public school education was of long standing. His objection was based primarily on the belief that majority opinion would determine the nature and content of, and the approach to, the materials taught. The Word, I (February, 1873), The Index, IV (November 6, 1873), 433.

234.  Liberty, II (October 14, 1882), 1. Tucker once quoted from an address by President Warren of Boston University, which had praised the voluntary system as it had operated in the cities in the German Hanseatic League.

235.  See J. William Lloyd, “Memories of Benjamin R. Tucker,” in Ishill (ed.), Free Vistas, II, 282.

236.  Liberty, I (February 4, 1882), 2.

• 1 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.
• 2 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.
• 3 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.
• 4 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.
• 5 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.
• 6 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.
• 7 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.
• 8 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.
• 9 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.
• 10  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.
• 11  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).
• 12  “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.
• 13  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.
• 14The 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.
• 15The 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.
• 16It 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.
• 17Owen 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.
• 18Having 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.
• 19Having 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.
• 20Having 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.
• 21Warren 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.
• 22Warren 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.
• 23Warren 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.
• 24Warren 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.
• 25Warren 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:
• 26Warren 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:
• 27Warren 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:
• 28Warren 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:
• 29Although 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:
• 30Although 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:
• 31One 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.
• 32Owen 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.
• 33Owen 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.
• 34Owen 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.
• 35Warren 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.
• 36While 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.
• 37While 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.
• 38Warren’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:
• 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 unpretentious establishment opened its doors on May 18, 1827 and after a faltering start produced results which he found highly gratifying. The failure of New Harmony had become common knowledge in Cincinnati by the time Warren expressed his determination to begin his labor exchange store, and his friends begged him to refrain from additional attempts at reform. The promise of financial support in commencing a conventional business venture was of no avail. Nor was he inhibited by denunciations of his plan as “utopian” or “visionary,” or as just one more of the numerous tricks to aid speculating or swindling which were all too common in the port towns along the water route to New Orleans. Despite all the discouraging factors, the time store began operations, and at the end of three months had resulted in making an impression in the retail trade of the area which has since drawn the attention of students of early American economic radicalism.
• 57Warren’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.
• 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, 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.”
• 60Warren 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.
• 61Warren 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.
• 62The 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.
• 63The 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.
• 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.
• 65Warren’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.
• 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.
• 68The 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.
• 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.
• 70A 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.
• 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.
• 73Warren 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.
• 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.
• 76At 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.
• 77The 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.
• 78Owen 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.
• 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.
• 80Owen’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.
• 81Owen’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.
• 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.”
• 83Turning 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.”
• 84Turning 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.”
• 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.
• 86Warren 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.
• 87Warren 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.
• 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.
• 89Regardless 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.
• 90Regardless 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.
• 91Equitable 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:
• 92The 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.
• 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 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.
• 96In 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.
• 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:
• 98In 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:
• 99In 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:
• 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 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.
• 104Warren 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.
• 105Warren 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.”
• 106Warren 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.”
• 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 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.
• 110The 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.
• 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.
• 113The 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.
• 114The 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.
• 115One 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.
• 116With 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.
• 117With 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.
• 118Warren’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.
• 119It 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.
• 120It 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.
• 121The 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.
• 122Since 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.
• 123Although 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.
• 124Although 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.
• 125The 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.
• 126In 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.
• 127The 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.)
• 128The 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.)
• 129The 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.
• 130The 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.
• 131The 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.
• 132.  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.
• 133.  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.
• 134.  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.
• 135.  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).
• 136.  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).
• 137.  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.
• 138.  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.
• 139.  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.
• 140.  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.
• 141.  “When I reached New Harmony, early in 1826, . . . I looked at everything with eyes of enthusiasm. . . . The evening gatherings too, delighted me . . . the weekly concert, with an excellent leader, Josiah Warren, and a performance of music . . . much beyond what I had expected in the backwoods . . .” Robert Dale Owen, “My Experiences of Community Life,” in Atlantic Monthly, XXXII (September, 1873), 338.
• 142.  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.
• 143.  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.
• 144.  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.
• 145.  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.
• 146.  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.
• 147.  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.
• 148.  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.
• 149.  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.
• 150.  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.
• 151.  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.
• 152.  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.
• 153.  John R. Commons and Associates, A Documentary History of Industrial Society, V, 79.
• 154.  Practical Details, 75.
• 155.  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.
• 156.  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.
• 157.  Ely, Labor Movement, 238; Warren, Practical Details, 13.
• 158.  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.
• 159.  Warren, Practical Details, 13. Capitalized portions are Warren’s.
• 160.  Practical Details, above.
• 161.  Practical Details, 14.
• 162.  Practical Details, above.
• 163.  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.
• 164.  Practical Details, 14.
• 165.  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.
• 166.  Quarterly Letter, I, 6.
• 167.  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.
• 168.  Practical Details, 15.
• 169.  Practical Details, 29.
• 170.  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.
• 171.  Quarterly Letter, I, 6.
• 172.  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.
• 173.  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.
• 174.  The first customer in the time store was Warren’s brother, according to Warren’s account. He recalled prevailing upon him to make the first purchase to start the experiment, “desperate with disappointment and chagrin” at the failure of three friends to make promised transactions. Warren, Practical Details, 17-18. Two weeks after the Time Store opened, the Western Tiller of Cincinnati began publication of a series of eight dispatches, which ran from June 1 through July 27, written by “A Late Member of New Harmony,” and addressed “To the Friends of the Social System,” which, based on the criteria of internal criticism, must be attributed to Warren. These essays are not only prepared in his peculiar style, but amount to a trial run of some of the ideas to be found later in Equitable Commerce.
• 175.  Practical Details, 24; Peaceful Revolutionist, I (April 5, 1833), 15,
• 176.  Practical Details, 22, 25, 31.
• 177.  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.
• 178.  Peaceful Revolutionist, I (February 5, 1833), 6.
• 179.  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.
• 180.  Practical Details, 16; Peaceful Revolutionist, I (February 5, 1833), 7.
• 181.  Practical Details, 27, 29.
• 182.  Compare prices reported by Warren in 1827 in Practical Details, 21, 23, 27.
• 183.  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.
• 184.  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.
• 185.  Practical Details, 40.
• 186.  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.
• 187.  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.
• 188.  Practical Details, 41.
• 189.  Practical Details, 42.
• 190.  True Civilization an Immediate Necessity, 107-108.
• 191.  Practical Details, 43.
• 192.  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).
• 193.  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).
• 194.  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.
• 195.  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.
• 196.  Practical Details, 43.
• 197.  Bailie, Josiah Warren, 25.
• 198.  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.
• 199.  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.
• 200.  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.
• 201.  A full description of the compositions involved can be found in Kubler, History of Stereotyping, 301.
• 202.  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.
• 203.  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.
• 204.  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.
• 205.  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.
• 206.  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.
• 207.  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.
• 208.  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.
• 209.  Equitable Commerce, introduction, iii.
• 210.  The five basic principles of the Warrenite community were re-phrased a number of times, receiving their most concise statement in 1863:
• 211.  Equitable Commerce, 10.
• 212.  “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.
• 213.  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.
• 214.  Equitable Commerce, 4-5.
• 215.  Equitable Commerce, 7.
• 216.  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.
• 217.  Equitable Commerce, 23.
• 218.  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.
• 219.  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.
• 220.  Equitable Commerce, 22, 24.
• 221.  “. . . 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.
• 222.  Equitable Commerce, 22, 24.
• 223.  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.
• 224.  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.
• 225.  Equitable Commerce, 30-31.
• 226.  Equitable Commerce, 25, 28. There is no existing evidence that Warren at any time was a believer in biological or racial inequality.
• 227.  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.
• 228.  Equitable Commerce, 27, 31.
• 229.  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.
• 230.  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.
• 231.  Equitable Commerce, 26.
• 232.  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.
• 233.  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.
• 234.  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.
• 235.  Equitable Commerce, 41-42.
• 236.  Equitable Commerce, 16-17. His opposition to the taking of interest on money was as rigid as to the stand on rent.