John Pickering, John Campbell and John Francis Bray: American egalitarians
The middle of the 19th century in America witnessed considerable writing on economic theory, much of it following the work of the Ricardian socialist economists in Britain, but also informing and supporting the development of a socialist working-class movement in America. Little is known about John Pickering of Cincinnati, the author in 1847 of The Working Man’s Political Economy, other than at one time he was an associate of Josiah Warren, on whose printing press the polemic was published. Pickering may have lived at one time in Warren’s experimental community. He later broke with Warren, who had moved to a more individualistic position. It is possible that he was the son of the linguist John Pickering of Salem, Massachusetts, who was a Harvard professor. There is, however, no record, at least in the secondary literature, of the younger Pickering’s involvement in any political organisation.
More is known about John Campbell, the author of A Theory of Equality, published in New York in 1848. Campbell was born in Ireland in 1810, before becoming a weaver in Manchester. A militant or ’physical force’ Chartist, in 1841, he was secretary of the National Charter Association. In 1843, having been arrested and charged with ‘sedition, conspiracy, tumult and riot’ together with the leading Chartist, Feargus O’Connor, but released on a technicality, Campbell emigrated to the United States, moving to Philadelphia, where he founded a social reform society. After working as a weaver, he became a bookseller and publisher, having a significant role in various labour movements in the city. He collaborated with the utopian socialist editor Horace Greeley. Campbell was a member of the Democratic Party. Campbell’s book on Equality was dedicated to the leaders of the French republican government, including the socialist, Louis Blanc. Campbell was familiar with the works of Rousseau, Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo and Bronterre O’Brien, and much of his book is taken directly from John Francis Bray’s Labour’s Wrongs and Labour’s Remedy, a study also referenced in Marx’s Poverty of Philosophy. Bray’s book had been published in Leeds in 1839, when he had been an Owenite and an active member of the Leeds Working Men’s Association. Bray had been born in the United States in Washington, but moved to Leeds when he was a teenager, returning to America in 1842, where he published A Voyage to Utopia and later supported the Socialist Labour Party.
Bray lived until 1897, being regarded as ‘ the grand old man of American socialism’. In contrast, Campbell later became a vigorous advocate of negro slavery, publishing Negro-Mania in 1851. He died in 1874.
The first two extracts are from Pickering’s Political Economy, the second two from Campbell’s Equality.
“Whoever will but open his eyes, and take an unprejudiced view of society as it is now organised, cannot fail to observe that men do not accumulate property in proportion to their industry; but the reverse is the fact…. Everywhere, we see toiling millions, the slaves of the capitalist; consequently, we find unconsumable wealth in the possession of a few, while poverty, discomfort and wretchedness are the lot of the great mass of people. These truths stare us in the face; they cannot be denied. The rich few overburdened with wealth; the poor suffer from want.”
“Producers of wealth, wake up; organise yourselves into societies, associations and reading clubs; discuss the subject of your wrongs; circulate and encourage National Reform newspapers… Institute courts of Humanity, for the purpose of testing the validity of governmental acts, whether they be in accordance with the law of immutable justice, and the common rights of Humanity or not. Make known the results of your decision to your suffering fellow men, in order that they may learn how to cast off those chains which so grievously bind, degrade and enslave them.”
“Wherever I look upon man, I behold him in very different conditions; one class is educated, another is neglected; one man is extremely rich, another is in the greatest destitution. I am, therefore, induced to inquire into the causes of these great inequalities among men. I ask, is the present the natural condition of man? I ask, is Mother Nature thus unjust? … I lay it down as an uncontrovertible axiom that when men enter into the bonds of society, no member of the body politic can be endowed with any privilege because the moment such shall be the fact, the social contract is broken, and each member is then absolved from the duties he engaged to fulfil.”
“ The monopoly of land has led to a monopoly of money; the monopoly of money to a monopoly of education; the monopoly of education has led to a monopoly of all social and political power! The departure from the first great natural law has led to the violation of every other right.”
Further reading
Pickering, John. The Working Man’s Political Economy (Cincinnati, 1847, reprinted Arno, New York 1971)
Campbell, John. A Theory of Equality (New York, 1848, reprinted 2005 UMI Books on Demand)
Bray, John Francis Labour’s Wrongs and Labour’s Remedy
Bray, John Francis Voyage to Utopia (Leeds 1842, reprint Lawrence and Wishart 1957)
Bronstein, Jamie Land Reform and Working Class Experience in Britain and the United States 1800-1862 (Stanford University Press 1999)
Bronstein, Jamie John Francis Bray. Transatlantic Radical (Merlin Press 2010)
Sorge, Frederich Labour Movement in the United States (reprint Greenwood Press 1977)
Zahler, Helene Eastern Working Men and National Land Policy (Columbia University Press, 1971)
Boston, Ray British Chartists in America (Manchester University Press, 1971)
Cole, G D H Socialist Thought: The Forerunners 1789-1850 Chapter 12 (Macmillan 1953)