The Cincinnati Time Store As An His-

torical Precedent For Societal ChangeSteve Kemple

(Presented at CS13, Cincinnati OH, March 19, 2010)

1. The First Time Store (Excerpt)

I’ll begin by reading an excerpt from a 1906 biography by William

Bailie entitled Josiah Warren: The First American Anarchist, A Sociological

Study, in which the author describes in detail the establishment and work-

ings of the Cincinnati Time Store:

On the 18th of May, 1827, there was opened unpreten-

tiously at the corner of Fifth and Elm Streets in Cincinnati a lit-

tle country store, conducted on a plan new to commerce though

not unimportant to the well-being of society. It was the first Eq-

uity store, designed to illustrate the Cost Principle, the germ of

the cooperative movement of the future.

When the advantages of the store became known and its

method understood, it was the most popular mercantile institu-

tion in the city. The people called it the “Time Store,” not be-

cause it gave credit or sold goods on installments, but on ac-

count of the peculiar and original method adopted to fix and

regulate the amount of the merchant’s compensation. This was

determined on the principle of the equal exchange of labor,

measured by the time occupied, and exchanged hour for hour

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with other kinds of labor. Let us illustrate. A clock hangs in a

conspicuous place in the store. In comes the customer to make

his purchases. All goods are marked with the price in plain fig-

ures, which is their cost price, plus a nominal percentage to

cover fre ight, shrinkage, rent, etc., usually about four cents on

the dollar. The purchaser selects what he needs, with not over-

much assistance or prompting from the salesman, and pays for

the same in lawful money. The time spent by the merchant in

waiting upon him is now calculated by reference to the conve-

nient clock, and in payment for this service the customer gives

his labor note, something after this form: “Due to Josiah Warren,

on demand, thirty minutes in carpenter work - John Smith.” Or,

“Due to Josiah Warren, on demand, ten minutes in needlework -

Mary Brown.”

The store-keeper thus agreed to exchange his time for an

equal amount of the time of those who bought goods of him.

Profits in the customary sense there were none. Here was the

application of the principle of labor for labor, the Cost Principle

in its most primitive form, which, through experience, was sub-

sequently modified so as to allow for the different valuations of

the various kinds of labor.

As to the moral results of the Cost system in practice, it

prevented needless waste of the vendor’s time by thoughtless

purchasers; while the marking of each commodity at cost price

stopped all haggling, and promoted mutual respect and confi-

dence in place of sharp dealing and distrust. While it was

Robert Owen who, in a plan devised in 1820 to relieve the indus-

trial woes of Ireland, first proposed the use of labor notes, yet

the idea had not been put in practice until Warren, in his origi-

nal way, successfully carried it out.

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His store was also a magazine for the deposit of saleable

products. A report of the demand was posted up each morning,

showing at all times what goods would be received. The deposi-

tor, when his goods were accepted, was at liberty to take in ex-

change other goods to an equal amount from the store or to take

Warren’s labor notes instead. And as these labor notes were ex-

pressed in hours and not in dollar, it was found advisable to

keep exhibited for the information of traders a list which was

compiled from the ascertained average cost in labor-time of all

staple articles, showing their prices in hours. Besides this, the

public had access to the bills of all goods purchased, so that no

grounds of dispute could exist as to price.

The plan of accepting from depositors for sale in the store

only such goods as were known to be then in demand prevented

a glut in any line, and avoided the mistake which, a few years

later, was largely responsible for the collapse, after a brief exis-

tence, of Robert Owen’s Labor Exchange in London.

There were no rules and regulations to bewilder the public

in the Equity store, the subjoined notice being deemed by War-

ren sufficient:

Whatever arrangements may be made from

time in this place, they will always be subject to al-

teration, or to be abolished, whenever circum-

stances or increasing knowledge may exhibit the ne-

cessity of change.

Just two years after the doors first opened to his Time

Store, in May of 1829, Warren declared the experiment a suc-

cess and left Cincinnati to pursue other ventures implementing

his anarchistic theories. Interestingly, the land on which the

Time Store was built was leased from none other than Nicholas

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Longworth for a duration of 99 years. Before leaving Cincinnati,

Warren relinquished his rights to the land on the guiding princi-

ple that it would be unethical to profit from another’s use of the

land, or by any other indirect means.

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2. Josiah Warren’s Life & Career

Warren grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, where he underwent for-

mal training as a musician. As a young man he developed a reputation as a

band leader and an inventor; it was this occupation that led him to his first

residence in Cincinnati, where, in his leisure time, he invented a lard burn-

ing lamp. This was a dramatic improvement on the existing tallow burning

lamps, and the popularity of the device provided him with modest financial

success. It was here in Cincinnati that Warren attended a lecture by Robert

Owen and was immediately enamored with his ideas. He became a devoted

student to Owen’s theories and decided to join his communistic utopian ex-

periment, commenced shortly thereafter in nearby New Harmony, Indiana.

He spent two years working with Owen at New Harmony, but in 1827, after

anticipating the failure of the venture, Warren left for Cincinnati. The Time

Store was to be a positive critique of Owen’s practices; his perceptive ob-

servations turned out to be accurate when Owen’s commune dissolved sev-

eral years later. He wrote of the community, in an 1856 letter:

It seemed that the difference of opinion, tastes and purposes in-

creased just in proportion to the demand for conformity. Two

years were worn out in this way; at the end of which, I believe

that not more than three persons had the least hope of success.

Most of the experimenters left in despair of all reforms, and con-

servatism felt itself confirmed. We had tried every conceivable

form of organization and government. We had a world in minia-

ture. --we had enacted the French revolution over again with de-

spairing hearts instead of corpses as a result. ...It appeared that

it was nature's own inherent law of diversity that had conquered

us ...our 'united interests' were directly at war with the individu-

alities of persons and circumstances and the instinct of self-

preservation... and it was evident that just in proportion to the

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contact of persons or interests, so are concessions and compro-

mises indispensable.

Josiah Warren would eventually return to New Harmony and re-

mained there for several years throughout the 1840’s. By this point the

commune had been completely absorbed into the surrounding industry, and

very much resembled any other southwest Indiana town. But bitter memo-

ries of Owen’s failure were fresh in the minds of its residents; when he at-

tempted to set up a Time Store there in 1842, its opening was met with a

threatening display of firearms. Despite opposition, the venture proved to

be a success and even benefited the surrounding economy by driving prices

down and drawing curious visitors from around the Midwest.

During this residence in New Harmony, Owen wrote prolifically and

developed his most famous invention: the continuous cylindrical printing

press, on which he printed his 1841 Manifesto. He freely distributed this

pamphlet to visitors at the New Harmony Time Store, and copies were cir-

culated largely by hand throughout the Midwest. Few of the original pam-

phlets survive; the text was reprinted once in a very small edition, by Joseph

Ishill in 1952. Editions are exceedingly scarce; a copy of Ishill’s reprint re-

sides in the Rare Books room at the Main Library in downtown Cincinnati.

For the sake of encouraging renewed local interest, we have reprinted the

text here in Creative Economy, along with a short introduction by Isaac

Hand, who has been a collaborator on the research culminating in this lec-

ture.

Before and after his second residence in New Harmony, Warren trav-

eled throughout the Midwest, founding Time Stores wherever he went, and

establishing several successful settlements founded on the principles of Eq-

uity. His first “trial village” founded in 1835 was located 40 miles south of

Canton, Ohio. Among the most famous of his settlements was Modern

Times, founded on Long Island, New York, along with fellow reformer

Stephen Pearl Andrews. The project descended into chaos when newspaper

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readers in New York City were introduced to its existence, and it subse-

quently became a notorious haven for cranks and depraved individuals seek-

ing refuge in its anarchistic structure.

In 1847, Warren returned again to the Cincinnati area. Thirty miles

to the east, on present day Route 52 in Clermont County, a group of Spiritu-

alist Communists had founded Utopia in 1844. While they were friendly

with Warren and acquainted with his teachings, they openly rejected his

views on property and individual liberty. Spiritualism was a belief system

popular throughout the 1800’s in which many of its adherents supple-

mented their (often but not always) Protestant Christian beliefs with occult

practices such as séances, the use of mediums, and prominent belief in a

spirit world. The original founders of Utopia believed that the earth was

about to enter a 35,000 year period of peace, and that the formation of

small communes was necessary to bring about enlightenment and the new

age. They also supposedly believed that such a new age would be signified

by the world’s oceans turning into lemonade. For reasons unfathomable to

me, this venture was near shambles by 1847. In December of that year, the

Ohio River flooded, sweeping away the town hall, in which at the time the

Spiritualist leaders were having a celebratory gathering. It is said that the

weary ghosts of Spiritualistic Communists haunt the banks of the Ohio to

this day, making their presence known on dreary nights when the river

banks are shrouded in fog.

The surviving members contacted Warren for his advice, and he

agreed to take over leadership of the community. He converted the resi-

dents to anarchism and established two Equity Stores at the center of the

town. The commune flourished for many years thereafter, though was only

under the direct leadership of Warren until 1849. The town of Utopia exists

to this day as a gas station, a few houses, and two standard green signs

bearing the word “Utopia” in upper case Highway Gothic.

Josiah Warren died of dropsy in 1874 at age 76.

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3. Philosophy, Perspectives, etc.

Josiah Warren, as may have been gathered up to this point, was a pro-

fessed advocate of Individualism and Anarchism. He is considered by many

historians to have been the first American born Anarchist, and is credited

with having established its uniquely American strain. His thinking was ac-

knowledged by John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer as being tremen-

dously influential to their own. His emphasis on individual sovereignty was

born out of his critique of Robert Owen’s cooperative movement, whose fail-

ure he saw as being due to the disavowal of property and lack of considera-

tion of individual differences. Warren, much like modern day American

Right Wing Libertarians, saw the State as something whose reach should be

as small as possible. But unlike modern day Libertarians, his philosophy,

despite being rooted in critique, is largely positive. He writes at length

about the necessity for what he alternately calls “voluntary,” or “coinciden-

tal cooperation” He says in his 1863 book True Civilization:

If one decides for all, then all but that one are, perhaps, en-

slaved; if each one’s title to Sovereignty is admitted, there will

be different interpretations, and this freedom to differ will en-

sure emancipation, safety, repose, even in a political atmos-

phere! And all the cooperation we ought to expect will come

from the coincidence of motives according to the merits of each

case as estimated by different minds. ... No subordination can

be more perfect than that of an Orchestra; but it is all voluntary.

We can see here a clear glimpse into his ontology, which has its roots

deeply embedded in the individualistic American spirit of the seventeen and

eighteen hundreds. “One, such as Warren, could cite the Declaration of In-

dependence as a logical antecedent to Anarchism (albeit a uniquely Ameri-

can individualistic Thoreau-esque variety) without a tinge of irony.” While it

is not clear if he was acquainted the writings of Emerson or Thoreau, he

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was surely motivated by a shared sentiment and was undoubtedly their ide-

ological kin.

Warren’s theory of Equitable Commerce, embodied in the practice of

“Labor for Labor,” runs parallel to the writings of French Socialist Anarchist

philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon, who infamously proclaimed

“La propriété, c'est le vol!” or “Property is theft!” (around which a group

show at U-Turn is planned for later this year), is usually considered to be

the originator of Mutualism. Though Proudhon and Warren were contempo-

raries, it is unclear if and to what extent the two thinkers were aware of

each other’s work. Whether or not its theoretical bases may be entirely at-

tributed to Warren, the Cincinnati Time Store is still historically recognized

as the first application of the Mutualist economic theory. Interestingly, it

could be shown that in some sense, this discursive relation to Proudhon sit-

uates Warren’s thinking in proximity to Marxism, with whom Warren would

undoubtedly have been highly critical.

Josiah Warren summarized his interpretation of Mutualism with the

maxim, “cost the limit of price,” which lived on as a ubiquitous mantra for

Individualist Anarchism throughout the remainder of the nineteenth cen-

tury.

In its purest form, the Mutualist school of thought holds that in an

ideal society each person (or collective of persons) possesses a means of

production, and where all exchanges in a free market are equivalent to

goods or services embodying “the amount of labor necessary to produce an

article of exactly similar or equal utility.” The economic infrastructure nec-

essary to facilitate such a market on a large scale has differed from thinker

to thinker, though most have involved some sort of centralized mutual-

credit bank guided by the same principles it facilitates. A tenet central to

all proponents of Mutualism is the notion that all profit is not only funda-

mentally unjustifiable, but that, being indicative of an essentially non-equiv-

alent transaction, it is indistinguishable from usury or extortion. The notion

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of interest is minimally retained in most variants, including Warren’s, as a

means to accommodate for the accumulation of labor associated with a

good or service. For example, a pound of rhubarb will accumulate interest

equivalent to the labor necessary to transport it to the store, and then for

the labor of shopkeepers and the overhead at the store, and so on. This was

exemplified in Warren’s iconic clock, marking off interest accumulated in

proportion to time spent with the shopkeeper.

At heart, Josiah Warren’s attempts at social reform were rooted in

pragmatism. Though undoubtedly a deep thinker, his writings reflect a

tremendous valuation of self reliance. Perhaps to his disadvantage, though

certainly indicative of the sincerity and depth of his convictions, as well as

his intelligence and clear mindedness, Warren did not express, at least in

writing, any conscious effort to situate his ideas within the context of histor-

ical or contemporary political, social, or economic ideologies. While the

crux of his theories, as a result, are rife with fallacies, it was ultimately his

emphasis on pragmatism and experimentation, twofold with his ingenuity,

that gave him his advantage over Robert Owen’s more austere but ulti-

mately impracticable approach. While Owen approached social reform an

aloof, classically minded essayist, Warren’s approach was that of a working

American inventor, concerned above all with practicality and innovation.

Although Warren’s ideology is subject to many sharp criticisms, it is

ripe for contemporary discussion and reinterpretation. In our publication,

Isaac Hand gives several examples of Time and Labor Economies as well as

Mutualist trade networks developed to facilitate the execution of creative

endeavors. In the present global recession, such creative economies are

burgeoning alternatives to a failing system. All such economies share a

common ancestor in the Cincinnati Time Store.

But what I find to be most fascinating, local historical interest aside, is

the Cincinnati Time Store as an alternative model for societal change. The

dominant belief is that broader change happens from either the bottom up

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or the top down (assuming anyone still finds “Reaganomics” a plausible the-

ory), and its occurrences tend to be described with the verb “sweeping.”

But the Cincinnati Time Store offers an historical precedent for a different

kind of change, one that more or less happens from the middle outward,

and whose movement resembles a complex organism rather than a simplis-

tic verb. Even discounting most of the theoretical bases for his reform, as

to which we might ought to be inclined, Warren intuited a model for change

that allowed for organic growth and that required neither unanimous con-

sent nor dramatic conversions. His Time Stores, more so than his Equity

Villages, could accurately be described as “parenthetical” or “micro-

economies”, defined from but not existing independently of a larger eco-

nomic structure. In a very literal sense they were “little Utopias,” existing

unpretentiously on their own terms without violating the structure they

sought to critique.

Such entities are not necessarily Anarchistic; it just so happens that

the clearest precedent was founded on Anarchistic terms. To come to the fi-

nal point of this lecture, I’d like to simply invite you to consider that there is

an obvious correlation between Josiah Warren’s Time Stores and contempo-

rary creative DIY spaces. Such spaces exist on their own terms, incorporat-

ing a parenthetical economy implemented on the basis of voluntary coopera-

tion by their members. When there is a crisis in arts funding, as we’ll hear

about soon, such structures have the capacity to offer buoyancy and re-

silience. As makers of spaces, what better way to put what we are doing

than by “building little Utopias?”

As Josiah Warren put it, “Society must have a new experience as a

new basis.”

As Gary Gaffney put it, “Art Is Not Optional.”

As Publico put it, “Sike.”

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4. To the representatives of various local creative spaces present

tonight:

In the present global recession, we are faced with the daunting task of

redefining the world as we go. We must do so in no uncertain terms.

In the present global recession, we “...must remember that an econ-

omy is more than a model of commercial exchange: it is a belief system. To

adopt an economic model is to appropriate an ontology, a whole structure of

meaning and valuation.” We must remember this in no uncertain terms.

In the present global recession, we must present economic alterna-

tives, even wildly implausible ones, on the basis that change is far more

subtle and complex than we had hoped. We must present them in no uncer-

tain terms.

In the present global recession, we must seek collaboration, commu-

nity, discourse, and contradiction, in hopes that our Utopias will become vi-

carious paradigms for a renewed economy.

In the present global recession, we must accept that we may not com-

prehend the differences we make, but must press on with our projects. And

we must accept this in no uncertain terms.

And finally,

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In the present global recession, we must press on in our Utopias, so

that, upon the coming age of enlightenment, we will be greeted, in no un-

certain terms, by the world’s oceans turning into lemonade.

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