The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-06-15

Boston, June 14,-(special.) )-Who tho anarchists are has become pretty well known in the past few weeks. Uncle Sam has been busy discovering some of those whose disposition is most violent. Most Americans have undoubtedly ap- proved his activity against the Reds.
 Just what anarchism is, though, is still unappreciated by 99 people out of 100.
 That Is to say, philosophical anarchism, although it has existed as philosophy of life for countless centuries and under its present specific name for good many years, is not popularly understood. Most people think of it as having some con- iection with infammatory oratory and bomb throwing They don't associate it with such men as Tolstoy, Ibsen, Walt Whitman. William Lloyd Garrison and many others who have not been wild-eyed fanatics. but who have believed so thor oughly in the freedom of the individual that they have stood opposed to what IS called "coercive authority" Such men be- l;eve that in power there is a quality which leads to its abuse and that the ideal condition Is one in which enlight- ened selfishness and intelligence make each individual a law to himself.
 It is the fashion to speak of anarcn- ism as a foreign and un-American prod uct Very few people seem to be aware that the founder of the cult of philosophi- cal anarchism was an American, mem- ter of one of the most famous families of Massachusetts, man of strictly moral and helpful life, and a mechanical genius to whom we owe, among other inventions, that of the cylinder press, which throws hundreds of newspapers in less time than it took the old fiat press to print ten. This very able Amer ican, Josiah Warren, born in Boston in i79S and resident during a considerable rart of his career in and near Cincinnati. has had very little attention in the books on American history, and 1t is only very recently that little biography, written py William Baillie, a Boston manufact- rrer, who is especially interested in the doctrines of philosophical anarchism, has thrown much new light on a most re- markable character of the nineteenth cen tury, one whose theories and observd- tons had a large influence upon such English leaders as Robert Dale Owen, John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spenser.
 Personally, Josiah Warren was, of course, very different kind of anarchist from the fierce reds of France, the story of whose strained relations with the po- lice has lately been described graphically by Alvan F. Sanborn in his Paris and the Social Revolution the best book ever written on the subject of the foreign oi,,cf xrl, pr ident Roosevelt's activities have been di- rected. Warren, who was a versatile Yankee, individualst of the same stock as the hero of Bunker Hill battle, was a man whom no one would have wanted to deport. even if there had been an anti anarchist agitation in his day. He sim ply carried to it's logical conclusion the belief of Thomas Jefferson and the anti federalsts leaders of our early history to the effect that that government IS best which governs least. His favorite doctrine was that Every one should be free to dispose of his person, his time. his property and his reputation as he pleases, but always at his own cost He claimed that ''man seeks freedom as the magnet seeks the pole or water it's
 
 til every member is really free" MT. Bailies Investigations, recalling very in- teresting incidents in the history of what was then the far west, show that all though Josiah Warren was not by nature great organizer, his undertakings were much more successful than the socialistic and communistc ventures which were popular back in the nineteenth century and which without exception failed be- cause they did not take into account ehe differences which nature has established among individuals.
 In Cincinnatf where MT. Warren got his start in life as manufacturer of lamps, he opened on May IS, 1927, the first 'equity store,'' designed to illus trate what he called the "cost principle" This was known as the "Time Store" be- cause of a peculiar and original method