The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-06-15
WARREN WAS AMERICAS
 EARLIEST ANARCHIST
Man Who Invented Cylinder Printing Press Was Father of Cult of Peaceful and Philosophical Anarchism Rem iniscences of Celebrated Equity Stores
 and Communities

 adopted to fix and regulate the amount of the merchants compensation Ali goods had a certain price which was fixed by their cost in money, together with a fair loading charge to cover the running expenses of the store and then a charge was also made for as much of the mer- <, chants time as was consumed in making | the purchase. Incidents were not un- | known of economical persons grabbing | for goods from the counter and getting l off with only l cents worth of the mer- chants time. In payment for the time | service the customer ordinarily gave his labor note, something after this form: Due to Josiah Warren on demand 90 minutes in carpenter work. John Smith, After MT. Smith had accumulated notes l representing, say, half a days work he | would be engaged by MT. Warren to | make needed repairs at the store or in his | house. Profit in the ordinary sense of l the word was eliminated, and yet there l was abundant incentive to the merchant l to exert himself to increase his busi- | ness.
 | | initiated elsewhere, and many of the principles laid down by MT. Warren
 have been put into practice by the great department stores of today. On account. however, of his personal feel ing against land speculation and be- cause the store was located on land which he had leased from Nicholas Longworth for 99 years, and which was likely to make him a rich man without his giving an equivalent service to the
 community, the enterprise was given up.
 Later, in the midst of various activ- ities as a manufacturer and inventor MT. Warren was concerned In the es- tablishment of several "equity com
 munities,' the most famous of which was that at Brentwood, Long Island where a little group of individuals set | tied on desolate tract of land cov cred with scrub -oak, and built a vil- 1 lage community which has had a very | considerable degree of prosperity. The original pioneers were hardy people who believed thorougly in Mir War ren's Idea of self help and individual | initiative and who in surprisingly short time provided themselves with homes and some of the comforts of | life. Later as a result of sensational l publicity given to the enterprise by ] the New York papers, the colony found | itself almost overwh elmed with cranks | ignorant of the ideas on which the | village was founded. True, however, to
 the principle of philosophical anarch-
 ism which gives equal rights to all in
 natural opportunities the pioneers re- ] trained from taking any steps toward | excluding the newcomers so long as
 they did not invade the rights of oth- | CTS.
 The invaders unquestionably, how ever, hurt the cause of the individual 1 1stS. AS Mr. Warren himself wrote: l one man began to advocate plurality 1 of wives and published a paper to sup
 port his views; another believed cloth : | ing to be a superfluity, and not only
 attempted to practice his Adamic the | ories in person, but inflicted his view
 upon his helpless children. A woman With an ungainly form displayed her | self in public in mems attire which | gave rise to newspaper comment that. | The women dressed in mems clothes
 and looked hideous.' Still another | young woman had the diet mania so
 severely that after living upon beans without salt until reduced to a skele- ] ton she died within a year."
 The burdens which the real settlers at l Brentwood had to bear on account of ! these unbalanced persons were very real
 but because they respected the rights of | others and accorded liberty to do even
 the silliest things, knowing that expcr- | fence and the principle which allows such | things to be done at each ones own cost ] would work the surest cure, they never | interfered
 | The financial depression of 1857 bank | rupted the paper box manufactory which one member had established at Brent | wood as means of providing work for | others and of making living for him. l self. After that industrial conditions | caused many of the pioneers and most of the cranlNs to leave, although the CO., | operative tendencies of the little com munity and the pleasant external features | of Brentwood have lasted down to this | time, two or three of the original po- | neers still surviving.
 1 MT. Warren himself, although great ly interested in theories of individual | initiative and although very practical | and competent so far as his own work | was concerned. had the weakness of his | qualities in that he lacked the gift of l leadership. This lack, together with the 1 difficulty of co-ordinating the activities of a small community with a big busi- ness world run on extremely different principles, is held by MT. Baillie to ac- count for the circumstance that while
 his equity villages never failed dismally
 as communistic and socialistic attempts
 have failed, none of them has proved an unqualified success. His invention of the cylinder printing press in the years 1S30 to 1892 was his most monumental achieve ment Improved methods of stereotyping also received a great deal of his atten- tion about 1840 to 1S45, and the processes
 which he invented are now In use in the
 finer classes of stereotype work. He died at Princeton, Mass, in 1874.
 The conceptions which now go under the name of philosophical anarchism' spread from MT. Warren's few public ad-
 dresses and scattered writings to England
 and other countries, where the American
 idea of accomplishing results through in-
 dividual effort and voluntary association instead of by governmental fiat appealed
 strongly to advanced and original think
 CTS. In a letter written toward the end of
 his life, MT. Warren summed up his philosophy of society in the following statement: Almost with fear and trem-
 bling I ventured years ago to offer one, on condition that should preserve my freedom to change 1t whenever 'increas- ing Knowledge should show its defects; and I gave the sovereignty of every in divldua1 over his or her person. time, property and responsibilities and here add, reputation" That is the kind of anarchisln which first grew up on Amer i~au soii