Month: February 2007

Anarchism

Architectural glass patents of Ingalls and Hyatt

February 28, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Among the records of the Architectural Glass Patent Index, you’ll find several patents by Joshua King Ingalls, as well as a much greater number by his friend, associate, and fellow reformer, Thaddeus Hyatt. The illustration (taken from the site) is of a design by Ingalls, Patent 146,074, Dec. 30, 1873, for “Improvement in Illuminating Vault-Covers.”
From the Archives

S. B. Brittan, “J. K. Ingalls” (1873)

February 28, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Samuel Byron Brittan included this notice of his friend, Joshua King Ingalls, in Brittan’s Journal, Vol. II, No. 2, (1874) pp. 275-6. Joshua King Ingalls (1816 – 1898) [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] J. K. Ingalls This representative of the Land Reform was born in Swanzey, Mass., July 21st, 1816, and is now in his fifty-seventh year. He was the youngest of six children, and at the age of four years lost his father. His mother, being a woman of decided energy, contrived to keep her little brood together until, one after another, they were […]
Anarchism

Joshua King Ingalls, The Exodus of Labor (1852)

February 28, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
This essay originally appeared in The Shekinah, Vol. 1 (1852), p. 363-369. The Shekinah was one of several periodicals edited by S. B. Brittan, a spiritualist, reformer, and friend of J. K. Ingalls. Ingalls seems to have contributed something to nearly all of Brittan’s projects. I’ll be posting other material by and about Ingalls in the near future, as I start to finalize the forthcoming print collection. THE EXODUS OF LABORBY J. K. INGALLS Through long, long ages has labor sighed and toiled under a worse than Egyptian bondage. Its utmost stretch of memory can scarce recall its pastoral days, […]
Uncategorized

Guess WTO’s Coming to Dinner

February 10, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
An earlier (2000) lo-fi video project, put together in the midst of a redevelopment project in the downtown where my now-defunct bookstore was located. Pre-Podcast Era commentary and construction-zone ambience. Heliograph2000 – Guess WTO’s Coming to Dinner
Anarchism

Voltairine de Cleyre: two articles on communism

February 7, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
My work in the files of the Twentieth Century keeps dredging up gems, including a handful of pieces by Voltairine de Cleyre. Here are two connected items. I’ll post the sequel before the original, in part because it gives some context and clarification. From the February 9, 1893 issue: A GLANCE AT COMMUNISM.BY VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE “Cast thy bread upon the waters,Find it after many days.” Two years ago, in a little uptown parlor, the home of a Philadelphia weaver, a group of inquirers after truth were wont to assemble bi-weekly for the discussion of “Communism vs. Individualism.” There were […]
Anarchism

Joshua King Ingalls, bibliography update

February 5, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
[NOTE: The most current version of the Joshua King Ingalls bibliography can be found at the Libertarian Labyrinth archive.] Here’s an updated bibliography of works by, about and in response to Joshua King Ingalls, consisting primarily of items I have in hand. I’m sharing this more as an indication of progress being made on the first Ingalls Lab Report volume than as a finished project. It is far from finished, which is fairly good news, given the quality of Ingalls’ contributions to the literature. I have yet to begin with his contributions to The Word, Fair Play, the Univercoelum, Social […]
Anarchism

Josiah Warren’s debt to Robert Owen

February 5, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
The extent to which the individualist anarchists remained suprisingly orthodox students of the so-called “utopian socialists” is a question that interests me quite a bit. I recently suggested a sort of division between “post-Fourierists” and “post-Saint-Simonians” (or “post-Comteans”) among the early individualists. (See also my follow-up here.) Here is some additional, if circumstantial, evidence. The first piece is by Josiah Warren, from the Boston Investigator in the early 1860s. Defending himself against inclusion among the proponents of the “Community System,” he also defends Robert Owen, Robert Dale Owen, and Frances Wright against a variety of charges. But he also takes […]
Anarchism

Practical application of the cost principle in Massachusetts, 1863

February 5, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
Lots of material on Josiah Warren and equitable commerce has surfaced in the Boston Investigator, while I’ve been looking for material by Lewis Masquerier. This is a particularly interesting account of an equity store being opened in Massachusetts in 1863. The note at the end might go some distance in clarifying the terms under which at least some of the Warren-inspired businesses actually traded with suppliers. Some critics have fixated on the labor note and “corn standard” as the central points of Warren’s scheme, which, I think, confuses two projects: the implementation of the “cost principle” and “labor for labor […]
From the Archives

The Anarchist View of Money, Benjamin R. Tucker, 1896

February 5, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur
I am asked by THE. INDEPENDENT to give my views on the financial question. At the outset, therefore, I must give my definition of the term “money.”

Col. William B. Greene, the author of “Mutual Banking” (which represents my views on finance perhaps more thoroughly than any other work), was accustomed to say that “that is money which does the work of the tool, money”; and the work of the tool, money, is that of mediating exchange. Anything, therefore, that is used as a medium of exchange is money to the extent that it is so used.

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