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Karl Pearson
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Karl Pearson, FRS
Pearson in 1912
Born: Carl Pearson, 27 March 1857, Islington, London, England
Died: 27 April 1936 (aged 79), Coldharbour, Surrey, England
Nationality: British
Alma mater: King's College, Cambridge; University of Heidelberg
Known for: Principal component analysis; Pearson distribution; Pearson's chi-squared test; Pearson's r
Phi coefficient; The Grammar of Science
Awards: Darwin Medal (1898); Weldon Memorial Prize (1912)
Scientific career
Fields: Lawyer, Germanist, eugenicist, mathematician and statistician (primarily the last)
Institutions: University College, London; King's College, Cambridge
Academic advisors: Francis Galton
Notable students: Philip Hall; John Wishart; Julia Bell; Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen
Influenced: Albert Einstein, Henry Ludwell Moore, James Arthur Harris

Karl Pearson FRS FRSE[1] (/ˈpɪərsən/; born Carl Pearson; 27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936[2]) was an English mathematician and biostatistician. He has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics.[3][4] He founded the world's first university statistics department at University College, London in 1911, and contributed significantly to the field of biometrics and meteorology. Pearson was also a proponent of social Darwinism and eugenics.[5] Pearson was a protégé and biographer of Sir Francis Galton. He edited and completed both William Kingdon Clifford's Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885) and Isaac Todhunter's History of the Theory of Elasticity, Vol. 1 (1886–1893) and Vol. 2 (1893), following their deaths.

Biography

Pearson was born in Islington, London into a Quaker family. His father was William Pearson QC of the Inner Temple, and his mother Fanny (née Smith), and he had two siblings, Arthur and Amy. Pearson attended University College School, followed by King's College, Cambridge in 1876 to study mathematics,[6] graduating in 1879 as Third Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos. He then travelled to Germany to study physics at the University of Heidelberg under G H Quincke and metaphysics under Kuno Fischer. He next visited the University of Berlin, where he attended the lectures of the physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond on Darwinism (Emil was a brother of Paul du Bois-Reymond, the mathematician). Pearson also studied Roman Law, taught by Bruns and Mommsen, medieval and 16th century German Literature, and Socialism. He became an accomplished historian and Germanist and spent much of the 1880s in Berlin, Heidelberg, Vienna[citation needed], Saig bei Lenzkirch, and Brixlegg. He wrote on Passion plays,[7] religion, Goethe, Werther, as well as sex-related themes,[8] and was a founder of the Men and Women's Club.[9]


Pearson with Sir Francis Galton, 1909 or 1910.

Pearson was offered a Germanics post at King's College, Cambridge. Comparing Cambridge students to those he knew from Germany, Karl found German students inathletic and weak. He wrote his mother, "I used to think athletics and sport was overestimated at Cambridge, but now I think it cannot be too highly valued."[10]

On returning to England in 1880, Pearson first went to Cambridge:

Back in Cambridge, I worked in the engineering shops, but drew up the schedule in Mittel- and Althochdeutsch for the Medieval Languages Tripos.[11]

In his first book, The New Werther, Pearson gives a clear indication of why he studied so many diverse subjects:

I rush from science to philosophy, and from philosophy to our old friends the poets; and then, over-wearied by too much idealism, I fancy I become practical in returning to science. Have you ever attempted to conceive all there is in the world worth knowing—that not one subject in the universe is unworthy of study? The giants of literature, the mysteries of many-dimensional space, the attempts of Boltzmann and Crookes to penetrate Nature's very laboratory, the Kantian theory of the universe, and the latest discoveries in embryology, with their wonderful tales of the development of life—what an immensity beyond our grasp! [...] Mankind seems on the verge of a new and glorious discovery. What Newton did to simplify the planetary motions must now be done to unite in one whole the various isolated theories of mathematical physics.[12]

Pearson then returned to London to study law, emulating his father. Quoting Pearson's own account:

Coming to London, I read in chambers in Lincoln's Inn, drew up bills of sale, and was called to the Bar, but varied legal studies by lecturing on heat at Barnes, on Martin Luther at Hampstead, and on Lassalle and Marx on Sundays at revolutionary clubs around Soho.[11]

His next career move was to the Inner Temple, where he read law until 1881 (although he never practised). After this, he returned to mathematics, deputising for the mathematics professor at King's College, London in 1881 and for the professor at University College, London in 1883. In 1884, he was appointed to the Goldsmid Chair of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics at University College, London. Pearson became the editor of Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885) when William Kingdon Clifford died. 1891 saw him also appointed to the professorship of Geometry at Gresham College; here he met Walter Frank Raphael Weldon, a zoologist who had some interesting problems requiring quantitative solutions.[13] The collaboration, in biometry and evolutionary theory, was a fruitful one and lasted until Weldon died in 1906.[14] Weldon introduced Pearson to Charles Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, who was interested in aspects of evolution such as heredity and eugenics. Pearson became Galton's protégé, at times to the verge of hero worship.[citation needed]

After Galton's death in 1911, Pearson embarked on producing his definitive biography — a three-volume tome of narrative, letters, genealogies, commentaries, and photographs — published in 1914, 1924, and 1930, with much of Pearson's own money paying for their print runs. The biography, done "to satisfy myself and without regard to traditional standards, to the needs of publishers or to the tastes of the reading public", triumphed Galton's life, work and personal heredity. He predicted that Galton, rather than Charles Darwin, would be remembered as the most prodigious grandson of Erasmus Darwin.

When Galton died, he left the residue of his estate to the University of London for a Chair in Eugenics. Pearson was the first holder of this chair — the Galton Chair of Eugenics, later the Galton Chair of Genetics[15]—in accordance with Galton's wishes. He formed the Department of Applied Statistics (with financial support from the Drapers' Company), into which he incorporated the Biometric and Galton laboratories. He remained with the department until his retirement in 1933, and continued to work until his death at Coldharbour, Surrey on 27 April 1936.

Pearson was a "zealous" atheist and a freethinker.[16][17]

Family

In 1890 Pearson married Maria Sharpe. The couple had three children: Sigrid Loetitia Pearson, Helga Sharpe Pearson, and Egon Pearson, who became a statistician himself and succeeded his father as head of the Applied Statistics Department at University College. Maria died in 1928 and in 1929 Karl married Margaret Victoria Child, a co-worker at the Biometric Laboratory. He and his family lived at 7 Well Road in Hampstead, now marked with a blue plaque.[18][19]

Einstein and Pearson's work

When the 23-year-old Albert Einstein started the Olympia Academy study group in 1902, with his two younger friends, Maurice Solovine and Conrad Habicht, his first reading suggestion was Pearson's The Grammar of Science. This book covered several themes that were later to become part of the theories of Einstein and other scientists.[20] Pearson asserted that the laws of nature are relative to the perceptive ability of the observer. Irreversibility of natural processes, he claimed, is a purely relative conception. An observer who travels at the exact velocity of light would see an eternal now, or an absence of motion. He speculated that an observer who travelled faster than light would see time reversal, similar to a cinema film being run backwards. Pearson also discussed antimatter, the fourth dimension, and wrinkles in time.

Pearson's relativity was based on idealism, in the sense of ideas or pictures in a mind. "There are many signs," he wrote, "that a sound idealism is surely replacing, as a basis for natural philosophy, the crude materialism of the older physicists." (Preface to 2nd Ed., The Grammar of Science) Further, he stated, "...science is in reality a classification and analysis of the contents of the mind..." "In truth, the field of science is much more consciousness than an external world." (Ibid., Ch. II, § 6) "Law in the scientific sense is thus essentially a product of the human mind and has no meaning apart from man." (Ibid., Ch. III, § 4)[21]

Politics and eugenics


Karl Pearson at work, 1910.

A eugenicist who applied his social Darwinism to entire nations, Pearson saw war against "inferior races" as a logical implication of the theory of evolution. "My view – and I think it may be called the scientific view of a nation," he wrote, "is that of an organized whole, kept up to a high pitch of internal efficiency by insuring that its numbers are substantially recruited from the better stocks, and kept up to a high pitch of external efficiency by contest, chiefly by way of war with inferior races."[22] He reasoned that, if August Weismann's theory of germ plasm is correct, the nation is wasting money when it tries to improve people who come from poor stock.

Weismann claimed that acquired characteristics could not be inherited. Therefore, training benefits only the trained generation. Their children will not exhibit the learned improvements and, in turn, will need to be improved. "No degenerate and feeble stock will ever be converted into healthy and sound stock by the accumulated effects of education, good laws, and sanitary surroundings. Such means may render the individual members of a stock passable if not strong members of society, but the same process will have to be gone through again and again with their offspring, and this in ever-widening circles, if the stock, owing to the conditions in which society has placed it, is able to increase its numbers."[23]

"History shows me one way, and one way only, in which a high state of civilization has been produced, namely, the struggle of race with race, and the survival of the physically and mentally fitter race. If you want to know whether the lower races of man can evolve a higher type, I fear the only course is to leave them to fight it out among themselves, and even then the struggle for existence between individual and individual, between tribe and tribe, may not be supported by that physical selection due to a particular climate on which probably so much of the Aryan's success depended."[24]

Pearson was known in his lifetime as a prominent "freethinker" and socialist. He gave lectures on such issues as "the woman's question" (this was the era of the suffragist movement in the UK)[25] and upon Karl Marx. His commitment to socialism and its ideals led him to refuse the offer of being created an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 1920 and also to refuse a knighthood in 1935.

In The Myth of the Jewish Race[26] Raphael and Jennifer Patai cite Karl Pearson's 1925 opposition (in the first issue of the journal Annals of Eugenics which he founded) to Jewish immigration into Britain. Pearson alleged that these immigrants "will develop into a parasitic race. [...] Taken on the average, and regarding both sexes, this alien Jewish population is somewhat inferior physically and mentally to the native population".[27]

Contributions to biometrics

Karl Pearson was important in the founding of the school of biometrics, which was a competing theory to describe evolution and population inheritance at the turn of the 20th century. His series of eighteen papers, "Mathematical Contributions to the Theory of Evolution" established him as the founder of the biometrical school for inheritance. In fact, Pearson devoted much time during 1893 to 1904 to developing statistical techniques for biometry.[28] These techniques, which are widely used today for statistical analysis, include the chi-squared test, standard deviation, and correlation and regression coefficients. Pearson's Law of Ancestral Heredity stated that germ plasm consisted of heritable elements inherited from the parents as well as from more distant ancestors, the proportion of which varied for different traits.[29] Karl Pearson was a follower of Galton, and although the two differed in some respects, Pearson used a substantial amount of Francis Galton's statistical concepts in his formulation of the biometrical school for inheritance, such as the law of regression. The biometric school, unlike the Mendelians, focused not on providing a mechanism for inheritance, but rather on providing a mathematical description for inheritance that was not causal in nature. While Galton proposed a discontinuous theory of evolution, in which species would have to change via large jumps rather than small changes that built up over time, Pearson pointed out flaws in Galton's argument and actually used Galton's ideas to further a continuous theory of evolution, whereas the Mendelians favored a discontinuous theory of evolution. While Galton focused primarily on the application of statistical methods to the study of heredity, Pearson and his colleague Weldon expanded statistical reasoning to the fields of inheritance, variation, correlation, and natural and sexual selection.[30]

For Pearson, the theory of evolution was not intended to identify a biological mechanism that explained patterns of inheritance, whereas Mendelian's theory postulated the gene as the mechanism for inheritance. Pearson criticized Bateson and other biologists for their failure to adopt biometrical techniques in their study of evolution.[31] Pearson criticized biologists who did not focus on the statistical validity of their theories, stating that "before we can accept [any cause of a progressive change] as a factor we must have not only shown its plausibility but if possible have demonstrated its quantitative ability"[32] Biologists had succumb to "almost metaphysical speculation as to the causes of heredity," which had replaced the process of experimental data collection that actually might allow scientists to narrow down potential theories.[33]

For Pearson, laws of nature were useful for making accurate predictions and for concisely describing trends in observed data.[30] Causation was the experience "that a certain sequence has occurred and recurred in the past".[32] Thus, identifying a particular mechanism of genetics was not a worthy pursuit of biologists, who should instead focus on mathematical descriptions of empirical data. This, in part led to the fierce debate between the biometricians and the Mendelians, including Bateson. After Bateson rejected one of Pearson's manuscripts that described a new theory for the variability of an offspring, or homotyposis, Pearson and Weldon established Biometrika in 1902.[34] Although the biometric approach to inheritance eventually lost to the Mendelian approach, the techniques Pearson and the biometricians at the time developed are vital to studies of biology and evolution today.

Awards from professional bodies

Pearson achieved widespread recognition across a range of disciplines and his membership of, and awards from, various professional bodies reflects this:

• 1896: elected FRS: Fellow of the Royal Society[2]
• 1898: awarded the Darwin Medal[35]
• 1911: awarded the honorary degree of LLD from the University of St Andrews
• 1911: awarded a DSc from University of London
• 1920: offered (and refused) the OBE
• 1932: awarded the Rudolf Virchow medal by the Berliner Anthropologische Gesellschaft
• 1935: offered (and refused) a knighthood

He was also elected an Honorary Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, University College, London and the Royal Society of Medicine, and a Member of the Actuaries' Club. A sesquicentenary conference was held in London on 23 March 2007, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth.[3]

Contributions to statistics

Pearson's work was all-embracing in the wide application and development of mathematical statistics, and encompassed the fields of biology, epidemiology, anthropometry, medicine, psychology and social history.[36] In 1901, with Weldon and Galton, he founded the journal Biometrika whose object was the development of statistical theory.[37] He edited this journal until his death. Among those who assisted Pearson in his research were a number of female mathematicians who included Beatrice Mabel Cave-Browne-Cave and Frances Cave-Browne-Cave. He also founded the journal Annals of Eugenics (now Annals of Human Genetics) in 1925. He published the Drapers' Company Research Memoirs largely to provide a record of the output of the Department of Applied Statistics not published elsewhere.

Pearson's thinking underpins many of the 'classical' statistical methods which are in common use today. Examples of his contributions are:

• Correlation coefficient. The correlation coefficient (first developed by Auguste Bravais[38][39]. and Francis Galton) was defined as a product-moment, and its relationship with linear regression was studied.[40]
• Method of moments. Pearson introduced moments, a concept borrowed from physics, as descriptive statistics and for the fitting of distributions to samples.
• Pearson's system of continuous curves. A system of continuous univariate probability distributions that came to form the basis of the now conventional continuous probability distributions. Since the system is complete up to the fourth moment, it is a powerful complement to the Pearsonian method of moments.
• Chi distance. A precursor and special case of the Mahalanobis distance.[41]
• p-value. Defined as the probability measure of the complement of the ball with the hypothesized value as center point and chi distance as radius.[41]
• Foundations of the statistical hypothesis testing theory and the statistical decision theory.[41] In the seminal "On the criterion..." paper,[41] Pearson proposed testing the validity of hypothesized values by evaluating the chi distance between the hypothesized and the empirically observed values via the p-value, which was proposed in the same paper. The use of preset evidence criteria, so called alpha type-I error probabilities, was later proposed by Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson.[42]
• Pearson's chi-squared test. A hypothesis test using normal approximation for discrete data.
• Principal component analysis. The method of fitting a linear subspace to multivariate data by minimising the chi distances.[43][44]
• The first introduction of the histogram is usually credited to Pearson.[45]

Publications

• Pearson, Karl (1880). The New Werther. C, Kegan Paul & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1882). The Trinity: A Nineteenth Century Passion-play. Cambridge: E. Johnson.
• Pearson, Karl (1887). Die Fronica. Strassburg: K.J. Trübner
• Pearson, Karl (1887). The Moral Basis of Socialism. William Reeves, London.
• Pearson, Karl (1888). The Ethic of Freethought. London: T. Fisher Unwin. Rep. University Press of the Pacific, 2002.
• Pearson, Karl (1892). The Grammar of Science. London: Walter Scott. Dover Publications, 2004 ISBN 0-486-49581-7
• Pearson, Karl (1892). The New University for London: A Guide to its History and a Criticism of its Defects. London: T. Fisher Unwin.
• Pearson, K (1896). "Mathematical Contributions to the Theory of Evolution. III. Regression, Heredity and Panmixia". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 187: 253–318. Bibcode:1896RSPTA.187..253P. doi:10.1098/rsta.1896.0007.
• Pearson, Karl (1897). The Chances of Death and Other Studies in Evolution, 2 Vol. London: Edward Arnold.
• Pearson, Karl (1904). On the Theory of Contingency and its Relation to Association and Normal Correlation. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1905). On the General Theory of Skew Correlation and Non-linear Regression. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1906). A Mathematical Theory of Random Migration. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1907). Studies in National Deterioration. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl, & Pollard, A.F. Campbell (1907). An Experimental Study of the Stresses in Masonry Dams. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1907). A First Study of the Statistics of Pulmonary Tuberculosis. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl, & Barrington, Amy (1909). A First Study of the Inheritance of Vision and of the Relative Influence of Heredity and Environment on Sight. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl; Reynolds, W. D., & Stanton, W. F. (1909). On a Practical Theory of Elliptical and Pseudo-elliptical Arches, with Special Reference to the Ideal Masonry Arch.
• Pearson, Karl (1909). The Groundwork of Eugenics. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1909). The Scope and Importance to the State of the Science of National Eugenics. London: Dalau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl, & Barrington, Amy (1910). A Preliminary Study of Extreme Alcoholism in Adults. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl, & Elderton, Ethel M. (1910). A First Study of the Influence of Parental Alcoholism on the Physique and Ability of the Offspring. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1910). The Influence of Parental Alcoholism on the Physique and Ability of the Offspring: A Reply to the Cambridge Economists. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl, & Elderton, Ethel M. (1910). A Second Study of the Influence of Parental Alcoholism on the Physique and Ability of the Offspring. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1911). An Attempt to Correct some of the Misstatements Made by Sir Victor Horsley and Mary D. Sturge, M.D. in the Criticisms of the Galton Laboratory Memoir: A First Study of the Influence of Parental Alcoholism, &c. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl; Nettleship, Edward, & Usher, Charles (1911–1913). A Monograph on Albinism in Man, 2 Vol. London: Dulau & Co., Ltd.
• Pearson, Karl (1912). The Problem of Practical Eugenics. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1912). Tuberculosis, Heredity and Environment. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1913). On the Correlation of Fertility with Social Value: A Cooperative Study. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl, & Jaederholm, Gustav A. (1914). Mendelism and the Problem of Mental Defect, II: On the Continuity of Mental Defect. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl; Williams, M.H., & Bell, Julia (1914). A Statistical Study of Oral Temperatures in School Children. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1914-24-30). The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton, 3 Vol. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Pearson, Karl (1915). Some Recent Misinterpretations of the Problem of Nurture and Nature. Cambridge University Press.
• Pearson, Karl; Young, A.W., & Elderton, Ethel (1918). On the Torsion Resulting from Flexure in Prisms with Cross-sections of Uni-axial Symmetry Only. Cambridge University Press.
• Pearson, Karl, & Bell, Julia (1919). A Study of the Long Bones of the English Skeleton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Pearson, Karl (1920). The Science of Man: its Needs and its Prospects. Cambridge University Press.
• Pearson, Karl, & Karn, Mary Noel (1922). Study of the Data Provided by a Baby-clinic in a Large Manufacturing Town. Cambridge University Press.
• Pearson, Karl (1922). Francis Galton, 1822–1922: A Centenary Appreciation. Cambridge University Press.
• Pearson, Karl (1923). On the Relationship of Health to the Psychical and Physical Characters in School Children. Cambridge University Press.
• Pearson, Karl (1926). On the Skull and Portraits of George Buchanan. Edinburgh, London: Oliver & Boyd.

Articles

• Pearson, Karl (1883). "Maimonides and Spinoza". Mind. 8 (31): 338–353. doi:10.1093/mind/os-VIII.31.338.
• Pearson, Karl (1885). "On a Certain Atomic Hypothesis". Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. 14: 71–120.
• Pearson, Karl (1890). "On Wöhler's Experiments on Alternating Stress". The Messenger of Mathematics. XX: 21–37.
• Pearson, Karl (1891). "Ether Squirts". American Journal of Mathematics. 13 (4): 309–72. doi:10.2307/2369570. JSTOR 2369570.
• Pearson, Karl (1897). "On Telegony in Man," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Vol. LX, pp. 273–283.
• Pearson, Karl (1897). "On a Form of Spurious Correlation which May Arise when Indices are Used in the Measurement of Organs," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Vol. LX, pp. 489–502.
• Pearson, Karl (1899). "On the Reconstruction of the Stature of Prehistoric Races". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 192: 169–243. Bibcode:1899RSPTA.192..169P. doi:10.1098/rsta.1899.0004.
• Pearson, Karl; Lee, Alice; Bramley-Moore, Leslie (1899). "Genetic (Reproductive) Selection". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 192: 257–330. Bibcode:1899RSPTA.192..257P. doi:10.1098/rsta.1899.0006.
• Pearson, Karl, & Whiteley, M.A. (1899). "Data for the Problem of Evolution in Man, I: A First Study of the Variability and Correlation of the Hand," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Vol. LXV, pp. 126–151.
• Pearson, Karl, & Beeton, Mary (1899). "Data for the Problem of Evolution in Man, II: A First Study on the Inheritance of Longevity and the Selective Death-rate in Man," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Vol. LXV, pp. 290–305.
• Pearson, Karl (1900). "On the Law of Reversion," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Vol. LXVI, pp. 140–164.
• Pearson, Karl; Beeton, M., & Yule, G.U. (1900). "On the Correlation Between Duration of Life and the Number of Offspring," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Vol. LXVII, pp. 159–179.
• Pearson, Karl (1900). "On the Criterion that a Given System of Deviations from the Probable in the Case of a Correlated System of Variables is Such that it can be Reasonably Supposed to Have Arisen from Random Sampling," Philosophical Magazine, 5th Series, Vol. L, pp. 157–175.
• Pearson, Karl (1901). "On Lines and Planes of Closest Fit to Systems of Points in Space," Philosophical Magazine, 6th Series, Vol. II, pp. 559–572.
• Pearson, Karl (1902–1903). "The Law of Ancestral Heredity," Biometrika, Vol. II, pp. 221–229.
• Pearson, Karl (1903). "On a General Theory of the Method of False Position", Philosophical Magazine, 6th Series, Vol. 5, pp. 658–668.
• Pearson, Karl (1907). "On the Influence of Past Experience on Future Expectation," Philosophical Magazine, 6th Series, Vol. XIII, pp. 365–378.
• Pearson, Karl, & Gibson, Winifred (1907). "Further Considerations on the Correlations of Stellar Characters," Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. LXVIII, pp. 415–448.
• Pearson, Karl (1910). "A Myth About Edward the Confessor". The English Historical Review. 25: 517–520. doi:10.1093/ehr/xxv.xcix.517.
• Pearson, Karl (1920). "The Problems of Anthropology". The Scientific Monthly. 11 (5): 451–458. Bibcode:1920SciMo..11..451P. JSTOR 6421.
• Pearson, Karl (1930). "On a New Theory of Progressive Evolution," Annals of Eugenics, Vol. IV, Nos. 1–2, pp. 1–40.
• Pearson, Karl (1931). "On the Inheritance of Mental Disease," Annals of Eugenics, Vol. IV, Nos. 3–4, pp. 362–380.

Miscellany

• Pearson, Karl (1885). The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences. London: Kegan, Paul, Trench & Co. (editor).
• Pearson, Karl (1886–1893). A History of the Theory of Elasticity and of the Strength of Materials from Galilei to the Present Time, Vol. 2, Vol. 3. Cambridge University Press (editor).
o Pearson, Karl (1889). The Elastical Researches of Barré de Saint-Venant. Cambridge University Press (editor).
• Pearson, Karl (1888). The Positive Creed of Freethought: with Some Remarks on the Relation of Freethought to Socialism. Being a Lecture Delivered at South Place Institute. London: William Reeves.
• Pearson, Karl (1901). National Life from the Stand-point of Science: An Address Delivered at Newcastle. London: Adam & Charles Black.
• Pearson, Karl (1908). A Second Study of the Statistics of Pulmonary Tuberculosis: Marital Infection. London: Dulau & Co. (editor).
• Pearson, Karl (1910). Nature and Nurture, the Problem of the Future: A Presidential Address. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1911). The Academic Aspect of the Science of Eugenics: A Lecture Delivered to Undergraduates. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1912). Treasury of Human Inheritance, 2 Vol. Dulau & Co., London (editor).
• Pearson, Karl (1912). Eugenics and Public Health: An Address to Public Health Officers. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1912). Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics. The Cavendish Lecture: An Address to the Medical Profession. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1912). Social Problems, their Treatment, Past, Present, and Future: A Lecture. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1914). On the Handicapping of the First-born: Being a Lecture Delivered at the Galton Laboratory. London: Dulau & Co.
• Pearson, Karl (1914). Tables for Statisticians and Biometricians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (editor).
• Pearson, Karl (1919–22). Tracts for Computers. Cambridge University Press (editor).
• Pearson, Karl (1921). Side Lights on the Evolution of Man: Being a Lecture Delivered at the Royal Institution. Cambridge University Press.
• Pearson, Karl (1922). Tables of the Incomplete Γ-Function. London: Pub. for the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research by H.M. Stationery Office.
• Pearson, Karl (1923). Charles Darwin, 1809–1882: An Appreciation. Being a Lecture Delivered to the Teachers of the London County Council. Cambridge University Press.
• Pearson, Karl (1927). The Right of the Unborn Child: Being a Lecture Delivered... to Teachers from the London County Council Schools. Cambridge University Press.
• Pearson, Karl (1934). Tables of the Incomplete Beta-function. Cambridge University Press. 2nd ed., 1968 (editor).

See also

• Biophysics
• Gresham Professor of Geometry § List of Gresham Professors of Geometry
• Kikuchi Dairoku, a close friend and contemporary of Karl Pearson at University College School and Cambridge University
• Scientific racism

References

1. Yule, G. U.; Filon, L. N. G. (1936). "Karl Pearson. 1857–1936". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 2 (5): 72–110. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1936.0007. JSTOR 769130.
2. "Library and Archive catalogue". Sackler Digital Archive. Royal Society. Archived from the original on 25 October 2011. Retrieved 1 July 2011.
3. "Karl Pearson sesquicentenary conference". Royal Statistical Society. 3 March 2007. Retrieved 25 July 2008.
4. "[...] the founder of modern statistics, Karl Pearson." – Bronowski, Jacob (1978). The Common Sense of Science, Harvard University Press, p. 128.
5. "The Concept of Heredity in the History of Western Culture: Part One," The Mankind Quarterly, Vol. XXXV, No. 3, p. 237.
6. "Pearson, Carl (or Karl) (PR875CK)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
7. Pearson, Karl (1897). "The German Passion-Play: A Study in the Evolution of Western Christianity," in The Chances of Death and Other Studies in Evolution. London: Edward Arnold, pp. 246–406.
8. Pearson, Karl (1888). "A Sketch of the Sex-Relations in Primitive and Mediæval Germany," in The Ethic of Freethought. London: T. Fisher Unwin, pp. 395–426.
9. Walkowitz, Judith R., History Workshop Journal 1986 21(1):37–59, p 37
10. Warwick, Andrew (2003). "4: Exercising the student body: Mathematics, manliness and athleticism". Masters of theory: Cambridge and the rise of mathematical physics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 176–226. ISBN 978-0-226-87375-6.
11. Pearson, Karl (1934). Speeches Delivered at a Dinner Held in University College, London, in Honour of Professor Karl Pearson, 23 April 1934. Cambridge University Press, p. 20.
12. Pearson, Karl (1880). The New Werther. London: C, Kegan Paul & Co., pp. 6, 96.
13. Provine, William B. (2001). The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics. University of Chicago Press, p. 29.
14. Tankard, James W. (1984). The Statistical Pioneers, Schenkman Pub. Co.
15. Blaney, Tom (2011). The Chief Sea Lion's Inheritance: Eugenics and the Darwins. Troubador Pub., p. 108. Also see Pearson, Roger (1991). Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe. Scott-Townsend Publishers.
16. McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch. The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy: Yale UP, 2011. Print. "Karl Pearson...was a zealous atheist..."
17. Porter, Theodore M. Karl Pearson: The Scientific Life in a Statistical Age. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004. Print.
18. "Karl Pearson Blue Plaque," at Openplaques.org.
19. Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. July 2006. ISBN 0-902-198-84-X.
20. Herbert, Christopher (2001). "Karl Pearson and the Human Form Divine," in Victorian Relativity: Radical Thought and Scientific Discovery, Chicago University Press, pp. 145–179.
21. Pearson, Karl (1900). The Grammar of Science. London: Adam & Charles Black, pp. vii, 52, 87.
22. Pearson, Karl (1901). National Life from the Standpoint of Science. London: Adam & Charles Black, pp. 43–44.
23. Pearson, Karl (1892). Introduction to The Grammar of Science. London: Water Scott, p. 32.
24. Pearson, Karl (1901). National Life from the Standpoint of Science. London: Adam & Charles Black, pp. 19–20.
25. Pearson, Karl (1888). "The Woman's Question," in The Ethic of Freethought. London: T. Fisher Unwin, pp. 370–394.
26. Patai, Raphael, & Jennifer Patai (1989). The Myth of the Jewish Race. Wayne State University Press, p. 146. ISBN 978-0814319482
27. Pearson, Karl; Moul, Margaret (1925). "The Problem of Alien Immigration into Great Britain, Illustrated by an Examination of Russian and Polish Jewish Children". Annals of Eugenics. I (2): 125–126. doi:10.1111/j.1469-1809.1925.tb02037.x.
28. Farrall, Lyndsay A. (August 1975). "Controversy and Conflict in Science: A Case Study The English Biometric School and Mendel's Laws". Social Studies of Science. 5 (3): 269–301. doi:10.1177/030631277500500302. PMID 11610080.
29. Pearson, Karl (1897). "Mathematical Contributions to the Theory of Evolution. On the Law of Ancestral Heredity". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. 62 (379–387): 386–412. Bibcode:1897RSPS...62..386P. doi:10.1098/rspl.1897.0128. JSTOR 115747.
30. Pence, Charles H. (2015). "The early history of chance in evolution". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. 50: 48–58. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.682.4758. doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2014.09.006. PMID 26466463.
31. Morrison, Margaret (1 March 2002). "Modelling Populations: Pearson and Fisher on Mendelism and Biometry". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 53: 39–68. doi:10.1093/bjps/53.1.39.
32. Pearson, Karl (1892). The grammar of science. The contemporary science series. London : New York: Walter Scott ; Charles Scribner's Sons.
33. Pearson, Karl (1 January 1896). "Mathematical Contributions to the Theory of Evolution. III. Regression, Heredity, and Panmixia". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 187: 253–318. Bibcode:1896RSPTA.187..253P. doi:10.1098/rsta.1896.0007. ISSN 1364-503X.
34. Gillham, Nicholas (9 August 2013). "The Battle Between the Biometricians and the Mendelians: How Sir Francis Galton Caused his Disciples to Reach Conflicting Conclusions About the Hereditary Mechanism". Science & Education. 24 (1–2): 61–75. Bibcode:2015Sc&Ed..24...61G. doi:10.1007/s11191-013-9642-1.
35. "PEARSON, Karl". Who's Who. Vol. 59. 1907. p. 1373.
36. Mackenzie, Donald (1981). Statistics in Britain, 1865–1930: The Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge, Edinburgh University Press.
37. Hald, Anders (1998). A History of Mathematical Statistics from 1750 to 1930. Wiley, p. 651.
38. Analyse Mathematique. Sur Les Probabilties des Erreurs de Situation d'un Point Mem. Acad. Roy. Sei. Inst. France, Sci. Math, et Phys., t. 9, p. 255–332. 1846
39. Wright, S., 1921. Correlation and causation. Journal of agricultural research, 20(7), pp. 557–585
40. Stigler, S. M. (1989). "Francis Galton's Account of the Invention of Correlation". Statistical Science. 4 (2): 73–79. doi:10.1214/ss/1177012580.
41. Pearson, K. (1900). "On the Criterion that a given System of Deviations from the Probable in the Case of a Correlated System of Variables is such that it can be reasonably supposed to have arisen from Random Sampling". Philosophical Magazine. Series 5. Vol. 50 no. 302. pp. 157–175. doi:10.1080/14786440009463897.
42. Neyman, J.; Pearson, E. S. (1928). "On the use and interpretation of certain test criteria for purposes of statistical inference". Biometrika. 20 (1/2): 175–240. doi:10.2307/2331945. JSTOR 2331945.
43. Pearson, K. (1901). "On Lines and Planes of Closest Fit to Systems of Points is Space". Philosophical Magazine. Series 6. Vol. 2 no. 11. pp. 559–572. doi:10.1080/14786440109462720.
44. Jolliffe, I. T. (2002). Principal Component Analysis, 2nd ed. New York: Springer-Verlag.
45. Pearson, K. (1895). "Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Evolution. II. Skew Variation in Homogeneous Material". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 186: 343–414. Bibcode:1895RSPTA.186..343P. doi:10.1098/rsta.1895.0010.
Most of the biographical information above is taken from the Karl Pearson page at the Department of Statistical Sciences at University College London, which has been placed in the public domain. The main source for that page was A list of the papers and correspondence of Karl Pearson (1857–1936) held in the Manuscripts Room, University College London Library, compiled by M. Merrington, B. Blundell, S. Burrough, J. Golden and J. Hogarth and published by the Publications Office, University College London, 1983.
Additional information from entry for Karl Pearson in the Sackler Digital Archive of the Royal Society

Further reading

• Eisenhart, Churchill (1974). Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 10, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, pp. 447–473.
• Norton, Bernard J (1978). "Karl Pearson and Statistics: The Social Origins of Scientific Innovation" (PDF). Social Studies of Science. 8 (1): 3–34. doi:10.1177/030631277800800101. PMID 11615697.
• Pearson, E. S. (1938). Karl Pearson: An Appreciation of Some Aspects of his Life and Work. Cambridge University Press.
• Porter, T. M. (2004). Karl Pearson: The Scientific Life in a Statistical Age, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-12635-7.

External links

• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Karl Pearson", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
• Karl Pearson at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• John Aldrich's Karl Pearson: a Reader's Guide at the University of Southampton (contains many useful links to further sources of information).
• Encyclopædia Britannica Karl Pearson
• Gavan Tredoux's Francis Galton website, galton.org, contains Pearson's biography of Francis Galton, and several other papers – in addition to nearly all of Galton's own published works.
• Karl Pearson and the Origins of Modern Statistics at The Rutherford Journal.
• Texts on Wikisource:
o Nock, Albert Jay, "A New Science and Its Findings", The American Magazine (The Phillips Publishing Co.) LXXIII (5): 577 (March 1912)
o "Biometrika" from The Doctor's Dilemma by George Bernard Shaw
o "Pearson, Karl" . Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921.
• "Studies in the history of probability and statistics, L: Karl Pearson and the Rule of Three"[permanent dead link], Stigler 2012
• From Masaryk to Karl Pearson, Philosophy as Scientia Scientiarum

John Flügel
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/7/20

In 1930 John Carl Flugel wrote a text, long considered classic, called "The Psychology of Clothes," from a eugenics point of view. The book argued that dress was a primary area of dispute between the id (equated with the desire from childhood to exhibit one's naked body) and the superego (resulting in the social prohibition of nudity for the sake of modesty), a conflict that he associated with authoritative and repressive societies. He was a social evolutionist, proposing that eventually society would outgrow authoritarian politics and the need for arbitrary rules regarding clothing. He envisioned that we would be able to control our environment so that clothes would either be unnecessary or be reduced to minimalist, rationalized versions.67

After World War II, the idea of eugenics soured because of its connection with Nazi racial cleansing, but as Susan Currell writes, "Eugenics was a continuing presence in the public psyche" in the 1930s. In 1930 the language of eugenics permeated the New York World's Fair (as it had Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition of 1933-1934). In the Vogue spread, the garments of the future were envisioned on bodies improved through eugenics, something noted by most of the Vogue feature designers. Christina Cogdell has explored the popularity of eugenics-based ideas among American industrial designers during the 1930s and revealed their obsession with health and fitness, even their application of streamlining concepts to human physical efficiency.69 The Vogue feature bore this out. One engineer among the designers, William Sakier, wrote, "The woman of the future will be tall, slim and lovely; she will be bred to it -- for the delectation of the community and her own happiness. She will move in a world of vast horizons."70 Likewise, Walter Dorwin Teague (a designer of the DuPont pavilion) wrote that, in the future, "Most women will have beautiful bodies ... Gowns will be designed to reveal the beauty of their bodies and will afford only the minimum of covering .... Materials will be of chemical origin, and many will be either transparent or translucent, with an individual life of their own."

The designs themselves, or at least the designers' explanations of them, artfully conjoined perfectibility with American notions of freedom, and they were not totally confined to women's fashions. One of the designers chosen by Vogue (all male), Gilbert Rhode, dressed his version of the "man of the future," representing a "revolt" from woolen suits and "a lifetime spent buttoning and lacing ... the ritual of fitting; ... the futility of pressing knife-like edges." Instead Rhode's garment, called the "Solo-suit," was a loose-fitting jumpsuit woven of beryllium thread, a suit so simple in design that Rhode speculated it could be cheaply manufactured and bought in any drugstore. Atop the overalls Rhode added a "Plastivest" -- a vest made of pieces of Plexiglas and chrome-plated ball-chain with wires to accommodate some sort of two-way telephone, worn on the body, presumably working in concert with the military-style utility belt and "Antenna hat" on the man's head (which looks rather like a halo). In fact, with his curly beard ("shaving the face has disappeared" he wrote), Rhode's man of the future looks exactly like a traditional Christ figure dressed in Flash Gordon attire -- a holy saint of technology.72

-- Garments of Paradise: Wearable Discourse in the Digital Age, by Susan Elizabeth Ryan/quote]

John Carl Flügel (or Flügel) (13 June 1884 – 6 August 1955), was a British experimental psychologist and a practising psychoanalyst.

Training and career

Flügel was born in London on 13 June 1884. His father was German and his mother English, and the family also had close ties with France, and so Flügel learned all three languages as he grew up. Because of a congenital malformation of his feet, however, he did not follow a normal pattern of secondary education.

Aged only 17 he attended Oxford University where he took a doctorate in philosophy, and grew interested in hypnotism, becoming a member of Frederic W. H. Myers' Society for Psychical Research. He also became interested in experimental psychology under the influence of William McDougall, and spent some time studying it in Wűrzburg before joining Charles Spearman at the University of London.[1] There he took a doctorate of science and taught as an auxiliary professor between 1929 and 1944.

Flügel was honorary secretary of the British Psychological Society from 1911 to 1920, honorary librarian from 1911 to 1932, and its president from 1932 to 1935. During the First World War he made a number of important contributions to the society, of which he became an honorary fellow. He was also an honorary member of the Indian Psychological Association, and became president of the Programme Committee of the International Congress on Mental Health in 1948, and of the psychology section of the British Medical Association in 1950.

Psychoanalytic career and writings

After undergoing psychoanalysis with Ernest Jones, the two men became friends; and Flügel (with Jones) helped in the refounding of the British Psychoanalytical Society and 1919, as well as the re-organisation of the British Psychological Society.[2] Flügel was also secretary of the International Psychoanalytic Association from 1919 to 1924, and, again with Ernest Jones, helped create the International Journal of Psychoanalysis in 1920.[3] He also helped translate Sigmund Freud's Vorlesungen (Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis; 1916-1917a [1915-1917]).

Flügel's Psychoanalytic Study of the Family (1921) was acclaimed by Eric Berne for its insights into the Oedipus complex.[4] He also published Men and their Motives (1934) and The Psychology of Clothes (1930)[5], the latter continuing to influence thinking on the subject into the 21st century.[6]

In Man, Morals and Society (1945), Flugel charted a movement from egocentrism to social awareness by way of what he saw as a hierarchy of expanding loyalties.[7] Reaching back to his old mentor, he also highlighted “the distinction that McDougall has sometimes made between an 'ideal', which is little more than an intellectual assent to a moral proposition, and a 'sentiment', which involves a real mobilisation”.[8]

Marriage and death

In 1913 Flügel married Ingeborg Klingberg, who also became a psychoanalyst. They had one daughter. Flügel died in London on 17 August 1955.

See also

• Oswald Külpe
• Semiotics of dress
• Sibling rivalry
• Susan Isaacs

References

1. O. L. Zangwill, 'Flugel, John Charles', in R. Gregory ed., The Oxford Companion to the Mind (1987) p. 264
2. Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (1964) p. 487
3. Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (1964) p. 502
4. Eric Berne, A Layman's Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (1976) p. 134
5. O. L. Zangwill, 'Flugel, John Charles', in R. Gregory ed., The Oxford Companion to the Mind (1987) p. 264
6. R. Koppen, Virginia Woolf, Fashion and Literary Modernism (2009) p. 59
7. J. C. Flugel, Man, Morals and Society (1973) p. 242-3 and p. 317
8. J. C. Flugel, Man, Morals and Society (1973) p. 67

Further reading

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Graham Richards, Flügel, John Carl (1884–1955), first published 2004, 822 words
• FLUGEL, John Carl, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007, accessed 30 Jan 2012
• http://hopc.bps.org.uk/document-downloa ... A3&ext=pdf
• Alain de Mijolla Gale Dictionary of Psychoanalysis: John Carl Flügel http://www.answers.com/topic/fl-gel-john-carl

Part 1 of 2

Neo-Malthusianism and eugenics in the struggle over meaning in the Spanish anarchist press, 1900-1936
by Jorge Molero-Mesa, Isabel Jimenez-Lucena, and Carlos Tabernero-Holgado
História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos, Rio de Janeiro, v.25, supl., ago.
2018

Abstract

This article analyzes the debate on neo-Malthusianism and eugenics in Spanish anarchist publications in the first third of the last century. Using theoretical frameworks that have been under-utilized thus far, it provides new interpretations of what the term “eugenics” meant in pro-anarchist neo-Malthusian journals. Framed within a “struggle over meaning,” Spanish neo-Malthusianism re-signified eugenic ideas in an attempt to recover political ground that had been lost in the drive to promote individual control of human sexuality. This study also analyzes the role of the anarchosyndicalist movement’s “direct action” strategy, in which actions undertaken by individualist anarchists were seen as a complement to revolutionary action.

Keywords: neo-Malthusianism; eugenics; anarchism; anarcho-syndicalism; degenerationism.

Jorge Molero-Mesa
Professor, Facultad de Medicina/Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona.
Barcelona – Cataluña – Spain
jorge.molero@uab.cat

Isabel Jiménez-Lucena
Professor, Facultad de Medicina/Universidad de Málaga.
Málaga – Málaga – Spain
isajimenez@uma.es

Carlos Tabernero-Holgado
Professor, Facultad de Medicina/Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona.
Barcelona – Cataluña – Spain
carlos.tabernero@uab.cat

You can die of love just as you can die of hunger.

-- Luis Bulffi (1904, p.2)

The sexual question is at the root of the social question.

-- G. Hardy [Gabriel Giroud] (1933, p.36)

This article analyzes the debate on eugenics and neo-Malthusianism that took place in Spanish anarchist publications in the first third of the last century. Incorporating anarchist sources gives us a better understanding of the mechanisms whereby hegemonic medicine became a global design (Mignolo, 2012), and how it arrived at the notion of a normalized body subject to common, universal patterns, both in health and in disease states. The topic we are dealing with is very complex, due to the large number of variables related to human sexuality and the collective, populational approach to it, in which biological issues are only one of many elements that need to be taken into account. In order to help overcome this reductive view, we wish to contribute to the debate on neo- Malthusianism and eugenics by analyzing elements that might help open up new lines of research on the history of the regulation and scientific-medical normalization of the body, and on the forms of resistance to that regulation, which attempted to reinterpret and re-signify the meaning of certain words and acts.

In the period being studied, there were various responses to the problem of the “proletarian population surplus” and the phenomenon of “racial degeneracy” that accompanied industrial development in western countries. The most visible aspect of this, which was cited as evidence, was the dire poverty of hundreds of thousands of wage-earning employees. The chronic physical frailness characteristically seen in the impoverished meant that the growing numbers of people contracting diseases like tuberculosis and syphilis came almost exclusively from the working class. Along with alcoholism, these pathologies made up the so-called “race degeneration triad” for all social groups (Molero-Mesa, 1999). In a European context of social conflict and class struggle, two theories emerged to deal with these problems: neo-Malthusianism and eugenics.

Our underlying hypothesis is that throughout the first half of the twentieth century, there was a struggle between opposing social groups over the meaning (Jiménez-Lucena, Molero-Mesa, Tabernero-Holgado, forthcoming) of the signifiers “neo-Malthusianism” and “eugenics.” If we assume that “power inhabits meaning” and that meanings “are a fundamental resource of social power” (Escobar, 2010, p.30), we must acknowledge that struggles over meaning are essential in a social dynamic that channels and resolves conflicts over scientific and cultural distribution (Escobar, 2005, p.123-144). In this case, the conflicts stem from differing biopolitical attitudes (Jiménez-Lucena, Molero-Mesa, 2009, 2011, 2014) regarding the extent and purpose of contraceptive practices in the public and private sphere. Likewise, cultural struggles, including struggles over meaning, play an important role in the configuration of hegemonic/subaltern relationships, as defined by Gramsci, who considers this duality in a non-dichotomous, shifting way, rejecting the idea that some hegemonic groups impose meanings on other subaltern groups, which passively accept them (Jiménez-Lucena, Molero-Mesa, Tabernero-Holgado, forthcoming; Jiménez-Lucena, 2014). Following this relational perspective, we argue that these groups are inserted in dialogic relations that mark their discourses, interests and strategies.1 From this perspective, heterogeneous social groups in subaltern situations (as is the case for anarchism) may function as agents who actively define sociobiological processes involving human beings. This gives rise to conflicts over power distribution that generate negotiations and forms of resistance, arguments and counterarguments, allowing us to problematize the origin of physical normalization processes and the reasons for the success of this “local history” generated by biopower, which became hegemonic through eugenic measures characteristically found in social reform policies. prevailing over other power devices such as the legal system, the Army, the educational system or religion.

There is now a large body of literature analyzing the development of neo-Malthusian and eugenic movements in western countries. True historiographical specializations have emerged, as in the case of research on Nazi racial hygiene policies. A review of this literature is beyond the scope of this article (Bashford, Levinell, 2010). Our approach to the issue is based on studies that link neo-Malthusianism to libertarian movements in the first third of the twentieth century in Spain; we wish to discuss the embrace of eugenic ideas by anarcho-libertarian groups, and its implications for individualist anarchist thought and practice.2

For the purposes of this article, we shall use three journals as our principal sources, each of which was, in turn, the main vehicle for the spread of neo-Malthusianism in Spain in the first third of the twentieth century: Salud y Fuerza (1904-1914), Generación Consciente (1923-1928) and Estudios (1928-1937); also Solidaridad Obrera (1907-1939), the publication of the National Labor Confederation (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, referred to hereafter as CNT).

The characteristics of Spanish neo-Malthusianism

The start of the neo-Malthusian movement in Spain has been studied by a number of authors, who have approached it in terms of the history of sexuality, law, education, science and medicine, focusing on various different aspects and methodologies (Masjuan, 2000; Díez, 2001; Girón Sierra, 2005; Cleminson, 2008). Based on their work, we can reconstruct the theoretical framework and practices of the Spanish section of the League for Human Regeneration (Liga para la Regeneración Humana) led by the anarchist Luis Bulffi de Quintana (b. 1867). The league’s publication was Salud y Fuerza, and its general principles remained the same throughout the period under study, as we shall see later.

Briefly put, the movement supported conscious procreation on the part of the proletariat as a way to fight the state and the church, and it sought to achieve this by providing rational teachings that gave workers access to scientific knowledge about human reproduction from the sociological, economic and biological point of view. This knowledge, according to the proponents of neo-Malthusianism, was being kept “secret” by medical professionals and by the moral and legal mechanisms of the established social system, whose interests were served by keeping the proletariat ignorant so as to perpetuate an army of barely-surviving workers living in abject poverty (Tabernero-Holgado, Jiménez-Lucena, Molero-Mesa, 2013). For neo-Malthusianism, large families meant greater poverty in these families’ homes, with all the attendant consequences (hunger, serious illnesses, acceptance of poorly-paid jobs…). This meant it was important to share contraceptive methods and make them available to working people of both sexes.

The journal Salud y Fuerza was able to promote this type of learning by using reader participation to help manage contraceptive knowledge, thus turning non-experts into active epistemological agents. It not only conveyed information by experts to be assimilated by lay people, but co-constructed knowledge through communication practices that set up an exchange with readers. In this dynamic of self-management of knowledge in a dialogic relationship with hegemonic thought, struggles over meaning were struggles for resources, both symbolic and material, in the process of (de)stabilizing social systems (Tabernero-Holgado, Jiménez-Lucena, Molero-Mesa, 2013; Jiménez-Lucena, Molero-Mesa, Tabernero-Holgado, forthcoming; Jiménez-Lucena, 2014).

This can be seen in various sections of the journal during its 10 years in print. One of them invited readers to interpret drawings showing the social reality of the working-class family with many or few children (Figure 1) or to interpret the paths humanity might take to reach social revolution (Figure 2). The winner of this last contest ended his interpretation of the rocks on the cliff as follows: “Let us be resolute and wade through social revolution, by way of womb strikes (huelgas de vientre), as well as strikes by politicians, clergy, the Army and employees, with no fear that any of them will fail, and we shall reach the land of anarchism strong and determined” (Oromil, 1906, p.74).

The goals of Spanish neo-Malthusianism are summed up in the article “New humanity” (“Nueva humanidad”), by the anarchist José Chueca (d. 1927), published in Salud y Fuerza in 1913 and reprinted, significantly, in Generación Consciente ten years later (Chueca, 1923). Chueca argued that the human race was “degenerate” and pointed to the usual vices and diseases (syphilis, alcoholism, tuberculosis), but above all, he argued that poverty and ignorance were responsible for creating and maintaining the problem of degeneracy. As a result, among the multiple possible ways to combat them he proposes two “whose virtue is immediately revealed: one is conscious, limited procreation, and the other is rationalist, comprehensive education” (Chueca, 1913, p.290). Chueca believed (p.290) that neo-Malthusianism showed people how to choose their descendants by using contraceptive methods, and he predicted that: “In a few generations a physically beautiful, strong, healthy species could be obtained. And if those generations were taught and given a solid, rational, scientific education, then mankind would become ideal, superior, good, and wise as a result.”

Meanwhile, the neo-Malthusianist G. Hardy (the pseudonym of Gabriel Giroud)3 wrote in Salud y Fuerza about the advantages of this method of population control as opposed to other, traditional ones such as war or epidemics:

neo-Malthusian methods solve the problem of the proportions that must be established between the population and the means of subsistence without brutality, trouble, or pain… From society’s point of view, these methods facilitate the resolution of problems that bedevil the working world: if there are fewer workers competing for jobs, salaries will be higher, the work will be less tiring, and strikes will be successfully suppressed by workers. From the point of view of individuals and families, people will live more comfortably, air and light will penetrate their hovels, children will be better brought up, politer and better-educated, women will be emancipated, and men will use their leisure time intelligently, since the terrible anguish of overwork will no longer absorb all their strength and brain-power. In short, this will lead to a new era in the near future, an era in which we shall barely remember those criminal powers: the state, capital, and the church (Giroud, 1904, p.4).

We can see that in diagnosing the etiology of the problem, there is an appeal to social and biological factors, using the talking-points of radical environmentalism (Jiménez- Lucena, 2004; Molero-Mesa, Jiménez-Lucena, 2010) and neo-Malthusianism adapted to the circumstances and interests of libertarian ideas. Luis Bulffi, the director of the journal Salud y Fuerza, declared in the first issue that one of the magazine’s fundamental goals was “to publicize the positive data of ‘biological and social science’ so that future generations will not be like our own” (Bulffi, 1904, p.1; emphasis added).


Figure 1: Cover (Salud y Fuerza, 1906b, p.65)


Figure 2: Cover (Salud y Fuerza, 1906a, p.49)

Logically, therefore, Spanish neo-Malthusianism was linked from the outset to the progressive educational goals of the Modern School (Escuela Moderna), which helped spread libertarian-style neo-Malthusianism in Spain before Salud y Fuerza was founded. The most famous figure associated with the Modern School was Francisco Ferrer Guardia (1859-1909) (Masjuan, 2000; Girón Sierra, Molero-Mesa, 2016). It is no accident that it was in a publication of the Modern School, the Boletín de la Escuela Moderna, that Paul Robin (1901, p.32) laid out the principles of comprehensive education and the three ideas for promoting human happiness: “Good birth, good education, good social organization,” a slogan that saw both neo-Malthusianism and education as the two indispensable pillars of a libertarian revolution. Articles from neo-Malthusian journals and books were found in rationalist schools founded by libertarian Athenaeums and labor unions belonging to the CNT. In 1934, the journal Solidaridad Obrera declared that, as a result of the action of the rationalist schools, “every one of the young pupils in the libertarian Athenaeums knows more about hygiene, physical fitness and heliotherapy than ninety per cent of our rural schoolteachers” (Otra vez…, 1934, p.3).

Scientific legitimation of neo-Malthusianism

Neo-Malthusianism used science to legitimize itself socially and to validate its theories. It did so both to attack its traditional enemies (the State, the Church, and the Army), whom it accused of being “immoral,” and to provide a basis for its own concept of morality. Indeed, neo-Malthusians argued that along with the need to avoid procreation, medical knowledge showed there was a physiological need for people to use their sexual organs regularly. According to neo-Malthusians, medical science had demonstrated that sexual continence led to physical disorders similar to those associated with non-use of other organs like the stomach or the lungs:

A physiological law that is of utterly supreme importance [sic] and that applies in a rigorously universal manner orders that every member in our bodies must be exercised normally in order to remain healthy and vigorous. The eyes, the organs of sight, need light; the legs and arms, the organs of locomotion, need movement; intelligence requires thought; our appetites and our passions need normal pleasures, otherwise they gradually weaken and inevitably become diseased (Leyes…, 1911, p.132).

The damage was not only physical, but also psychological:

An individual’s nature is so closely related to sexual pleasures, and our happiness and health so depend on being able to indulge them naturally and normally, that we cannot ignore them without causing great damage to the body (Leyes…, 1911, p.132).

Neo-Malthusian rational education should therefore be rounded out by teaching new moral ideas based on scientific knowledge, since whereas official morality was based “on hypocrisy, aversion and scorn for matters relating to sex, which it considers shameful, neo-Malthusianism teaches the legitimacy and nobility of the sexual function.” Therefore, “just as we teach the primary role of digestion or respiration, we should teach the primary role of copulation and fertilization” (Grandjean, 1910, p.64).

We can now understand the vehement opposition this movement aroused in hegemonic thought. These highly subversive ideas and practices threatened the central nexus of the capitalist-natalist system, and an entire way of looking at society based on religious, authoritarian thinking about sexual repression – in other words, all the ways that biopower was exercised.

Given the traditional forms of direct physical repression and the disparaged “civilized” social control carried out by the legal system and the church, it is not strange that the response to neo-Malthusianism arose from the very science it was advocating: the hegemonic system’s attempt to regain control of the population was called eugenics and it was intended to dispute the territory gained by neo-Malthusianism, as we shall now see.

Hegemonic thought and the attempt to discredit neo-Malthusianism: the Church, the State and… science

Neo-Malthusianism was fundamentally a self-regulated practice carried on outside the academy and run by heterogeneous groups of freethinkers including liberals, socialists and anarchists who shared an opposition to religious morality and the irrational and authoritarian rules issued by the State. In Spain, this movement was linked to anarchist groups who wished to destabilize the capitalist economic system by acting on the population. Neo-Malthusian practice also defied the power of the Church and State by defending free love and attacking marriage.

Hegemonic thought was well aware that the neo-Malthusian movement in Spain was opposed to the established social system, and it used all available means to counter it. The foundation of conservative Catholic social order, “religion, property, and the family,” was being attacked, along with the populational and natalist foundation of the conservative bourgeoisie, and their publications announced this (Masjuan, 2000, p.233-282). For example, La Lectura Dominical, the journal of the Apostolate of the Press (Apostolado de la Prensa), congratulated itself in 1926 on the fact that the government had passed a decree protecting large families, while describing neo-Malthusian practices as “criminal.” It reminded readers that Francisco Ferrer and Mateo Morral’s Modern School was the main source of propagation for these “dissolute doctrines”:

It is highly significant that the revolutionary elements who are opposed to religious morality are the intellectual agents of this social aberration; indeed, it is understandable that the proponents of free love, divorce, secularization and state control of the family should be defending and fomenting abominable neo-Malthusian practices (León, 12 jun. 1926, p.284).

However, the repressive discourses and practices of the church or state merely reinforced revolutionary practices among the working class in the early twentieth century. As Kate Austin (1864-1902) argued in an article reprinted in Solidaridad Obrera in 1916: “When the enemies of liberty expose their weak side in this way, anarchists know just where to target their attacks” (Austin, 10 ago. 1916, p.2).

The criminalization of neo-Malthusianism did indeed begin with its relationship to radical anarchism. In the aftermath of Mateo Morral’s attempted assassination of Alfonso XIII in Madrid in May 1906, much was made in the press of the fact that he belonged to neo-Malthusian groups. The goal was clearly to criminalize neo-Malthusian practice by identifying it with the violent actions of its followers, and giving a scientific explanation. The results of the autopsy on Mateo Morral (we now know he did not commit suicide but was murdered a few days after the attack) (Masjuan, 2009, p.111-119), relayed in the bourgeois press from a Lombrosian criminal anthropological perspective, stressed Morral’s high level of degeneracy. Antonio Lecha-Marzo, who was a young man at the time (1888- 1919), examined Mateo Morral’s body, and concluded that:

From the anomalies noted in Mateo Morral, only three seem to be of any importance: prognathism, prominence of the frontal sinuses and the deviated septum. These three abnormal degenerate characteristics mean that Morral fits Lombroso’s description of the criminal type (Lecha-Marzo, 1906, p.87).

It was not new to use Lombrosian theory to establish that people who had become anarchists were degenerates (Girón Sierra, 2005). The novelty, in this case, involved associating the person’s physical, mental and moral characteristics with neo-Malthusian ideas and practices, which were getting a lot of coverage in the daily papers and, as we saw earlier, were still remembered years later. The bourgeois press, after the attempt on Alfonso XII’s life, stated that “Mateo Morral soon joined the anarchist neo-Malthusian movement. He was drawn to it by his negative attitude to life, its paltriness for this young engineer, his solitary, mystical nature, in disarray thanks to his passions and to womanizing, his physical degeneracy etc.” (El criminal…, 4 jun. 1906, p.1).

But official scientific doctrine not only asserted that neo-Malthusianism was commonly practiced by degenerates but also went so far as to contradict what the movement meant for the health of individual followers. Indeed, some physicians believed “neo-Malthusian practices” caused serious genital dysfunctions both in men and women, relating them directly to sexual continence, “early withdrawal” and masturbation. They not only ignored the fact that neo-Malthusianism defended non-reproductive sexual pleasure, but also overlooked all the contraceptive resources that neo-Malthusians were attempting to make available to the population, precisely to avoid resorting to the practices they were accused of. The urologist Narciso Serrallach Maurí (1875-1951), director of the Barcelona journal Hojas Urológicas (1913-1935), which in 1931 published an article significantly titled “Genital dysfunction disorders: continence, neo-Malthusianism and masturbation” (Serrallach, 1931), wrote in 1916 that:

Controlling procreation, which Malthus advocates so as to make our descendants’ struggle for subsistence less arduous, necessarily involves not only sexual abstinence but incomplete acts, masturbation and even sexual excitations not followed by coitus (Serrallach, 1916, p.33).

All the publicity around the issue created by official science reinforced the impression that every neo-Malthusian was an anarchist and vice versa, even though not all anarchist workers agreed with these ideas, and not all neo-Malthusians were anarchists. In 1935, the journal Estudios reported that neo-Malthusians in France who underwent voluntary sterilization were starting to be prosecuted and sent to jail, noting that it wished to warn “comrades” for fear that this type of repressive legislation might be reproduced in Spain (Puente, mayo 1935, p.17).

The struggle over meaning: neo-Malthusianism and eugenics

The various campaigns by the scientific establishment to disparage and criminalize neo-Malthusianism did not succeed in halting this world-wide movement, which continued to threaten the pillars of traditional capitalist society. Neo-Malthusianism supported individual management of sexuality, mainly in connection with contraception and population control, and it used science to support its call for equality, presenting itself as offering liberation through knowledge, which it saw as an emancipatory tool that revealed injustice and social inequality and offered a means to emancipation (Jiménez- Lucena, Molero-Mesa, 2009). Eugenics, however (according to the hypotheses we plan to demonstrate), arose with two fundamental goals: to discredit neo-Malthusianism by using the very same scientific and technological terrain to regain the biopolitical initiative on management of the body and human sexuality, and, at the same time, to legitimize the existence of social inequality politically, using scientific models, in a liberal and supposedly egalitarian society in which all citizens had the same rights and duties. It was thus in the terrain of science that the dispute over the meaning of the terms “neo- Malthusianism” and “eugenics” took place.

The first piece of evidence to validate our hypothesis comes from the International Neo-Malthusian Conference in The Hague in July 1910 (Quast, 2014). One of the topics scheduled for the day in private session was “Would it be useful or desirable to change the name of neo-Malthusianism?” (Programa…, 1910, p.1). Clearly, eugenics was starting to exert some pressure since it had emerged from the academy, with laws restricting births being passed in some European and North American countries. The physician and psychiatrist Auguste Forel (1848-1931) proposed at the conference that the name “neo- Malthusianism” should be changed to “eugenetism” or “eugenism.” The reason he gave, in addition to stating that it was a science of interest “to hygienists and doctors,” was that “the neo-Malthusian question is merely a question of seeking quality,” which was possible, he argued, “without bothering to limit quantity, at least for now.” After general deliberation, it was finally decided that the name of neo-Malthusianism should be maintained, “because it has a broader meaning than the word ‘eugenism’ or ‘eugenetism,’ which indicates just one branch of neo-Malthusian action” (Grandidier, 1910, p.20; emphasis in the original).

Indeed, the belief that the objectives and methods of eugenics were already integrated into neo-Malthusianism was repeated at the first International Eugenics Congress, held in London in June 1912. Edmon Potier (1912, p.185), reviewed the conference for the journal Salud y Fuerza, and referred to eugenics as follows:

Regardless of whether this is acknowledged or denied, the new science is none other than neo-Malthusian science, with all its sub-divisions, as attested by comparing it to the various fields where our efforts have been directed and the various sections of the Congress. Its identity leads necessarily to the same fundamental goal: ‘good procreation’ (emphasis in the original).

At this early stage, the neo-Malthusians were happy to have media attention from the press, claiming that the conference drew “official experts the world over – biologists, hygienists, pediatricians, gynecologists, neurologists, educators, sociologists etc.” and they concluded that:

For our part, we see no problem in people calling it whatever they want. This will give rise to the curious spectacle of seeing newspapers that have so far been hostile to neo-Malthusianism combatting it on the one hand and valiantly defending Eugenics on the other! (Potier, 1912, p.187).

However, at this conference, eugenics came up with a definition, which was proposed by Galton himself, and linked to state intervention: “Eugenics is the study of the causes ‘subject to social control,’ and it can improve or exacerbate the racial qualities of future generations, whether mentally or physically” (Potier, 1912, p.187; emphasis in the original). In other words, following the traditional hygienic line, characteristic of medical policing, the 1912 conference attendees trusted that the power of the State would achieve all their proposals for improving the quality of the human race, while attempting to disassociate themselves from neo-Malthusian initiatives, which came to be seen only as a way of limiting births, with no further social or biological considerations.

In a presentation on “racial hygiene,” the German doctor Alfred Ploetz (1860-1940) pointedly attacked neo-Malthusian practices of self-management as being outside state control:

If we look at all its effects, we have to conclude that nowadays the spread of neo- Malthusianism, which is not regulated and is poorly run, is harmful from the racial hygiene point of view. We should strive to abolish it, but I believe it may be totally impossible to suppress. Whenever Malthusianism grows up somewhere, it remains in the families affected for many years… Even the Catholic church has proven powerless to stop it. There is nothing for it but to influence Malthusian practice through eugenics so that the race will suffer as little as possible from it… Right now, we need, firstly, to fight neo-Malthusian propaganda (Ploetz, 1913, p.189).

Ploetz believed that the problem being created by the spread of neo-Malthusian practices was that they were impeding the reproduction of the most intelligent members of society, since they were widespread among the middle and upper class and less so among the proletariat. Furthermore, poor families who were practicing neo-Malthusianism were capable of rearing and nurturing sickly children who would not have survived if the family had been larger, so that, in his view, neo-Malthusian practice was contrary to natural selection (Ploetz, 1913, p.189). This argument based on “reverse selection” was key to the spread of eugenics. The medical journal The Lancet dutifully recorded this (Neo- Malthusianism, 1912, p.960) when the English Malthusian League published a pamphlet titled Neo-Malthusianism and eugenics (Drysdale, 1912), which fought these criticisms, claiming that the League was also in favor of improving the quality of the human race and not merely reducing the number of inhabitants, a charge the proponents of eugenics were leveling at neo-Malthusians.

Part 2 of 2

It is true that what Foucault called “biopower” saw eugenic ideas as a way to turn the biological regulation of sexuality into a tool of domination for hegemonic thought, in the interests of the State and liberal society, but it did so at a point when the neo-Malthusian movement had spent decades offering anatomic and physiological information on human reproduction to the general population so that people could decide for themselves whether sexual intercourse would have a reproductive goal or not. This phenomenon, which was linked to the revolutionary potential of the southern European anarchist movements at a time of especially intense social conflict (Masjuan, 2017), helps explain the delay in the emergence of explicit eugenic activism, twenty years after Galton proposed the goals and limits of eugenics in 1883 (Schneider, 1990, p.5-7), and over thirty years after his work Hereditary genius was published in 1869. These sociopolitical forces also drove the switch from public hygiene to social medicine, a discipline that took on eugenic ideas in Spain (Rodríguez Ocaña, 1992; Álvarez Peláez, 1995), where specifically eugenic leagues did not flourish, since ecclesiastic and state powers were opposed to any manifestations of sexuality that were not uniquely oriented towards reproduction of the species.

The issue at stake was whether the body should be managed by the state (eugenics) or by each individual for themselves (neo-Malthusianism), since these two biopolitical endeavors pursued mutually exclusive goals in terms of ideological utopias, which were inherent both to libertarian-style neo-Malthusianism and to eugenics linked to the interests of hegemonic power.

After the International Eugenics Congress in London, the proponents of eugenics began stressing the differences between the two approaches to racial improvement. According to the anarchist José Chueca (1914, p.322):

Eugenics and neo-Malthusianism, even though they claim to pursue the same end – the regeneration of the human species – bear no relationship to one another whatsoever; the first is essentially bourgeois and falsely scientific, and the second is against the bourgeoisie and is catalogued among the things that really do belong to science; one vainly claims to regenerate humankind by brutally trying to prevent a certain number of individuals from procreating, and the other aspires to convince people to procreate consciously by offering them, in order to do so, the means to prevent fertilization, since neo-Malthusianism does not wish to impose on anyone by violent procedures, nor does it deny even the most miserable and degenerate of men the right to love.

The solution, he argued, was very different than the one offered by bourgeois eugenics:

What we need to do is to suppress the causes of species degeneration. Complete regeneration of all individuals is impossible, given the social conditions in which humankind currently exists. Thus, we neo-Malthusians do not limit ourselves to encouraging conscious, limited procreation; we aspire to transform society. We know very well that while the majority of people lack well-being and education, there will be cause for degeneration, and a great many degenerates (Chueca, 1914, p.322).

This argument was central also to a presentation by the Syndicate for Liberal Professions (Sindicato de las Profesiones Liberales) at the second CNT Congress held in Madrid in 1919. The talk was titled “Eugenic reasons why working-class organizations should fight for higher salaries.” The adjective “eugenic” was already integrated into the discourse of these anarcho-syndicalist intellectuals, but they acknowledged that they used it exclusively to reinforce the CNT’s economic demands with “scientific arguments.” Indeed, their presentation was announced as “a scientific topic that affects our working-class biology,” and it showed how the rise in the cost of basic foodstuffs from 1914-1919 had caused rising worker mortality, for which it blamed the “capitalist regime… for the physical annihilation and ethic degeneration of our race… [which] perpetuates all kinds of incurable diseases among our descendants” (Segundo Congreso…, 1919).

However, in 1923, in the context of a harsh crackdown on anarchist and anarchosyndicalist groups, an explicitly neo-Malthusian journal was relaunched, this time including a change in its theoretical stance on eugenics and neo-Malthusianism. The journal Generación Consciente, which was a continuation of the earlier Salud y Fuerza, maintained neo-Malthusian principles but under the denomination “eugenics,” leaving the term neo-Malthusianism limited to controlling the number of births. The journal’s title unequivocally defines it as a neo-Malthusian publication, but in order to preserve its objectives, it adopted the strategy of assuming a term already widespread in hegemonic scientific media at a time of great political complications for the libertarian movement.

Indeed, Isaac Puente, one of the physicians most widely supported by CNT members and the Iberian Anarchist Federation (Federación Anarquista Ibérica, FAI), launched the first issue of the journal Generación Consciente by acknowledging that eugenics had increasing numbers of followers, that it was “every doctor’s duty to disseminate and encourage its teachings,” since otherwise, he would incur “a great moral responsibility.” However, his approach remained neo-Malthusian, since he stressed the same issues as in prior years but under another name. He proposes as much up front:

to divulge the laws and information on heredity so as to avoid hereditary transmission of pathological criminal traits whose monstrosity only ignorance can excuse; to educate children rationally, teaching them the rudiments of sexuality and cultivating the sentiments of Health, Goodness and Beauty, so as later on to be able to influence amorous passion, which must obey this trilogy; to encourage the conditions of normality most favorable to the act of fertilization; forms of care required by this transcendental function in order to achieve the best possible product; the means to avoid fertilization (neo-Malthusianism) when it must be avoided; pre-natal care; rules for rearing infants properly (Puericulture) and prophylactic Hygiene (Puente, 1923, p.33-34).

Nevertheless, eugenics, whether neo-Malthusian in orientation or not, was viewed with suspicion by Spanish society, which was conservative and catholic, as seen in the suspension by governmental order of the Spanish Eugenics Course (Curso Eugenésico Español), organized by progressive and liberal groups in 1928 (Masjuan, 2000, p.395). But what concerned the Spanish authorities the most was neo-Malthusianism, as seen in the fact that in October of that same year, a new article was added to the Criminal Code that forbad the propagation of “contraceptive theories or practices” outside “purely scientific publications or the proceedings of expert bodies” (Martínez-Pereda, 1981, p.664). One of the consequences of this reform was the ban on the explicitly neo-Malthusian title of the journal Generación Consciente, which had been in publication since its foundation in 1923, despite various indictments and jail terms for its editor Joaquín Juan Pastor (b. 1895) (Navarro Navarro, 1997, p.26). At the same time, the criminal code outlawed the content of Generación Consciente, not only for attacking the tenets of public morality, but also because the journal could not be considered a scientific publication.

In December 1928, the journal had to be renamed Estudios; and it was not until 1930 that it could use the term neo-Malthusianism openly and frequently. Once the censorship imposed under the Primo de Rivera dictatorship ended, the journal Estudios (in its October 1930 issue) reaffirmed its “neo-Malthusian and eugenic” objectives, which, its editors acknowledged, were the same ones that had inspired Generación Consciente:

[Generación Consciente] aimed to provide mental and physical training, to diminish the endless supply of large, famished families, a mass of unconscious, unlettered, impoverished flesh, which provides the bodies that sustain this immoral, cruel society. Naturally, it drew hatred and war from all the vultures who traffic in and profit from human ignorance and suffering. Now that the odious censorship has disappeared… the educational work of Estudios will intensify neo-Malthusian and eugenic propaganda, prioritizing its initial slogan of Generación Consciente (Conscious Procreation) (La Redacción, oct. 1930, p.1).

It is no surprise, therefore, that the first article of the new, censorship-free era was devoted to neo-Malthusianism, and its author was the physician Isaac Puente, who, as we saw earlier, reduced it to the mere practice of contraception. However, this article is a defense of the revolutionary goals of neo-Malthusianism, which Puente presents as “a new idea,” perhaps because of the ostracism he had been subjected to, and he lists the justifications for it one by one. Significantly, he returns to the original neo-Malthusian idea of a comprehensive discipline and relegates eugenics to just another reason for contraception, concretely the “cold reason” of not procreating when there are cases of hereditary diseases or “transmissible pathological defects” present in the couple (Puente, oct. 1930, p.3).

In this assimilation of the term eugenics within neo-Malthusianism, what we might term “eugenic neo-Malthusianism,” we see the Spanish libertarian movement taking back the initiative in the struggle over the meaning of both terms, encouraged by the crisis of hegemony that characterized the historical period of Spain’s Second Republic, which made the rise of the libertarian movement possible.

Not completely abandoning the use of the word “eugenics” was to have strategic advantages in terms of spreading the neo-Malthusian ideal among the working class. On one hand, during the Republic, eugenics maintained its subversive potential against the Catholic church and conservative governments, which had never passed any laws inspired by this science. However, using the term “eugenics” also made it possible to overturn the idea of “reverse selection” that came out of racial hygiene and blamed neo-Malthusianism for the degeneration of the species, as we saw earlier. In this re-signification, if neo-Malthusian couples did not procreate for eugenic reasons, social inequality would be the principal reason for this “reverse selection.”

André Lorulot (1885-1963), writing in Estudios, put it thus:

The millionaire’s child who is degenerate and dimwitted will be showered with attention and surrounded by extremely expensive luxuries – which won’t prevent him from dying or continuing to be depraved or immoral… And meanwhile, the proletariat might have produced a healthy, robust child, who will fall sick because his parents don’t have enough time to take care of him or because he lacks the basics. Social injustice, based on privileges that come with money, leads to the degradation of the species (Lorulot, ene. 1934, p.58).

Thus, Spanish anarchism was able to appropriate a term that was linked in other countries to state intervention, the legitimation of elite bourgeoisies and repression of the working class.

Neo-Malthusianism, anarcho-syndicalism and direct action

There is one feature to bear in mind when dealing with the history of thought and libertarian action, and that is the internal organization of the various groups that emerged. In the case of anarcho-syndicalism (the main anarchist movement in terms of the number of members, visibility and social impact), we should not overlook the mechanisms of inclusion-exclusion put in place to prevent the organization from being run by intellectuals, or the direct action strategy that separated it from the possibilism of other labor union organizations. The strategy developed by the CNT consisted of differentiating and protecting its core manual labor unionists from possible attempts by intellectual workers to direct or influence them, particularly people in technical professions. CNT’s exclusive focus on union struggle (without joining forces with political parties vying for power) discouraged professionals seeking self-aggrandizement through the established power structure. Indeed, physicians, engineers and other specialized professionals had no particular interest in joining the ranks of the anarcho-syndicalists. However, the few intellectuals who did sympathize with or belong to anarchist-leaning groups were finally accepted into the CNT, but not mixed with blue-collar workers in their professional field. Instead, they were assigned to a union exclusively for intellectuals. The union never endorsed any proposal to distance itself from the struggle for change and revolution, for example by setting up health insurance, union stores or co-ops instead (unlike the socialist General Workers’ Union [Unión General de Trabajadores, UGT]), nor getting involved in practices mostly followed by anarchists such as naturism, nudism, or, of course, neo- Malthusianism. This modus operandi was followed by people who were union members and who also collaborated on an individual level with anarchist groups following these practices, since they knew what the role of each one was (Molero-Mesa, Jiménez-Lucena, Tabernero-Holgado, 2013).

This strategy pursued by anarcho-syndicalism provided a new focus for workers’ cultural centers, which banded together in Athenaeums and naturist or neo-Malthusian groups that had their own journals to publicize their agendas. All of these were places were manual and intellectual workers mingled, and intellectuals who sympathized with anarchism could collaborate in its revolutionary work, but final say over whether their proposals would be included in the union’s struggle lay exclusively with the CNT (Molero-Mesa, Jiménez-Lucena, 2013). Perhaps the most significant example of this was the CNT’s utter disregard of a proposal issued by the first Congress of the Federation of Single Healthcare Unions (Federación de Sindicatos Únicos de Sanidad), held in Madrid in November 1931, to “consider healthcare ideals as equivalent to libertarian ones… and to substitute healthcare reform for economic struggle tactics, making healthcare part of the proletariat’s demands” (Congreso…, 22 nov. 1931, p.3).

On the other hand, anarchist-leaning cultural journals were and called themselves “eclectic;” in other words, they would publish any article, even if the author did not identify with anarchist ideas or agree with the journal’s particular editorial line. It is not surprising, therefore, that journals like Generación Consciente or Estudios published articles by thinkers who did not share anarchist views, such as Gregorio Marañón, César Juarros, Nicolás Amador or Luis Huerta (Navarro Navarro, 1998). Articles by these writers were not published in order to endorse their ideas but to generate debate and to make good use of anything in them that might be of help in achieving libertarian ideals. We can also point to other factors that might have influenced the inclusion of these articles, such as the need for legitimation by scientific authorities in a society that was persecuting libertarians, or as a nod to intellectuals who might end up sympathizing with their ideas; there was also the fact that they were seeking to widen their audience in society. A very significant case that helps illustrate how libertarian publications’ eclecticism was perceived is that of the urologist Narciso Serrallach, who, as we saw earlier, disagreed with the anarchists’ concept of neo-Malthusianism. Nevertheless, in 1924, the journal Generación Consciente published an article of his, without seeming to care who the author was, because it gave practical advice on gonorrhea, a topic of interest to the journal’s readership, like everything related to sexually transmitted diseases (Serrallach, 1924).

This phenomenon makes it difficult to know how to approach these journals, and it has caused confusion for many authors who have sought a consistent editorial policy reflecting the ideology of the publications’ owners, as seen in the great majority of journals that are not “eclectic” in the libertarian sense.

However, the newspaper Solidaridad Obrera, the CNT’s official publication, exercised strict censorship of articles that did not follow anarcho-syndicalist principles and doctrines by advocating direct action, although the degree of strictness depended on who was on the editorial team at each particular point in history. During the Second Republic, when editorial policy was determined by the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), in order for an article on the tendencies and attitudes of the “confederal body” to be considered for publication in Solidaridad Obrera, it had to be rubber-stamped by the union to which the writer belonged. Examples of this censorship can be seen in the “Editorial” section, which listed the reasons why an article was rejected: “Pascual Cubells, Valencia – Your article cannot be published in our paper. We have no interest in religion whatsoever, unless it is to contribute to the complete disappearance of all of them;” “To a young Republican lady, Villafranca del Penedés – Indeed, dear young lady, he who keeps bad company will end up badly, and by praising the Republic, you are keeping very bad company, so, beware!” (Redacción, 15 mar. 1932, p.2).

The direct action strategy meant that unionists could not be involved in activities that distracted them from the only purpose that could end poverty once and for all: revolution. Neo-Malthusians thought that if there were less people in the proletariat, their social situation would improve both in the family (resources would be scarce but sufficient, if they did not have many children) and professionally (by reducing the number of workers competing for the same job). Therefore, neo-Malthusianism contributed to the ultimate emancipation of the working class, a goal that overrode all the partisan movements of circles outside the anarcho-syndicalist nucleus.

Final considerations

Libertarian-style neo-Malthusianism in Spain was a movement that re-signified the term “eugenics” during the first third of the twentieth century. It took a radically environmentalist view of the relationship between health and disease in order to explain the degenerative process in humankind. The measures it advocated to prevent couples with serious illnesses from procreating (“eugenic neo-Malthusianism”) were only a part of its revolutionary objectives, and, because it was an anarchist movement, it opposed the imposition of such measures through laws or the dictates of bourgeois morality and religion. Neo-Malthusianism sought to convince individuals to subscribe to its goals by convincing them through consciousness-raising that practicing contraception was one way to help bring about a more just, egalitarian society, one that would be favorable to revolutionary change. Its socio-political view of biological processes was constructed within what we see, following Gramsci, as “struggles over meaning,” based on a dialogic relationship with hegemonic thought, which sought to recover lost ground in the management of individual sexuality via eugenics or racial hygiene. Biopower’s characteristically biological view of social processes became especially relevant when it began focusing on “improvement of the race” to avoid the transmission of pathological characteristics typical of the impoverished working class, whom it blamed for the process of “racial degeneration.” The dialogic relationship established against the backdrop of a violent political crackdown on libertarians led, in the Republic period, to a triumph of neo-Malthusian ideas, which were put into practice from 1936 on. Indeed, even though this falls outside the period under study here, we would like to point out that during the highly exceptional conditions of the Spanish Civil War, anarchist-style “eugenics” led to implementation of various measures from the neo-Malthusian agenda, such as free abortion on demand, sex education campaigns, social action against prostitution (led by the feminist anarcho-syndicalist group “Free Women” [“Mujeres Libres”]), conscious maternity clinics and many other topics that we cannot go into here. This article is merely a beginning, and we invite others to revisit all these issues from a broader perspective than the one used so far, and to keep investigating this very complex phenomenon, since there is much still left to be explored. We should not forget that, for the anarcho-syndicalists, neo-Malthusianism was only a complementary contribution to the revolutionary struggle, and therefore it was never given as much coverage in their publications as in anarchist-leaning cultural journals, where workers and intellectuals could contribute to speeding the pace of social revolution.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was performed under Project HAR2014-58699-P, funded by Spain’s Ministry for the Economy and Competitiveness (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad).

Notes:

1 We use the “/” as Mignolo (2012, p.IX) does.

2 See Parsons’ historiographical revision of anarchist neo-Malthusianism in Barcelona (2012).

3 Iberian neo-Malthusianism was closely related to the French variety, which is why French authors were frequently featured in Spanish eugenic journals (Masjuan, 2000; Cleminson, 2003). For the French case, see Sonn (2010).

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Bisbee Deportation
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/9/20

Most of these miners were Mexican and Eastern European immigrants, others were Mexican-Americans....

From the late 1880s, Bisbee was defined as a “white man’s camp,” which originally meant the exclusion of Chinese laborers. Then the term referred to the exclusion of other non-white laborers, including “Mexicans,” a term used by whites to mean both Mexican immigrants and Hispanics native to Arizona.

“Mexicans” had been allowed to live and work in Bisbee, but only as menial laborers -- even when they did the same jobs as “white” men, they were paid far less. Then immigrants from Serbia and Italy started coming to work the mines in the early 1900s, which complicated the “white”/”Mexican” distinction. They were described as “foreign labor” and occupied a sort of in-between status in the hierarchy there.

The racial hierarchy of miners was underscored by a pervasive “family wage ideology.” Real men were supposed to make enough money to take care of their whole family. But in the eyes of both white workers and the copper company, “Mexican” workers were not real men. “Anglo workers and managers infantilized and feminized Mexican workers to reinforce their exclusion from the family wage and the American standard of living.”...

The workers, however, had the misfortune of striking during wartime. Militant patriotism was at a fever pitch. The man in charge of the roundup and deportation, Sheriff Wheeler, used the wartime emergency as an excuse to rid the town of “foreigners.” But he had another motive, too, which Benton-Cohen describes as maintaining “Bisbee’s most precious social boundaries—those that separated working class Mexican men from ‘white women.'” As Wheeler himself described it, he was protecting white womanhood and “pure Americanism itself” by removing the foreigners (80% of the Bisbee Deportees were foreign-born; of these, 40% were Slavic).

-- The Bisbee Deportations, by Matthew Wills

Bisbee Deportation
Striking miners and others being deported from Bisbee on the morning of July 12, 1917. The men are boarding the cattle cars provided by the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad.
Date: July 12, 1917
Location: Bisbee, Arizona; Jerome, Arizona
Goals: Union organizing
Methods: Strikes, protest, demonstrations
Resulted in: ~1,300 miners deported from Arizona
Parties to the civil conflict: International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers; Industrial Workers of the World / Phelps Dodge Corporation; Sherriff's deputies
Lead figures: Charles Moyer / Walter S. Douglas; Harry Wheeler
Number: 2,000 protesters / 2,200
Arrests, etc
Deaths: 1 / Deaths: 1
Arrests: 1,300+

The Bisbee Deportation was the illegal kidnapping and deportation of about 1,300 striking mine workers, their supporters, and citizen bystanders by 2,000 members of a deputized posse, who arrested these people beginning on July 12, 1917. The action was orchestrated by Phelps Dodge, the major mining company in the area, which provided lists of workers and others who were to be arrested in Bisbee, Arizona, to the Cochise County sheriff, Harry C. Wheeler. These workers were arrested and held at a local baseball park before being loaded onto cattle cars and deported 200 miles (320 km) to Tres Hermanas in New Mexico. The 16-hour journey was through desert without food and with little water. Once unloaded, the deportees, most without money or transportation, were warned against returning to Bisbee.

As Phelps Dodge, in collusion with the sheriff, had closed down access to outside communications, it was some time before the story was reported. The company presented their action as reducing threats to United States interests in World War I in Europe. The Governor of New Mexico, in consultation with President Woodrow Wilson, provided temporary housing for the deportees. A presidential mediation commission investigated the actions in November 1917, and in its final report, described the deportation as "wholly illegal and without authority in law, either State or Federal."[1] Nevertheless, no individual, company, or agency was ever convicted in connection with the deportations.

Background

In 1917, the Phelps Dodge Corporation owned a number of copper and other mines in Arizona. Mining conditions in the region were difficult, and working conditions (including mine safety, pay, and camp living conditions) were extremely poor. Discrimination against Mexican American and immigrant workers by European-American supervisors was routine and extensive. During the winter of 1915–6, a successful if bitter four-month strike in the Clifton-Morenci district led to widespread discontent and unionization among miners in the state.[2][3]

But, the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) and its president, Charles Moyer, did little to support the nascent union movement. Between February and May 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) stepped in and began signing up several hundred miners as members. The IWW formed Metal Mine Workers Union No. 800. Although Local 800 counted more than 1,000 members, only about 400 paid dues.[3][4][5]

Strike


Panoramic view of Bisbee, Arizona, in 1916, shortly before the Bisbee Deportation

The town of Bisbee had about 8,000 citizens in 1917. The city was dominated by Phelps Dodge (which owned the Copper Queen Mine) and two other mining firms: the Calumet and Arizona Co., and the Shattuck Arizona Co. Phelps Dodge was by far the largest company and employer in the area; it also owned the largest hotel in town, the hospital, the only department store, the town library, and the town newspaper, the Bisbee Daily Review.[6][7]

In May 1917, IWW Local 800 presented a list of demands to Phelps Dodge. They asked for an end to physical examinations after shifts (used by the mine owners to counter theft), having two workers on each drilling machine, two men working the ore elevators, an end to blasting while men were in the mine, an end to the bonus system,[a] no more assignment of construction work to miners,[ b] replacement of the sliding scale of wages with a $6.00 per day shift rate, and no discrimination against union members. The company refused all the demands.[3][4]

IWW Local 800 called a strike to begin on June 26, 1917. When the strike occurred as scheduled, not only the miners at Phelps Dodge, but also those at other mines walked out. More than 3,000 miners—about 85 percent of all mine workers in Bisbee—went on strike.[4][5][6]

Although the strike was peaceful, local authorities immediately asked for federal troops to break the strike. Cochise County Sheriff Harry Wheeler set up his headquarters in Bisbee on the first day of the strike. On July 2, Wheeler asked Republican Governor Thomas Edward Campbell to request federal troops, suggesting the strike threatened US war interests: "The whole thing appears to be pro-German and anti-American."[8] Campbell quickly telegraphed the White House and made the request, but President Woodrow Wilson declined to send in the Army. He appointed former Arizona Governor George W. P. Hunt as a mediator.[4][5][6]

The president of Phelps Dodge at the time was Walter S. Douglas. He was the son of Dr. James Douglas, developer of the Copper Queen mine and a member of the board of directors of the Phelps Dodge Corporation. Douglas was a political opponent of Governor Hunt and had virulently attacked him for refusing, as governor, to send the state militia to suppress strikes in the mining industry. Douglas was also president of the American Mining Congress, an employer association. He had won office by vowing to break every union in every mine and restore the open shop. Determined to keep Bisbee free of IWW influence, in 1916, Douglas established a Citizens' Protective League, composed of business leaders and middle-class local residents. He also organized a Workmens' Loyalty League, some of whose members were IUMMSW miners.[3][4][9]

Deportations

Jerome

On July 5, 1917, an IWW local in Jerome, Arizona, struck Phelps Dodge. Douglas ordered his mine superintendents to remove the miners from the town, in what became known as the Jerome Deportation. Mine supervisors, joined by 250 local businessmen and members of the IUMMSW,[10] began rounding up suspected IWW members at dawn on July 10. More than 100 men were abducted by these vigilantes and held in the county jail (with the cooperation of the Yavapai County sheriff). Later that day, 67 men were deported by train to Needles, California, and ordered not to return. When the IWW protested to Governor Campbell, he declared that the IWW had "threatened" the governor.[4]

Bisbee


Striking miners and others rounded up by the armed posse on July 12, 1917, sit in the bleachers in Warren Ballpark. Armed members of the posse patrol the infield.

The Jerome Deportation proved to be a test run for Phelps Dodge, which ordered the same plan, but larger in scale, in Bisbee.

On July 11, 1917, Sheriff Wheeler met with Phelps Dodge corporate executives to plan the deportation of striking miners. Some 2,200 men from Bisbee and the nearby town of Douglas were recruited and deputized as a posse— one of the largest posses ever assembled. Phelps Dodge officials also met with executives of the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad, who agreed to provide rail transportation for any deportees. The morning of July 12, the Bisbee Daily Review carried a notice announcing that:

...a Sheriff's posse of 1,200 men in Bisbee and 1,000 men in Douglas, all loyal Americans, [had formed] for the purpose of arresting on the charges of vagrancy, treason, and of being disturbers of the peace of Cochise County all those strange men who have congregated here from other parts and sections for the purpose of harassing and intimidating all men who desire to pursue their daily toil.[11]

A similar notice was posted throughout the town on fence posts, telephone poles and walls.

At 4:00 a.m., July 12, 1917, the 2,200 deputies dispersed through the town of Bisbee and took up their planned positions. Each wore a white armband for identification, and carried a list of the men on strike. At 6:30 a.m., the deputies moved through town and arrested every man on their list, as well as any man who refused to work in the mines. Several men who owned local grocery stores were also arrested. In the process, the deputies took cash from the registers and all the goods they could carry. They arrested many male citizens of the town, seemingly at random, and anyone who had voiced support for the strike or the IWW. Two men died: one was a deputy shot by a miner he had tried to arrest, and the other was the miner (shot dead by three other deputies moments later).[3][4][5][6]

At 7:30 a.m., the 2,000 arrested men were assembled in front of the Bisbee Post Office and marched two miles (3 km) to Warren Ballpark. Sheriff Wheeler oversaw the march from a car outfitted with a loaded Marlin 7.62 mm belt-fed machine gun. At the baseball field, the arrestees were told that if they denounced the IWW and went back to work, they would be freed. Only men who were not IWW members or organizers were given this choice. About 700 men agreed to these terms, while the rest sang, jeered or shouted profanities.[3][4][5][6]

At 11:00 a.m., the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad brought 23 cattle cars to Bisbee. The posse deputies forced the remaining 1,286 arrestees at gunpoint to board the cars, many of which had more than three inches (76 mm) of manure on the floor. Although temperatures were in the mid-90s Fahrenheit,[12] (mid-30s Celsius), no water had been provided to the men since the arrests began at dawn.[3][4][5][6]

The train stopped 10 miles (16 km) east of Douglas to take on water, some of which was provided to the deportees in the packed cars. Deputies manned two machine guns from nearby hilltops to guard the train, while another 200 armed men patrolled the tracks. The train continued to Columbus, New Mexico (about 175 miles (282 km) away), arriving at about 9:30 p.m. Initially prevented from unloading at Columbus, the train slowly traveled west another 20 miles (32 km) to Hermanas, not stopping until 3:00 a.m.[3][4][5][6][13]

During the Bisbee Deportation, Phelps Dodge executives seized control of the telegraph and telephones to prevent news of the arrests and expulsion from being reported. Company executives refused to let Western Union send wires out of town, and stopped Associated Press reporters from filing stories.[14] News of the Bisbee Deportation was made known only after an IWW attorney, who met the train in Hermanas, issued a press release.[4]

With 1,300 penniless men in Hermanas, the Luna County sheriff worriedly wired the Governor of New Mexico for instructions. Republican Governor Washington Ellsworth Lindsey said the men should be treated humanely and fed; he urgently contacted President Wilson and asked for assistance. Wilson ordered U.S. Army troops to escort the men to Columbus, New Mexico. The deportees were housed in tents originally intended for use by Mexican refugees, who had fled across the border to the United States to escape the Mexican Army's Pancho Villa Expedition. The men were allowed to stay in the camp for two months until September 17, 1917.[3][4][5][6]

Aftermath

From the day of the deportations until November 1917, the Citizens' Protective League ruled Bisbee. Based in a building owned by the copper companies, its representatives interrogated residents about their political beliefs with respect to unions and the war, determining who could work or obtain a draft deferment. Sheriff Wheeler established guards at all entrances to Bisbee and Douglas. Anyone seeking to exit or enter the town over the next several months had to have a "passport" issued by Wheeler. Any adult male in town who was not known to the sheriff's men was brought before a secret sheriff's kangaroo court. Hundreds of citizens were tried, and most of them were deported and threatened with lynching if they returned. Even long-time citizens of Bisbee were deported by this "court".[3][4][5][6]

When ordered to cease these activities by the Arizona Attorney General, Wheeler tried to explain his actions. Asked what law supported his actions, he answered:

I have no statute that I had in mind. Perhaps everything that I did wasn't legal....It became a question of 'Are you American, or are you not?'" He told the Attorney General: "I would repeat the operation any time I find my own people endangered by a mob composed of eighty percent aliens and enemies of my Government."[15]

These actions took place during a period in the early 20th century when attacks by anarchists and labor unrest and violence erupted in numerous American cities and industries. Many native-born Americans were worried about such actions, attributing the unrest to the high numbers of immigrants, rather than to the poor working conditions in many industries. As a result, national press reaction to the Bisbee Deportation was muted. Although many newspapers carried stories about the event, most of them editorialized that the workers "must have" been violent, and therefore "gotten what they deserved", thus criminalizing the victims. Some major papers said that Sheriff Wheeler had gone too far, but declared that he should have imprisoned the miners rather than deported them.[3][4][5][6] The New York Times criticized the violence on the part of the mine owners and suggested that mass arrests "on vagrancy charges" would have been appropriate.[16] Former President Theodore Roosevelt said that "no human being in his senses doubts that the men deported from Bisbee were bent on destruction and murder."[15]


Then Secretary of Labor William Wilson

The men deported from Bisbee pleaded with President Wilson for protection and permission to return to their homes. In October 1917, Wilson appointed a commission of five individuals to investigate labor disputes in Arizona. They were led by Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson (with support from Assistant Secretary of Labor Felix Frankfurter, future Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court). The commission heard testimony during the first five days of November 1917.[3][4][5][6] In its final report, issued on November 6, 1917, the commission denounced the Bisbee Deportation. "The deportation was wholly illegal and without authority in law, either State or Federal," the commissioners wrote.[1]

Prosecution

On May 15, 1918, the U.S. Department of Justice ordered the arrest of 21 Phelps Dodge executives, including some from the Calumet and Arizona Co., and several elected leaders and law enforcement officers from Bisbee and Cochise Counties. The arrestees included Walter S. Douglas. Sheriff Wheeler was not arrested because he was by then serving in France with the American Expeditionary Force during World War I.

A pre-trial motion by the defense led a federal district court to release the 21 men on the grounds that no federal laws had been violated.[3][4][5][6] The Justice Department appealed, but in United States v. Wheeler, 254 U.S. 281 (1920), Chief Justice Edward Douglass White wrote for an 8-to-1 majority that the U.S. Constitution did not empower the federal government to enforce the rights of the deportees. Rather, it "necessarily assumed the continued possession by the states of the reserved power to deal with free residence, ingress and egress." Only in a case of "state discriminatory action" would the federal government have a role to play.[17]

Arizona officials never initiated criminal proceedings in state court against those responsible for the deportation of workers and their lost wages and other losses. Some workers filed civil suits, but in the first case the jury determined that the deportations represented good public policy and refused to grant relief. Most of the other suits were quietly dropped, although a few workers received payments in the range of $500 to $1,250.[3][4][5][6]

The Bisbee Deportations were later used by some proponents as an argument in favor of stronger laws against unpopular speech. Such laws would be justified as empowering the government to suppress disloyal speech and activity, and remove the need for citizens groups to take actions the government could not. During World War I, the federal government used the Sedition Act of 1918 to prosecute people for statements in opposition to the war.

At the end of the conflict, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and others advocated for a peacetime equivalent of the Sedition Act, using the Bisbee events as a justification. They claimed that the only reason the company representatives and local law enforcement had taken the law into their own hands was that the government lacked the power to suppress radical sentiment directly. If the government were armed with appropriate legislation and the threat of long prison terms, private citizens would not feel the need to act. Writing in 1920, Harvard Professor Zechariah Chafee mocked that view: "Doubtless some governmental action was required to protect pacifists and extreme radicals from mob violence, but incarceration for a period of twenty years seems a very queer kind of protection."[18]

Effects

The later history of American deportations of alleged radicals and other undesirables from the country did not follow the precedent of Bisbee and Jerome, which were considered vigilante actions by private citizens. Instead, later deportations were authorized by law and executed by government agents. These actions were criticized by contemporaries at the time on the basis of public policy and the US Constitution, as well as extensively by later analysts. Each case has involved discriminatory actions against ethnic minorities (and sometimes immigrants).

The most notable have included the following:

• deportation from the United States of supposed foreign anarchists during the Red Scare of 1919–20;
• mass deportations of up to 2 million Mexicans and Mexican-American workers (the latter citizens of the United States) between 1929 and 1936, during the Great Depression;[19]
• relocation and internment of 120,000 Japanese national and Japanese Americans to camps during World War II, causing them extensive losses of jobs and property; and
• 1954 removal by the Immigration and Naturalization Service of approximately a million Mexican nationals living in the U.S. without the legal right to do so. Many Mexican workers had been recruited during the war years, but in the postwar period, the US did not want them competing with American workers. In what is known as Operation Wetback, several hundred U.S. citizens were also deported by mistake, because of lack of due process.[20]

See also

• Anti-union violence
• Company town
• Freedom of movement under United States law
• Institutional racism
• Bisbee '17, 2018 film of the events

Notes

1. Under the bonus system, miners were paid more money not only for mining more ore, but for mining high-quality ore. Since only a few veins were of the highest-quality ore, assignment to these veins was very important. Mine supervisors routinely discriminated and played favorites among the miners when assigning the high-grade veins.
2. Construction work was unpaid.

References

1. eport on the Bisbee Deportations. Made by the President's Mediation Commission to the President of the United States.Bisbee, Arizona. November 6, 1917.
2. Kluger, James R. The Clifton-Morenci Strike: Labor Difficulty in Arizona, 1915–1916. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1970. ISBN 0-8165-0267-6
3. Jensen, Vernon H. Heritage of Conflict: Labor Relations in the Nonferrous Metals Industry up to 1930.Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1950.
4. Foner, Philip S. History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Vol. 7: Labor and World War I, 1914–1918. New York: International Publishers, 1987. Cloth ISBN 0-7178-0638-3; Paperback ISBN 0-7178-0627-8
5. Dubofsky, Melvyn. We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World. Abridged ed. Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2000. ISBN 0-252-06905-6
6. Byrkit, James. "The Bisbee Deportation." In American Labor in the Southwest. James C. Foster, ed. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982. ISBN 0-8165-0741-4
7. Cleland, Robert Glass. A History of Phelps Dodge, 1834–1950. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952.
8. Christopher Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (NY: Oxford University Press, 2008), 126
9. Lindquist, John H. "The Jerome Deportation of 1917", Arizona and the West, Autumn 1969
10. It was not uncommon for unions in the first half of the 20th century to act as strikebreakers against other unions. The IUMMSW viewed the IWW as "not a real union" and often worked to break its strikes. See Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Vol. 7: Labor and World War I, 1914–1918, 1987, and Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World, 2000.
11. Quoted in Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Vol. 7: Labor and World War I, 1914–1918, 1987, p. 270.
12. Lindquist, John H. and Fraser, James. "A Sociological Interpretation of the Bisbee Deportation." Pacific Historical Review. 37:4 (November 1968).
13. Emery, Ken. "Wobbly Justice". Desert Exposure. Retrieved 2 May 2014.
14. "Report of a Censorship, Military Movements in Arizona Are Hidden," New York Times, July 13, 1917; "Arizona Sheriff Ships 1,100 I.W.W.'s Out In Cattle Cars," New York Times, July 13, 1917; "Not An Army Censorship, Phelps-Dodge Officials Said to Have Tied Up Bisbee Wires," New York Times, July 14, 1917.
15. Capozzola, 128
16. Capozzola, 129
17. Pratt, Jr., Walter F. The Supreme Court under Edward Douglass White, 1910–1921 Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1999, 257–8. ISBN 1-57003-309-9; FindLaw: U. S. v. Wheeler, 254 U.S. 281 (1920), accessed April 22, 2010. In 1966, when the Supreme Court considered a "right to travel" in United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745 (1966), Justice Potter Stewart devoted a footnote to dismissing Wheeler as precedent because "the right of interstate travel was...not directly involved" in the earlier case. FindLaw: United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745, 759, n. 16, accessed April 22, 2010
18. Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Freedom of Speech (NY: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920), 45–46.
19. McKay, Robert R. "The Federal Deportation Campaign in Texas: Mexican Deportation from the Lower Rio Grande Valley during the Great Depression," Borderlands Journal, Fall 1981
20. García, Juan Ramon, Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1980), ISBN 0-313-21353-4

Further reading

• Leslie Marcy, "The Eleven Hundred Exiled Copper Miners," International Socialist Review, vol. 18, no. 3 (September 1917), pp. 160–162.

External links

• "Wobbly Justice" by Ken Emery in Desert Exposure, July 2007
• Bisbee Deportation online exhibit at the Library of the University of Arizona
• Video on Bisbee Deportation of 1917 Case, Jacob, and Sharlene Grant (First Place National History Day Competition)
• University of Arizona Archives Online

*************************************

The Bisbee Deportations
by Matthew Wills
JSTOR Daily
August 17, 2018

According to one scholar, the 1917 deportation in Bisbee, AZ wasn’t “about labor relations or race or gender: it was about all of them.”


Workers forced out of Bisbee, AZ at gunpoint, 1917. via Wikimedia Commons

On July 12th, 1917 in Bisbee, Arizona, over a thousand striking copper miners -- along with regular townsfolk like restaurant owners, carpenters, and exactly one lawyer -- were rounded up at gun-point, herded into boxcars, and taken two hundreds miles into the desert. A new movie, Bisbee ’17, opening next month, tells the story anew.

The miners were left out in the desert to fend for themselves, until a nearby army camp rescued them. Few of them ever returned to Bisbee. Most of these miners were Mexican and Eastern European immigrants, others were Mexican-Americans. Although not strictly a deportation, since they weren’t sent across any national border, the action became known as the Bisbee Deportation.

Historian Katherine Benton-Cohen writes that this event has been looked at through many lenses, but she argues that it wasn’t “about labor relations or race or gender: it was about all of them.”

“White Man’s Camp”

From the late 1880s, Bisbee was defined as a “white man’s camp,” which originally meant the exclusion of Chinese laborers. Then the term referred to the exclusion of other non-white laborers, including “Mexicans,” a term used by whites to mean both Mexican immigrants and Hispanics native to Arizona.

“Mexicans” had been allowed to live and work in Bisbee, but only as menial laborers -- even when they did the same jobs as “white” men, they were paid far less. Then immigrants from Serbia and Italy started coming to work the mines in the early 1900s, which complicated the “white”/”Mexican” distinction. They were described as “foreign labor” and occupied a sort of in-between status in the hierarchy there.

Real Men & The Family Wage

The racial hierarchy of miners was underscored by a pervasive “family wage ideology.” Real men were supposed to make enough money to take care of their whole family. But in the eyes of both white workers and the copper company, “Mexican” workers were not real men. “Anglo workers and managers infantilized and feminized Mexican workers to reinforce their exclusion from the family wage and the American standard of living.”

Unsurprisingly, these non-white workers rebelled against these views, as well the dual wage system that paid them less, during the 1917 strike in Bisbee. Benton-Cohen describes the strike as a “vivid assertion of their own manly identities,” an effort to end the “social compact of the white man’s camp, one that denied them full male economic and social citizenship.”

The workers, however, had the misfortune of striking during wartime. Militant patriotism was at a fever pitch. The man in charge of the roundup and deportation, Sheriff Wheeler, used the wartime emergency as an excuse to rid the town of “foreigners.” But he had another motive, too, which Benton-Cohen describes as maintaining “Bisbee’s most precious social boundaries—those that separated working class Mexican men from ‘white women.'” As Wheeler himself described it, he was protecting white womanhood and “pure Americanism itself” by removing the foreigners (80% of the Bisbee Deportees were foreign-born; of these, 40% were Slavic).

Benton-Cohen concludes by noting that her “emphasis on the role of masculinity—something seemingly natural but never stable—highlights the connections between gender, race, family, labor, and national identity.” And helps us understand a shameful incident with disturbing contemporary echoes.

*************************************

The Bisbee Deportation of 1917
by Sheila Bonnand
University of Arizona
1997

Overview

"How it could have happened in a civilized country I'll never know. This is the only country it could have happened in. As far as we're concerned, we're still on strike!"

~ Fred Watson*

The Bisbee Deportation was still fresh in Fred Watson's mind when interviewed 60 years later. This is not surprising, because on July 12, 1917, Watson and 1,185 other men were herded into filthy boxcars by an armed vigilante force in Bisbee, Arizona, and abandoned across the New Mexico border. The Bisbee Deportation of 1917 was not only a pivotal event in Arizona's labor history, but one that had an effect on labor activities throughout the country. What led to this course of action by the Bisbee authorities?

Arizona in the early 1900s was home to huge copper mining operations. The managers and engineers controlling these mines answered primarily to eastern stockholders. During World War I, the price of copper reached unprecedented heights and the companies reaped enormous profits. By March of 1917, copper sold for $.37 a pound; it had been $.13 1/2 at the outbreak of World War I in 1914. With five thousand miners working around the clock, Bisbee was booming.

To maintain high production levels, the pool of miners was increased from an influx of southern European immigrants. Although the mining companies paid relatively high wages, working conditions for miners were no better than before the copper market crash in 1907-1908. Furthermore, the inflation caused by World War I increased living expenses and eroded any gains the miners had realized in salaries.

The mining companies controlled Bisbee, not only because they were the primary employers but because local businesses depended heavily on the mines and miners to survive. Even the local newspaper was owned by one of the major mining companies, Phelps Dodge.

Prior to 1917, union activity had repeatedly been stifled. Between 1906 and 1907, for example, about 1,200 men were fired for for supporting a union. Conversely, the Bisbee Industrial Association, an alliance that was pro-company and anti-union, was easily organized around the same time. Finally, in 1916, the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter (formerly the Western Federation of Miners) successfully enrolled 1,800 miners.

The Industrial Workers of the World's (I.W.W.) presence in Arizona was also increasing. Founded in 1905, the I.W.W. never recruited more than five percent of the trade unionists in the country, but many others were exposed to its ideas. Some of the I.W.W.'s tactics, such as advocating slowdowns and sabotage, were of great concern to the controlling interests. In addition, the I.W.W. adopted two successful recruiting practices. They actively recruited miners from minority groups. As a result, the IWW was particularly successful recruiting Bisbee's Mexican workers, who were routinely given lower paying jobs outside of the mine. The I.W.W. was also successful recruiting southern European immigrants, who were allowed in the mines but given lower paying jobs.

On June 24, 1917, the I.W.W. presented the Bisbee mining companies with a list of demands. These demands included improvements to safety and working conditions, such as requiring two men on each machine and an end to blasting in the mines during shifts. Demands were also made to end discrimination against members of labor organizations and the unequal treatment of foreign and minority workers. Furthermore, the unions wanted a flat wage system to replace sliding scales tied to the market price of copper. The copper companies refused all I.W.W. demands, using the war effort as justification. As a result, a strike was called, and by June 27 roughly half of the Bisbee work force was on strike.

Tensions heightened when rumors spread asserting that the unions had been infiltrated by pro-Germans. Another rumor suggested that weapons and dynamite were cached around Bisbee for sabotage. The Citizen's Protective League, an anti-union organization formed during a previous labor dispute, was resurrected by local businessmen and put under the control of Sheriff Harry Wheeler. A group of miners loyal to the mining companies also formed the Workman's Loyalty League. On July 11, secret meetings of these two so-called "vigilante groups" were held to discuss ways to deal with the strike and the strikers.

The next day, starting at 2:00 a.m., calls were made to Loyalty Leaguers as far away as Douglas, Arizona. By 5:00 a. m., about 2,000 deputies assembled. All wore white armbands to distinguish them from other mining workers. No federal or state officials were notified of the vigilantes' plans. The Western Union telegraph office was seized, preventing any communication to the town.

At 6:30 a. m., Sheriff Harry Wheeler gave orders to begin the roundup. Throughout Bisbee, men were roused from their beds, their houses, and the streets. Though armed, the vigilantes were instructed to avoid violence. However, reports of beatings, robberies, vandalism, and abuse of women later surfaced.

Two men died during the roundup. James Brew shot Loyalty Leaguer, Orson McRae, after warning McRae he would shoot anyone who attempted to take him. Brew was in turn shot and killed by men accompanying McRae.

The vigilantes rounded up over 1,000 men, many of whom were not strikers -- or even miners -- and marched them two miles to the Warren Ballpark. There they were surrounded by armed Loyalty Leaguers and urged to quit the strike. Anyone willing to put on a white armband was released. At 11:00 a. m. a train arrived, and 1,186 men were loaded aboard boxcars inches deep in manure. Also boarding were 186 armed guards; a machine gun was mounted on the top of the train. The train traveled from Bisbee to Columbus, New Mexico, where it was turned back because there were no accommodations for so many men. On its return trip the train stopped at Hermanas, New Mexico, where the men were abandoned. A later train brought water and food rations, but the men were left without shelter until July 14th when U.S. troops arrived. The troops escorted the men to facilities in Columbus. Many were detained for several months.

Meanwhile, Bisbee authorities mounted guards on all roads into town to insure that no deportees returned and to prevent new "troublemakers" from entering. A kangaroo court was also established to try other people deemed disloyal to mining interests. These people also faced deportation.

Several months after the deportation, President Woodrow Wilson set up the Federal Mediation Commission to investigate the Bisbee Deportation. The Commission discovered that no federal law applied. It referred the issue to the State of Arizona while recommending that such events be made criminal by federal statute. They did hold that the copper companies were at fault in the deportation, not the I.W.W.

The State of Arizona took no action against the copper companies. Approximately 300 deportees brought civil suits against the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad and the copper companies. None of these suits came to trial because of out-of-court settlements. Suits were also filed in state court against 224 vigilantes. Sadly, the only suit brought to trial ended in a "not guilty" verdict. The rest of the cases were dismissed.

Although efforts to organize pro-labor unions in Bisbee were crushed in 1917, the Deportation boosted I.W.W. efforts across the country.

To read more about Bisbee, the deportation, or the I.W.W., refer to the following sources or to those on the Resources page.

Sources

Lynn R Bailey, Bisbee, Queen of the Copper Camps (Westernlore Press, 1983).

Annie M. Cox, History of Bisbee, 1877 to 1937. (University of Arizona, 1938).

Rob E. Hanson The Great Bisbee I.W.W. Deportation of July 12, 1917 (Signature Press, 1989).

* Fred Watson, "Still on Strike! Recollections of a Bisbee Deportee" Journal of Arizona History 18 (Summer 1977): 171-184.

Pantisocracy
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/10/20

Pantisocracy (from the Greek πᾶν and ἰσοκρατία meaning "equal or level government by/for all") was a utopian scheme devised in 1794 by, among others, the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey for an egalitarian community. It is a system of government where all rule equally. They originally intended to establish such a community in the United States, choosing a site on the banks of the Susquehanna River after considering other places such as Kentucky.[1] By 1795 Southey had doubts about the viability of this and proposed moving the project to Wales. The two men were unable to agree on the location, causing the project to collapse.[2]

Others involved included the poet Robert Lovell and three of the Fricker sisters, Sara, Edith and Mary, who married the three poets, and George Burnett (who proposed unsuccessfully to another Fricker sister, Martha).

Their friend Thomas Poole was not part of the scheme but considered moving to somewhere nearby, writing:

“ Could they realise [their plan] they would, indeed, realise the age of reason; but however perfectible human nature may be, I fear it is not yet perfect enough to exist long under the regulations of such a system, particularly when the Executors of the plan are taken from a society in a high degree civilized and corrupted…I think a man would do well first to see the country and his future hopes, before he removes his connections or any large portion of his property, there. I could live, I think, in America, much to my satisfaction and credit, without joining such a scheme…though I should like well to accompany them, and see what progress they make. ”

Principles

The Pantisocrats believed that contemporary society and politics were responsible for cultures of servitude and oppression.[3] Having abandoned these corrupting influences along with personal property for a fresh start in the wilderness, the Pantisocrats hoped that men might be governed by the “dictates of rational benevolence.”

As spelled out by Southey, the utopian community he and Coleridge planned was to be built on two principles: "Pantisocracy" (meaning government by all) and "Aspheterism" (meaning general ownership of property).[4] The scheme called for a small group of educated individuals to give up their possessions and labor together for the common good. Few regulations would be necessary to govern the colony and decisions would be made so as to avoid one man having more power than another. Coleridge envisioned Pantisocracy as a way to minimize the greed among men.[5] Additionally, Coleridge and Southey hoped to enjoy a more relaxing existence than was possible in England, and expected that each member of the community would have to work just two to three hours per day to sustain the colony.[6]:132

The Pantisocrats viewed their attempt as not only a search for personal domestic peace, but also as an attempt to change the status quo in England.[7] One influence on the plan was disillusionment with the French Revolution and with the current politics of England, from which Coleridge may have sought solace through a utopian escape.[5] Coleridge viewed the utopian scheme as an experiment that, if successful, might be gradually extended to a larger citizenship.[8] Coleridge also hoped that through a more active, natural lifestyle he would live a healthier and more wholesome existence with his family.[9]

Inspirations

Like many utopian societies, the Pantisocracy envisioned by the members owed its origins to Plato's ideal commonwealth, envisioned in the later books of The Republic and in Critias.[6]:134 More modern examples for the Pantisocrats included Sir Thomas More's Utopia, Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, Tommaso Campanella's Civitas Solis, and the accounts of Cotton Mather.

The Pantisocrats were also heavily influenced by contemporary travel accounts of the new world.[10] Many writers who visited the new world (including J. P. Brissot, Thomas Cooper and Joseph Priestley) described a fresh and inviting country, whose inhabitants were untainted by the evils of society. Coleridge and Southey pored over these and other accounts of the American continent.

Beginnings

As early as November 1793, Robert Southey was envisioning a utopia in the US.[11] Coleridge's schoolfriend Robert Allen had become acquainted with Southey while at Oxford and introduced the two men while Coleridge was on a walking tour with another friend, Joseph Hucks. Southey would later write "that meeting fixed the future fortunes of us both". Coleridge extended his stay in Oxford for several weeks while the two men discussed the problems of the time and the possibility of setting up a utopian society in the United States, which Coleridge first dubbed "Pantocracy" then "Pantisocracy". Allen and Southey's friend George Burnett were early allies and when Coleridge and Huck departed for Wales, Southey and Burnett accompanied them part of the way. On their return journey to Oxford, Southey and Burnett discussed the practicalities of the scheme.

Throughout July, Coleridge corresponded regularly with Southey about their plans (unfortunately, while many of Coleridge's letters to Southey have survived, only part of one of Southey's letters to Coleridge is known). Coleridge even went so far as to share his enthusiasm for Pantisocracy with many of the people he and Hucks met along the road, offending several listeners with their radical ideas. During the walking tour Coleridge also encountered an old flame, Mary Evans, and his interaction with her momentarily drove thoughts of Pantisocracy from his mind. On August 3, Coleridge and Hucks rejoined Southey in Bristol.[6]:159

In Bristol, Southey and Coleridge continued to flesh out their plans, and spoke openly of their radical ideas. One listener was John Poole, cousin of Tom Poole of Nether Stowey, who writes of his encounter with the two young men: "Each of them was shamefully hot with Democratic rage as regards politics, and both Infidel as to religion. I was extremely indignant...".[6]:159

During this time the young men also became acquainted with the family of Mrs. Fricker, a widow whose daughters seemed willing to join in the scheme (as Mrs. Southey and Coleridge).[12] Southey became interested in Edith and Coleridge began showing interest in Sara.

Further planning and practical implications

In the autumn of 1794, Coleridge began seriously to investigate the practical problems of setting up a community in America. During this time he encountered George Dyer, a student familiar with Priestley (who at the time was already living in Pennsylvania), and also spoke with a land agent. In a letter to Southey on September 6 he writes:[13]

“ [The land agent] says £2000 will do; that he doubts not we can contract for our passage under £400; that we shall buy the land a great deal cheaper when we arrive in American than we could do in England…That twelve men may easily clear 300 acres in four or five months; and that, for 600 dollars, a thousand acres may be cleared and houses built on them. He recommends the Susquehannah for its excessive beauty and its security from hostile Indians. ”

Neither Coleridge nor Southey possessed the requisite wealth, but plans were laid for a spring departure in 1795.[6]:165 The young men hoped that other, wealthier immigrants who would join in the endeavor would be willing to fund it. Returning to Cambridge in late September, Coleridge began to spread word of the plan.

Coleridge at this time envisioned the community including "twelve men with their families", among whom the costs would be split, with the wealthier members of the community making up for the shortcomings of the poorer members.[6]:166 Besides money, other practical issues arose. Having little ability in farming or carpentry, the young men planned to acquire these skills over the winter in time for a March departure. Among the families who were planning to make the voyage were children, and Coleridge worried that they might already be deeply prejudiced by society, which could subvert and corrupt the Pantisocracy.[14]

Disillusionment

As the date set for departure arrived and the financial difficulties in undertaking the journey remained unsolved, the would-be emigrants began to lose excitement and resolve.[6]:168 Besides their lack of funds, other concerns challenged the Pantisocrats. Contrary to the glowing travel narratives that Coleridge pored over while researching the prospect of settling in America, other accounts of American life were less encouraging, and described a difficult and laborious existence.[15] In a review of Thomas Cooper’s Some Information Respecting America, (one of the positive accounts of the New World that Coleridge consulted) a reviewer describes Cooper and those like him as “rival auctioneers, or rather show-men, stationed for the allurement of incautious passengers. 'Pray, ladies and gentlemen, walk in and admire the wonders of Kentucky—Pray, stop and see the incomparable beauties of the Susquehanna.'”

Coleridge also faced personal challenges in carrying out the scheme. He received a letter from Mary Evans which argued against the plan, and his feelings for her for a time swayed him against Pantisocracy.[12] Learning that she had become engaged, Coleridge turned his attention back to Pantisocracy and Sara Fricker. Under pressure from Southey to act with regard to Sara (both because of the demands of Pantisocracy and also because she was being courted by other men), Coleridge married Sara in October 1795.

As plans bogged down, Southey and Coleridge eventually reached an impasse. Coleridge, Southey and Burnett shared rooms in Bristol but the meticulous Southey grew worried by Coleridge's lifestyle and feared that finances were being left under his responsibility (he contributed four times more to their common funds than his roommates). Southey at one point advocated taking servants to the new world, a proposition Coleridge scoffed at. Southey and other would-be Pantisocrats also considered a less ambitious plan: the purchase of a common farm in Wales. Coleridge, still dreaming of the new world, felt that this compromise failed to meet the standards of Pantisocracy. In a letter to Southey he complains that private resources would not be abandoned at the farm in Wales and that, "In short, we were to commence partners in a petty farming trade."[16] By the winter of 1795, the dream of Pantisocracy had all but died out.

Impact on Coleridge

There are two of Coleridge’s poems that directly address the plans he and Southey were envisioning. "Pantisocracy," a sonnet sent to Southey in a letter of September 18, 1794, was not published during Coleridge’s lifetime.[17] A second sonnet, "On the Prospect of Establishing a Pantisocracy," has also been attributed to Coleridge, and was first published in 1826. Many of Coleridge's other works of the time implicitly suggest the New World, and may owe a debt to his musings over the Susquehanna.[18] An early version of the poem "To a Young Ass" also makes mention of Pantisocracy.[19]

Pantisocracy presented Coleridge a practical outlet for ideas he had previously only considered theoretically.[20] While the scheme never produced an actual community, it did impact Coleridge's philosophical thinking. His lectures of the time reflect his Pantisocratic thinking on social relations and wealth. He wrote of the scheme years afterward that it was “a plan as harmless as it was extravagant” but it can be argued that much of the fantastic imagery and political thoughts present in his work owe a debt both to Pantisocracy and to the research he conducted in preparation for his voyage.[21] On a literal level, perhaps the greatest impact Pantisocracy had on the young Coleridge was the addition of Sara Fricker (and their subsequent family) to his life.

References

1. Newlyn, Lucy (2002). The Cambridge Companion to Coleridge. Cambridge University Press. pp. 129. ISBN 0-521-65909-4. Pantisocracy.
2. Fulford, Tim (2006). Romantic Indians: Native Americans, British Literature, and Transatlantic Culture, 1756–1830. Oxford University Press. pp. 120–121. ISBN 0-19-927337-5.
3. Morrow, John (1990). Coleridge's Political Thought, p. 8. St. Martin's Press, New York. ISBN 0-312-03645-0
4. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Ed. Ernest Coleridge. (1895). Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, vol. 1, p. 73. Houghton Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York. ISBN 1-4212-7161-3
5. Woodring, Carl R. Politics in the Poetry of Coleridge, p. 63. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.
6. MacGillivray, J.R., Ed. Malcolm Wallace (1931). "The Pantisocracy Scheme and Its Immediate Background" in Studies in English. The University of Toronto Press, Toronto. OCLC 27738043
7. Morrow, John (1990). Coleridge's Political Thought, p. 9. St. Martin's Press, New York. ISBN 0-312-03645-0
8. Sister Eugenia (1930). "Coleridge's Scheme of Pantisocracy and American Travel Accounts", in PMLA p. 1079. [1]28/1/2010
9. Woodring, Carl R. (1961). Politics in the Poetry of Coleridge, p. 69. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.
10. Sister Eugenia (1930). "Coleridge's Scheme of Pantisocracy and American Travel Accounts", in PMLA p. 1069-1074. [2]28/1/2010
11. Southey, Rev. Charles Cuthbert, Ed. (1850). The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, vol. 1, p. 211. Longman, Brown, Greene, and Longmans, London. ISBN 1-4255-6343-0
12. Beer, John, (2004). "Samuel Taylor Coleridge", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, Oxford. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5888
13. Southey, Rev. Charles Cuthbert, Ed. (1850). The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, vol. 1, p. 193-196. Longman, Brown, Greene, and Longmans, London. ISBN 1-4255-6343-0
14. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Ed. Ernest Coleridge. (1895). Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, vol. 1, p. 168. Houghton Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York. ISBN 1-4212-7161-3
15. Sister Eugenia (1930). "Coleridge's Scheme of Pantisocracy and American Travel Accounts", in PMLA p. 1079-1081. [3]28/1/2010
16. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Ed. Ernest Coleridge. (1895). Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, vol. 1, p. 140. Houghton Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York. ISBN 1-4212-7161-3
17. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Ed. William Keach. (1997). The Complete Poems, p. 57-58. Houghton Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York. ISBN 1-4212-7161-3
18. Cottle, Joseph. (1847). Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, p. 22. Houlston and Stoneman, London.
19. Woodring, Carl R. (1961). Politics in the Poetry of Coleridge, p. 70. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. ISBN 978-0-299-02440-6
20. Colmer, John. Ed. R.L. Brett. (1971). '"Coleridge and Politics," in Writers and Their Background: S.T. Coleridge p. 254 . G. Bell & Sons, London. ISBN 0-7135-1900-2
21. Sister Eugenia (1930). "Coleridge's Scheme of Pantisocracy and American Travel Accounts", in PMLA p. 1084. [4]28/1/2010

Monism
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/10/20


The circled dot was used by the Pythagoreans and later Greeks to represent the first metaphysical being, the Monad or The Absolute

Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept e.g., existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:

• Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., in Neoplatonism everything is derived from The One.[1] In this view only one thing is ontologically basic or prior to everything else.
• Existence monism posits that, strictly speaking, there exists only a single thing, the Universe, which can only be artificially and arbitrarily divided into many things.[2]
• Substance monism asserts that a variety of existing things can be explained in terms of a single reality or substance.[3] Substance monism posits that only one kind of stuff exists, although many things may be made up of this stuff, e.g., matter or mind.

Definitions

There are two sorts of definitions for monism:

1. The wide definition: a philosophy is monistic if it postulates unity of the origin of all things; all existing things return to a source that is distinct from them.[1]

2. The restricted definition: this requires not only unity of origin but also unity of substance and essence.[1]
Although the term "monism" is derived from Western philosophy to typify positions in the mind–body problem, it has also been used to typify religious traditions. In modern Hinduism, the term "absolute monism" is being used for Advaita Vedanta.[4][5]

History

The term "monism" was introduced in the 18th century by Christian von Wolff[6] in his work Logic (1728),[7] to designate types of philosophical thought in which the attempt was made to eliminate the dichotomy of body and mind[8] and explain all phenomena by one unifying principle, or as manifestations of a single substance.[6]

The mind–body problem in philosophy examines the relationship between mind and matter, and in particular the relationship between consciousness and the brain. The problem was addressed by René Descartes in the 17th century, resulting in Cartesian dualism, and by pre-Aristotelian philosophers,[9][10] in Avicennian philosophy,[11] and in earlier Asian and more specifically Indian traditions.

It was later also applied to the theory of absolute identity set forth by Hegel and Schelling.[12] Thereafter the term was more broadly used, for any theory postulating a unifying principle.[12] The opponent thesis of dualism also was broadened, to include pluralism.[12] According to Urmson, as a result of this extended use, the term is "systematically ambiguous".[12]

According to Jonathan Schaffer, monism lost popularity due to the emergence of Analytic philosophy in the early twentieth century, which revolted against the neo-Hegelians. Carnap and Ayer, who were strong proponents of positivism, "ridiculed the whole question as incoherent mysticism".[13]

The mind–body problem has reemerged in social psychology and related fields, with the interest in mind–body interaction[14] and the rejection of Cartesian mind–body dualism in the identity thesis, a modern form of monism.[15] Monism is also still relevant to the philosophy of mind,[12] where various positions are defended.[16][17]

Philosophy

Types


A diagram with neutral monism compared to Cartesian dualism, physicalism and idealism.

Different types of monism include:[12][18]

1. Substance monism, "the view that the apparent plurality of substances is due to different states or appearances of a single substance"[12]

2. Attributive monism, "the view that whatever the number of substances, they are of a single ultimate kind"[12]

3. Partial monism, "within a given realm of being (however many there may be) there is only one substance"[12]

4. Existence monism, "the view that there is only one concrete object token (The One, "Τὸ Ἕν" or the Monad)"[19]

5. Priority monism, "the whole is prior to its parts" or "the world has parts, but the parts are dependent fragments of an integrated whole"[18]

6. Property monism, "the view that all properties are of a single type (e.g., only physical properties exist)"

7. Genus monism, "the doctrine that there is a highest category; e.g., being"[18]

Views contrasting with monism are:

• Metaphysical dualism, which asserts that there are two ultimately irreconcilable substances or realities such as Good and Evil, for example, Manichaeism,[1]

• Metaphysical pluralism, which asserts three or more fundamental substances or realities.[1]

• Metaphysical nihilism, negates any of the above categories (substances, properties, concrete objects, etc.).

Monism in modern philosophy of mind can be divided into three broad categories:

1. Idealist, mentalistic monism, which holds that only mind or spirit exists. [1]

2. Neutral monism, which holds that one sort of thing fundamentally exists,[20] to which both the mental and the physical can be reduced[8]

3. Material monism (also called Physicalism and materialism), which holds that the material world is primary, and consciousness arises through the interaction with the material world[21][20]

a. Eliminative Materialism, according to which everything is physical and mental things do not exist[20]

b. Reductive physicalism, according to which mental things do exist and are a kind of physical thing[20][note 1]
Certain positions do not fit easily into the above categories, such as functionalism, anomalous monism, and reflexive monism. Moreover, they do not define the meaning of "real".

Monistic philosophers

Pre-Socratic

While the lack of information makes it difficult in some cases to be sure of the details, the following pre-Socratic philosophers thought in monistic terms:[22]

• Thales: Water
• Anaximander: Apeiron (meaning 'the undefined infinite'). Reality is some, one thing, but we cannot know what.
• Anaximenes of Miletus: Air
• Heraclitus: Change, symbolized by fire (in that everything is in constant flux).
• Parmenides: Being or Reality is an unmoving perfect sphere, unchanging, undivided.[23]

Post-Socrates

• Neopythagorians such as Apollonius of Tyana centered their cosmologies on the Monad or One.
• Stoics taught that there is only one substance, identified as God.[24]
• Middle Platonism under such works as those by Numenius taught that the Universe emanates from the Monad or One.
• Neoplatonism is monistic. Plotinus taught that there was an ineffable transcendent god, 'The One,' of which subsequent realities were emanations. From The One emanates the Divine Mind (Nous), the Cosmic Soul (Psyche), and the World (Cosmos).

Modern

• Giordano Bruno[25][26]
• Baruch Spinoza
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
• Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
• Johann Gottlieb Fichte
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• F. H. Bradley
• Arthur Schopenhauer
• Ernst Haeckel[27][28]
• Herbert Spencer
• Friedrich Engels
• Karl Marx
• Georgi Plekhanov
• Ernst Mach
• Wilhelm Ostwald
• Alexander Bogdanov
• Bertrand Russell
• Giacomo Leopardi[29]
• Gilbert Ryle
• Jonathan Schaffer

Monistic neuroscientists

• Ivan Pavlov
• Roger Sperry
• Francis Crick
• Eric Kandel
• Rodolfo Llinas
• György Buzsáki
• Karl Friston

Religion

Pantheism

Main article: Pantheism

Pantheism is the belief that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent God,[30] or that the universe (or nature) is identical with divinity.[31] Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal or anthropomorphic god, but believe that interpretations of the term differ.

Pantheism was popularized in the modern era as both a theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza,[32] whose Ethics was an answer to Descartes' famous dualist theory that the body and spirit are separate.[33] Spinoza held that the two are the same, and this monism is a fundamental quality of his philosophy. He was described as a "God-intoxicated man," and used the word God to describe the unity of all substance.[33] Although the term pantheism was not coined until after his death, Spinoza is regarded as its most celebrated advocate.[34]

H. P. Owen claimed that

Pantheists are "monists" ... they believe that there is only one Being, and that all other forms of reality are either modes (or appearances) of it or identical with it.[35]

Pantheism is closely related to monism, as pantheists too believe all of reality is one substance, called Universe, God or Nature. Panentheism, a slightly different concept (explained below), however is dualistic.[36] Some of the most famous pantheists are the Stoics, Giordano Bruno and Spinoza.

Panentheism

Main article: Panentheism

Panentheism (from Greek πᾶν (pân) "all"; ἐν (en) "in"; and θεός (theós) "God"; "all-in-God") is a belief system that posits that the divine (be it a monotheistic God, polytheistic gods, or an eternal cosmic animating force) interpenetrates every part of nature, but is not one with nature. Panentheism differentiates itself from pantheism, which holds that the divine is synonymous with the universe.[37]

In panentheism, there are two types of substance, "pan" the universe and God. The universe and the divine are not ontologically equivalent. God is viewed as the eternal animating force within the universe. In some forms of panentheism, the cosmos exists within God, who in turn "transcends", "pervades" or is "in" the cosmos.

While pantheism asserts that 'All is God', panentheism claims that God animates all of the universe, and also transcends the universe. In addition, some forms indicate that the universe is contained within God,[37] like in the Judaic concept of Tzimtzum. Much Hindu thought is highly characterized by panentheism and pantheism.[38][39]

Paul Tillich has argued for such a concept within Christian theology, as has liberal biblical scholar Marcus Borg and mystical theologian Matthew Fox, an Episcopal priest.[note 2]

Pandeism

Main article: Pandeism

Pandeism or pan-deism (from Ancient Greek: πᾶν, romanized: pan, lit. 'all' and Latin: deus meaning "god" in the sense of deism), is a term describing beliefs coherently incorporating or mixing logically reconcilable elements of pantheism (that "God", or a metaphysically equivalent creator deity, is identical to Nature) and classical deism (that the creator-god who designed the universe no longer exists in a status where it can be reached, and can instead be confirmed only by reason). It is therefore most particularly the belief that the creator of the universe actually became the universe, and so ceased to exist as a separate entity.[40][41]

Through this synergy pandeism claims to answer primary objections to deism (why would God create and then not interact with the universe?) and to pantheism (how did the universe originate and what is its purpose?).

Dharmic faiths

Characteristics

The central problem in Asian (religious) philosophy is not the body-mind problem, but the search for an unchanging Real or Absolute beyond the world of appearances and changing phenomena,[42] and the search for liberation from dukkha and the liberation from the cycle of rebirth.[43] In Hinduism, substance-ontology prevails, seeing Brahman as the unchanging real beyond the world of appearances.[44] In Buddhism process ontology is prevalent,[44] seeing reality as empty of an unchanging essence.[45][46]

Characteristic for various Asian religions is the discernment of levels of truth,[47] an emphasis on intuitive-experiential understanding of the Absolute[48][49][50][51] such as jnana, bodhi and kensho, and an emphasis on the integration of these levels of truth and its understanding.[52][53]

Hinduism

Main articles: Hinduism, Hindu philosophy, and Hindu denominations

Vedanta


Adi Shankara with Disciples, by Raja Ravi Varma (1904)

Main article: Vedanta

Vedanta is the inquiry into and systematisation of the Vedas and Upanishads, to harmonise the various and contrasting ideas that can be found in those texts. Within Vedanta, different schools exist:[54]

• Advaita Vedanta, absolute monism, of which Adi Shankara is the best-known representative;[55]
• Vishishtadvaita, qualified monism, is from the school of Ramanuja;[56]
• Shuddhadvaita, in-essence monism, is the school of Vallabha;
• Dvaitadvaita, differential monism, is a school founded by Nimbarka;
• Dvaita, dualism, is a school founded by Madhvacharya is probably the only Vedantic System that is opposed to all types of monism. It believes that God is eternally different from souls and matter in both form and essence.
• Achintya Bheda Abheda, a school of Vedanta founded by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu representing the philosophy of inconceivable one-ness and difference. It can be understood as an integration of the strict dualist (dvaita) theology of Madhvacharya and the qualified monism (vishishtadvaita) of Ramanuja.

Advaita Vedanta

Main article: Advaita Vedanta

Monism is most clearly identified in Advaita Vedanta,[57] though Renard points out that this may be a western interpretation, bypassing the intuitive understanding of a nondual reality.[58]

In Advaita Vedanta, Brahman is the eternal, unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all matter, energy, time, space, being, and everything beyond in this Universe. The nature of Brahman is described as transpersonal, personal and impersonal by different philosophical schools.[59]

Advaita Vedanta gives an elaborate path to attain moksha. It entails more than self-inquiry or bare insight into one's real nature. Practice, especially Jnana Yoga, is needed to "destroy one’s tendencies (vAasanA-s)" before real insight can be attained.[60]

Advaita took over from the Madhyamika the idea of levels of reality.[61] Usually two levels are being mentioned,[62] but Shankara uses sublation as the criterion to postulate an ontological hierarchy of three levels:[63][64]

• Pāramārthika (paramartha, absolute), the absolute level, "which is absolutely real and into which both other reality levels can be resolved".[64] This experience can't be sublated by any other experience.[63]
• Vyāvahārika (vyavahara), or samvriti-saya[62] (empirical or pragmatical), "our world of experience, the phenomenal world that we handle every day when we are awake".[64] It is the level in which both jiva (living creatures or individual souls) and Iswara are true; here, the material world is also true.
• Prāthibhāsika (pratibhasika, apparent reality, unreality), "reality based on imagination alone".[64] It is the level in which appearances are actually false, like the illusion of a snake over a rope, or a dream.

Vaishnava

Main article: Vaishnavism

All Vaishnava schools are panentheistic and view the universe as part of Krishna or Narayana, but see a plurality of souls and substances within Brahman. Monistic theism, which includes the concept of a personal god as a universal, omnipotent Supreme Being who is both immanent and transcendent, is prevalent within many other schools of Hinduism as well.

Tantra

Main article: Tantra

Tantra sees the Divine as both immanent and transcendent. The Divine can be found in the concrete world. Practices are aimed at transforming the passions, instead of transcending them.

Modern Hinduism

Main article: Hindu reform movements

The colonisation of India by the British had a major impact on Hindu society.[65] In response, leading Hindu intellectuals started to study western culture and philosophy, integrating several western notions into Hinduism.[65] This modernised Hinduism, at its turn, has gained popularity in the west.[48]

A major role was played in the 19th century by Swami Vivekananda in the revival of Hinduism,[66] and the spread of Advaita Vedanta to the west via the Ramakrishna Mission. His interpretation of Advaita Vedanta has been called Neo-Vedanta.[67] In Advaita, Shankara suggests meditation and Nirvikalpa Samadhi are means to gain knowledge of the already existing unity of Brahman and Atman,[68] not the highest goal itself:

[Y]oga is a meditative exercise of withdrawal from the particular and identification with the universal, leading to contemplation of oneself as the most universal, namely, Consciousness. This approach is different from the classical Yoga of complete thought suppression.[68]

Vivekananda, according to Gavin Flood, was "a figure of great importance in the development of a modern Hindu self-understanding and in formulating the West's view of Hinduism."[69] Central to his philosophy is the idea that the divine exists in all beings, that all human beings can achieve union with this "innate divinity",[70] and that seeing this divine as the essence of others will further love and social harmony.[70] According to Vivekananda, there is an essential unity to Hinduism, which underlies the diversity of its many forms.[70] According to Flood, Vivekananda's view of Hinduism is the most common among Hindus today.[71] This monism, according to Flood, is at the foundation of earlier Upanishads, to theosophy in the later Vedanta tradition and in modern Neo-Hinduism.[72]

Buddhism

Main article: Buddhism

According to the Pāli Canon, both pluralism (nānatta) and monism (ekatta) are speculative views. A Theravada commentary notes that the former is similar to or associated with nihilism (ucchēdavāda), and the latter is similar to or associated with eternalism (sassatavada).[73] See middle way.

In the Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism, the ultimate nature of the world is described as Śūnyatā or "emptiness", which is inseparable from sensorial objects or anything else. That appears to be a monist position, but the Madhyamaka views – including variations like rangtong and shentong – will refrain from asserting any ultimately existent entity. They instead deconstruct any detailed or conceptual assertions about ultimate existence as resulting in absurd consequences. The Yogacara view, a minority school now only found among the Mahayana, also rejects monism.

Levels of truth

Within Buddhism, a rich variety of philosophical[74] and pedagogical models[75] can be found. Various schools of Buddhism discern levels of truth:

• The Two truths doctrine of the Madhyamaka
• The Three Natures of the Yogacara
• Essence-Function, or Absolute-relative in Chinese and Korean Buddhism
• The Trikaya-formule, consisting of
o The Dharmakāya or Truth body which embodies the very principle of enlightenment and knows no limits or boundaries;
o The Sambhogakāya or body of mutual enjoyment which is a body of bliss or clear light manifestation;
o The Nirmāṇakāya or created body which manifests in time and space.[76]

The Prajnaparamita-sutras and Madhyamaka emphasize the non-duality of form and emptiness: "form is emptiness, emptiness is form", as the heart sutra says.[77] In Chinese Buddhism this was understood to mean that ultimate reality is not a transcendental realm, but equal to the daily world of relative reality. This idea fitted into the Chinese culture, which emphasized the mundane world and society. But this does not tell how the absolute is present in the relative world:

To deny the duality of samsara and nirvana, as the Perfection of Wisdom does, or to demonstrate logically the error of dichotomizing conceptualization, as Nagarjuna does, is not to address the question of the relationship between samsara and nirvana -or, in more philosophical terms, between phenomenal and ultimate reality [...] What, then, is the relationship between these two realms?[77]

This question is answered in such schemata as the Five Ranks of Tozan,[78] the Oxherding Pictures, and Hakuin's Four ways of knowing.[79]

Sikhism

Main article: God in Sikhism

Sikhism complies with the concept of Priority Monism. Sikh philosophy advocates that all that our senses comprehend is an illusion; God is the sole reality. Forms being subject to time shall pass away. God's Reality alone is eternal and abiding.[80] The thought is that Atma (soul) is born from, and a reflection of, ParamAtma (Supreme Soul), and "will again merge into it", in the words of the fifth guru of Sikhs, Guru Arjan Dev Ji, "just as water merges back into the water."[81]

ਜਿਉ ਜਲ ਮਹਿ ਜਲੁ ਆਇ ਖਟਾਨਾ ॥
Jio Jal Mehi Jal Aae Khattaanaa ||
As water comes to blend with water,

ਤਿਉ ਜੋਤੀ ਸੰਗਿ ਜੋਤਿ ਸਮਾਨਾ ॥
Thio Jothee Sang Joth Samaanaa ||
His light blends into the Light.
— SGGS. Pg 278, https://www.searchgurbani.com/guru-gran ... ang-by-ang

God and Soul are fundamentally the same; identical in the same way as Fire and its sparks. "Atam meh Ram, Ram meh Atam" which means "The Ultimate Eternal reality resides in the Soul and the Soul is contained in Him". As from one stream, millions of waves arise and yet the waves, made of water, again become water; in the same way all souls have sprung from the Universal Being and would blend again into it.[82]

Abrahamic faiths

Judaism

Main article: Judaism

Jewish thought considers God as separate from all physical, created things (transcendent) and as existing outside of time (eternal).[note 3][note 4]

According to Maimonides,[83] God is an incorporeal being that caused all other existence. In fact, God is defined as the necessary existent that caused all other existence. According to Maimonides, to admit corporeality to God is tantamount to admitting complexity to God, which is a contradiction to God as the First Cause and constitutes heresy. While Hasidic mystics considered the existence of the physical world a contradiction to God's simpleness, Maimonides saw no contradiction.[note 5]

According to Chasidic Thought (particularly as propounded by the 18th century, early 19th century founder of Chabad, Shneur Zalman of Liadi), God is held to be immanent within creation for two interrelated reasons:

1. A very strong Jewish belief is that "[t]he Divine life-force which brings [the universe] into existence must constantly be present ... were this life-force to forsake [the universe] for even one brief moment, it would revert to a state of utter nothingness, as before the creation ..."[84]

2. Simultaneously, Judaism holds as axiomatic that God is an absolute unity, and that he is Perfectly Simple—thus, if his sustaining power is within nature, then his essence is also within nature.

The Vilna Gaon was very much against this philosophy, for he felt that it would lead to pantheism and heresy. According to some this is the main reason for the Gaon's ban on Chasidism.

Christianity

See also: Christian anthropology

Creator–creature distinction

Christianity strongly maintains the creator–creature distinction as fundamental. Christians maintain that God created the universe ex nihilo and not from his own substance, so that the creator is not to be confused with creation, but rather transcends it (metaphysical dualism) (cf. Genesis). Although, there is growing movement to have a "Christian Panentheism".[85] Even more immanent concepts and theologies are to be defined together with God's omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience, due to God's desire for intimate contact with his own creation (cf. Acts 17:27). Another use of the term "monism" is in Christian anthropology to refer to the innate nature of humankind as being holistic, as usually opposed to bipartite and tripartite views.

Rejection of radical dualism

In On Free Choice of the Will, Augustine argued, in the context of the problem of evil, that evil is not the opposite of good, but rather merely the absence of good, something that does not have existence in itself. Likewise, C. S. Lewis described evil as a "parasite" in Mere Christianity, as he viewed evil as something that cannot exist without good to provide it with existence. Lewis went on to argue against dualism from the basis of moral absolutism, and rejected the dualistic notion that God and Satan are opposites, arguing instead that God has no equal, hence no opposite. Lewis rather viewed Satan as the opposite of Michael the archangel. Due to this, Lewis instead argued for a more limited type of dualism.[86] Other theologians, such as Greg Boyd, have argued in more depth that the Biblical authors held a "limited dualism", meaning that God and Satan do engage in real battle, but only due to free will given by God, for the duration that God allows.[87]

Isaiah 45:5–7 says: *5 I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me:

• 6 That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is none else.
• 7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

Theosis

In Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, while human beings are not ontologically identical with the Creator, they are nonetheless capable with uniting with his Divine Nature via theosis, and especially, through the devout reception of the Holy Eucharist.[citation needed] This is a supernatural union, over and above that natural union, of which St. John of the Cross says, "it must be known that God dwells and is present substantially in every soul, even in that of the greatest sinner in the world, and this union is natural." Julian of Norwich, while maintaining the orthodox duality of Creator and creature, nonetheless speaks of God as "the true Father and true Mother" of all natures; thus, he indwells them substantially and thus preserves them from annihilation, as without this sustaining indwelling everything would cease to exist.

However, in Eastern Orthodoxy creation is united to God by grace and not by nature. This is what is known as the Essence-Energies distinction, while in union with God, Orthodox Christians believe, the human person retains its individuality and is not swallowed up by the Monad.

Christian Monism

Some Christian theologians are avowed monists, such as Paul Tillich. Since God is he "in whom we live and move and have our being" (Book of Acts 17.28), it follows that everything that has being partakes in God.

Latter-day Saint view (Mormonism)

Latter-day Saint theology also expresses a form of monism via materialism and eternalism, claiming that creation was ex materia (as opposed to ex nihilo in conventional Christianity), as expressed by Parley Pratt and echoed in view by Latter-day Saint prophet Joseph Smith, making no distinction between the spiritual and the material, these being not just similarly eternal, but ultimately two manifestations of the same reality or substance. [88]

God, the father is material. Jesus Christ is material. Angels are material. Spirits are material. Men are material. The universe is material ... Nothing exists which is not material."

— Parley Pratt[89]

Islam

See also: Tawhid

Quran

Vincent Cornell argues that the Quran provides a monist image of God by describing reality as a unified whole, with God being a single concept that would describe or ascribe all existing things. But most argue that Semitic religious scriptures, especially the Quran, see creation and God as two separate existences. It explains that everything has been created by God and is under his control, but at the same time distinguishes creation as being dependent on the existence of God.[90]

Sufism

See also: Sufism

Sufi mystics advocate monism. One of the most notable being the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi (1207–73) in his didactic poem Masnavi espoused monism.[91][92] Rumi says in the Masnavi,

In the shop for Unity (wahdat); anything that you see there except the One is an idol.[91]

The most influential of the Islamic monists was the Sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi (1165–1240). He developed the concept of 'unity of being' (Arabic: waḥdat al-wujūd), a monoist philosophy. Born in al-Andalus, he made an enormous impact on the Muslim world, where he was crowned "the great Master". In the centuries following his death, his ideas became increasingly controversial.

Bahá'í

Main article: Bahá'í Faith and the unity of religion

Although the Bahá'í teachings have a strong emphasis on social and ethical issues, there exist a number of foundational texts that have been described as mystical.[93] Some of these include statements of a monist nature (e.g., The Seven Valleys and the Hidden Words). The differences between dualist and monist views are reconciled by the teaching that these opposing viewpoints are caused by differences in the observers themselves, not in that which is observed. This is not a 'higher truth/lower truth' position. God is unknowable. For man it is impossible to acquire any direct knowledge of God or the Absolute, because any knowledge that one has, is relative.[94]

Non-dualism

Main article: Nondualism

According to nondualism, many forms of religion are based on an experiential or intuitive understanding of "the Real".[95] Nondualism, a modern reinterpretation of these religions, prefers the term "nondualism", instead of monism, because this understanding is "nonconceptual", "not graspable in an idea".[95][note 6][note 7]

To these nondual traditions belong Hinduism (including Vedanta[97], some forms of Yoga, and certain schools of Shaivism), Taoism[98][99], Pantheism[100], Rastafari[101] and similar systems of thought.

See also

• Cosmic pluralism
• Dialectical monism
• Henosis
• Holism
• Indefinite monism
• Material monism
• Monistic idealism
• Ontological pluralism
• Univocity of being
• Monadology

Notes

1. Such as Behaviourism,[8] Type-identity theory[8] and Functionalism[8]
2. See Creation Spirituality
3. For a discussion of the resultant paradox, see Tzimtzum.
4. See also Negative theology.
5. See the "Guide for the Perplexed", especially chapter I:50.
6. In Dutch: "Niet in een denkbeeld te vatten".[95]
7. According to Renard, Alan Watts has explained the difference between "non-dualism" and "monism" in The Supreme Identity, Faber and Faber 1950, p.69 and 95; The Way of Zen, Pelican-edition 1976, p.59-60.[96] According to Renard, Alan Watts has been one of the main contributors to thepopularisation of the notion of "nondualism".[95]

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38. [1] Britannica – Pantheism and Panentheism in non-Western cultures
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95. Renard 2010, p. 59.
96. Renard 2010, p. 59, p.285 note 17.
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101. Christensen, Jeanne (2014-02-14). Rastafari Reasoning and the RastaWoman: Gender Constructions in the Shaping of Rastafari Livity. Lexington Books. ISBN 9780739175743.

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• Sharf, Robert H. (1995), "Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience" (PDF), NUMEN, 42 (3): 228–283, doi:10.1163/1568527952598549, hdl:2027.42/43810, archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-04-12, retrieved 2013-02-10
• Urmson, James Opie (1991), The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers, Routledge
• White (ed.), David Gordon (2000), Introduction. In: Tantra in practice, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press
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External links

• Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). "Monism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Monism at PhilPapers
• Monism at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project
• Catholic Encyclopedia - Monism
• Hinduism's Online Lexicon – (search for Monism)
• The Monist

Part 1 of 2

Henry George
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/10/20


Henry George
Born: September 2, 1839, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
Died: October 29, 1897 (aged 58), New York City, US
Spouse(s): Annie Corsina Fox
Children: Henry George Jr.; Anna George de Mille
Philosophy career
Education: Primary
School: Georgism
Main interests: Classical economics, ethics, political and economic philosophy, socialism, capitalism, laissez-faire, history, free trade, land economics
Notable ideas: Unearned income, land value tax, municipalization, free public goods from land value capture, single-tax, intellectual property reform, citizen's dividend, monetary sovereignty, the role of monopoly/privilege/land in effecting economic inequality and the business cycle
Influences: John Locke John Stuart Mil lThomas Paine[1] David Ricardo Adam Smith
Influenced: Grant Allen[2] Peter Barnes[3] Gary Becker[4] Arthur Brisbane[5] Paul Douglas[6][circular reference] Lloyd George [7] Jiang Kanghu Helen Keller Christopher Lasch Lizzie Magie[8] José Martí[9] Bill Moyers Scott Nearing[10] George W. Norris[11] Walter Rauschenbusch[12][13][14] Franklin D. Roosevelt Teddy Roosevelt George Bernard Shaw Joseph Stiglitz Milton Friedman Leo Tolstoy Sun Yat-sen

Henry George (September 2, 1839 – October 29, 1897) was an American political economist and journalist. He promoted the "single tax" on land, though he avoided that term. His writing was immensely popular in the 19th century America, and sparked several reform movements of the Progressive Era. He inspired the economic philosophy known as Georgism, based on the belief that people should own the value they produce themselves, but that the economic value derived from land (including natural resources) should belong equally to all members of society. He argued that a single tax on land would itself reform society and economy.

His most famous work, Progress and Poverty (1879), sold millions of copies worldwide, probably more than any other American book before that time. The treatise investigates the paradox of increasing inequality and poverty amid economic and technological progress, the cyclic nature of industrialized economies, and the use of rent capture such as land value tax and other anti-monopoly reforms as a remedy for these and other social problems.

The mid-20th century labor economist and journalist George Soule wrote that George was "By far the most famous American economic writer," and "author of a book which probably had a larger world-wide circulation than any other work on economics ever written."[15]

Personal life


Birthplace in Philadelphia

George was born in Philadelphia to a lower-middle-class family, the second of ten children of Richard S. H. George and Catharine Pratt George (née Vallance). His father was a publisher of religious texts and a devout Episcopalian, and sent George to the Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia. George chafed at his religious upbringing and left the academy without graduating.[16][17] Instead he convinced his father to hire a tutor and supplemented this with avid reading and attending lectures at the Franklin Institute.[18] His formal education ended at age 14 and he went to sea as a foremast boy at age 15 in April 1855 on the Hindoo, bound for Melbourne and Calcutta. He ended up in the American West in 1858 and briefly considered prospecting for gold but instead started work the same year in San Francisco as a type setter.[18]

In California, George fell in love with Annie Corsina Fox, an eighteen-year-old girl from Sydney who had been orphaned and was living with an uncle. The uncle, a prosperous, strong-minded man, was opposed to his niece's impoverished suitor. But the couple, defying him, eloped and married in late 1861, with Henry dressed in a borrowed suit and Annie bringing only a packet of books.

The marriage was a happy one and four children were born to them. On November 3, 1862 Annie gave birth to future United States Representative from New York, Henry George Jr. (1862–1916). Early on, even with the birth of future sculptor Richard F. George (1865 – September 28, 1912),[19][20] the family was near starvation. George's other two children were both daughters. The first was Jennie George, (c. 1867–1897), later to become Jennie George Atkinson.[21] George's other daughter was Anna Angela George (b. 1878), who would become mother of both future dancer and choreographer, Agnes de Mille and future actress Peggy George, who was born Margaret George de Mille.[22]

Following the birth of his second child George had no work and no money and had to beg for food. As he approached the first well-dressed stranger he saw in the street, George, normally a lawful man, decided to rob him if he was unwilling to help. Fortunately, the man took pity on him and gave him five dollars.[23]

George was raised as an Episcopalian, but he believed in "deistic humanitarianism". His wife Annie was Irish Catholic, but Henry George Jr. wrote that the children were mainly influenced by Henry George's deism and humanism.[24]

Career in journalism


George in 1865, age 26

After deciding against gold mining in British Columbia, George was hired as a printer for the newly created San Francisco Times,[25] and was able to immediately submit editorials for publication, including the popular What the Railroads Will Bring Us.,[26] which remained required reading in California schools for decades. George climbed the ranks of the Times, eventually becoming managing editor in the summer of 1867.[27][28] George worked for several papers, including four years (1871–1875) as editor of his own newspaper San Francisco Daily Evening Post and for a time running the Reporter, a Democratic anti-monopoly publication.[29][30][31] The George family struggled but George's increasing reputation and involvement in the newspaper industry lifted them from poverty.

Political and economic philosophy

George began as a Lincoln Republican, but then became a Democrat. He was a strong critic of railroad and mining interests, corrupt politicians, land speculators, and labor contractors. He first articulated his views in an 1868 article entitled "What the Railroad Will Bring Us." George argued that the boom in railroad construction would benefit only the lucky few who owned interests in the railroads and other related enterprises, while throwing the greater part of the population into abject poverty. This had led to him earning the enmity of the Central Pacific Railroad's executives, who helped defeat his bid for election to the California State Assembly.[31][32][33]

One day in 1871 George went for a horseback ride and stopped to rest while overlooking San Francisco Bay. He later wrote of the revelation that he had:

I asked a passing teamster, for want of something better to say, what land was worth there. He pointed to some cows grazing so far off that they looked like mice, and said, "I don't know exactly, but there is a man over there who will sell some land for a thousand dollars an acre." Like a flash it came over me that there was the reason of advancing poverty with advancing wealth. With the growth of population, land grows in value, and the men who work it must pay more for the privilege.[34]

Iconic portrait, taken shortly after writing Progress and Poverty

Furthermore, on a visit to New York City, he was struck by the apparent paradox that the poor in that long-established city were much worse off than the poor in less developed California. These observations supplied the theme and title for his 1879 book Progress and Poverty, which was a great success, selling over 3 million copies. In it George made the argument that a sizeable portion of the wealth created by social and technological advances in a free market economy is possessed by land owners and monopolists via economic rents, and that this concentration of unearned wealth is the main cause of poverty. George considered it a great injustice that private profit was being earned from restricting access to natural resources while productive activity was burdened with heavy taxes, and indicated that such a system was equivalent to slavery—a concept somewhat similar to wage slavery. This is also the work in which he made the case for a land value tax in which governments would tax the value of the land itself, thus preventing private interests from profiting upon its mere possession, but allowing the value of all improvements made to that land to remain with investors.[35][36]

George was in a position to discover this pattern, having experienced poverty himself, knowing many different societies from his travels, and living in California at a time of rapid growth. In particular he had noticed that the construction of railroads in California was increasing land values and rents as fast as or faster than wages were rising.[32][37]

Political career

In 1880, now a popular writer and speaker,[38] George moved to New York City, becoming closely allied with the Irish nationalist community despite being of English ancestry. From there he made several speaking journeys abroad to places such as Ireland and Scotland where access to land was (and still is) a major political issue.


Campaigning for mayor in 1897, just before his death

In 1886, George campaigned for mayor of New York City as the candidate of the United Labor Party, the short-lived political society of the Central Labor Union. He polled second, more than the Republican candidate Theodore Roosevelt. The election was won by Tammany Hall candidate Abram Stevens Hewitt by what many of George's supporters believed was fraud. In the 1887 New York state elections, George came in a distant third in the election for Secretary of State of New York.[31][39] The United Labor Party was soon weakened by internal divisions: the management was essentially Georgist, but as a party of organized labor it also included some Marxist members who did not want to distinguish between land and capital, many Catholic members who were discouraged by the excommunication of Father Edward McGlynn, and many who disagreed with George's free trade policy. George had particular trouble with Terrence V. Powderly, president of the Knights of Labor, a key member of the United Labor coalition. While initially friendly with Powderly, George vigorously opposed the tariff policies which Powderly and many other labor leaders thought vital to the protection of American workers. George's strident criticism of the tariff set him against Powderly and others in the labor movement.[40] During George’s life, communities in Delaware and Alabama were developed based on his single tax on land and this legacy continued through applications in a number of areas around the world, including Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan.[41]

Death and funeral

George's first stroke occurred in 1890, after a global speaking tour concerning land rights and the relationship between rent and poverty. This stroke greatly weakened him, and he never truly recovered. Despite this, George tried to remain active in politics. Against the advice of his doctors, George campaigned for New York City mayor again in 1897, this time as an Independent Democrat, saying, "I will make the race if I die for it." The strain of the campaign precipitated a second stroke, leading to his death four days before the election.[42][43][44][45]

An estimated 100,000 people visited Grand Central Palace during the day to see Henry George's face, with an estimated equal number[46] crowding outside, unable to enter, and held back by police. After the Palace doors closed, the Reverend Lyman Abbott, Father Edward McGlynn, Rabbi Gustav Gottheil, R. Heber Newton (Episcopalian), and John Sherwin Crosby delivered addresses.[47] Separate memorial services were held elsewhere. In Chicago, five thousand people waited in line to hear memorial addresses by the former governor of Illinois, John Peter Altgeld, and John Lancaster Spalding.[48] Mayor Strong broke down and cried at a meeting, calling George a martyr.[45]


George's funeral procession on Madison Avenue

The New York Times reported that later in the evening, an organized funeral procession of about 2,000 people left from the Grand Central Palace and made its way through Manhattan to the Brooklyn Bridge. This procession was "all the way ... thronged on either side by crowds of silent watchers."

The procession then went on to Brooklyn, where the crowd at Brooklyn City Hall "was the densest ever seen there." There were "thousands on thousands" at City Hall who were so far back that they could not see the funeral procession pass. It was impossible to move on any of the nearby streets. The Times wrote, "Rarely has such an enormous crowd turned out in Brooklyn on any occasion," but that nonetheless, "[t]he slow tolling of the City Hall bell and the regular beating of drums were the only sounds that broke the stillness. ... Anything more impressive ... could not be imagined."[49] At Court Street, the casket was transferred to a hearse and taken to a private funeral at Fort Hamilton.

Commentators disagreed on whether it was the largest funeral in New York history or the largest since the death of Abraham Lincoln. The New York Times reported, "Not even Lincoln had a more glorious death."[50] Even the more conservative New York Sun wrote that "Since the Civil War, few announcements have been more startling than that of the sudden death of Henry George."[51] Flags were placed at half-mast, even at Tammany Hall, which cancelled its rally for the day.[45]

Views and policy proposals

Socialization of land and natural resource rents


Everybody works but the vacant lot.

Henry George is best known for his argument that the economic rent of land (location) should be shared by society. The clearest statement of this view is found in Progress and Poverty: "We must make land common property."[52][53] By taxing land values, society could recapture the value of its common inheritance, raise wages, improve land use, and eliminate the need for taxes on productive activity. George believed it would remove existing incentives toward land speculation and encourage development, as landlords would not suffer tax penalties for any industry or edifice constructed on their land and could not profit by holding valuable sites vacant.[54]

Broadly applying this principle is now commonly known as "Georgism." In George's time, it was known as the "single-tax" movement and sometimes associated with movements for land nationalization, especially in Ireland.[55][56][57] However, in Progress and Poverty, George did not favor the idea of nationalization.

I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate private property in land. The first would be unjust; the second, needless. Let the individuals who now hold it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are pleased to call their land. Let them continue to call it their land. Let them buy and sell, and bequeath and devise it. We may safely leave them the shell, if we take the kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate land; it is only necessary to confiscate rent.[58]

Municipalization of utilities and free public transit

George considered businesses relying on exclusive right-of-way land privilege to be "natural" monopolies. Examples of these services included the transportation of utilities (water, electricity, sewage), information (telecommunications), goods, and travelers. George advocated that these systems of transport along "public ways" should usually be managed as public utilities and provided for free or at marginal cost. In some cases, it might be possible to allow competition between private service providers along public "rights of way," such as parcel shipping companies that operate on public roads, but wherever competition would be impossible, George supported complete municipalization. George said that these services would be provided for free because investments in beneficial public goods always tend to increase land values by more than the total cost of those investments. George used the example of urban buildings that provide free vertical transit, paid out of some of the increased value that residents derive from the addition of elevators.[59][60]

Intellectual property reform

George was opposed to or suspicious of all intellectual property privilege, because his classical definition of "land" included "all natural forces and opportunities." Therefore, George proposed to abolish or greatly limit intellectual property privilege. In George's view, owning a monopoly over specific arrangements and interactions of materials, governed by the forces of nature, allowed title-holders to extract royalty-rents from producers, in a way similar to owners of ordinary land titles. George later supported limited copyright, on the ground that temporary property over a unique arrangement of words or colors did not in any way prevent others from laboring to make other works of art. George apparently ranked patent rents as a less significant form of monopoly than the owners of land title deeds, partly because he viewed the owners of locations as "the robber that takes all that is left." People could choose not to buy a specific new product, but they cannot choose to lack a place upon which to stand, so benefits gained for labor through lesser reforms would tend to eventually be captured by owners and financers of location monopoly.

Free trade

George was opposed to tariffs, which were at the time both the major method of protectionist trade policy and an important source of federal revenue, the federal income tax having not yet been introduced. He argued that tariffs kept prices high for consumers, while failing to produce any increase in overall wages. He also believed that tariffs protected monopolistic companies from competition, thus augmenting their power. Free trade became a major issue in federal politics and his book Protection or Free Trade was the first book to be read entirely into the Congressional Record.[61] It was read by five Democratic congressmen.[62][63]

In 1997, Spencer MacCallum wrote that Henry George was "undeniably the greatest writer and orator on free trade who ever lived."[64]

In 2009, Tyler Cowen wrote that George's 1886 book Protection or Free Trade "remains perhaps the best-argued tract on free trade to this day."[65]

Jim Powell said that Protection or Free Trade was probably the best book on trade written by anyone in the Americas, comparing it Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Milton Friedman said it was the most rhetorically brilliant work ever written on trade.[66] Friedman also paraphrased one of George's arguments in favor of free trade: "It's a very interesting thing that in times of war, we blockade our enemies in order to prevent them from getting goods from us. In time of peace we do to ourselves by tariffs what we do to our enemy in time of war."[67]

Secret ballot


Artist: George de Forest Brush, Sitter: Henry George, Date: 1888

George was one of the earliest and most prominent advocates for adoption of the secret ballot in the United States.[68] Harvard historian Jill Lepore asserts that Henry George's advocacy is the reason Americans vote with secret ballots today.[50] George's first article in support of the secret ballot was entitled "Bribery in Elections" and was published in the Overland Review of December 1871. His second article was "Money in Elections," published in the North American Review of March 1883. The first secret ballot reform approved by a state legislature was brought about by reformers who said they were influenced by George.[69] The first state to adopt the secret ballot, also called The Australian Ballot, was Massachusetts in 1888 under the leadership of Richard Henry Dana III. By 1891, more than half the states had adopted it too.[70]

Money creation, banking, and national deficit reform

George supported the use of "debt free" (sovereign money) currency, such as the greenback, which governments would spend into circulation to help finance public spending through the capture of seigniorage rents. He opposed the use of metallic currency, such as gold or silver, and fiat money created by private commercial banks.[71]

Citizen's dividend and universal pension

George proposed to create a pension and disability system, and an unconditional basic income from surplus land rents. It would be distributed to residents "as a right" instead of as charity. Georgists often refer to this policy as a citizen's dividend in reference to a similar proposal by Thomas Paine.

Bankruptcy protection and an abolition of debtors' prisons

George noted that most debt, though bearing the appearance of genuine capital interest, was not issued for the purpose of creating true capital, but instead as an obligation against rental flows from existing economic privilege. George therefore reasoned that the state should not provide aid to creditors in the form of sheriffs, constables, courts, and prisons to enforce collection on these illegitimate obligations. George did not provide any data to support this view, but in today's developed economies, much of the supply of credit is created to purchase claims on future land rents, rather than to finance the creation of true capital. Michael Hudson and Adair Turner estimate that about 80 percent of credit finances real estate purchases, mostly land.[72][73]

George acknowledged that this policy would limit the banking system but believed that would actually be an economic boon, since the financial sector, in its existing form, was mostly augmenting rent extraction, as opposed to productive investment. "The curse of credit," George wrote, was "... that it expands when there is a tendency to speculation, and sharply contracts just when most needed to assure confidence and prevent industrial waste." George even said that a debt jubilee could remove the accumulation of burdensome obligations without reducing aggregate wealth.[74]

Women's suffrage

George was an important and vocal advocate for women's political rights. He argued for extending suffrage to women and even suggested filling one house of Congress entirely with women: "If we must have two houses of Congress, then by all means let us fill one with women and the other with men."[75]

Other proposals

Henry George also proposed and advocated for the following reforms:

• Dramatic reductions in the size of the military.
• Replacement of contract patronage with the direct employment of government workers, with civil-service protections.
• Building and maintenance of free mass transportation and libraries.[76]
• Campaign finance reform and political spending restrictions.
• Careful regulation of all monopolies. George advocated regulations to eliminate monopolies when possible and government ownership of monopolies as a policy of last resort.

Part 2 of 2

Legacy

See also: Georgism

Henry George's ideas on politics and economics had enormous influence in his time. His ideas gave rise to the economic philosophy now known as Georgism. However, his influence slowly waned through the 20th century. Nonetheless, it would be difficult to overstate George's impact on turn-of-the-century reform movements and intellectual culture. George's self-published Progress and Poverty was the first popular economics text and one of the most widely printed books ever written. The book's explosive worldwide popularity is often marked as the beginning of the Progressive Era and various political parties, clubs, and charitable organizations around the world were founded on George's ideas. George's message attracts support widely across the political spectrum, including labor union activists, socialists, anarchists, libertarians, reformers, conservatives, and wealthy investors. As a result, Henry George is still claimed as a primary intellectual influence by both classical liberals and socialists. Edwin Markham expressed a common sentiment when he said, "Henry George has always been to me one of the supreme heroes of humanity."[77]

A large number of famous individuals, particularly Progressive Era figures, claim inspiration from Henry George's ideas. John Peter Altgeld wrote that George "made almost as great an impression on the economic thought of the age as Darwin did on the world of science."[78] Jose Marti wrote, "Only Darwin in the natural sciences has made a mark comparable to George's on social science."[79] In 1892, Alfred Russel Wallace stated that George's Progress and Poverty was "undoubtedly the most remarkable and important book of the present century," implicitly placing it above even The Origin of Species, which he had earlier helped develop and publicize.[80]

Franklin D. Roosevelt praised George as "one of the really great thinkers produced by our country" and bemoaned the fact that George's writings were not better known and understood.[81] Yet even several decades earlier, William Jennings Bryan wrote that George's genius had reached the global reading public and that he "was one of the foremost thinkers of the world."[82]

John Dewey wrote, "It would require less than the fingers of the two hands to enumerate those who from Plato down rank with him," and that "No man, no graduate of a higher educational institution, has a right to regard himself as an educated man in social thought unless he has some first-hand acquaintance with the theoretical contribution of this great American thinker."[83] Albert Jay Nock wrote that anyone who rediscovers Henry George will find that "George was one of the first half-dozen [greatest] minds of the nineteenth century, in all the world."[84] The anti-war activist John Haynes Holmes echoed that sentiment by commenting that George was "one of the half-dozen great Americans of the nineteenth century, and one of the outstanding social reformers of all time." [85] Edward McGlynn said, "[George] is one of the greatest geniuses that the world has ever seen, and ... the qualities of his heart fully equal the magnificent gifts of his intellect. ... He is a man who could have towered above all his equals in almost any line of literary or scientific pursuit."[86] Likewise, Leo Tolstoy wrote that George was "one of the greatest men of the 19th century."[87]

The social scientist and economist John A. Hobson observed in 1897 that "Henry George may be considered to have exercised a more directly powerful formative and educative influence over English radicalism of the last fifteen years than any other man,"[88] and that George "was able to drive an abstract notion, that of economic rent, into the minds of a large number of 'practical' men, and so generate therefrom a social movement. George had all the popular gifts of the American orator and journalist, with something more. Sincerity rang out of every utterance."[89] Many others agree with Hobson. George Bernard Shaw claims that Henry George was responsible for inspiring 5 out of 6 socialist reformers in Britain during the 1880s, who created socialist organizations such as the Fabian Society.[90] The controversial People's Budget and the Land Values (Scotland) Bill were inspired by Henry George and resulted in a constitutional crisis and the Parliament Act 1911 to reform of the House of Lords, which had blocked the land reform. In Denmark, the Danmarks Retsforbund, known in English as the Justice Party or Single-Tax Party, was founded in 1919. The party's platform is based upon the land tax principles of Henry George. The party was elected to parliament for the first time in 1926, and they were moderately successful in the post-war period and managed to join a governing coalition with the Social Democrats and the Social Liberal Party from the years 1957–60, with diminishing success afterwards.

Non-political means have also been attempted to further the cause. A number of "Single Tax Colonies" were started, such as Arden, Delaware and Fairhope, Alabama. In 1904, Lizzie Magie created a board game called The Landlord's Game to demonstrate George's theories. This was later turned into the popular board game Monopoly.


Landlords Game board, based on Magie's 1924 US patent (no. 1,509,312).

Joseph Jay "J.J." Pastoriza led a successful Georgist movement in Houston. Though the Georgist club, the Houston Single Tax League, started there in 1890, Pastoriza lent use of his property to the league in 1903. He retired from the printing business in 1906 in order to dedicate his life to public service, then traveled the United States and Europe while studying various systems of taxing property. He returned to Houston and served as Houston Tax Commissioner from 1911 through 1917. He introduced his "Houston Plan of Taxation" in 1912: improvements to land and merchants' inventories were taxed at 25 percent of appraised value, unimproved land was taxed at 70 percent of appraisal, and personal property was exempt. However, in 1915, two courts ruled that the Houston Plan violated the Texas Constitution.[91]

Before reading Progress and Poverty, Helen Keller was a socialist who believed that Georgism was a good step in the right direction.[92] She later wrote of finding "in Henry George's philosophy a rare beauty and power of inspiration, and a splendid faith in the essential nobility of human nature."[93] Some speculate that the passion, sincerity, clear explanations evident in Henry George's writing account for the almost religious passion that many believers in George's theories exhibit, and that the promised possibility of creating heaven on Earth filled a spiritual void during an era of secularization.[94] Josiah Wedgwood, the Liberal and later Labour Party politician wrote that ever since reading Henry George's work, "I have known 'that there was a man from God, and his name was Henry George.' I had no need hence-forth for any other faith."[95]

Although both advocated worker's rights, Henry George and Karl Marx were antagonists. Marx saw the Single Tax platform as a step backwards from the transition to communism.[96] On his part, Henry George predicted that if Marx's ideas were tried, the likely result would be a dictatorship.[citation needed] Leo Tolstoy deplored that a silence had fallen around George, for he viewed Georgism as reasonable and realistic, as opposed to other utopian movements,[97] and as a "contribution to the enlightenment of the consciousness of mankind, placed on a practical footing,"[98][99] and that it could help do away with what he called the Slavery of Our Times."[100]

Henry George's popularity waned gradually during the 20th century. However, there are still Georgist organizations. Many influential people who remain famous, such as George Bernard Shaw, were inspired by George or identify as Georgists. In his last book, Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community?, Martin Luther King, Jr referred to Henry George in support of a guaranteed minimum income. Bill Moyers quoted Henry George in a speech and identified George as a "great personal hero."[101] Albert Einstein wrote that "Men like Henry George are rare unfortunately. One cannot imagine a more beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic form and fervent love of justice. Every line is written as if for our generation. The spreading of these works is a really deserving cause, for our generation especially has many and important things to learn from Henry George."[102] FILE NOT FOUND (ERROR 404)

Mason Gaffney, an American economist and a major Georgist critic of neoclassical economics, argued that neoclassical economics was designed and promoted by landowners and their hired economists to divert attention from George's extremely popular philosophy that since land and resources are provided by nature, and their value is given by society, land value—rather than labor or capital—should provide the tax base to fund government and its expenditures.[103]

British MP, Andrew MacLaren believed George's ideas of land taxation would bring about economic justice and argued in favour of them in the House of Commons. Together with his son Leon MacLaren he founded the School of Economic Science, a global organisation teaching Georgist principles.[104]

Joseph Stiglitz wrote that "One of the most important but underappreciated ideas in economics is the Henry George principle of taxing the economic rent of land, and more generally, natural resources."[105] Stiglitz also claims that we now know land value tax "is even better than Henry George thought."

The Robert Schalkenbach Foundation publishes copies of George's works and related texts on economic reform and sponsors academic research into his policy proposals. The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy was founded to promote the ideas of Henry George but now focuses more generally on land economics and policy. The Henry George School of Social Science of New York and its satellite schools teach classes and conduct outreach.

Henry George theorem

Main article: Henry George theorem

In 1977, Joseph Stiglitz showed that under certain conditions, spending by the government on public goods will increase aggregate land rents by at least an equal amount. This result has been dubbed by economists the Henry George theorem, as it characterizes a situation where Henry George's "single tax" is not only efficient, it is also the only tax necessary to finance public expenditures.[106]

Economic contributions

George reconciled the issues of efficiency and equity, showing that both could be satisfied under a system in harmony with natural law.[107] He showed that Ricardo's Law of Rent applied not just to an agricultural economy, but even more so to urban economics. And he showed that there is no inherent conflict between labor and capital provided one maintained a clear distinction between classical factors of production, capital and land.

George developed what he saw as a crucial feature of his own theory of economics in a critique of an illustration used by Frédéric Bastiat in order to explain the nature of interest and profit. Bastiat had asked his readers to consider James and William, both carpenters. James has built himself a plane, and has lent it to William for a year. Would James be satisfied with the return of an equally good plane a year later? Surely not! He'd expect a board along with it, as interest. The basic idea of a theory of interest is to understand why. Bastiat said that James had given William over that year "the power, inherent in the instrument, to increase the productivity of his labor," and wants compensation for that increased productivity.[108]

George did not accept this explanation. He wrote, "I am inclined to think that if all wealth consisted of such things as planes, and all production was such as that of carpenters – that is to say, if wealth consisted but of the inert matter of the universe, and production of working up this inert matter into different shapes – that interest would be but the robbery of industry, and could not long exist."[109] But some wealth is inherently fruitful, like a pair of breeding cattle, or a vat of grape juice soon to ferment into wine. Planes and other sorts of inert matter (and the most lent item of all – money itself) earn interest indirectly, by being part of the same "circle of exchange" with fruitful forms of wealth such as those, so that tying up these forms of wealth over time incurs an opportunity cost.[citation needed]

George's theory had its share of critiques. Austrian school economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, for example, expressed a negative judgment of George's discussion of the carpenter's plane. In his treatise, Capital and Interest, he wrote:

(T)he separation of production into two groups, in one of which the vital forces of nature form a distinct element in addition to labour, while in the other they do not, is entirely untenable... The natural sciences have long ago told us that the cooperation of nature is universal. ... The muscular movement of the man who planes would be of very little use, if the natural powers and properties of the steel edge of the plane did not come to his assistance.[110]

Later, George argued that the role of time in production is pervasive. In The Science of Political Economy, he writes:

[I]f I go to a builder and say to him, "In what time and at what price will you build me such and such a house?" he would, after thinking, name a time, and a price based on it. This specification of time would be essential. ... This I would soon find if, not quarreling with the price, I ask him largely to lessen the time. ... I might get the builder somewhat to lessen the time ... ; but only by greatly increasing the price, until finally a point would be reached where he would not consent to build the house in less time no matter at what price. He would say [that the house just could not be built any faster]. ... The importance ... of this principle – that all production of wealth requires time as well as labor – we shall see later on; but the principle that time is a necessary element in all production we must take into account from the very first.[111]

According to Oscar B. Johannsen, "Since the very basis of the Austrian concept of value is subjective, it is apparent that George's understanding of value paralleled theirs. However, he either did not understand or did not appreciate the importance of marginal utility."[112] On the contrary, George explicitly used marginal utility in his analyses of both the 'margin of production' in macroeconomics and microeconomic decision theory.[113]

Another spirited response came from British biologist T.H. Huxley in his article "Capital – the Mother of Labour," published in 1890 in the journal The Nineteenth Century. Huxley used the scientific principles of energy to undermine George's theory, arguing that, energetically speaking, labor is unproductive.[114]

Works

• Our Land and Land Policy 1871
• Progress and Poverty 1879 unabridged text (1912)
• The Land Question 1881 (The Irish Land Question)
• Social Problems 1883
• Protection or Free Trade 1886
• "The New Party". The North American Review. 145 (368): 1–8. July 1887. ISBN 0-85315-726-X.
• Protection or Free Trade 1886 unabridged text (1905)
• The Standard, New York 1887 to 1890 A weekly periodical started and usually edited by Henry George.
• The Condition of Labor 1891
• A Perplexed Philosopher 1892
• The Science of Political Economy (unfinished) 1898

See also

• Georgism
• Charles Hall – An early precursor to Henry George
• Henry George Birthplace
• Henry George Theorem
• History of the board game Monopoly
• Land Value Tax
• New York City mayoral elections
• Spaceship Earth
• Tammany Hall#1870-1900

References

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7. Contemporary Europe since 1870. Carlton J. H. Hayes. 1953. https://books.google.com/books?id=yCmUjgEACAAJ Quote: "A young Welsh Liberal, David Lloyd George, was especially impressed by Henry George."
8. Stone, Tanya Lee (2018). Pass go and collect $200: the real story of how Monopoly was invented (1st ed.). New York: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 9781627791687.
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12. McNab, John (1972). Towards a Theology of Social Concern: A Comparative Study of the Elements for Social Concern in the Writings of Frederick D. Maurice and Walter Rauschenbusch (PhD thesis). Montreal: McGill University. p. 201. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
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16. Dictionary of American Biography, 1st. ed., s.v. "George, Henry," edited by Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, Vol. VII (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1931), pp. 211–212.
17. David Montgomery, American National Biography Online, s.v. "George, Henry," Feb. 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00261.html Accessed September 3, 2011
18. "American National Biography Online."
19. Obituaries, New York Times, September 30, 1912,
20. "SINGLE TAXERS DINE JOHNSON; Medallion Made by Son of Henry George Presented to Cleveland's Former Mayor", The New York Times – May 31, 1910
21. "Obituary – The New York Times, May 4, 1897" (PDF).
22. De Mille, Agnes. "Finding aid to the Agnes De Mille papers SSC.MS.00046". asteria.fivecolleges.edu.
23. Hill, Malcolm, 1943- (1999). Enemy of injustice : the life of Andrew MacLaren, Member of Parliament. London: Othila Press. ISBN 1901647196. OCLC 42137055.
24. "How Henry George, Jr., Got into the Catholic "Who's Who"". The Fortnightly Review. 18: 704. 1911. Retrieved March 9,2018.
25. Formaini, Robert L. "Henry George Antiprotectionist Giant of American Economics" (PDF). Economic Insights of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. 10 (2). Retrieved October 28, 2014.
26. George, Henry (October 1868). "What the Railroad Will Bring Us". Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine. 1 (4): 297–306.
27. Henry, George, Jr. The Life of Henry George. New York: Doubleday & McClure, 1900, chap. 11.
28. "George, Henry". Encyclopedia.com. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Retrieved October 28, 2014.
29. Charles A. Barker, "Henry George and the California Background of Progress and Poverty," California Historical Society Quartery 24, no. 2 (Jun. 1945), 103–104.
30. Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. "George, Henry," pp. 211–212.
31. Montgomery, American National Biography Online, s.v. "George, Henry," http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00261.htmlAccessed September 3, 2011.
32. Henry George, "What the Railroad Will Bring Us," Overland Monthly 1, no. 4 (Oct. 1868), http://www.grundskyld.dk/1-railway.html Archived April 26, 2012, at the Wayback Machine Accessed September 3, 2011.
33. Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. "George, Henry," 213.
34. Nock, Albert Jay. Henry George: Unorthodox American, Part IV[permanent dead link]
35. Jurgen G. Backhaus, "Henry George's Ingenious Tax: A Contemporary Restatement," American Journal of Economics and Sociology 56, no. 4 (Oct. 1997), 453–458
36. Henry George, Progress and Poverty, (1879; reprinted, London: Kegan Paul, Tench & Co., 1886), 283–284.
37. Charles A. Barker, "Henry George and the California Background of Progress and Poverty," California Historical Society Quartery 24, no. 2 (Jun. 1945), 97–115.
38. According to his granddaughter Agnes de Mille, Progress and Poverty and its successors made Henry George the third most famous man in the US, behind only Mark Twain and Thomas Edison. [1] Archived February 3, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
39. Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. "George, Henry," 214–215.
40. Robert E. Weir, "A Fragile Alliance: Henry George and the Knights of Labor," American Journal of Economics and Sociology56, no. 4 (Oct. 1997), 423–426.
41. Caves, R. W. (2004). Encyclopedia of the City. Routledge. p. 301.
42. Dictionary of American Biography, s. V. "George, Henry," 215.
43. Montgomery, American National Biography, s.v. "George, Henry," http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00261.html
44. "Henry George's Death Abroad. London Papers Publish Long Sketches and Comment on His Career". New York Times. October 30, 1897. Retrieved March 7, 2010. The newspapers today are devoting much attention to the death of Henry George, the candidate of the Jeffersonian Democracy for the office of Mayor of Greater New York, publishing long sketches of his career and philosophical and economical theories.
45. New York Times October 30, 1897 https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesm ... 956699.pdf
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48. University of Chicago. Office of the President. Harper, Judson and Burton Administrations. Records, [Box 37, Folder 3], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library
49. "The Funeral Procession" (PDF). The New York Times. November 1, 1897. Retrieved July 16, 2015.
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51. Henry George, Citizen of the World. By Anna George de Mille. Edited by Don C. Shoemaker. With an Introduction by Agnes de Mille. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1950.
52. George, Henry (1879). "The True Remedy". Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth. VI. New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation. ISBN 0-914016-60-1. Retrieved May 12, 2008.
53. Lough, Alexandra. "The Last Tax: Henry George and the Social Politics of Land Reform in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era". Academia.edu. George only sought to make land common property through the socialization of land rent, or what many have called the "unearned increment" of land value.
54. Backhaus, "Henry George's Ingenious Tax," 453–458.
55. "Supplement to Encyclopædia Britannica". 1889. The labor vote in the election was trifling until Henry George had commenced an agitation for the nationalization of land.
56. Thompson, Robert Ellis; Barker, Wharton (1888). "The American: A National Journal, Volumes 15-16".
57. "A RECEPTION TO MR.GEORGE". The New York Times. October 21, 1882. Mr. George expressed his thanks for the reception and predicted that soon the movement in favor of land nationalization would be felt all over the civilized world.
58. George, Henry (1879). "How Equal Rights to the Land May Be Asserted and Secured". Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth. VIII. New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation. ISBN 0-914016-60-1. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
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60. George, Henry (October 6, 1886). "Throwing His Hat in the Ring: Henry George Runs for Mayor (Acceptance Speech)". New York World, New York Tribune, New York Star, and New York Times. Retrieved February 1, 2016.
61. George, Henry (2016). The annotated works of Henry George. Madison New Jersey Lanham, Maryland New York, NY: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., Robert Schalkenbach Foundation. ISBN 978-1611477016.
62. Weir, "A Fragile Alliance," 425–425
63. Henry George, Protection or Free Trade: An Examination of the Tariff Question, with Especial Regard to the Interests of Labor(New York: 1887).
64. MacCallum, Spencer H. (Summer–Fall 1997). "The Alternative Georgist Tradition" (PDF). Fragments. 35. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 4, 2016. Retrieved October 30, 2014.
65. Cowen, Tyler (May 1, 2009). "Anti-Capitalist Rerun". The American Interest. 4 (5). Retrieved November 15, 2014.
66. Powell, Jim (June 11, 2016). "Milton Friedman's Favorite Book on Trade". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved March 17, 2018.
67. Obenhaus, Matthew (March 7, 2016). "Free Trade Lessons for the Economically Challenged". The Gymnasium. Retrieved March 17, 2018.
68. Lepore, Jill (October 13, 2008). "Rock, Paper, Scissors: How we used to vote". New Yorker. New Yorker.
69. Saltman, Roy (2008). The history and politics of voting technology : chads and other scandals. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 97. ISBN 978-0230605985.
70. For a more complete discussion of the adoption of the Australian Ballot, see Saltman, Roy G., (2006), The History and Politics of Voting Technology, Palgrave Macmillan, NY, pp. 96–103.
71. "To illustrate: It is not the business of government to interfere with the views which any one may hold of the Creator or with the worship he may choose to pay him, so long as the exercise of these individual rights does not conflict with the equal liberty of others; and the result of governmental interference in this domain has been hypocrisy, corruption, persecution and religious war. It is not the business of government to direct the employment of labor and capital, and to foster certain industries at the expense of other industries; and the attempt to do so leads to all the waste, loss and corruption due to protective tariffs." "On the other hand it is the business of government to issue money. This is perceived as soon as the great labor saving invention of money supplants barter. To leave it to every one who chose to do so to issue money would be to entail general inconvenience and loss, to offer many temptations to roguery, and to put the poorer classes of society at a great disadvantage. These obvious considerations have everywhere, as society became well organized, led to the recognition of the coinage of money as an exclusive function of government. When in the progress of society, a further labor-saving improvement becomes possible by the substitution of paper for the precious metals as the material for money, the reasons why the issuance of this money should be made a government function become still stronger. The evils entailed by wildcat banking in the United States are too well remembered to need reference. The loss and inconvenience, the swindling and corruption that flowed from the assumption by each State of the Union of the power to license banks of issue ended with the war, and no one would now go back to them. Yet instead of doing what every public consideration impels us to, and assuming wholly and fully as the exclusive function of the General Government the power to issue money, the private interests of bankers have, up to this, compelled us to the use of a hybrid currency, of which a large part, though guaranteed by the General Government, is issued and made profitable to corporations. The legitimate business of banking—the safekeeping and loaning of money, and the making and exchange of credits—is properly left to individuals and associations; but by leaving to them, even in part and under restrictions and guarantees, the issuance of money, the people of the United States suffer an annual loss of millions of dollars, and sensibly increase the influences which exert a corrupting effect upon their government." The Complete Works of Henry George. "Social Problems," p. 178, Doubleday Page & Co, New York, 1904
72. Turner, Adair (April 13, 2012). "A new era for monetary policy". Berlin: INET. Retrieved January 15, 2016.
73. Hudson, Michael. "Scenarios for Recovery: How to Write Down the Debts and Restructure the Financial System" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on March 4, 2016. Retrieved January 15, 2016.
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79. Martí, José (2002). José Martí : selected writings. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0142437042.
80. Buder, Stanley. Visionaries and Planners: The Garden City Movement and the Modern Community. New York: Oxford UP, 1990.
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85. A sermon that first appeared as No. VIII, Series 1944–45 of the Community Pulpit, published by The Community Church, New York, New York. Reprinted as a pamphlet by the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation <"Archived copy". Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved September 16, 2015.>
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90. Henderson, Archibald. George Bernard Shaw, His Life and Works. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1911.
91. Davis, Stephen (1986). "Joseph Jay Pastoriza and the Single Tax in Houston, 1911–1917" (PDF). 8 (2). Houston Review: history and culture of the Gulf Coast.[permanent dead link]
92. "Wonder Woman at Massey Hall: Helen Keller Spoke to Large Audience Who Were Spellbound". Toronto Star Weekly. January 1914. Retrieved October 31, 2014.
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95. Mulvey, Paul (2010). The Political Life of Josiah C. Wedgwood: Land, Liberty and Empire, 1872–1943. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK Rochester, NY: Boydell Press. ISBN 978-0861933082.
96. "Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1881". http://www.marxists.org.
97. L. Tolstoï. Où est l'issu? (1899) In Les Rayons de l'aube (Dernières études philosophiques). (Tr. J-W Bienstock) Paris; P.-V. Stock Éditeur, 1901, chap. xxiii, pp. 393-411.
98. Wikisource:Letter on Henry George (I)
99. Wikisource:Letter on Henry George (II)
100. Wikisource:The Slavery of Our Times
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104. Stewart, John, 1931- (2001). Standing for justice : a biography of Andrew MacLaren, MP. London: Shepheard-Walwyn. ISBN 0856831948. OCLC 49362105.
105. "The Mason Gaffney Reader". masongaffneyreader.com.
106. Arnott, Richard J.; Joseph E. Stiglitz (November 1979). "Aggregate Land Rents, Expenditure on Public Goods, and Optimal City Size" (PDF). Quarterly Journal of Economics. 93 (4): 471–500. doi:10.2307/1884466. JSTOR 1884466.
107. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on March 3, 2012. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
108. Frédéric Bastiat, That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen," 1850.
109. Henry George, Progress and Poverty,, 161.
110. Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Capital and Interest: A Critical History of Economic Theory transl. William Smart (London: Macmillan and Co., 1890), 417.
111. Henry George, The Science of Political Economy (New York: Doubleday & McClure Co., 1898), 369–370.
112. Johannsen, Oscar B. Henry George and the Austrian economists. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology (Am. j. econ. sociol.) ISSN 0002-9246. Abstract.
113. "The Science of Political Economy, Part III, Chapter 5". politicaleconomy.org.
114. T.H. Huxley, "Capital – the Mother of Labour: An Economical Problem Discussed from a Physiological Point of View," The Nineteenth Century (Mar. 1890).

Further reading

• Barker, Charles Albro Henry George. Oxford University Press 1955 and Greenwood Press 1974. ISBN 0-8371-7775-8

[b]External links

• Works by Henry George at Project Gutenberg
• The Henry George Foundation (United Kingdom)
• Robert Schalkenbach Foundation
• Land Value Taxation Campaign (UK)
• The Henry George Foundation of Australia
• Henry George (1839–1897). The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Library of Economics and Liberty (2nd ed.). Liberty Fund. 2008.
• The Center for the Study of Economics
• The Henry George Institute – Understanding Economics
• The Henry George School, founded 1932.
• Works by or about Henry George at Internet Archive
• Works by Henry George at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Online Works of Henry George
• Wealth and Want
• Prosper Australia
• Henry George Foundation OnlyMelbourne
• The Complete Works of Henry George. Publisher: New York, Doubleday, Page & company, 1904. Description: 10 v. fronts (v. 1–9) ports. 21 cm. (searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu & layered PDF format)
• The Crime of Poverty by Henry George
• Centro Educativo Internacional Henry George (Managua, Nicaragua), in Spanish
• The Economics of Henry George's "Progress and Poverty", by Edgar H. Johnson, 1910.

Charles Bradlaugh
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/10/20

-- Revolution to ruins: The tragic fall of Bradlaugh Hall, by Aown Ali

The Society was now finding its feet. On April 17th it had been resolved to send a delegate "to examine into and report upon the South Yorkshire Miners"! And on the same day it was determined to get up a Soirée. This gathering, held in Gower Street, was memorable because it was attended by Mrs. Annie Besant, then notorious as an advocate of Atheism and Malthusianism, the heroine of several famous law cases, and a friend and colleague of Charles Bradlaugh. Mrs. Besant was elected a member a few weeks later, and she completed the list of the seven who subsequently wrote "Fabian Essays," with the exception of Graham Wallas, who did not join the Society until April, 1886...

Here again a quotation from Bernard Shaw's "Early History of the Fabian Society" is the best description available:...

Before I refreshed my memory on the subject the other day, I had a vague notion that the Conference cost a great deal of money; that it did no good whatever; that Mr. Bradlaugh made a speech; that Mrs. Fenwick Miller, who had nothing on earth to do with us, was in the chair during part of the proceedings; and that the most successful paper was by a strange gentleman whom we had taken on trust as a Socialist, but who turned out to be an enthusiast on the subject of building more harbours....

But an almost contemporary account of the life of Bernard Shaw, probably the most active of the leaders, because the least fettered by his occupation, is given in Tract 41 under the heading ["How to Train for Public Life"]:...

A man's Socialistic acquisitiveness must be keen enough to make him actually prefer spending two or three nights a week in speaking and debating, or in picking up social information even in the most dingy and scrappy way, to going to the theatre, or dancing or drinking, or even sweethearting, if he is to become a really competent propagandist—unless, of course, his daily work is of such a nature as to be in itself a training for political life; and that, we know, is the case with very few of us indeed. It is at such lecturing and debating work, and on squalid little committees and ridiculous little delegations to conferences of the three tailors of Tooley Street, with perhaps a deputation to the Mayor thrown in once in a blue moon or so, that the ordinary Fabian workman or clerk must qualify for his future seat on the Town Council, the School Board, or perhaps in the Cabinet. It was in that way that Bradlaugh, for instance, graduated from being a boy evangelist to being one of the most formidable debaters in the House of Commons....

It must be added that though the tradition that Socialism excludes the established creeds was overthrown by the Fabians, and the claim of the Christian Socialists to rank with the best of us was insisted on faithfully by them, the Fabian leaders did not break the tradition in their own practice. The contention of the Anti-Socialist Union that all Socialists are atheists is no doubt ridiculous in the face of the fact that the intellectual opposition to Socialism has been led exclusively by avowed atheists like Charles Bradlaugh or agnostics like Herbert Spencer, whilst Communism claims Jesus as an exponent...

-- The History of the Fabian Society, by Edward R. Pease

Charles Bradlaugh
Member of Parliament for Northampton
In office: 1880–1891
Preceded by: Charles George Merewether
Succeeded by: Sir Moses Philip Manfield
Personal details
Born: 26 September 1833, Hoxton, England, UK
Died: 30 January 1891 (aged 57), London, England, UK
Nationality: British
Political party: Liberal

Charles Bradlaugh (/ˈbrædlɔː/; 26 September 1833 – 30 January 1891) was an English political activist and atheist. He founded the National Secular Society in 1866.[1]

In 1880, Bradlaugh was elected as the Liberal MP for Northampton. His attempt to affirm as an atheist ultimately led to his temporary imprisonment, fines for voting in the Commons illegally, and a number of by-elections at which Bradlaugh regained his seat on each occasion. He was finally allowed to take an oath in 1886. Eventually, a parliamentary bill which he proposed became law in 1888 which allowed members of both Houses of Parliament to affirm, if they so wished, when being sworn in. The new law resolved the issue for witnesses in civil and criminal court cases.

Early life

Born in Hoxton (an area in the East End of London), Bradlaugh was the son of a solicitor's clerk. He left school at the age of eleven and then worked as an office errand-boy and later as a clerk to a coal merchant. After a brief spell as a Sunday school teacher, he became disturbed by discrepancies between the Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Church and the Bible. When he expressed his concerns, the local vicar, John Graham Packer, accused him of atheism and suspended him from teaching.[2] He was thrown out of the family home and was taken in by Eliza Sharples Carlile, the widow of Richard Carlile, who had been imprisoned for printing Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason. Soon Bradlaugh was introduced to George Holyoake, who organised Bradlaugh's first public lecture as an atheist.

At the age of 17, he published his first pamphlet, A Few Words on the Christian Creed. However, refusing financial support from fellow freethinkers, he enlisted as a soldier with the Seventh Dragoon Guards hoping to serve in India and make his fortune. Instead he was stationed in Dublin. In 1853, he was left a legacy by a great-aunt and used it to purchase his discharge from the army.

Activism and journalism



Bradlaugh returned to London in 1853 and took a post as a solicitor's clerk. By this time he was a convinced freethinker and in his free time he became a pamphleteer and writer about "secularist" ideas, adopting the pseudonym "Iconoclast" to protect his employer's reputation.[3] He gradually attained prominence in a number of liberal or radical political groups or societies, including the Reform League, Land Law Reformers, and Secularists.

He was President of the London Secular Society from 1858. In 1860 he became editor of the secularist newspaper, the National Reformer, and in 1866 co-founded the National Secular Society, in which Annie Besant became his close associate. In 1868, the Reformer was prosecuted by the British Government for blasphemy and sedition. Bradlaugh was eventually acquitted on all charges, but fierce controversy continued both in the courts and in the press.

A decade later (1876), Bradlaugh and Besant decided to republish the American Charles Knowlton's pamphlet advocating birth control, The Fruits of Philosophy, or the Private Companion of Young Married People,[4] whose previous British publisher had already been successfully prosecuted for obscenity. The two activists were both tried in 1877, and Charles Darwin refused to give evidence in their defence, pleading ill-health, but at the time writing to Bradlaugh that his testimony would have been of little use to them because he opposed birth control. They were sentenced to heavy fines and six months' imprisonment, but their conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal on the basis that the prosecution had not set out the precise words which were alleged to be obscene in the indictment. The Malthusian League was founded as a result of the trial to promote birth control. He was a member of a Masonic lodge in Bolton, although he was later to resign due to the nomination of the Prince of Wales as Grand Master.[5]

The Malthusian League was a British organisation which advocated the practice of contraception and the education of the public about the importance of family planning. It was established in 1877 and was dissolved in 1927. The organisation was secular, utilitarian, individualistic, and "above all malthusian." The organisation maintained that it was concerned about the poverty of the British working class and held that over-population was the chief cause of poverty.

The league was initially founded during the "Knowlton trial" of Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh in July 1877. They were prosecuted for publishing Charles Knowlton's Fruits of Philosophy which explained various methods of birth control. The League was formed as a permanent body to advocate for the elimination of penalties for promoting birth control as well as to promote public education in matters of contraception. The trial demonstrated that the public was interested in the topic of contraception and sales of the book surged during the trial.

-- Malthusian League, by Wikipedia

On 6 March 1881 he spoke at the opening of Leicester Secular Society's new Secular Hall in Humberstone Gate, Leicester. The other speakers were George Jacob Holyoake, Annie Besant and Harriet Law.[6]

Politics

Bradlaugh was an advocate of trade unionism, republicanism, and universal suffrage, and he opposed socialism.[7] His anti-socialism was divisive, and many secularists who became socialists left the secularist movement because of its identification with Bradlaugh's liberal individualism. He was a supporter of Irish Home Rule, and backed France during the Franco-Prussian War. He took a strong interest in India.

Parliament


Bradlaugh's arrest in Parliament

In 1880 Bradlaugh was elected Member of Parliament for Northampton. To take his seat and become an active Parliamentarian, he needed to signify his allegiance to the Crown and on 3 May Bradlaugh came to the Table of the House of Commons, bearing a letter to the Speaker "begging respectfully to claim to be allowed to affirm" instead of taking the religious Oath of Allegiance, citing the Evidence Amendment Acts of 1869 and 1870. Speaker Brand declared that he had "grave doubts" and asked the House for its judgment. Lord Frederick Cavendish, for the Government, moved that a Select Committee be set up to decide whether persons entitled to make a solemn affirmation in court were also allowed to affirm instead of taking the Parliamentary oath.[8][9]

First Select Committee


Caricature from Punch, 1881 – "Mr. Bradlaugh, M.P., The Northampton Cherub"


Bradlaugh's pamphlet 'A plea for atheism', from the Conway Hall digital collections.

This Select Committee held only one brief meeting on 12 May 1880. The Attorney General, Sir Henry James, moved that anyone entitled to affirm to give evidence in court was also entitled to affirm instead of taking the Oath in Parliament. Sir John Holker, Conservative MP for Preston, moved an amendment to reverse this finding, and the committee split down the middle with eight members (seven Conservatives and Charles Henry Hopwood, Liberal MP for Stockport) supporting the amendment and eight (all Liberals) opposing it; on the casting vote of the chairman Spencer Horatio Walpole the amendment was carried.[10] Bradlaugh was not surprised that the Committee had gone against him, and notified the Speaker that he would attend to take the Oath on 21 May.

Attempts to take the Oath

To explain his actions, Bradlaugh wrote an open letter to The Times which was published on the morning of 21 May. He said it would have been hypocritical to voluntarily take the oath "including words of idle and meaningless character" without protest when another form of words was available, but now that the Select Committee had ruled he must, he would do so and "regard myself as bound not by the letter of its words, but by the spirit which the affirmation would have conveyed had I been permitted to use it."

Bradlaugh's letter was regarded as a direct provocation by his opponents, and when he came to the table, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff rose to object to the administration of the Oath to Bradlaugh. Speaker Brand allowed him to object, and Wolff argued that the Evidence Amendment Acts referred to by Bradlaugh only allowed an affirmation to one who regarded the oath as meaningless, so the House should not allow Bradlaugh to take it. Prime Minister William Gladstone, alerted to the fact that a protest was possible, moved to set up a second Select Committee to examine whether it was possible to interfere with a Member wishing to take the oath. Gladstone's amendment was carried by 289 to 214.[11]

Second Select Committee


Bradlaugh by Spy in Vanity Fair, 1887

The Select Committee began deliberating on 1 June 1880, when it considered a paper put in by Sir Thomas Erskine May, the Clerk of the House. Sir Thomas found several precedents for Members disabled to sit for refusing to take the Oath, together with Quaker MP Joseph Pease who was permitted to affirm, and Jewish MPs Baron Lionel de Rothschild and David Salomons who were eventually allowed to take the Oath while omitting the words "on the true faith of a Christian".[12]

On the following day, Erskine May and Bradlaugh himself were questioned by the Committee, with Bradlaugh arguing that, should the Committee decide he had no right to affirm, he would take the oath and regard it as binding on his conscience.[13] When the Committee decided its report, it agreed by one vote an amendment declaring that the House could "and, in the opinion of your Committee, ought to" prevent Bradlaugh taking the Oath.[14] It also added (by 12 votes to 9) that it would be possible for an action in the High Court of Justice to test whether an affirmation was genuinely legal, and therefore recommended that if Bradlaugh sought to affirm, he should be allowed to do so in order that such an action be brought to clarify the law.[15] The second Select Committee had effectively reversed the outcome of the first.[16]

When it was known that this was the likely outcome of the Select Committee, Bradlaugh's fellow Northampton MP Henry Labouchère initiated a debate on a motion to allow Bradlaugh to affirm. Sir Hardinge Giffard moved an amendment that Bradlaugh be not permitted to take either the Oath or make an affirmation. After two days of debate,[17] Giffard's amendment was carried by 275 to 230, a defeat which surprised Gladstone. The majority comprised 210 Conservatives, 34 Liberals and 31 Irish Home Rulers; supporting Bradlaugh were 218 Liberals, 10 Home Rulers and 2 Conservatives.[18] On the next day, Bradlaugh came to the Table claiming to take the Oath; in consequence of the previous night's vote the Speaker ordered him to withdraw.

Bradlaugh was permitted to address the House from behind the Bar (which was technically outside the Chamber), and treated the occasion as his maiden speech. He based his argument on law, contending that he was not legally disqualified, and asking "as one man against six hundred" for the same justice he would receive in the Courts. Although well received, the speech was too late to reverse the decision, and Henry Labouchère was forced to withdraw a motion to rescind it.[19]

Imprisonment

The initial difficulty is in defining the word "God". It is equally impossible to intelligently affirm or deny any proposition unless there is at least an understanding, on the part of the affirmer or denier, of the meaning of every word used in the proposition. To me the word "God" standing alone is a word without meaning. ... So long as the word "God" is undefined I do not deny "God".

—Charles Bradlaugh[20]

A portrait of Charles Bradlaugh in 1890, drawn by artist Walter Sickert, from the first issue of The Whirlwind

At that point Bradlaugh was summoned back to the table to be told the outcome of the debate; having relayed it, the Speaker then ordered him to withdraw. Bradlaugh "respectfully refused" to obey an order of the House which was "against the law". The Conservative leader Sir Stafford Northcote successfully moved a motion that Bradlaugh be required to withdraw (agreed on a division by 326 to 38, Liberal MPs being unwilling to challenge a motion which sustained the House's legal authority) but Bradlaugh "positively refused to obey". The Serjeant-at-arms was sent for and led Bradlaugh out to the Bar of the House, but Bradlaugh then immediately returned to the table claiming to take the Oath. At this Sir Stafford Northcote moved that Bradlaugh be taken into custody. The House agreed, on a division by 274 votes to 7 and Bradlaugh was taken to the small prison cell located under Big Ben in the Clock Tower.[21]

Lord Randolph Churchill roused the Conservatives by leading resistance to Bradlaugh.

Because Members had to take the oath before being allowed to take their seats, he effectively forfeited his seat in Parliament. His seat fell vacant and a by-election was declared. Bradlaugh was re-elected by Northampton four times in succession as the dispute continued. Supporting Bradlaugh were William Ewart Gladstone, T. P. O'Connor and George Bernard Shaw as well as hundreds of thousands of people who signed a public petition. Opposing his right to sit were the Conservative Party, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and other leading figures in the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church.

On at least one occasion, Bradlaugh was escorted from the House by police officers. In 1883 he took his seat and voted three times before being fined £1,500 for voting illegally. A bill allowing him to affirm was defeated in Parliament.

In 1886 Bradlaugh was finally allowed to take the oath, and did so at the risk of prosecution under the Parliamentary Oaths Act. Two years later, in 1888, he secured passage of a new Oaths Act,[22] which enshrined into law the right of affirmation for members of both Houses, as well as extending and clarifying the law as it related to witnesses in civil and criminal trials (the Evidence Amendment Acts of 1869 and 1870 had proved unsatisfactory, though they had given relief to many who would otherwise have been disadvantaged). Bradlaugh spoke in Parliament about the London matchgirls strike of 1888.

Personal life

His daughter, Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner (1858–1935), was a peace activist, author, atheist and freethinker. She was named for Hypatia, the Ancient Greek pagan philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and teacher, who was murdered by a mob of Coptic monks devoted to the Christian archbishop Cyril of Alexandria.[citation needed]

Death


Bradlaugh's grave in Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey


Bradlaugh's statue at Abington Square, Northampton.

Bradlaugh died on 30 January 1891. His funeral was attended by 3,000 mourners, including a 21-year-old Mohandas Gandhi.[23][24][25] He is buried in Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey.[26]


Photo of the Charles Bradlaugh Statue in Northampton, Abington Square with a large crowd.

In 1898, Bradlaugh's daughter Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner wrote a pamphlet in answer to the question that was often addressed to her: whether her father "changed his opinions and became a Christian" before he died. Bonner laid out all the evidence and concluded that her father gave no indication that his opinions had changed in the "smallest" way.[27]

Commemoration

A statue of Bradlaugh is located on a traffic island at Abington Square, Northampton. The statue points west towards the centre of Northampton, the accusing finger periodically missing due to vandalism.[citation needed] In 2014 the statue was cleaned and returned to the stonework. New signs are to be installed in 2015 on the roundabout reading "Charles Bradlaugh MP".

Since 2002, an "Annual Commemoration" has taken place beneath the statue at 3 pm on the Sunday closest to his birthday, organised by the Charles Bradlaugh Society.[28] Attendees are invited to speak about Charles Bradlaugh. 2014 saw the addition of the inaugural Bradlaugh Talk with speakers on issues relevant to Bradlaugh. The first speaker was Graham Smith, CEO of Republic.[29]

Bradlaugh Fields, a community wildlife park situated to the north of Northampton, was named after Charles Bradlaugh when it opened in 1998.[30] Other landmarks bearing his name include The Charles Bradlaugh pub, Charles Bradlaugh Hall at the University of Northampton and Bradlaugh Hall in Lahore, Pakistan.

In November 2016 a portrait bust of Charles Bradlaugh entered the Parliamentary Art Collection.[31] Displayed in the Palace of Westminster, the sculpture was designed by Suzie Zamit (who is the fourth female sculptor to have work represented in the Parliamentary Art Collection) and was donated by the National Secular Society as part of its 150th anniversary celebrations.[32]

Bibliography

Works by Charles Bradlaugh: 132 works online.[33]

• Political Essays: A Compilation (1833–1891)[34]
• Half-Hours with the Freethinkers 1857[35]
• The Credibility and Morality of the Four Gospels, 1860[36]
• Who Was Jesus Christ, and What Did He Teach? 1860
• A Few Words About the Devil (includes an autobiographical sketch) 1864[37]
• A Plea for Atheism (included in Theological Essays) 1864[38]
• The Bible: What It Is! 1870[39]
• The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick 1875[40]
• The Freethinker's Text-Book, Vol 1 1876
• Is The Bible Divine? (Debate with Roberts) 1876[41]
• Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers (rpt Half-Hours with the Freethinkers) 1877[42]
• When Were Our Gospels Written? 1881[43]
• Some Objections to Socialism 1884[44]
• The Atheistic Platform: 12 Lectures by Charles Bradlaugh, Annie Besant [and others] 1884[45]
• Is There a God? 1887[20]
• Humanity's Gain from Unbelief 1889
• Labor and Law 1891
• The True Story of My Parliamentary Struggle 1882[46]
• Heresy: Its Utility And Morality. A Plea And A Justification 1882[47]
• Theological Essays ( includes 20 essays) 1895[48]
• Man, Whence and How? and Religion, What and Why? (rpt of The Freethinker's Text-Book, Vol 1) 1906[49]

See also

• Luis Emilio Recabarren, Chilean communist, was prevented from assuming his position because, as an atheist, he refused to be sworn in on a Bible.

Citations

1. "Charles Bradlaugh (1833–1891): Founder". National Secular Society. Archived from the original on 16 April 2008. Retrieved 22 March 2008.
2. See Bradlaugh-Bonner (1908, p.8); Headlingly (1888, pp. 5–6); Tribe (1971, p.18)
3. "Charles Bradlaugh". Oxforddnb.com. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
4. Knowlton, Charles (October 1891) [1840]. Besant, Annie; Bradlaugh, Charles (eds.). Fruits of philosophy: a treatise on the population question. San Francisco: Reader's Library. OCLC 626706770. View original copy.
See also: Langer, William L. (Spring 1975). "The origins of the birth control movement in England in the early nineteenth century". Journal of Interdisciplinary History. MIT Press. 5 (4): 669–686. doi:10.2307/202864. JSTOR 202864. PMID 11619426.
5. "Charles Bradlaugh". Freemasonry.bcy.ca. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
6. "Random Recollections of Leicester Secular Society". Retrieved 23 February 2015.
7. Theresa Notare, A Revolution in Christian Morals: Lambeth 1930-Resolution #15. History and Reception (ProQuest, 2008), 188.
8. Arnstein, p. 34-35
9. "PARLIAMENTARY OATH (MR. BRADLAUGH). (Hansard, 3 May 1880)". api.parliament.uk. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
10. Arnstein, p. 38; "Report from the Select Committee on the Parliamentary Oath" HCP 159 (1880).
11. Arnstein, p. 40-51; Hansard 3ser vol 252 cols 187–221, 333–422.
12. "Report from the Select Committee on Parliamentary Oath (Mr. Bradlaugh)", HCP 226 (1880), Appendix No. 1 (pp. 25–33).
13. Evidence, Q 85.
14. Proceedings of the Select Committee, p. xv–xvi.
15. Proceedings of the Select Committee, p. xvii–xviii.
16. Arnstein, p. 70.
17. Hansard, 3ser, vol 253 cols 443–513, 550–628.
18. Arnstein, p. 73–74.
19. Arnstein, pp. 75–76.
20. "Is There a God? : Bradlaugh, Charles, 1833–1891 : Free Download & Streaming". Retrieved 15 July 2016.
21. Arnstein, p. 76–77.
22. "Random Recollections of Leicester Secular Society". Leicestersecularsociety.org.uk. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
23. Chatterjee, Margaret (2005). Gandhi and the challenge of religious diversity: religious pluralism revisited. New Delhi/Chicago:Promilla & Co./Bibliophile South Asia, p.330
24. Payne, Robert (1969). The life and death of Mahatma Gandhi. New York: E.P. Duttonhttp://leicestersecularsociety.or ... tm#%281%29, pp.73.
25. Arnstein (1983), p.322.
26. "Charles Bradlaugh". Necropolis Notables. The Brookwood Cemetery Society. Archived from the original on 25 March 2007. Retrieved 23 February 2007.
27. "Did Charles Bradlaugh die an atheist?". Retrieved 15 July 2016.
28. "About the Charles Bradlaugh Society". Charles Bradlaugh Society. Archived from the original on 23 December 2015. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
29. "Inaugural Annual Charles Bradlaugh Talk". Charles Bradlaugh Society. 27 September 2014.
30. "History of Bradlaugh Fields". Bradlaugh Fields & Barn. Archived from the original on 24 September 2016.
31. Celebrating the first atheist MP Charles Bradlaugh, 14 November 2016, retrieved 17 November 2016
32. "Portrait bust of NSS founder Charles Bradlaugh MP unveiled in Parliament". National Secular Society. 2 November 2016. Retrieved 17 November 2016.
33. "Internet Archive Search: Charles Bradlaugh". Retrieved 15 July 2016.
34. "Political essays : Bradlaugh, Charles, 1833–1891 : Free Download & Streaming". Retrieved 15 July 2016.
35. A. Collins (1857). J. Watts (ed.). "Half-hours with the freethinkers". p. 1. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
36. "The credibility and morality of the four Gospels, report of the discussion between T.D. Matthias". Retrieved 15 July 2016.
37. Charles Bradlaugh (1874). A Few Words about the Devil: And Other Biographical Sketches and Essays. A. K. Butts. Retrieved 15 July 2016. A Few Words About the Devil.
38. "A Plea for Atheism : Bradlaugh, Charles, 1833–1891 : Free Download & Streaming". Retrieved 15 July 2016.
39. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 2015-03-26.
40. "The impeachment of the House of Brunswick : Bradlaugh, Charles, 1833–1891 : Free Download & Streaming". Retrieved 15 July 2016.
41. Charles Bradlaugh (1876). Is the Bible Divine?: A Six Nights' Discussion Between Mr. Charles Bradlaugh ... F. Pitman. p. 90. Retrieved 15 July 2016. The Roberts-Bradlaugh Debate.
42. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 31 March 2015. Retrieved 2015-03-26.
43. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 30 March 2015. Retrieved 2015-03-26.
44. Platform, Atheistic (1884). "The atheistic platform, 12 lectures by C. Bradlaugh [and others]". p. 99. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
45. Platform, Atheistic (1884). "The atheistic platform, 12 lectures by C. Bradlaugh [and others]". Retrieved 15 July 2016.
46. "The True Story of My Parliamentary Struggle : Charles Bradlaugh : Free Download & Streaming". Retrieved 15 July 2016.
47. "Heresy: Its Utility and Morality : Bradlaugh, Charles, 1833–1891 : Free Download & Streaming". Retrieved 15 July 2016.
48. "Theological Essays : Bradlaugh, Charles, 1833–1891 : Free Download & Streaming". Retrieved 15 July 2016.
49. Charles Bradlaugh (1906). "Man: Whence and How?: Religion: what and Why?". Retrieved 15 July 2016.

References

• Alexander, Nathan G. (2019). Race in a Godless World: Atheism, Race, and Civilization, 1850-1914. New York/Manchester: New York University Press/Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-1526142375
• Alexander, Nathan G. "Atheism and Polygenesis in the Nineteenth Century: Charles Bradlaugh's Racial Anthropology." Modern Intellectual History. (2018)
• Arnstein, Walter L (1962). "Gladstone and the Bradlaugh Case". Victorian Studies. 5 (4): 303–330.
• Arnstein, Walter L. (1965) The Bradlaugh Case: a study in late Victorian opinion and politics. Oxford University Press. (2nd ed. with new postscript chapter published as The Bradlaugh Case: Atheism, Sex and Politics Among the Late Victorians, University of Missouri Press, 1983. ISBN 0-8262-0425-2)
• Besant, Annie. Autobiographical Sketches (1885) in which Bradlaugh plays a major role.
• Besant, Annie. An Autobiography (1893) in which Chap VI is devoted to Charles Bradlaugh.
• Bonner, Hypatia Bradlaugh (1895). Charles Bradlaugh: A Record of His Life and Work, Vol 1. London, T. Fisher Unwin.
• Bonner, Hypatia Bradlaugh (1891), Catalogue of the Library of the Late Charles Bradlaugh. London: Mrs. H. Bradlaugh Bonner
• Champion of Liberty: Charles Bradlaugh (Centenary Volume) (1933). London, Watts & Co and Pioneer Press.
• Diamond, M. (2003) Victorian Sensation, London, Anthem Press. ISBN 1-84331-150-X, pp. 101–110.
• Headingly, Adolphe S. (1888). The biography of Charles Bradlaugh. London: Freethought Publishing Company.
• Manvell, Roger (1976). Trial of Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh. London: Elek/Pemberton.
• Niblett, Bryan (2011). Dare to Stand Alone: The Story of Charles Bradlaugh. Oxford: kramedart press. ISBN 978-0-9564743-0-8
• Robertson, J.M. (1920). Charles Bradlaugh. London, Watts & Co.
• Tribe, David (1971) President Charles Bradlaugh MP. London, Elek. ISBN 0-236-17726-5

External links

• Works by Charles Bradlaugh at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Charles Bradlaugh at Internet Archive
• Works by Charles Bradlaugh at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Charles Bradlaugh
• NSS Founder, Charles Bradlaugh
• ‘The Cause of Humanity’: Charles Bradlaughnand Freemasonry‘ by Professor Andrew Prescott, PhD, 2003
• Charles Bradlaugh writings (Bank of Wisdom)
• Dare To Stand Alone by Bryan Niblett – book review by Edward Pearce
• Detailed account in page on police in Parliament by Robin Fell
• Browse and search the catalogue of the Charles Bradlaugh Collection and Bradlaugh Papers archive, held at the Bishopsgate Institute, London.
• Charles Bradlaugh Collection, Northamptonshire Central Library, Northampton
• Hackney Plaques and Social History: birthplace of Charles Bradlaugh
• Omnibus: Charles Bradlaugh, BBC World Service radio programme, broadcast 1991
• A bronze bust of Bradlaugh
• Northampton based Charles Bradlaugh Society