Josiah Warren

Josiah Warren (1798-1874) is widely regarded as America's first anarchist who founded what are now considered America's first anarchist newspaper, and America's first successful anarchist village. 2130Warren was short and stocky mild mannered man with a prominent forehead and bushy muttonchops. 2130

Rev. Moncure Daniel Conway recalled of meeting Warren at Modern Times,"There entered presently a man to whom all showed profound respect, and (who was introduced as the reformer, to embody whose ideas the village had been established.) He was a short, thickset man about fifty years of age with a bright restless blue eye, and somewhat restless, too, in his movements. His forehead was large descending to a good full brow; his lower face especially the mouth was not of equal strength but indicated a mild enthusiasm. He was fluent, eager, and entirely absorbed in his social ideas. It was pleasant to listen to him…"

His son George Washington Warren said of his father, "I never knew him to use profane language or to touch liquor of any kind, or use tobacco in any form. He was strictly temperate in every respect."

Early Life & Education
Josiah Warren was born in Brighton, Massachusetts sometime in 1798. Little is known about his childhood, but at some point he headed west, and by 1825 he was working as a music teacher in Cincinnati, Ohio. 2147

Not too long after closing down the Cincinnati Time Store, Warren spent some time with four men who were living at Spring Hill, Ohio (near Massillon) who ran a labor school for boys and whom he had persuaded to the philosophy of Equitable Commerce. They hoped to join Warren in his first Equity Village experiment, but they had to finish out their 3 year contract at the school first. So, Warren "[threw] down his lot for a time" with the men and started to prepare for village project. As he was a staunch opponent of the apprenticeship system, Warren wanted to test the feasibility of skill training outside of it. He assigned himself to learning how to make wagon wheels, and, with the ample supply of boys from the labor school, he assigned some of the boys to learning various trades in the same manor. 595

Back in Cincinnati in 1831 Warren continued to teach himself in trades such as printing, ironworking, woodworking, building construction, making spinning machinery and how to make various other necessities that a self-sufficient village would need. 644

Warren taught himself skills he knew he'd need for his Equity Villages-- house framing, ironworking, carpentry, printing, and brickmaking. He innovated a new method to make cheap bricks of sun-dried mortar. :2373-4

Marriage
Little is known of Warren's wife Caroline, whom he married when he was 20, soon before the new couple set out for Cincinnati.

They did move together to New Harmony in 1826, but sometime thereafter began to live apart. 2147This was likely due to disagreements about the various radical schemes Warren dedicated his life to. Later in life, when Caroline was living in New Harmony and Warren in Boston, he wrote to his wife about a new publication he wanted to write. She replied, "'Your proposal meets with my --objections, as usual. You are not made of the right material, to even make it pay cost, it that is, a paper of any kind, or book either, with you is an outlay, not an income.' :2256"Caroline did not live with her husband at Modern Times. :3747

There has been some speculation by later biographers that there may have been an affair with one Mrs. Jane Crane who, Warren told Stephen Pearl Andrews in one letter, he spent every night with, reading Andrews' work to each other, a practice which indicates "a high degree of intimacy between the two". :3747

Children and Parenting
Of his son George, Warren's biographer lauded him as a perfect example of his father's philosophy on education,"'At four years old the boy was taught to use carpenter's tools. At seven he learned type-setting and composed a tiny book with pages one inch square. From one thing to another he proceeded after the manner of a child, exploring all-fields of knowledge open to him. He was a musician, and at seventeen began to teach for a living. At eighteen he built an organ, fashioning it from the raw material. It was sold at the current price of such instruments. Being a practical wood-worker, he made the best paling fence in the town. He was also skilled in the use of pencil and brush, and, as one of his sources of income, painted some of the most artistic signs in that part of the country. At nineteen the young man was considered one of the ablest orchestra teachers then known in the West. When he was twenty-one he was noted as a composer of band-music, and was an expert performer on the Clarinet, French Horn, Trombone, Sax Horn, Cornet, Violin, and 'Cello. He learned cabinet-making, and afterwards became a successful manufacturer.' 613"

Musician
During his days in Cincinnati and New Harmony, Warren was a music teacher and bandleader. During the Cincinnati cholera epidemic of 1832, along with printing and distributing informational leaflets, Warren was kept busy leading funeral marches nearly every day for public figures in the community. 653

New Harmony
Warren was a music teacher and owner of a factory which had recently started producing the new lard lamp he had invented, when in 1826 he heard a lecture by Robert Owen. With great excitement and determination, he quickly sold his factory and moved with his wife to New Harmony, where he was both music teacher and bandleader. 2147

The community was dissolved by 1828. Though Owen blamed the residents' "lack of forbearance and charity," Warren believed that the problem did not lie with the individual residents, but because "communal socialism suppressed individuality, and in doing so, it robbed the individual of both initiative and responsibility." 2147-65 As a biographer later summarized, "What was every one's interest was nobody's business." :363 He took issue with what he saw as the approach to diversity in the community: "something to be behaviorally modified rather than simply accepted." 2147-65

Having had gone to New Harmony with such high hopes, its failure was a deeply felt disappointment for Warren. Still, he was inspired by the potential of building a community based on social ideals. After New Harmony, Warren began developing his own social philosophy in reaction to the "failure both of paternal authority and majority rule as forms of government" :353 that he witnessed there. Soon he was fleshing out his own plans for an 'utopian' village that could prove his ideals true. 2167

Nearly 30 years after New Harmony, Warren wrote,"'Many a time while in the midst of them did I say to myself, Oh ! if the world could only assemble on these hills around and look down upon us through all these experiences, what lessons they would learn ! There would be no more French Revolutions, no more patent political governments, no more organizations, no more constitution-making, law-making, nor human contrivances for the foundation of society. And what a world of disappointment and suffering this experience might save them! But they could not get our experience, and so they have kept on organizing communities, phalansteries, political parties, and national revolutions, only to fail, of course, as we did, and to destroy by degrees the little hope that existed of making the world more fit to live in.' :363 (5)"

He returned to Cincinnati when he was 29. :382

Return
Sometime after the Panic of 1837 and the subsequent depression, Warren and his family returned to New Harmony. It was no longer a socialist utopia, but it was a prosperous town by that time, and furthermore, many of his friends still lived there. There he began his second Time Store and began designing a new system of musical notation. :2446

Lard Lamp
The lard lamp, his first known invention was able to burn much more cheaply than tallow or oil lamps. :2147Warren had patented it in 1823, and had just started the factory to produce them en masse when, in 1825 :1601 or 1826 :2147 Warren heard a lecture by Robert Owen and eagerly sold the factory and moved to New Harmony. :2147

Printing Innovations
Warren believed strongly in the revolutionary powers of the press. For him, "egalitarian media were the greatest handmaid to radical social change, especially since the mainstream papers of the day would give no credence to his anarchist philosophy of cooperative individualism." :2391 As he said, "It was evident that any new truths which tended to break up the present suicidal and desolating habits of business must have a printing power of their own, or make their way into the world with all the mighty power of the press against them. This gave rise to the design of taking the printing power out of the exclusive control of merely mercenary managers, and making it as accessible as the use of speech or the pen. 1084"After designing the first version of the speed press and his own type, his next step "'was to combine all the implements for printing in a single piece of household furniture to stand in the next room to the piano,' which he also accomplished. His intention was 'to domesticate stereotyping, and the arts required for printing drawings, pictorial illustrations, maps, music, etc.' And to this work he devoted all the time not occupied with social experiments during the remainder of his life. 1140"

Speed Press
To that end, the ever inventive Warren designed and built what was likely the first countinuous-feed rotary press in the country. He began working on the idea in 1830. 1092 True to his ideals, Warren did not patent the invention, it was "simply given to the public." :2391A few years after exhibiting the invention in New York, Hoe and Company "was reaping large sums of money marketing an identical press, one that would revolutionize printing toward the end of the nineteenth century." :2391

In 1832 Warren was able to use his new press to print thousands of medical leaflets during a cholera epidemic in Cincinnati :2409(CONFIRMATION NEEDED: BAILIE said that he developed this in 1837, but he had his type during this epidemic... okay looks like this was his first version of it, and later developed a 2nd version)undefinedThey described the disease's first symptoms and how it should be treated, along with general information on hygeine and sanitation. Warren printed the pamphlets at his own cost. 644Warren's son George later remembered the "pleasure it gave his father when some well-known citizen, meeting him in the streets engaged upon his humane task, would stop him, grasp him warmly by the hand, and express his gratitude for that philanthropic work." 633 The city later declared a "resolution of public thanks" to Warren for his information campaign during the epidemic. :2409

Back in New Harmony in 1837 Warren 'resumed his labors on the printing press.' It was an entirely new type of press, designed for, or at least first widely used for The South-Western Sentinel of Evansville, Indiana, which supported the campaign of Van Buren. The press was described in a February 1840 editorial,"The first number of The South-Western Sentinel is the first newspaper probably in the world which was ever printed on a continuous sheet. Our press or printing machinery is the invention of Mr. Josiah Warren of New Harmony. He has brought a series of experiments extending through nine years to a successful close, and this machine, which he calls his speed press, is one of the results.""It receives the paper from a roll, prints it by means of a roller and winds it as it is printed on a second roll. It is worked by a man and a boy, or, at somewhat slower speed, by a man alone. It is supplied with self-inking apparatus by which the distribution of the ink is strictly under control. Its construction throughout is very simple. It has not a single geared wheel about it. It is chiefly composed of rollers, twenty-three in number, with several pulleys. Its form is elegant and its appearance substantial.""The paper used ... is cut into sheets after it is printed .... Should the experiment which has succeeded admirably thus far, cause the introduction of Mr. Warren's printing machines throughout the Union, the printers' vocabulary will be somewhat changed. We order not so many reams, but so many yards, of paper which comes to us like cloth in rolls. :1108"Warren's new self-inking 'speed press' could print '60 or more' copies a minute at a time when all the others could do, at best, 5 or 6. While this was a giant leap forward for publishing, it was seen as a threat to the livelihoods of the pressmen themselves. "Their instinct of self-preservation at once became aroused, and blind ignorance and pitiful prejudice were arrayed against the inventor. The trick of the workmen was to throw the press out of order at every opportunity. Warren lived at New Harmony, twenty-five miles from Evansville, and in those days it was not always a simple matter to make the journey. But no one except the inventor could set the press in order when it had been maliciously tampered with. On several occasions Warren was sent for, and came to set the mechanism going. The workmen tried to throw the blame of their trickery upon the imperfections of the press. The interests of the paper suffered by the troubles and delays that arose, while the inventor began to lose patience with his insidious foes. But there was no remedy. He could not remain always in the office of the paper to operate the press himself, so, after several months of conflict and experiences both mortifying and costly, he finally concluded to take the press away from Evansville, believing that the ignorance and selfishness of printers would not permit the introduction of his labor-saving invention. One day he arrived with several wagons at the office of the Sentinel, took the press apart, loaded it on his wagons, and returned with it to New Harmony where he, in disgust, proceeded to break it up. The stone press-bed is all that has survived, and that to-day still forms the front door-step of a house in New Harmony.” 1129"

Rubber Type
Warren spent much of 1830 inventing the new rubber type plate, made out of shellac, tar, and beeswax. At the time type plates were made of metal, were more expensive, and took much longer to produce and set than Warren's innovation. His son George later reminisced on this time. "Well I remembered in 1830, when I was a little chap. I watched my father making type at the same fireplace at which my mother cooked the meals." :2391"To purchase fonts of type was beyond his resources, so the inventor's next task was to devise a mode of casting them. But, owing to the fear engendered by his former innovations, he found it impossible to procure in Cincinnati a type mould at any price. Determined not to be balked by prejudice, he managed to gain admission to a type foundry and there saw the desired implements. He then took lessons in working steel, and soon made a type mould himself. To overcome the difficulty and expense of cutting a steel punch for every letter, he substituted the types for punches and warm lead for copper matrices, and by this means was able to cast type which, to judge from samples of printing done seventy years ago, now in the writer's possession, were a credit to the artificer. 1101"In 1851 the Smithsonian Institution used Warren's rubber type to print its first book catalog, likely due to the influence of Robert Dale Owen. :2391

In the same year Warren was hired to bring his rubber type to the Boston publisher John P. Jewett, who, a year later, published the first edition of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. :2391

Universal Typography
During his second residency at New Harmony, Warren appears to have invented "Universal Typography", a stereotyping process with which he was able to reproduce his own handwriting in 'delicate copperplate," 743along with being able to reproduce illustrations. 1149

'In the New Harmony Indiana Statesman for Oct. 4, 1845, appears an illustration which looks like a well-executed wood-cut, with the following explanatory note:'"We are indebted to Mr. Josiah Warren of this place for the above representation of the steamship 'Great Britain,' — the mastodon of the age. The plate was executed by Mr. Warren's new stereotyping process, and, although not so perfect as it might be made, still it serves to show the usefulness and susceptibility of the invention. 1149"The next March the Statesmen carries a notice of the "Universal Typography" which detailed the process."The plates were very durable and cheap, with a smooth, glossy surface so like stone that the inventor termed them 'stone-type.' He claimed that the facility with which illustrations could be got up, the rapidity of stereotyping and printing them, together with the durability of the plates, justified the expectation that they would ultimately supersede wood-cuts, steel-plate and copper-plate engraving and printing, and lithography. The process included color-printing, besides effects similar to half-tones of the present day. 1158"He quickly sold his patents for the process for seven thousand dollars, which he planned to use in developing his second Equity village.undefined 743

'He also invented a method of addressing wrappers and envelopes which saved ninety per cent of the labor required by the common mode.' 1158

Musical Notation
As a musician and orchestra leader, Warren saw music as a thing needed "to elevate, refine, and harmonize and humanize a people," and was keenly aware of the "monopoly of music publishers". He wanted to simplify sheet music, and in his new system, developed in 1844 and called "Mathematical Notation" 733 he "completely did away with the treble and bass clef, sharps, flats, and the need to transpose different musical keys." However, he was not able to find any publishers "willing to jeopardize the entire industry, along with a six-hundred-year-old tradition of writing and transposing music." He criticized the publishers for their "one great, all-absorbing object of money making." :2446

Leader
"'For all his insights into what truly motivates Homo economicus, Warren lacked the charisma characteristic of most social visionaries. 'He had no magnetic qualities so needful in persuasion or gaining converts,' remembered one of his later converts. 'Also he was a timid man and hated to wrangle.''"

Between the cholera leaflets and his leading the funeral marches, circa 1832, Warren was a popular figure in Cincinnati. 653

According to one biographer Warren "believed that the first step toward doing good to others was to show them that he possessed no power to do them harm, and 'was as ready to run away from power as are most reformers to pursue it.'" 431

Peaceful Revolutionist
In 1833 Warren turned his new press with his new type to what had been his original purpose: to spread the message of Equitable Commerce. The Peaceful Revolutionist, a four-page weekly, is now considered America's first anarchist newspaper. In it Warren had free reign to condemn urban correction, public education, and his critics. He was particularly incensed against "the way governments hid behind the guise of law to exert state power over the liberties of individuals." 2409The paper did not last the whole of 1833. 665

Equitable Commerce
Later called "the first important publication of anarchistic doctrine in America," :2455 Equitable Commerce was Warren's public elucidation of the theories he had been developing over the last 20 years. Published at New Harmony in 1846, in the small book he,"'contended that the only historical justification for government was the 'interchange of mutual assistance' and 'security of person or property.' In both cases, every government known to man had failed, turning the guise of armed protection into conscription, coercion, and the general abuse of power.' :2455"Warren believed, as illustrated by nature herself, that individuality is the first law of nature. ."'Individuality thus rising above all prescriptions--all authority-- every one, by the very necessities of nature, is raised above, instead of being under, institutions based on language.' :2455"And that only by "raising every individual above the state will society take the first successful step toward its harmonious adjustment." :2455

Later Warren would date the book's publishing to 1846, but in a letter dated April 25, 1847 he refers to it being "out at last." 'A second edition was printed in 1849 at Utopia, Ohio, and Fowler and Wells of New York in 1852 issued another edition which they followed with Warren's "Practical Details of Equitable Commerce," .. .these works and the author's subsequent writings being usually referred to under the general title, "True Civilization."' 772

Periodical Letters

He published "Periodical Letters" irregularly between 1854-1858. 1199

Philosophy
The idea that became the guiding light of the rest of Warren's light was what he called the "sovereignty of the individual." This principle said that "every person is a law unto him-or herself, and a person's rights are primary to those of any other institution, including the state." 2165

Warren believed that, with that in mind, "all social undertakings should be conducted in the mutual interest of all parties involved," or, voluntary cooperation. 2165

Equitable Commerce
To respect the sovereignty of the individual and promote voluntary cooperation, Warren called for a single economic mandate, which he called Equitable Commerce. As one biographer described it, "Its simple premise predates Marx and is far more radical: cost should be the limit of price." The idea was suggested in the writings of Robert Owen and Constantine Rafinesque, but it was Warren who would build a theory of it. 2165

Though Warren never called himself an anarchist, later academics would retroactively apply that label to him (and Individualist Anarchism in particular). As the writer of Utopian Drive, Erik Reese, later wrote:"'Certainly Warren's version of anarchism was distinctly American. He never sought to overthrow any government, like his European and Russian counterparts, but rather to undermine the state through the success of his experiments in noncoercive, cooperative living. He would live and work in the gaps left open by the state, and in doing so, show its cumbersome apparatus of law and power to be unnecessary, irrelevant. Government would then simply decay out of disuse.' '2428"

Alexander Bryan Johnson
Treatise on Language by the philosopher Alexander Bryan Johnson is one of the few books known for sure to have been read by Warren. 2409As a Warren biographer would explain,"'Johnson's particular philosophy of language was as radical as Warren's philosophy of labor, and it reached many of the same conclusions as the American pragmatists would one hundred years later. Johnson argued that words are blunt and inadequate instruments for representing reality. Whereas nature always shows itself in an infinite display of particularity, words always rise to the level of the general, so that a rose is a rose is a rose. Not only was language only fossilized poetry, as Emerson asserted, but its fossil became outdated and unreliable as soon nas it hardened into words. Thus, because language could not be trusted to be a mirror of nature, it had to be judged, as the pragmatists would later argue, by the actions it inspired... :2409""'Warren transposed Johnson's theories into an attach on the whole enterprise of government, that could never be brought in line with the complexities of human reality.' :2409"As the biographer continued,"'Southern slavery was obviously a grotesque violation of Warren's 'sovereignty of the individual,' but he also had nothing but contempt for the North's argument for 'union,' a word so vague and empty of meaning that it could be used only in an act of brutal state coercion (as when Lincoln hanged deserters of the Union army after making them sit on their caskets all day.)' : 2428""'There was a time when the word union held legitimacy because it could be tied to a particular reality-- the fellow feeling that brought on the American Revolution. For Warren, 'This union existed independent of words: it was the necessary and unavoidable effect of the circumstances of that time.' Yet that action of union soon ossified into a proscriptive social contract that betrayed the heart of Jefferson's original justification for independence. Sixty years later, the United States government was insisting, in Warren's words, that 'the laws shall be obeyed, and that the union must be preserved. But these words must and shall rouse the ghost of murdered liberty to resistance.' : 2428"

Education
During his time with the Labor School for Boys near Massillon, Ohio in his early 30s, Warren was able to practice extending the principles of Equity to children and their education outside of his own family. "'The boys were treated according to the principle of Equity, given self-sovereignty, allowed to assume responsibility for their own support, and, as a consequence of being thrown upon their own resources, they formed habits of thinking and deciding for themselves, sought advice which they received with gratitude and paid for by exchanging their labor equitably with the labor of their teachers; all of which proved a valuable means of education and taught them more in one week, when all their interests were aroused and their innate capacities called forth, than they would have learned in a year by the common method of enforced instruction.' 595"In his book Equitable Commerce, Warren wrote, "What is education? What is the power of education? With whom will we trust the fearful power of forming the character and determining the destinies of the future race ?.. . The educating power is in whatever surrounds us. If we would have education to qualify children for future life, then must education embrace those practices and principles which will be demanded in adult life. If we would have them practise equity toward each other, in adult life, we must surround them with equitable practices and treat them equitably. If we would have children respect the rights of property in others, we must respect their rights of property. If we would have them respect the individual peculiarities and the proper liberty of others, then we must respect their individual peculiarities and their personal liberty. If we would have them know and claim for themselves the proper reward of labor in adult age, we must give them the proper reward of their labor in childhood. "If we would qualify them to sustain and preserve themselves in after life, they must be given the opportunity in childhood and youth. If we would have them capable of self-government in adult age, they should practise the rights of self-government in child-hood. If we would have them learn to govern themselves rationally, with a view to the consequences of their acts, they must be allowed to govern themselves by the consequences of their acts in childhood. Children are principally the creatures of example. If we strike them, they will strike each other. If they see us attempting to govern each other, they will imitate the same barbarism. If we habitually admit the right of self-sovereignty in each other and in them, they will become equally respectful of our rights and each other's."" 613-635

Free Love
Warren found himself much against two of his fellow members of Modern Times, Mary Gove Nichols and her husband Thomas Low Nichols, who were outspoken advocates of Free Love. At the time 'Free Love' usually meant the freedom to marry for love, to divorce when a marriage is loveless, and to be able to bear children when and with whom a person wanted without government interference. Despite the obvious direct connection this philosophy had to Warren's own concept of "Individual sovereignty," he was deeply annoyed by the Free Lovers, especially since the Nichols' Free Love infamy was bringing negative attention to his community and they were, he felt, attempting to represent the whole community when they addressed the public. Finally, he wrote a screed against Free Love and posted it on the community message board of Modern Times, inviting those in agreement to sign it as well. Many did, and soon the Nichols were moving out. :3747

The Civil War
Warren's belief in the Sovereignty of the Individual extended to his opinions on the Civil War, which may have caused conflict with his neighbors at Modern Times, many of whom were part of the great wave of national patriotism that occurred after the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter in 1861. :3800-3818Warren believed that the South had the right to secede from the Union, and it was wrong to use force to keep them within it against their wishes. He believed "to force a man to fight and die for a country to which he didn't wish to belong and for a principle in which he didn't believe was the grossest violation of liberty Warren could imagine." :3800-3818

Women
Warren's progressive spirit only went so far, however. While he believed that everyone had "the great sacred right of freedom to do silly things," that didn't mean that he felt they shouldn't be judged for it. As he wrote about a woman living in his Modern Times community who walked through town in men's clothing, "She cut such a hideous figure that women shut down their windows and men averted their heads as she passed. It seemed not to have occurred to the woman in men's clothes, that the influence of woman is one of the greatest civilizing powers we have, and we need to know when we are in their presence." :3728

Later Years
After leaving Modern Times in 1862, Warren moved to Boston, where he lived for the rest of his life. :3818

“At Princeton typography occupied part of the veteran's time, while his leisure was frequently beguiled by music. He sang and performed on the violin for the entertainment of his friends.” “He was attacked by dropsy, which rendered him unable to move about, but he could write in his usual clear hand till the last.” :1218

Death & Legacy
Warren lived with a friend from Modern Times, Edward H. Linton, at the man's home in Charleston, a mile from Boston City Hall. "He was cared for in his last illness by kindly hands. Miss Kate Metcalf one of the pioneers of Modern Times, nursed him until the end."

Warren died on April 14, in 1874, aged 76. Services were held at the Unitarian Bulfinch Place Church. 1218 He was buried across from Harvard Square at the Mount Auburn Cemetery. :3818As per his wishes, there was no headstone or marker for the grave. "'Did Warren's insistence that no constitutions be written add to the ephemeral nature of his legacy? Did his great distrust of language mean that little of it would be used to claim a place for him in this country's history?' :3836""'Yet it still seems to me that of all the American utopianists, only Josiah Warren found a scheme to balance absolute liberty for the individual with absolute fairness--justice if you will--for the community. Warren's two principles of equitable commerce both protected individual freedom and kept the individual from being exploited by larger economic forces. In a capitalist economy, the absence of the cost principle is what robs men of their liberty and makes them wage slaves. The second principle must therefore exist to protect the first. That was the genius of Warren's particular version of utopian anarchy.' :3836"