Fair Use Blog

1857: Cart War in context of Anglo lynchings of Mexicans. / BB&W 49

Although the California gold rush witnessed some of the worst acts of mob violence against Mexicans, whites also resorted to savagery–in order to secure economic supremacy–on other occasions. Actions during the Texas “Cart War” of 1857 exemplify this. During the 1850s, Texas businessmen developed a freight-hauling service between Indianola and San Antonio. Frustrated at having been beaten out by the lower prices of their Mexican [50] rivals, white competitors resorted to murdering cartmen, driving off their oxen and burning their carts and freight. Economic rivalry with Mexicans continued to inspire retributive action by whites throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1898, a group of Gonzales, Texas men–probably poor white sharecroppers in competition with Mexican immigrants–posted this warning: “Notice to the Mexicans. You have all got ten days to leave in. Mr. May Renfro and brother get your Mexicans all off your place. If not, you will get the same they do. Signed, Whitecaps.” In the 1920s, alarm at the increasing number of Mexican laborers who settled in the Rio Grande valley contributed to the growth of the local Ku Klux Klan.^[53]

William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, "Muerto por Unos Desconocidos (Killed by Persons Unknown): Mob Violence against Blacks and Mexicans," in Beyond Black & White: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the U.S. South and Southwest, edited by Stephanie Cole and Alison M. Parker (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), 49ff.

1. ^[53]Waco Times-Herald, Feb. 17, 1898; David J. Weber, ed., Foreigners in their Native Land: Historical Roots of the Mexicans (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973), p. 153; George P. Garrison, Texas: A Contest of Civilizations (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1973), p. 274; Frank W. Johnson, A History of Texas and Texans (Chicago: American Historical Society, 1914), vol. 1, pp. 515-16; J. Fred Rippy, The United States and Mexico (New York: F. S. Crofts & Co., 1931), pp. 179-80; Charles C. Alexander, The Ku Klux Klan in the Southwest (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965), p. 24. For further evidence of economic competition precipitating mob violence, see Mary Romero, “El Paso Salt War: Mob Action or Political Struggle?” Aztlán 16, nos. 1-2 (1985): 119-38.↩

This is an item from a 1916 issue of The American Printer (Vol. 62.12), printed at New York. I noticed it and clipped it out because it's about the career of Horace E. Carr, a Cleveland-area printer (active in the Cleveland arts scene, influenced by the work of William Morris, and also a friend of the individualist anarchist Fred Schulder, whose pamphlet he printed). Here:

The Success of an Efficient Printer

SOME one sent us a copy of a house-organ that was several years old, and in it we found a marked article by David Gibson, in which he tells in his interesting style the story of Horace Carr, the Cleveland printer. It is worth reading:

Back in 1893, when we all had fresh bank failures every morning for breakfast, a printer in the old Herald job office in Cleveland, O., bought an old treadle press and a few fonts of type from a man who conducted a combination printing shop and candy store out in his neighborhood, which equipment he stored away in a room in his house.

A few weeks later when bank failures were about all anybody had for breakfast, this printer found himself out of a job.

He tried to find another, but the thought came to him very soon that it would be easier to find a few jobs of printing at which both he and the little outfit he had stored away could work.

This theory proved to be correct, and its occurring to him after he had been thrown out of employment is a very good illustration of why throwing out a man very frequently gives him a boost.

His first job was 20,000 counter slips for a neighboring grocery, and for which he agreed to accept provisions as payment.

Now, anybody who has ever been anywhere near a treadle press knows that 20,000 impressions, one at a time, is a whole lot. He didn't have enough rules to set the job three times--the capacity of his press--and he didn't feel justified in adding any more to his investment; but--

Where there is want there is a will.

He set the job once, made a mold by beating wet tissue backed with blotting paper down into the type with a hairbrush, held the mold tight to the type between a couple of scrap-steel plates by means of a couple of glue clamps, and baked the impression dry in the kitchen-stove oven.

Then he melted the contents of the hellbox in a soup ladle, cast three stereotype plates, and thus by a little headwork he cut his footwork in three.

The work following this consisted of billheads for job carpenters, business cards for clothes-wringer peddlers, and tickets for milkmen.

He was alive to the value of advertising as appealing to the habits and tendencies of the human mind; when he went out soliciting work he needed something to leave with those on whom he called--something to serve as a reminder.

So he set a line on a card:

Perfect Printing Punctually Performed Pleases Particular People!

He didn't have enough Ps: there were only six in the font in which he was compelled to set it for display, so he cut the seventh out of a block of maple wood.

Even with all his disadvantages, his work was good enough to impress the city librarian, and he was asked to figure on an annual report.

He got the job even though he was the third highest bidder, by agreeing to set in hand composition what the others proposed to do with a machine. Linotype composition in those days was not up to its present high state of perfection.

The job was too big for his imposing stone, to say nothing of his press, so he made it up on the kitchen table and farmed out the presswork.

With the profit on this job he bought more equipment, and a little later he moved downtown.

This man was Horace Carr.

He is today, perhaps, the foremost strictly type printer in America, and has done as much as any one man to revive this simple, beautiful art and commercially apply it to what would otherwise be the commonplace.

His influence has been felt not only directly through his own work, but by the published examples and exhibitions he has educated the younger printers to his tradition.

It was a big jump from being thrown out of a newspaper job office to his present position, but--

Many a man loses his opportunity by not losing his job.

An examination of some samples of his very early work, which includes some milk tickets, very clearly indicates the reason for his present position.

These early efforts indicate a simplicity, care and cleanliness beyond the same class of work at that time.

He took pains and at the expense of untold labor by reason of lack of common facilities. He used one job to study the next, and doubtless put more pride in his work than he got out in price.

His price may have been market, yet his quality was more than market.

While Horace Carr's plant is not large today, and his business is not large as compared with that of many printers, yet it is more than complete, and his patronage is unique.

It is not always well to measure a success with a tapeline; more frequently a micrometer will do.

His product is mostly small-edition work involving strictly type design.

He gets better than market prices for his work even though he may not get all that he thinks it is worth.

Few of us ever get what we think we are worth.

Horace Carr can actually express a personality or a business in type.

For instance, a letterhead for a millinery store would express the feminine in type selection and color scheme, in direct contrast to the boldness expressed in a letterhead for a machine shop.

The writer once saw a letterhead that he designed [p. 20] for a fashionable undertaker. You would have known that it was for one of that profession without reading it. The type selection had a suggestion of early religious printing, and the whole was done in purple and black to suggest mourning.

While Horace Carr's work has all been performed in Cleveland, yet his first real recognition came from abroad. Some samples of his work fell into the hands of the British Printer, one of the leading typographical journals of England.

And there is a good example in this for any man in any field of endeavor: A man may do good work in some place and get recognition for it another; a mechanic may do good work in one shop and get recognition for it in another; a man may do good work on one farm and get his reward on another.

A man should be efficient for his own sake, in his own selfish interest, rather than out of consideration for the man for whom he may be immediately working.

The efficient man can get a job anywhere; it becomes a selection of jobs rather than just a job.

An efficient man doesn't have to work under unjust conditions; he can go where the conditions are just.

The efficient man can be absolutely certain of the money return if he makes efficiency the first consideration.

--From The Success of an Efficient Printer, in The American Printer: A Semi-Monthly News, Business and Technical Journal 62.12 (June 20, 1916). 19-20.

Source

• Google Books: American Printer and Lithographer, Volume 62, pp. 17-18

I am happy to announce a new transcription now available over at the main Fair Use Repository site: a rare Anarchist pamphlet from Cleveland, in 1899, of Fred Schulder's essay, The Relation of Anarchism to Organization:

[. . .]

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The theory of anarchism has a destructive, as well as a constructive side. It, being the doctrine of equal liberty, it is necessarily opposed to all that destroys this equal liberty, classing all such destructive agencies under the general term "government." This word has been defined by anarchists as invasion of the non-invasive individual’s liberty. In this sense, I must insist that the word be used in this discussion, for in this sense I shall use it: and if, in criticising my statements, you use the word in a different sense, you are not criticising the thought expressed by me, but only a thing of your own manufacture.

It may be claimed, however, that government, even in this sense, is but imperfectly defined until we know what does, and what does not, constitute invasion of equal liberty in every imaginable case. I concede that a difficulty exists here—that the line cannot be quite definitely drawn. But pray, have those who thus object, a remedy to offer? Have their courts of justice (?) ever discovered the true line? Have they ever discovered what, as an argument against a social theory, is claimed to be undiscoverable? Or, have they not, on the contrary, perpetrated invasions of equal liberty so gross that even the dullest mind must perceive it and cry out in disgust? Under liberty, however, this difficulty will continue to grow less; men will ever more realize their mutual dependence, and this must increase with the development of the social organism. And realizing this mutual dependence, they will adjust these minor differences according to their intelligence—an adjustment which government often prevents.

Now let us get back to the main point: anarchism is necessarily opposed to all government; the state is essentially governmental (that is to say, invasive), not only in its reaction on other organisms, but also in the forming of its own organization; it invades the liberty of its own members. What the anarchist objects to in the state is not the element of organization but the element of government.

Take the element of government out of the state, and no anarchist will object to the remains.

Since organization vastly increases the strength and efficiency of that which is organized, the anarchist sees in organized government—that is, organized invasion—the most effective and the most dangerous kind of invasion. The doctrine of equal liberty necessarily implying the unconditional self-ownership of the individual, it logically follows that it implies, also, the ownership of his product. The taking of the producer’s product without his consent is described by the anarchist as robbery. Hence anarchism is opposed to robbery—to all robbery. And again it finds in organized robbery the most effective form. Through the instrumentality of the state some individuals acquire a monopoly of opportunities, some of which are absolutely necessary to the production of wealth, and others very helpful to it. Such opportunities are freedom to the use of land, the freedom of trade, the freedom to use any medium of exchange which will be accepted, the freedom to invent or to copy, etc.,—monopolies which are unthinkable in absence of government, and which enable their holders to extract from the producer, as a tribute for allowing him to utilize whatever is so monopolized, such a portion of his product as is equaled by the benefits derived from this utilization. Now, since the monopolization of natural opportunities is based on invasion of equal freedom—on government,—its necessary economic result, the exaction of this tribute, (which, I believe, I am safe in saying, constitutes the greater part of the whole product) is also based on government.

Such is the fruit of organized robbery. And again, anarchism is opposed, not to the organization, but to the robbery. Although, of course, without the robbery, the organization would be without purpose in this instance, and consequently would not exist.

Having seen that anarchism is not opposed to organization itself, let us now go a little further and see if it does not in some cases indirectly further organization, by opposing that which tends to prevent or retard this organization. Since organization, as we have seen, is the life-principle of all aggregation or association, it is obvious that it would take place naturally wherever the individuals composing an association found it mutually advantageous. And it would take place as rapidly as they fuond it to be to their mutual advantage, provided this organization were not opposed by other forces. All such opposition must necessarily be in the nature of invasion of liberty; such opposition must be government. Anarchism then, by opposing government, would indirectly further such organization.

Instances of government opposing organization are numerous. Let us take society in general. There is a natural tendency for people to shift about, until they finally settle where they find surroundings to which they are best adapted. This tendency is being interfered with by organized government—the state—through emigration and immigration laws. In thickly-populated parts of the earth we find government prohibiting emigration, while in relatively thinly-populated countries the same force is directed against immigration.

In the industrial organism, government interference is so obvious that it is needless to point out any particular case. Wherever we turn, we find ourselves confronted by tariffs, patents, copyrights, licenses, and numerous other legislation. While these laws effectually rob the producer, they also retard industrial organization. For in the absence of these interferences, under free competition, each, after taking into account the economic demand and natural opportunities, would take to such employment as would be best fitted to his peculiar abilities. This he does now, after taking into account also the tax, fine, or (as I should call it) the robbery, which is attached to the consumption of some products, and which tends to disturb the demand. Now, if this legislation remained unchanged, the adaptation would at last become perfect, and although the producer would still be robbed, the organization of industry would not be retarded. But on account of the constant fighting among the robbers for the plunder, and through other causes, this legislation is ever changing, and the energy, which under freedom, would be used for further organization, is wasted in re-adaptation to changed interfering agencies. Hence, such legislation retards industrial organization; and anarchism, since it opposes government, both organized and unorganized, indirectly furthers social and industrial organization.

[. . .]

>

--From Fred Schulder, The Relation of Anarchism to Organization (1899; Cleveland, Horace E. Carr)

Schulder (1874-1961) was a anarchist writer, speaker, and sometime traveling salesman -- during 1907-1908, he made a living travelling throughout America selling books from Benjamin Tucker's publishing house and subscriptions to Liberty. He had a conscience marriage with fellow anarchist writer Adeline Champney; their son, Horace Champney, was an anti-war radical involved with A Quaker Action Group, who sailed a boat full of medical supplies to North Vietnam during the American War. James J. Martin described this pamphlet by Schulder in the context of the younger generation of individualists trying to build on the work of Tucker and the Liberty circle: Others attempted the task assumed by [William] Bailie in reconciling the many elements which went to make up individualist anarchism from the combined influence of Spencerian and Stirnerite doctrines. One of these projected syntheses was the brief outline of Fred Schulder, The Relation of Anarchism to Organization. Another was Francis D. Tandy, an associate of Cohen in Denver, whose Modern Social Tendencies and Voluntary Socialism were anarchist works of considerable repute, showing influence of Tucker, Spencer and Thoreau. Both Tandy and Schulder were recipients of Tucker's approval in their activities along the program of educational propaganda for the anarchist cause (Men Against the State [1970/2009], p. 258). (Tucker may well have approved of Schulder's efforts, on the whole, but the reaction to the pamphlet in Liberty ["On Picket Duty," XIII.12, p. 1] was to make fun of the typesetting. Having read the original, I can say that this was an accurate enough complaint; but perhaps not entirely to the point.) Schulder's essay is, in any case, an interesting attempt at discussing the possibilities of consensual social organization, and the anti-social, anti-coordinative features of State force, from a framework based on Spencerian evolutionary theory.

I'm happy to announce that the Fair Use Repository has added a new article to its collection: A Retrospect, an autobiographical sketch of the political development of A. L. Ballou, the individualist Anarchist and sometime contributor to Benjamin Tucker's Liberty. (This A. L. Ballou should not be confused with Adin Ballou, 1803-1890, the abolitionist minister and advocate of Christian non-resistance.) The article, discussing Ballou's development from Republican Party politics, to the freethought movement and the temperance movement, to the Greenback movement and Georgism, and ultimately out of electoral politics entirely to Anarchism and the method of passive resistance.

I am happy to announce that the full content of Benjamin Tucker's Instead Of A Book, By A Man Too Busy To Write One is now available, online, through the Fair Use Repository!

The completion of the online edition adds the following new essays:

1. Part V. Communism.

   1. General Walker and the Anarchists.
   2. Herr Most on Libertas.
   3. Still Avoiding the Issue
   4. Herr Most Distilled and Consumed.
   5. Should Labor be Paid or Not?
   6. Does Competition Mean War?
   7. Competition and Monopoly Confounded.
   8. On Picket Duty.

2. Part VI. Methods.

   1. The Power of Passive Resistance.
   2. The Irish Situation in 1881.
   3. The Method of Anarchy.
   4. Theoretical Methods.
   5. A Seed Planted.
   6. The Home Guard Heard From.
   7. Colonization.
   8. Labor’s New Fetich.
   9. Mr. Pentecost’s Belief in the Ballot.
   10. A Principle of Social Therapeutics.
   11. The Morality of Terrorism.
   12. The Beast of Communism.
   13. Time Will Tell.
   14. The Facts Coming to Light.
   15. Liberty and Violence.
   16. Convicted by a Packed Jury.
   17. Why Expect Justice from the State?
   18. The Lesson of the Hour
   19. Convicted for their Opinions.
   20. To the Breach, Comrades!
   21. On Picket Duty.

3. Part VII. Miscellaneous.

   1. The Lesson of Homestead.
   2. Save Labor from its Friends
   3. Is Frick a Soldier of Liberty?
   4. Shall Strikers be Court-Martialled?
   5. Census-Taking Fatal to Monopoly.
   6. Anarchy Necessarily Atheistic.
   7. A Fable for Malthusians
   8. Auberon Herbert and his Work.
   9. Solutions of the Labor Problem.
   10. Karl Marx as Friend and Foe.
   11. Do the Knights of Labor Love Liberty?
   12. Play-House Philanthropy.
   13. Beware of Batterson!
   14. A Gratifying Discovery.
   15. Cases of Lamentable Longevity.
   16. Spooner Memorial Resolutions.
   17. On Picket Duty.

There are still the usual finishing touches (internal links, details of the front matter, minor points of formatting, etc.) to apply. But this book is basically done, and all 497 pages worth of content are, in any case, available for you to read, cite, and enjoy!

Part IV of Benjamin Tucker's Instead of a Book, by a Man Too Busy To Write One, on Socialism, is now available in full in the Fair Use Repository's online edition of the work. This adds several newly transcribed essays focusing on the meaning of socialism, arguing that Anarchistic Socialism is the most consistent form of socialism and arguing against the common assumption that socialism is synonymous with State monopoly over production. The essays newly available are:

• Socialism: What It Is, which argues that the word Socialism should be proudly claimed, or reclaimed, by Anarchists, in spite of the appropriation of the word by State Socialists. Tucker argues that Anarchistic Socialism is the most consistent form of socialism.
• Armies That Overlap, in which Tucker claims (against the claims of the paper Twentieth Century) that Anarchism and Socialism, properly defined, are neither coextensive nor exclusive; they are two overlapping struggles.
• Socialism and the Lexicographers, which compiles a large list of dictionary and encyclopaedia definitions of the word Socialism in response to State Socialists' recent attempts to use a dictionary definition to read Anarchists out of the socialist movement.
• The Sin of Herbert Spencer, discussing the apparent class bias in Spencer's later work, which Tucker interprets as attacking only government privilege for the poor, while remaining silent about government privilege for the rich. Tucker also praises the work of Spencer's English followers, especially Auberon Herbert, as more consistent.
• Will Professor Sumner Choose? addresses remarks by the liberal political economist William Graham Sumner, arguing that while his arguments against State Socialism are quite telling, consistency demands that he should endorse the radical laissez-faire position of Anarchistic Socialism.
• After Freiheit, Der Sozialist responds to a polemical attack on the German edition of Liberty by a State Socialist newspaper.
• State Socialism and Liberty argues that State monopoly over the means of production necessarily involves tyranny, and that free individual people must be able to withdraw and form their own arrangements at will.
• On Picket Duty discusses arguments from the English Marxist Edward Aveling on the tyranny of State Socialism, the relationship between individualist anarchism and communist anarchism, the relationship between individualist anarchism and laissez-faire classical liberalism, gradualists who see State Socialism as part of a transition to Anarchism, and Terence Powderly's attacks on Oscar Wilde.

Part III of Benjamin Tucker's Instead of a Book, by a Man Too Busy to Write One, on Land and Rent, is now available in full in the Fair Use Repository's online edition. This adds the following new transcribed essays.

There are a series of articles setting out basic principles and defending the occupancy-and-use standard for land ownership, including discussions with Edgeworth and Auberon Herbert:

• The Land for the People
• Basic Principles of Economics: Rent
• Rent: Parting Words
• Property Under Anarchism

Next come a series of discussions on Henry George's theories on land tenure and the single tax:

• Mere Land No Saviour for Labor
• Henry George's Secondary Factors
• The State Socialists and Henry George
• Liberty and the George Theory

Followed by a long debate with the correspondent Egoist, on the abolition of the State and the merits of Georgist theory:

• A Criticism that Does Not Apply
• Land Occupancy and its Conditions
• Competitive Protection
• Protection, and its Relation to Rent
• Liberty and Land
• Rent, and its Collection by Force

Then an exchange with Stephen T. Byington, later a major translator of anarchist works into English, on whether a free market will eliminate economic rent; if so, how; and if not, whether Georgist confiscation of rent is permissible. Tucker makes clear that the notion of liberty that he defends is intimately connected with a defense of private property:

• Economic Rent
• Liberty and Property

And two short articles in which Tucker argues that Georgist land-tax schemes would result in homesteaders being unjustly evicted from their homes due to increasing population in their neighborhood:

• Going to Pieces on the Rocks
• Simplifying Government

Finally, a collection of short remarks from the On Picket Duty columns of Liberty, focusing almost entirely on debates with Henry George:

• On Picket Duty