Timeline
of the Life of Josiah Warren
George
Santayana in Persons and Places describes the "Brighton Warrens" as "a dissentient
family." His first American ancestor, John Warren, is said in The
History of Watertown to have been arrested for non-attendance at church and harboring
Quakers.
1793:
[William Godwin: An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice]
1798:
Born, Boston, Mass.
1805:
[Birth of Emerson], [Birth of Garrison]
1809:
[Birth of Proudhon]
1818,
Jan. 3 - April 7: Musical engagements in places in and around Boston; marries
Caroline Cutter.
1820: Cincinnati, Ohio
1821(?):
Invents lard (as opposed to tallow) burning lamp. "The patent documents
for the lard lamp were signed by President John Quincy Adams. The patents on
the printing presses invented by my father were issued under the signature of
Andrew Jackson, and B. F. Butler, in 1835" (George Warren). That is, he
humorously falsified the patent data.
1825-27:
New Harmony, IN, as music director etc. New Harmony was established in Indiana
by the British industrialist and utopian thinker Robert Owen. Owen may have
coined the term "socialism," and he prescribed community of property,
possibly under the influence of the Rappites and Shakers. New Harmony was
probably the first secular ideal community in America. Warren lived there from
almost start to almost finish, supervising its music program. The failure of
the community has been blamed on the fact that some residents were essentially
spongers on Owen's wealth, and that agreement on uses of community property
could not be arrived at by the extremely various and eccentric inhabitants.
These failures gave rise to Warren's doctrines of individual sovereignty and
defense of property. Robert Dale Owen (the founder's son) in the Atlantic described his delight in the
musical performances, with "an excellent band leader, Josiah Warren. This
was a performance of music, instrumental and vocal, much beyond what I expected
in the backwoods."
1827-May
18 1829: Time Store, Cincinnati. In downtown Cincinnati, later at Utopia, back
at New Harmony (1840s) and at Modern Times (1850s), Warren established Time
Stores, which were employed labor notes as the circulating medium. Each Time
Store would become the center of a cooperative, equitable economy. In every
case, particularly the first, the experiment was a dramatic success.
Son
George Warren born. "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. . . . 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. . . . When
he was twenty-one he was noted as a composer of band music, and was an expert
performer on the Clarinet, French Horn, Cornet, Violin, and 'Cello"
(Bailie).
1828:
Visited at home in Cincinnati by Frances Wright. [Alexander Bryant Johnson's The
Philosophy of Human Knowledge published; read by both Warren and Wright. Later revised and
re-published as A Treatise on Language.]
1831:
Visits New York; establishes village in Tuscawaras County, OH. [William Lloyd
Garrison publishes the first number of the Liberator.]
Early
1830s: Warren perfects the continuous-feed printing press.
1832:
Cholera epidemic in Cincinnati. Warren was able to provide extremely cheap and
fast printing of health information, at cost, through use of his type-casting
techniques and continuous-feed press.
1833:
The Peaceful Revolutionist published, the plates cast on the family stove at the Equity
community. Death of Camilla Wright (1831) (Frances Wright's sister), on which Warren
writes the following poem, publishing in the PR 1833.
Written
on Hearing Unwelcome News
They
say tis best to be deceived
When
sad realities would break the heart:
O
would I could be thus relieved
When
moral meteors like thee depart.
Ah!
vain the thought - We seldom find
A
friend like thee in all mankind
And
when thou'rt gone can we caress thee
And
think thee here when most we miss thee?
Ah
no - Then let the poor, the weak,
The
injured, talented and meek
Prepare
to hear what I most dread
To
tell - Their friend Camilla's dead.
O
would that death could be controled
By
tears, by reason or by gold
These
in excess thy friends would give-
E'en
die for thee, couldst thou but live.
Thy
doating sister too, when oft reclined
Fatigued
and worn, will call to mind
Thy
gentle, soothing, watchful care -
Will
call "Camilla" but thou wilt not hear.
She
has thee not; but now alone
Feels
every moment, thou art gone!
Kind
friends around us strive in vain
To
place her as she was, again.
She
lives now but to haste the day
(and
knows her aid can speed its coming)
When,
if sweet flowers too soon decay
They'll
leave as sweet, around us blooming.
1834-37:
Tuscawaras County, Ohio. The first "equitable village," encompassing
four hundred acres and a half-dozen families, and commencing with a cooperative
sawmill. The atmosphere was malarial: deaths and sickness caused Warren and
friends to return to Cincinnati or New Harmony; Warren established a Time Store
in New Harmony by 1842.
1840:
[Proudhon: What is Property?]
1841:
[Emerson's Essays: First Series.]
1842:
New Harmony Time Store.
1844:
New, "mathematical" musical notation published; Peaceful
Revolutionist
(vol 2. no 1) published as pamphlet. Publicly exhibits a new printing press in
New York; prototype of the later high-speed presses. The principle was so
simple that "there was no equitable ground for a patent, and it was given
to the public" (Bailie quoting Warren, 84). Invents "universal
typography," apparently a cheap way of casting type.
1846:
First edition of Equitable Commerce (?), New Harmony.
1847:
Establishment of Utopia, Ohio (Claremont County) With some resources derived
from printing, Warren bought a village that had previously been a small
Fourierist phalanx on the Ohio River. Houses were built - again with perhaps 6
families, who began destitute. Utopia was a small-scale success. This village
apparently persisted long after Warren had gone east, and eventually removed to
Minnesota, displaced by land speculation. A village called Utopia still exists
at this location.
1848:
[Thoreau: "Civil Disobedience."]
1849:
[Emerson: Nature. Thoreau: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.]
1850:
Visits New York and Boston.
1851:
Foundation of Modern Times on Long Island. Equitable commerce/self-sovereign
community established by Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews (who never lived
there). Again, destitute families were able to build homes. Eventually, it
started attracting anyone whose lifestyle was not conventional, including
people living with partners other than their spouses, as well as advocates of
free love - Victoria Woodhull was about, for example - and a variety of fads,
such as spiritualism, nudism, the all-bean diet, the water cure, and the
amazing philosophy of Pearl Andrews. Warren writes: "Whoever tries what is
vulgarly known as 'free love' . . . will find it more troublesome than a crown
of thorns: and there is not much danger of its becoming contagious where the
results of the experiment are made known" (Periodical Letter quoted by Wunderlich 78). It
was eventually torn apart under the weight of Horace Greeley's publicity in the
New York Tribune. Thomas and Mary Gove Nichols made it notorious by mailing sex
education guides and advocating promiscuity. Then they moved to Yellow Springs,
Ohio, and tried celibacy. First they were spiritualists, then conservative
Catholics. In short (like (I hate to say it) Victoria and her sister
Tennessee), they were not serious people, rather post-apocalyptic faddists. But
within reason Modern Times was a success, despite the occasional nudist or
visitation by malevolent spirits, for some ten years for a hundred people or
more. Community more or less seamlessly becomes the town of Brentwood during
the 1860s. Caroline Warren stays behind in New Harmony, and perhaps Josiah is
co-resident with another woman (Wunderlich).
1851:
Stephen Pearl Andrews publishes The Science of Society, expounding Warren's ideas
with eclectic bits of Comte and Fourier thrown in.
1852:
2nd (canonical) edition of Equitable Commerce. Debate commences in the New
York Tribune
among Horace Greeley, Henry James Sr., and Pearl Andrews on marriage and free
love, focusing prurient attention on Modern Times. [Lysander Spooner: An
Essay on Trial By Jury.]
1854-58:
Periodical Letter published at Modern Times.
1855,
&c.: House of Equity (Boston) Established by Warren follower [?] Keith, who
conceived it as an urban community center, with equitable stores, lectures,
recreational areas, printing facilities etc. Warren helped conceive and execute
the plan, which eventually collapsed when Keith's finances did.
1858:
seems likely that Warren was resident in the Boston area by this date. The Dual
Commerce Association formed on Warren principles (though the extent of Warren's
involvement is imperfectly clear; the proprietor is listed as T.J. Lewis). It
was essentially an equitable food store. The wage of the "distributors or
merchants" was set at two dollars a day, based on a labor calculation. The
project, which was described in a proposal dated July 1, 1858 and then reported
on in a tract dated January 1, 1859, is striking for its size, and should make
us re-think the scale of Warrenian equitable experiments. The Jan 1 tract is
not Warren's writing, but quotes an earlier advertisement that certainly is.
The central store was located in the basement of the Pelham Hotel, with other
"stations" in different poor neighborhoods in the city, six in all,
each staffed by a man and a woman, 20 employees altogether. The basic system
was consignment: farmers still owned their produce until sold, and price did
not vary by quantity. The Jan 1 report says that "several thousands of
individuals have already begun to experience the benefits growing out of the
movement." Milk was priced at "five cents per quart in winter, four
in summer." The distribution is described as 500 quarts of milk per day;
50 barrels of flour per week (at 50 cents); 6000 pounds of soap per month; 5000
bushels of Nova Scotia potatoes per month (five cents a bushel "if taken
from the boat, or ten cents when delivered at the homes of consumers"),
and so on. From the earlier advertisement by Warren: "Dual commerce"
expresses those commercial relations which result and develope between producer
and consumer, instead of being the absorbent of both." Unknown how or when
the DCA was dissolved.
1863:
Boston area; association with Ezra Heywood and the nascent labor movement. True
Civilization published.
An equitable commerce store established (contact "Nath'l G. Simonds,
No.
189 Main St., Charlestown"), apparently on a pretty small scale. (This
project identified by Shawn Wilbur in the form of an advertisement, in the Boston
Investigator,
Vol. XXXII, No. 50, April 15, 1863, p. 393.
1866:
Resident at Cliftondale, Mass.
1872:
Princeton, Mass. At the Spring meeting of the New England Labor Reform League,
Warren, Ezra Heywood, William B. Greene, and a young and impressionable
Benjamin Tucker are all present: possibly the greatest summit meeting of
American anarchists. Publication of Warren's last book(let): Practical
Applications.
1874:
Death claims Josiah Warren, individually.
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