William Potter’s “Key of Wealth”

With two other researchers now working on Josiah Warren, I’ve been trying (as regular readers will know) to get notes together and sources archived. It’s rather wonderful, I must say, to be working in a field so wide open that it’s a relief to find that someone else can make use of your research. One less book to write. My notes on The Boston Investigator turned out to be a little less complete than I had hoped, so I’ve been taking another look at those microfilm reels—no hardship since each pass through a literature as rich as this tends to […]

PROSPECTUS OF THE LAND BANKOR MANUFACTORY COMPANY.__________________________ THE LAND BANK OR MANUFACTORY SCHEME. Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England. In order to Redress the distressing Circumstances which the Trade of this Province labours under for want of a Medium, other Methods having failed, it is proposed to set up a Bank on Land Security, no Person to be admitted but such as dwell in this Province, and hath a Real Estate therein. I. THE Stock to be One Hundred and fifty Thousand Pounds Lawful Money; no man to subscribe for more than Two Thousand Pounds, and none less […]

A funny thing happened on the way to the modern edition of William B. Greene’s Mutual Banking. We know that with Mutual Banking, as was so often the case with Greene’s work, the editorial refinement process over the years consisted largely of whittling away at his early works, Equality (1849) and Mutual Banking (1850), cutting down towards the kernel of occasionally sprawling explorations. The editors of Proudhon’s Solution to the Social Problem, who gave us the modern edition of Mutual Banking, only continued that trend. The result is a bit peculiar. While modern critics have at times taken pains to […]