Stephen Pearl Andrews

### Occupation

Lawyer, linguist, political philosopher, abolitionist, author, community founder

### Founded

Modern Times (co-founded)Unitary Household

### Associated with

Abolition, Temperance, Language Reform, Fourierism. Equitable Commerce, Positivism, Swedenborgism, Marxism

### Works

The Complete Phonographic Class-Book (1845)The Phonographic Reader: A Complete Course of Inductive Reading Lessons in Phonography (1846)

Cost the Limit of Price (1851)

The Constitution of Government in the Sovereignty of the Individual (1851)

The Science of Society (1851)

The Sovereignty of the Individual (1853)

Principles of Nature, Original Physiocracy, the New Order of Government (1857)

The Pantarchy (1871)

The Primary Synopsis of Universology and Alwato: The New Scientific Universal Language (1871)

The Basic Outline of Universology (1872)

The Labor Dollar (1881)

Elements of Universology (1881)

The New Civilization (1885)

### Parents

Rev. Elisha Andrews & Ann Lathrop

**Stephen Pearl Andrews** (March 22, 1812 – May 21, 1886) was an American individualist anarchist, political philosopher, abolitionist, women's rights advocate, lawyer, author, journal editor, co-founder of Modern Times and founder of the Unitary Household (Unity House).

## Early Life & Education

Andrews was born in Templeton, Massachusetts on March 22, 1812 to Reverend Elisha Andrews, a nonconformist Baptist minister,25 and Ann Lathrop. He was the youngest of eight children and grew up in Hinsdale, New Hampshire. He attended Amherst College.25

### **Louisiana & Law**

At 19 Andrews packed up and went with a sister to Louisiana to study law. One of his brothers had established a school for (wealthy) girls just north of Baton Rouge several years prior. The school, now run by his brother's widow, employed Andrews as a teacher while another transplanted brother, a practicing lawyer, taught him the law in his spare time. Andrews was admitted to the Louisiana Bar just after his 25th birthday in 1833

The flamboyant Andrews moved to New Orleans in 1835 and as a young teacher at the Jackson Female Seminary, Andrews met the student and Connecticut native Mary Ann Gordon. They married, though the date, like nearly any subsequent information about Mary, is unknown. She is described by at least one source as "a doctor and suffragette."

In his private practice, Andrews famously represented Myra Clark Gaines in her attempt to gain legal recognition as the sole heir to her deceased father's estate, which became the longest-running lawsuit in the history of the United States.

### **Texas**

In 1839, Andrews moved again, this time to Houston, in the Republic of Texas, then just 3 years old. As a successful lawyer, he rose to prominence in the nascent little town and soon found himself as a leader within the First Baptist Church of Houston, and was involved in the founding of the school that eventually became Baylor University.

A voracious learner and autodiadact, Andrews picked up Spanish and soon he was tapped by the Texas government to translate the constitution and legal code into the language of what was then still the majority of Texans.

### **Abolition**

Though Andrews had met fugitive slaves as a child growing up in a house that was also a stop on the underground railroad, It wasn't until living in the South for a number of years that he became an abolition activist. For years he had given lightly disguised abolitionist lectures in New Orleans, and later Houston and Galveston, but by 1843 he had a legal plan of action.

> "...he tried to drum up support in both Texas and England for a plan to free all the slaves in Texas, amend the constitution to forbid slavery, and "compensate" the slaveholders for the loss of their "property." This basic approach had been successfully used to end slavery in various countries in what, in the 1830s, had just begun to be widely called "Latin America." Andrews saw no reason it shouldn't work just as well in Texas."
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No longer even 'lightly disguised', the Abolitionist Andrews was not given a warm welcome home. An armed committee escorted him out of Galveston with orders to never return, and his Houston home was so violently mobbed that he and Mary had to escape on horseback through swamps and to the comparative safety of Louisiana.

### **Pitman & Alwato**

While in England Andrews came across the books of British Parliamentarian Isaac Pitman, on his new development, Pitman shorthand, which he hoped would improve the efficiency of court reporters, secretaries, and the general public. A lover of language, he enthusiastically took up its cause and taught and wrote about the new shorthand system upon his return to the U.S. To Andrews, the logical Pitman Shorthand held the promise of revolutionizing literacy and thus education. After leaving Texas, Andrews set up shop in New York City, where he began an Institute to teach the writing method, and he published newspapers, pamphlets and magazines in the new shorthand. Though Pitman would eventually raise to prominence in the English-speaking world, in the early days there was little market for Andrews' classes or publications, and before too long he was forced to abandon it.

Andrews claimed to know "no fewer than 32 languages" of which he may h ave spoke at least 6 fluently, including Chinese. He eventually even created a "scientific" language of his own, "Alwato", which he hoped

> "would unite mankind under his philosophy of universology, itself a grand theory of everything that affirmed the most micro-cosmic earthly correspondences to the macro-cosmic spheres."
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### **New York City**

Andrews moved to New York City in 1847, where he was hired by Horace Greeley of the new York Tribune to cover senatorial news.

## Communities

### **Modern Times**

In 1850 Josiah Warren and Andrews rode the newly completed Long Island Railroad out to a barren area of Long Island. The land had been clear-cut and abandoned by developers, making it an ideal place for their villagers to make a fresh start, without the extra work of tree felling. Together Warren and Andrews financed 750 acres with little money down and a 5 year bond on the balance3636 and Modern Times was started. Andrews acted as the attorney for real estate transactions of the community, but never actually lived at Modern Times, though his wife was part of the first batch of property sales in 1851 (purchasing one acre), and bought and sold another acre a few years later.28-9

According to one biographer of Modern Times, it was Andrews who invited Mary Gove Nichols and her husband to Modern Times, and was significantly responsible for "anti-marriage" (Free Love) being the public 'cause' of the community.

> Although a staunch spokesman for the village, he narrowed his vision of Modern Times from a model village of social justice to a specialized community formed to defy the institution of marriage. Thus, the forceful and eloquent Andrews sometimes worked at cross purposes from Warren. Before Modern Times could sink its roots, it wilted under the glare of scandal.27
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### **"Salons for free-loving individual sovereigns"**

#### **The League Union of the Men of Progress**

The first salon he organized in New York City was called the League Union of the Men of Progress in 1855. They met in a small hall on Bond Street. Various departments of the League were called Grand Orders. There were at least two: The Grand Order of the Social Relations, which advocated the development of the "baby world" (scientific daycare ran by nurses, physiologists and matrons who would provide sexual education as part of the curriculum); and The Grand Order of Recreation. At the meetings, admission to which carried a fee, members were able to discuss controversial subjects which the general public was horrified by, such as Free Love and Equitable Commerce. An Andrews biographer later wrote, "Every member was an individual sovereign though the sovereign of all the individuals was Pearl Andrews."(78) 25

The Grand Order of Recreation was a social club offshoot of The League, and had dances and discussions at 555 Broadway. Local papers such as the Times and the Tribune lambasted the group for its 'consideration of lawless principles "known by the general name of Individual Sovereignty," and then putting them into practice "especially in the sexual relations."'25

#### **The Club**

A popular group of New Yorkers "with a taste for cultural radicalism." It was frequented by the likes of Marie Stevens Case Howland and her husband Lyman W. Case, whom she met there), Jane Cunningham Croly.(the 'mistress of ceremonies') A reporter wrote of "bloomerites in pantaloons and round hats, partisans of individual liberty late of Modern Times, atheists, infidels and philosophers" side by side with "perfumed exquisites from Gotham."

Though the newspapers ran sensational stories about The Club and free love, the group was really there for discussions. Believing in 'individual sovereignty', Andrews and his supporters declared that "Man and Woman who do love can live together in Purity without any mummery at all."

On October 18, 1855 The Club was raided by police. Andrews had stayed home sick that night so Albert Brisbane was presiding. Police arrested the club members 'on grounds of disorderly conduct and other trumped-up counts.'25 And though the charges were dropped the next day, the press coverage of the event was "only equaled by the fall of Sebastopol and the arrival from Arctic regions of Dr. Kane," "Tarred with slander,"26 The League dissolved.

### **The Unitary Household**

The Unitary Household, aka Unity House was a cooperatively owned large boardinghouse established by Andrews in 1858. It could be said to be an urban take on the Fourierist phalanstery. It combined private spaces and common spaces (dining rooms, parlors) and had a shared staff to do the domestic work. Andrews and Mary lived there, however, Its association with Free Love soon caused conflict with the surrounding community and it broke up in 1860.

### **The Pantarchy**

Out of The Unitary Home evolved The Pantarchy, "a Grand Composite Order of Government, reaching with its influences every department of human affairs."(80) 26 J. T. Trowbridge described it as an

> "infinite Republic... [constituting] organized and orderly operation in all the affairs' of all the nations of the earth," by the power vested in one central person, "the Pantarch; and the Pantarch was Mr. Stephen Pearl Andrews." Grander in scope than number, the Pantarchy, in which society would be a chain of industrial and social groups and series, was founded on the work of "earlier sociologists, and especially upon the far abler writings of Fourier," Andrews's primary mentor. (80-1) 26
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## Philosophy

Andrews dabbled in many of the popular movements of his day. Not only was he an ardent abolitionist, but he also jumped into the Suffragette and Women's Rights Cause, Temperance movement, Fourierism, Positivism, as well as becoming a vocal supporter of Swedenborg and Marx. However, It is specifically his support of Equitable Commerce and contributions to that philosophy, the forerunner of Individualist Anarchism, that secured his legacy into the present day,

### **Equitable Commerce**

Soon after discovering Fourierism, in early 1850, Andrews went to a Boston lecture by an experimental community founder, social philosopher, inventor, and musician Josiah Warren. Warren was there promoting his idea of Equitable Commerce, including the Labor Note, which allowed people to trade their labor with each other on an equitable basis, hour for hour. Warren believed that labor notes were the key to what he called "individual sovereignty", an idea that seems to have electrified Andrews and moved him once again into action.

Unlike the anarcho-communists, Andrews supported the right of employment and wage labor, and in *The Science of Society* he wrote,

> "The 'Wages System' is essentially proper and right. It is a right to that one man employ another, it is right that he pay him wages, and it is right that he direct him absolutely, arbitrarily, if you will, in the performance of his labor, while, on the other hand, it is the business of him who is employed implicitly to obey, that is, to surrender any will of his own in relation to a design not his own, and to conceive and execute the will of the other...It is right that the great manufacturer should plan, and either alone, or through the aid of assistants under his direction, organize his mammoth establishment. It is right that he should employ and direct his hundreds, or his five hundred men...It is not in any, nor in all of these features combined, that the wrong of our present system is to be sought and found. It is in the simply failure to do Equity. It is not that men are employed and paid, but that they are not paid justly…"
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### **Writings**

A year after meeting Warren, Andrews published *The Science of Society (*1851), which is now regarded as the single best presentation of Warren's ideas. In 1853 he published *Love, Marriage, and Divorce, and the Sovereignty of the Individual*, which was a reprint of "A Discussion Between Henry James [father of the novelist], Horace Greeley, and Stephen Pearl Andrews" which had been published in the New York Tribune earlier that year.

In *The Science of Society* Andrews wrote,

> "if the laborer enjoyed the full results of his own labor in immediate products or equivalents of cost, two hours of labor a day would be ample to supply the ordinary wants of the individual, — that is, to bring his condition up to the average standard of comfort, — even without the benefits of labor-saving machinery or the economies of the large scale. … The remaining time of the Individual would then be at his disposition for providing a higher grade of luxury, for mental improvement and amusement, and for laying up accumulations of wealth as a provision for sickness, old age, the indulgence of benevolence, taste, etc."
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And in *Love, Marriage, and Divorce* he explained that there are

> "two conflicting principles of government. Stripped of all verbiage and all illusion, they are simply — 1st. That Man is not capable of governing himself, and hence needs some other man (or men) to govern him. 2. That Man is capable of self-government, potentially, and that if he be not so actually, he needs more experience in the practice of it, including more evil consequences from failure; that he must learn it for himself, as he learns other things; that he is entitled of right to his own self-government, whether good or bad in the judgment of others, whenever he exercises it at his own cost — that is, without encroachment upon the equal right of others to govern themselves. This last is the doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual."
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According to William Gary Kline in his book *The Individualist Anarchists: A Critique of Liberalism*,

> "Andrews' principal contribution to Individualist Anarchism … was his lucid elaboration of the thought of Warren. Andrews must be credited with passing this philosophy to the Individualist Anarchists that were to proliferate in the 1880s."
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One biographer of Modern Times, however, wrote,

> At issue are neither his brilliance nor failings, but whether he helped or hindered the village's growth. His Science of Society gave equitable commerce the intellectual content that Warren's homespun writing lacked. Presenting sovereignty of the individual as the love child of Protestantism and democracy, Andrews endowed it as the rightful heir of Luther, Locke, Paine, and Jefferson... But his linking of Warren's system to socialism was akward and inappropriate, stemming from Andrews's allegiance to Fourier, his first and always mentor. For all of his casuistry, not even the Pantarch could dovetail the Associationist mode of combination with anarchism.27
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Andrews was an editorial writer and columnist, often 'pleading the Pantarchy's cause' in Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly. He translated the Communist Manifesto, which they published for the first time in America in December 1871 in the Weekly.26

Andrews also acted as advisor and speech writer for "The Woodhull" during her 'short but colorful campaign for President of the United States ini 1872.' Together with the sisters, he also helped form Section 12 of the First International, before quickly being expelled for giving "precedence to the women's question over the question of labor." 'Marx personally denounced Victoria Woodhull for agitating "'the woman's franchise and ... all sorts of nonsense,' such as free love."(83) 26

### **Post-Equitable Commerce**

Only four years after publishing *Love, Marriage, and Divorce*, Andrews movement hopped yet again. Dropping what we today consider Individualist Anarchism, Andrews picked up Positivism. From there his intellectual pursuits focused on "the torturous task of reconciling antithetical conceptions of the nature of human society", and his "attempt to fuse the diverse contributions of Fourier, Warren, and Comte into a grandiose eclectic social order." An order which also included Swedenborg and Marx (Andrews had been the first to publish the *Communist Manifesto* in the U.S.). In the late 1850s Andrews believed

> "that government, if manipulated by social scientists, might be an effective agent for the social reforms he wanted to see. From this condition of world order anarchism would eventuate as government control was discarded."
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## Later Years

Andrews and other freethinkers 'prevailed on President Ulysses S. Grant to include in his message to Congress "the famous... paragraph [suggesting] taxation of all property equally, whether church or corporation," in 1875.(84) 27

## Works

* (with Augustus Boyle) *The Phonographic Reader: A Complete Course of Inductive Reading Lessons in Phonography* (1846)
* *Cost the Limit of Price* (1851)
* *The Constitution of Government in the Sovereignty of the Individual* (1851)
* *The Science of Society* (1851)
* *The Sovereignty of the Individual* (1853)
* *Principles of Nature, Original Physiocracy, the New Order of Government* (1857)
* *The Pantarchy* (1871)
* *The Primary Synopsis of Universology and Alwato: The New Scientific Universal Language* (1871)
* *The Basic Outline of Universology* (1872)
* *The Labor Dollar* (1881)
* *Elements of Universology* (1881)
* *The New Civilization* (1885)

## Further Reading

* Reece, Erik. *Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America’s Most Radical Idea*. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.
* Riggenbach, Jeff. “Stephen Pearl Andrews’s Fleeting Contribution to Anarchist Thought.” (blog) *Mises Institute*, 2011. https://mises.org/library/stephen-pearl-andrewss-fleeting-contribution-anarchist-thought.

## External Links

* Stephen Pearl Andrews at FindAGrave
* Stephen Pearl Andrews's Fleeting Contribution to Anarchist Thought

## References

1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 Wunderlich, Roger. *Low Living and High Thinking at Modern Times, New York*. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992.
2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 Riggenbach, Jeff. “Stephen Pearl Andrews’s Fleeting Contribution to Anarchist Thought.” *Mises Institute*, 2011. https://mises.org/library/stephen-pearl-andrewss-fleeting-contribution-anarchist-thought.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Trahair, Richard C. S. *Utopias and Utopians : An Historical Dictionary of Attempts to Make the World a Better Place and Those Who Were Involved.* Routledge, 2013.
4. ↑ Dyson, Verne. “A History of Modern Times.” Brentwood Public Library, 2015. http://brentwoodnylibrary.org/modern\_times/modern\_times.htm.
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Reece, Erik. *Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America’s Most Radical Idea*. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Hayden, Dolores. *The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Houses, Neighborhoods and Cities*, 1981.
7. ↑ Mott, F. L., History of American Magazines (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938), II, 207-208) quoted by Hayden, Dolores. *The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Houses, Neighborhoods and Cities*, 1981.
8. ↑ Andrews, Stephen Pearl. *The Science of Society*. Boston, MA: Sarah E. Holmes, 1888. p. 210-11
9. ↑ Martin, James J., "Men Against the State: The Expositers of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827-1908" (Colorado Springs, Ralph Myles Publisher Inc, 1970), quoted in Riggenbach, Jeff. “Stephen Pearl Andrews’s Fleeting Contribution to Anarchist Thought.” *Mises Institute*, 2011. https://mises.org/library/stephen-pearl-andrewss-fleeting-contribution-anarchist-thought.
10. ↑ Kline, William Gary, "The Individualist Anarchists: A Critique of Liberalism" (University Press of America, 1987) quoted in Riggenbach, Jeff. “Stephen Pearl Andrews’s Fleeting Contribution to Anarchist Thought.” Mises Institute, 2011. https://mises.org/library/stephen-pearl-andrewss-fleeting-contribution-anarchist-thought.