Excerpt from Reminiscences of an Octogenarian in the Fields of Industrial and Social Reform These Reminiscences, which largely refer to parties no longer dwellers of our sphere, are mainly the personal recollections of the author, who has never kept any regular diary. Where periodicals and books have been referred to, the memory has been relieved; but otherwise, it has been wholly relied upon. The motive leading to their publication, has been the request of friends, to have them put in readable form; but in addition to that, there are certain ideas I desired to put before the world in as familiar a form as possible. I regard as essential to Social advancement, first: The apportionment of the land so as to allow no one to be deprived of its use, who is able and willing to utilize it. Second: The recognition of the principle of joint-ownership in all increase from joint labor. Third; Equal Freedom in the choice of occupation and association. The trend of thought as these pages will show, has been towards a broader liberty in the pursuit of knowledge, and of every aim in life which does not invade the equal rights of others. Of the ideas I have arrived at in respect to rent, interest, and profit as to their origin, and double meaning as they refer to increase under equity and freedom, and to the same increase under monopoly and subjection, I am not sufficiently well read to aver that they are wholly new; but they are original with me, as far as that term applies to ordinary composition. For the statement of views on government and on all other Social matters, I have only to say that they are sincerely held and will be abandoned whenever the opposite or a more satisfactorily medium shall be made to appear rational. I am under obligation to many minds with which I have come in contact through books, periodicals, and personal acquaintance, which cannot be referred to here. Carlyle, Emerson and Spencer, have been my favorite authors. I remember that Combe's Constitution of Man, Vestiges of Creation, and other books of that period greatly stimulated my mental activites. But through life, I have endeavored to think for myself. I think I may claim to have made some novel contributions to -Economic Science, to wit: The nature and origin of profit, interest and rent. That they are one in character, and are divisible into economic and monopolistic according to the division made to labor, and the capture through legal privilege by landlord, banker, or holder of plant and stock: That money is also duplicate; legal and commercial. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

“...the starting point for anyone concerned with the antecedents of libertarianism in the United States...” MEN AGAINST THE STATE first appeared in the spring of 1953. Within a matter of months it had received nearly fifty highly commendatory reviews in thirteen countries in seven languages. Few products of American scholarly research in our time have gained more widespread international respect in such a short time. This book brought back into view a tradition which almost disappeared between the beginning of the First World War and the end of the Second, the philosophy and deeds of anti-statist libertarian voluntarism in the United States during the three generations which flourished between 1825 and 1910, in a style which a London commentator described as “a model of readable scholarship.” In the 1950s, the era of the “organization man” and almost unparalleled political passivity, MEN AGAINST THE STATE may have been a premature book, as some have observed, despite being reprinted two more times later in the decade. This quiet and unsensational circulation continued to further its reputation, nevertheless. In the last ten years however it has been recognized by many as the starting point for anyone concerned with the antecedents of libertarianism in the United States. The spread of interest in such thinking among a new generation has prompted the reissuance of this book, in a conventionally-printed popularly priced edition for the first time.

The Root and the Branch examines the relationship between the early labor movement and the crusade to abolish slavery between the early national period and the Civil War. Tracing the parallel rise of antislavery movements with working-class demands for economic equality, access to the soil, and the right to the fruits of labor, Sean Griffin shows how labor reformers and radicals contributed to the antislavery project, from the development of free labor ideology to the Republican Party’s adoption of working-class land reform in the Homestead Act. By pioneering an antislavery politics based on an appeal to the self-interest of ordinary voters and promoting a radical vision of “free soil” and “free labor” that challenged liberal understandings of property rights and freedom of contract, labor reformers helped to birth a mass politics of antislavery that hastened the conflict with the Slave Power, while pointing the way toward future struggles over the meaning of free labor in the post-Emancipation United States. Bridging the gap between the histories of abolitionism, capitalism and slavery, and the origins of the Civil War, The Root and the Branch recovers a long-overlooked story of cooperation and coalition-building between labor reformers and abolitionists and unearths new evidence about the contributions of artisan reformers, transatlantic radicals, free Black activists, and ordinary working men and women to the development of antislavery politics. Based on painstaking archival research, The Root and the Branch addresses timely questions surrounding the relationships between slavery, antislavery, race, labor, and capitalism in the early United States.