I was printing out a couple of issues of Ezra Heywood’s The Word, and ran across a listing of books available from the Heywoods’ Co-Operative Publishing Co. in 1873. William B. Greene’s then-newly-published The Blazing Star tops the list, followed by Mutual Banking. Then come two by Heywood: Yours and Mine and Uncivil Liberty. Josiah Warren’s True Civilization (the 1869 title; see Ronald Creagh’s great Warren bibliography for that convoluted publishing history), Lysander Spooner’s No Treason, and Joshua King Ingalls Land and Labor round out the list-along with one other, Edward Kellogg’s A New Monetary System.
Kellogg’s work is an interesting inclusion. Initially, his state-bank solution had him in a somewhat different camp than Greene, Spooner and the folks we’re accustomed to thinking of as individualist anarchists and mutualists. But recall that this is the phase of individualist anarchism’s development where affiliation with organizations like the IWA and the various Reform Leagues was common. Heywood’s advertisement includes this description of the work: “Being the original statement and an elaborate exposition of the financial principles now proclaimed by the National Labor Union.” Mary Kellogg Putnam was one of four female delegates to the 1868 conference of the NLU. It’s likely that Heywood and Putnam had some direct contact.
There’s a good deal more that should be said about this connection between mutualism and “greenbackism.” But not tonight. . . .
