equitable commerce Archives - Page 4 of 4 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

on the “Boston House of Equity,” 3/26/1856

June 9, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

“To Correspondents,” Boston Investigator, 25, 48 (March 26, 1856), 3. “J. N.”—The “Boston House of Equity” (established for the sale of provisions and groceries at about wholesale prices or a small advance upon cost,) and the “People’s Paper,” (pledged to advocate the enterprise,) have both failed or suspended operations.—The principle, however, upon which the movement was founded was a very good one, and deserved to succeed; but in a city where rent and labor are high, such an experiment is doubtful, even if well managed, and this probably was not. It undertook to do more than it had means to […]

Equitable Commerce: Boston Investigator advertisement

June 8, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[advertisement], Boston Investigator, 18, 44 (March 7, 1849), 3. EQUITABLE COMMERCE THE SECOND EDITION OF “EQUITABLE COMMERCE, a new development of principles for the harmonious adjustment and regulation of the intercourse of mankind,” is just published and for sale at the Investigator Office, 35 Washington street, and at Bela Marsh’s Bookstore, 25 Cornhill, Boston. Also, at Utopia, Ohio, where the principles are in practical operation. Address “Josiah Warren, Utopia, Rural Post Office, O. March 7, 1849.

Equitable Commerce bibliography and miscellany

May 16, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

For your education, edification, and amusement: Josiah Warren and Equitable Commerce: A Bibliography A Work-in-Progress: I currently have most of my notes from 1821 to about 1853 incorporated into this sprawling bibliography+, which includes the full text of many short articles. If you’re one of the folks looking forward to Crispin Sartwell’s anthology, check my progress once in awhile, and take a look at Crispin’s Josiah Warren Project, which just got a major update.

How NOT to Read Josiah Warren

May 12, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[The following note comes from David Ames, Robinson Crusoe’s Money (1876, pages 59-60). I include in here for the specimen notes, both of which were new to me, and for the hints about E. D. Linton’s scheme, but it can also stand as a textbook failure to read Josiah Warren’s actual proposals. Those who have just read William Pare’s “Equitable Villages in America“ will get a chuckle at the differences between the two accounts.] * If to any it may seem puerile and unnecessary to enter into such explanations, it may be well to remind them that one of the […]

William Pare on equitable commerce

May 11, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] William Pare’s “Equitable Villages in America,” a lecture from 1854, is a particularly good short treatment of the system of “equitable commerce” proposed and practiced by Josiah Warren. Pare never forgot that the first principle of Warren’s philosophy was individualization, and this helped him to understand that the “cost principle” is not simply a matter of exchanging labor time, but a system which incorporates into the notion of “cost” a whole range of subjective valuations, which cannot be subordinated to any social or institutional standard of equity without betraying the system completely. I recommend the […]

The Dual Commerce Association, Boston, 1859

May 9, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

One of the things that is becoming clearer from continuing research into the practical history of mutualism is that there were lots of small experiments in, and local enthusiasts for, equitable commerce and mutual currency. I’ve already documented one Practical application of the cost principle in Massachusetts, 1863. If appears that this was preceded in Boston by an 1859 project, The Dual Commerce Association. The OCLC catalog lists one 16-page pamphlet: Dual Commerce Association. The Dual Commerce Association: its Experience, Results, Plans & Prospectus : First Report. Boston, Mass.: Dual Commerce Association, 1859. and The Circular includes the following short […]

Josiah Warren, Equitable Commerce, &c.

April 15, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Here are four pieces, recently added to the archive, all relating to Josiah Warren. Peter I. Blacker, Equitable Villages Peter I. Blacker was a frequent contributor to The Boston Investigator, where his posts were frequently signed “P. I. B.” He was also, from all indications, one of the most enthusiastic converts to the system of “equitable commerce” promoted by Josiah Warren in a series of lectures in Boston in 1848 and 1849. Blacker contributed a number of articles to the Investigator, and to other Boston papers, in support of Warren’s efforts. This article, from 1852, announces the beginnings of the […]

From the Boston Investigator, 1848-49, Pt. 1

April 10, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

I was contacted this afternoon by a reader of this blog who is working on a biography of Josiah Warren. Taking that together with Crispin Sartwell’s work on a Warren Anthology, Crispin’s Josiah Warren Project archive, and the work that I’ve been doing digging through the archives, it appears that Warren’s star is once again on the rise. Good news! I’ve been promising Crispin the results of my own work for awhile, so here’s a start. XVII, 49 (April 12, 1848) 3. THE “ANGLO SACSUN,”—The publishers of the Phonographic paper, by this name, printed in New York, have issued a […]

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 […]

A Poem on Equitable Commerce

September 25, 2006 Shawn P. Wilbur

[The New Harmony Gazette published the following in December, 1827.] From the Saturday Evening Chronicle we copy, for the amusement of his friends, the following jeu d’esprit, on the Magazine kept by a late fellow-citizen at the corner of Elm and Fifth streets, Cincinnati, wherein a subscriber may receive, for one day’s labor, a similar amount of the labor of any other subscriber,—or may purchase articles at a wholesale price, adding thereto the value of the time necessarily consumed in the sale of the article. For an equal exchange of Labor, as valued by Time, now in successful operation, at […]