Uncategorized Archives - Page 17 of 39 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

And you thought “Lucifer” was an unfortunate name…

July 18, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Yes, Virginia, there are worse names for your radical journal than Lucifer the Light-Bearer, although that may not be immediately clear. When Lucifer changed its name and format, becoming the American Journal of Eugenics, it was considered by many a step in the right direction, towards a more staid, respectable image that would appeal to more Americans. Bolton Hall, for example, wrote in to express his approval of the changes. The masthead of the new journal was, like that of Lucifer, quite striking. What do think, shall I have some t-shirts made? I’m afraid, however, that the American Journal of […]

Google Books is hiding things again

July 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

More stupid search engine tricks. Back in May, I noted some peculiarities of Google Books’ search engines. If you follow the links from that original post, you will notice some new peculiarities, including the disappearance of the 1849 Amos E. senter edition of Equitable Commerce from the results for: inauthor:josiah inauthor:warren. That important edition is still available from Google Books; you can follow the link above to see what Equitable Commerce looked like before Stephen Pearl Andrews edited it. But it, and one other listing, no longer show up in a general search for Warren’s work. There are still five […]

Bits of Liberty’s History

July 12, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Labors of love are notoriously bad at paying the rent, and other work has been a little slow, so I’m digging into my personal archive a bit to keep a roof over my head while I work on the Josiah Warren book and Liberty archive. I was fortunate enough, some years ago, to pick up a lot of original issues of Liberty, along with a few related items: letterhead stationary from the Liberty offices and the portrait of Michael Bakunin which Tucker claimed was the first faithful likeness published in the United States. I have put one each of the […]

Burke + Warren, 1850

July 12, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

In an article on “Anarchism in England Fifty Years Ago,” reprinted in the February 1906 issue of Liberty, Max Nettlau discussed two very early anarchist publications printed in England. One of these was an edition of Edmund Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society, published By Holyoake and Co., in 1850, under the title The Inherent Evils of all State Governments Demonstrated. The particular interest in this edition of Burke’s work comes from the Appendix which followed it, probably the work of Ambrose C. Cuddon, in which Josiah Warren’s “system” (he hated the word but…) of equitable commerce is presented as an […]

Reading around / Dyer D. Lum’s Alarm

July 9, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’ve been reading pretty broadly lately, pulling together articles related to the Liberty archive project and Utopia, OH, the Josiah Warren anthology. That’s taken me into the pages of The Egoist, where Benjamin Tucker, Bolton Hall, and Stephen Byington shared pages with the likes of Ezra Pound, and fairly familiar debates about the nature of egoism and anarchism appeared alongside early reviews of Italian Futurism. It’s also taken me into the pages of Max Nettlau’s 1897 Bibliographie de l’Anarchie, which I had never tackled before, and which has been full of pleasant surprises. A steady regimen of Proudhon translation has […]

Independence Days

July 4, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Happy 4th of July! May we celebrate independence in all its best senses. All these days seem to get overrun by commercial and governmental concerns, which obscures what is radical and oppositional about the events they celebrate, what, for example, was really revolutionary about the American Revolution and the Declaration. Perhaps this is the time to think about a lost tradition of radical celebrations, the celebration of Tom Paine’s birthday, January 29. The Thomas Paine Institute has a birthday celebration page. It’s not too early to start planning an event!

Eliphalet Kimball, Suggestions

June 29, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Eliphalet Kimball, “Suggestions,” Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, 8, 3 (June 20, 1874), 4. SUGGESTIONS. The reasons are many and powerful why husband and wife should not sleep in the same bed or even the same room. It is a familiarity that in time extinguishes love. Even by day, absence a good share of the time is necessary to the life of love. What is the cause that brother and sister have no love for each other? It is not because they are brother and sister; it is because they have lived from earliest childhood in the same family. Sleeping in […]

Josiah Warren and the I. W. A. – Documents

June 29, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

“The International,” Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly,” 6, 5 (July 5, 1873), 3. THE INTERNATIONAL. The meeting of the American Federal Council on Sunday was well attended, and a vacancy was filled by the election of Thomas Lalor. The following communication was received from Section 23 (American) in Philadelphia, Pa.: At a meeting of Section No. 26, I. W. A., of Philadelphia, held June 16, 183, was passed the following, by a unanimous vote, as declaratory of the views of the members of the Section touching the question of the fundamental basis of the body, and recommending their consideration to the […]

Liberty Archive – update

June 26, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

The archive of Liberty is growing steadily. I passed the 1000-page mark today, which is about 1/3 of the run, in terms of actual pages; about 1/4 in terms of difficulty of scanning the material; and about 1/2 of the way in terms of the actual content of the paper. The response has been very encouraging. Wendy McElroy has offered her Index To Liberty as a means of wading into the archive in a more systematic manner, and it looks like we will be incorporating that index into the archive as it becomes more than just a pile of pdfs. […]

Lysander Spooner petitions Congress, 1839

June 26, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

In the late 1830s, a young Lysander Spooner was involved in real estate speculation in the Maumee River basin of Ohio. In 1837, he purchased 80 acres along the Maumee, including the town of Gilead, now know as Grand Rapids. Charles Shively’s biography tells some of the story of Spooner’s adventures. Gilead was not ultimately destined to become the great trading city between Toledo and Fort Wayne. The effects of the Panic of ’37, and plans by the State of Ohio to build a dam above Gilead, doomed Spooner’s plans. But it appears that he continued to fight until at […]