Cincinnati Time Store Opens (1827)
Fri May 18, 1827
Image: A sample labor for labor note for the Cincinnati Time Store. Scanned from Equitable Commerce by Josiah Warren (1846) [Wikipedia]
On this day in 1827, anarchist polymath Josiah Warren opened the Cincinnati Time Store, a store whose products could be purchased directly with labor power, one of the first practical applications of mutualist economic concepts.
Josiah Warren (1798 - 1874) was an American individualist anarchist, inventor, musician, printer, and author. Although he never used the term anarchism himself, Warren is sometimes credited as being the first American anarchist.
Warren's Cincinnati Time Store used "labor notes", where the customer purchased a good by agreeing to reproduce the amount of labor time it took to create it, plus a small increase to accommodate the overhead of the store.
Although the store was successful, Warren closed it after three years to create two communities based on the same mutualist foundation: Utopia, Ohio, and Modern Times, New York. Warren's concepts were influential on later anarchists, such as Benjamin Tucker and Émile Armand.
- Date: 1827-05-18
- Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.scribd.com.
- Tags: #Labor, #Anarchism.
- Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org
