Josiah Warren, an Annotated Bibliography

(A) Books/booklets published during Warren's lifetime:

(1) Equitable Commerce: A New Development of Principles as Substitutes for Laws and Governments, for the Harmonious Adjustment and Regulation of the Pecuniary, Intellectual, and Moral Intercourse of Mankind, Proposed as Elements of New Society. (New York, 1852: reprint New York: Burt Franklin, n.d.). The primary source for Warren's thinking, edited by Stephen Pearl Andrews. Uses an eccentric typographical/indexing system in which themes are numbered and lettered in a hierarchy and then noted in the margins. The first edition was apparently published in 1846: Andrews writes: "The main body of this book was published as far back as 1846. It has now undergone, at my request, a revisal by the author," who signs "Josiah Warren. New Harmony, Indiana, U.S., 1846."

(2) Practical details in equitable commerce showing the workings, in actual experiment, during a series of years, of the social principles expounded in the works called "Equitable commerce." (New York: Fowlers and Wells, 1852), 115 pp. I am in a possession of a copy from the Houghton Library, Harvard. It is mostly in dialogue form, seemingly recording actual transactions etc. It is something of a miscellany. It features a preface by Andrews, setting out the project of Modern Times. Also theoretical cogitations, very much redundant with other writings. But it yields a narrative of Warren's projects between New Harmony and Modern Times, with many detailed transactions that Warren regarded as the data confirming his theory.

(3) Written Music Remodeled and Invested with the Simplicity of an Exact Science. Boston: John P. Jewett & co., 1860. 107 pp. An elaboration of Warren's work on musical notation in the 1840s.

(4) True Civilization: An Immediate Necessity and the Last Ground of Hope for Mankind, Being the Results and Conclusions of Thirty-Nine Years' Laborious Study and Experiments in Civilization As It Is, and in Different Enterprises for Reconstruction, by Josiah Warren, Counsellor in Equity. (Boston: 1863; reprint New York: Burt Franklin, 1967). A late restatement. It qualifies his anarchism to some extent with a sort of system of arbitration panels and superficially addresses the Civil War. The table of contents, rather than running serially through the text, gives page numbers nonsequentially by theme. Widely redundant with (2).

(5) Practical Applications of the Elementary Principles of True Civilization to the Minute Details of Everyday Life: a 47 pp. booklet, narrating Warren's practical experiments starting with Tuscarawas. I have a copy obtained through the Houghton Library, Harvard.

(B) Material in the Labadie Collection, University of Michigan:

The Quarterly Letter: Devoted to Showing the Practical Applications and Progress of Equity, a Subject of Serious Concern to All Classes, but Most Immediately To the Men and Women of Labor and Sorrow! Vol 1, No. 1 (dated October, 1867). Consists exclusively of a treatise by Warren: "Labor for Labor": narrates Warren's experiments up to Tuscarawas (New Harmony and Time Store); together with Practical Applications, provides the more or less continuous narrative presented here.

Page of an earlier periodical (?: mentions lectures by Robert Dale Owen in the West and "here in the east," suspect 1850s) calculating the price of the periodical on equitable principles.

Labor for Labor Note for "Five Hours in Professional Sevices or 80 Pounds of Corn. Physician."

Another dated 1871, Massachussetts: "Ten Pounds of Indian Corn, being the product of One Hour's Labor."

"A few words to the writer in a paper called 'the Circular' on 'The Sovereignty of the Individual"

"Letter to E. H. Heywood": appears to be from a periodical, letter dated July 1873, a three page recapitulation of familiar themes.

"Money: the defects of money are the 'roots of all evil': 4 short graphs on labor currency from a periodical, dated October 1873.

"What the Labor Movement Means": one paragraph from a periodical.

"Response to the Call of the National Labor Union for Essays on the Following Subjects": a pamphlet giving one-paragraph responses in the Warrenian manner to such questions as "Coolie Importation," "Compulsory Education," and "Woman - Her Rights": 12 in all. Dated Boston, 1871. 7pp.

"Modern Government and Its True Mission: A Few Words on The American Crisis": Pamphlet,

signed "A Counsellor," March, 1862.

"Modern Education": leaflet promoting a school at Modern Times (2 pp.) dated December, 1861.

Letter addressed "My dear Sir" in a bold and flowing and clear hand. Thompson's Station, Long Island, New York, March 12 1853; addresses various subjects including Warren's printing experiments.

Other letters are not legible due to bleed-through.

Hand-written document titled "A Scrap of History" ("by the author of TC and EC etc"; thus, late): hand-written memoir of Owen's New Harmony, extending through some scraps of notes; a shopping list and a note on chains and their breaking.

There is a set of what are apparently lecture notes, too fragile to xerox. Described by Martin in Men Against the State.

Time System for Labor Exchange (photocopy); Western Tiller (5 articles) ≠ Sept/Oct 1828

Land Transactions (between Owen and Warren) 1839, 1855

"Notebook D": a book-length handwritten notebook used by Warren at widely divergent stages of his career (1840, 1860, 1873). It overlaps with Equitable Commerce and other writings, but also contains some previously unknown material. It was redacted by the painstaking efforts of Ann Caldwell Butler, for an M.A. thesis at Ball State University, in July 1968. The material used here is based on Butler's version.

"New System of Musical Notation," (New Harmony), 1841

Herald of Equity (Cincinnati: 1841)

Labor Prices broadside, 1842

Letters to Stephen Pearl Andrew about stereotype plates (photocopies), 1850 ≠1851

"Emancipation of Labor" (Boston: 1864)

"Young America" (pamphlet, no date)

(D) Material from the Wisconsin Historical Society

The collection holds two numbers The Peaceful Revolutionist. I have pretty clear photostats of "vol 1, #s 2 &4, dated February 3, 1833 and April 5, 1833.

(E) Material from the Indiana Historical Society

Gazette of Equitable Commerce, vol. 1 no. 2, dated New Harmony September 1842, 8 pp.. Pretty familiar stuff on the Time Store, EC etc.

Letter on Equitable Commerce, dated New Harmony, February, 1844. likewise. 16pp.

(F) Non-redundant material listed in Individualism Reconsidered by Joe Peacott with a bibliography by Jerry Kaplan (http://world.std.com/~bbrigade/badpp3.htm)

"Josiah Warren's Last Letter." Index, 5 (Apr. 30, 1874), pp. 207-8. Identical to "Letter to E.H. Heywood" and to the letter reproduced by Bailie at the end of his book; it would be worth finding the Heywood attack, in The Index.

Periodical Letter on True Civilization. 1854-1858.

"The Principle of Equivalents" (Boston, 1855)

(G) Non-redundant material mentioned in Ronald Creagh's bibliography in L'anarchisme aux Etats-Unis (Paris: Didier Erudition, 1986), vol 2

"Explanation of the Design and Arrangements of the Cooperative Magazine which has Recently Been Commenced, Western Tiller, 8 communications from June 1 to July 27, 1827, signed "A Late Member of New Harmony"

"To Friends of the Social System," Western Tiller, eight communications from June 1 to July 27, 1827, signed "a late member of New Harmony."

"A Letter form Josiah Warren," Mechanics Free Press (May 10, 1828), 2.

"To the Friends of Equal Exchange of Labor in the West," Free Enquirer, 2 (July 7, 1830), 301-2. Two other communications (Aug 14, 1830, Feb 26, 1831).

A Collection of the Most Popular Church Music Written Upon Geometric or Scientific Principles (New Harmony, 1844).

Contributions to the Indiana Statesman, New Harmony (Feb 1 1845; March 7 1846); and a series of engravings: July 4; Aug 16; Oct 11; Dec 27 1845; Jan 31; Feb 14, 1846.

Communications to the Boston Investigator (letters, notice etc): Jan 24, 27; Feb 7 14, 21, 28; March 7, 21; Apr 11, 25; May 16; July 25; Sep 25, 1849. June 25, Jul 2, Aug 20, Sep 3, 24; Oct 8, 15, 22: 1851.

"Positions Defined" Village of Modern Times (leaflet).

"The Principle of Equivalents. The Most Disagreeable Labor Entitled to the Highest Compensation" (leaflet? no publication information)

Controversy w/Andrews in Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly. July-September, 1871.

Letter to The American Workman (March 2, 1872).

"Communism: the Way it Worked and What it Led To," Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly (1873)

"A Few Words to the Pioneers," The Word, (Princeton Mass., July 1873), followed by a series of articles in subsequent issues.

"Money, the Defects of Money are the 'Roots of all Evil" (Charlestown, Mass.: 1873)

"The Cost Principle," Index Boston IV (Dec 11, 1873), 504-05.

"Labor the Only Ground of Price," Index (May 28, 1874), 260-61.

(F) Primary secondary sources

(1) Stephen Pearl Andrews, The Science of Society (Weston, Mass.: M&S Press, 1970 [1851]).

Explicitly presented as an exposition of Warren's ideas, this book was no doubt greeted with some relief by anyone who had tried to read Warren. Nevertheless in crankery Andrews far outcompeted Warren, and he was soon to be seen inventing a universal language ("Alwato") and answering all questions whatsoever in his system of "universology." It has often been stated, including apparently by Warren, that this book is the best embodiment in writing of Warren's philosophy. As Wunderlich points out, it is an attempt to reconcile Warren and Fourier: a fool's errand.

(2) William Bailie, Josiah Warren, the First American Anarchist (New York: Herbert C. Roseman, 1971 [1906]). The only and of course fundamental biography of Warren, a bit on the hagiographic side to be absolutely in good taste.

(4) Ezra Heywood, "Yours or Mine? The True Basis of Property" first printed as a pamphlet in 1876 in Princeton, MA. Collected in Essential Works of Ezra Heywood, ed. Martin Blatt (Westin, MA: M&S Press, 1985), pp. 71-104. A very able exposition of Warrenian economics.

(5) The "anarchist librarian," Agnes Inglis, did considerable research and bibliographical work on Warren. This material is in her papers at the Labadie Collection.

(6) James J. Martin, Men Against the State (Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles, 1970 [1953]). This is still the best treatment of American individualist anarchism, and begins with several chapters evincing prodigious research on Warren.

(7) John Humphrey Noyes, History of American Socialisms (New York: Dover, 1966 [1870]), chapter 10. A sharp and fair assessment (characteristic of Noyes) with material from The Peaceful Revolutionist and an interview with a resident of Modern Times (probably not Warren or Andrews).

Noyes's chapter is based on the "A.J. Macdonald Papers on American Communities" at the Beinecke collection at Yale. This material is based on Macdonald's travels, interviews and collecting of ephemera. It contains considerable material on Warren. MacDonald's typescript is hard to decipher, but this material also includes the whole of Peaceful Revolutionist, vol 2, no 1, dated Utopia (Ohio), May 1848: properly a pamphlet rather than a paper, and, again a quasi-dialogical setting out of the basic positions. Also there are some drawings of Modern Times by MacDonald.

(8) Madelein Stern, "Every Man His Own Printer: The Typographical Experiments of Josiah Warren," Printing History, vol. II, no. 2, 1980. Quite a delightful and well-researched treatment of Warren the printer.

(9) Roger Wunderlich, Low Living and High Thinking at Modern Times, New York (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992). Wunderlich's is by far the best scholarly work on Warren, with sources no one else consulted. I wish I could get all the locations of material from him, but he's dead. An interesting chap: he got a Ph.D. from Stony Brook at age 72 or so and became more or less the national historian of Long Island.

(G) Secondary secondary sources

(1) Mark Holloway, Utopian Communities in America, 1680-1880 (New York: Dover, 1966 [1951]). Very droll and quick treatment of the full range of American utopias. The fact that the chapter on Warren is practically only a pastiche of Bailie makes one suspicious, however. But historians are like that.

(2) Eunice Schuster, Native American Anarchism (New York; De Capo Press, 1970 [1932]). This book was controversial because it connected American individualism with radical Protestantism; it starts with the pilgrim antinomians. Later anarchists were extremely anxious to unload any hint of religion. Basically, I think Schuster got it extremely right. Thin on Warren - though he's there - but really good on early non-resistance and Christian anarchism.

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