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    Arden
    Arden
    Arden
    Ebook186 pages50 minutes

    Arden

    By Mark Taylor

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    About this ebook

    The Village of Arden was founded in 1900 by sculptor Frank Stephens and architect Will Price, both social reformers who sought to create an ideal society based on principles set forth by the American economist Henry George. With funding from Joseph Fels, a wealthy Philadelphia soap manufacturer who also financed C. R. Ashbee's Guild of Handicraft in England, Stephens and Price purchased 162 acres in northern Delaware and named their colony after the Arden forest of William Shakespeare's As You Like It. The community's motto was "You Are Welcome Hither," but Arden's founders did not anticipate the diverse and colorful mix of radicals and progressives their experiment would attract, including Upton Sinclair, muckraking author of The Jungle, and Scott Nearing, author of Living the Good Life. Through photographs, Images of America: Arden explores the early history of one of this country's most vibrant, yet little known, utopian experiments.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439626085
    Arden
    Author

    Mark Taylor

    Mark Taylor is professor of New Testament and associate dean for Master's Programs at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

    Read more from Mark Taylor

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      Book preview

      Arden - Mark Taylor

      community.

      INTRODUCTION

      On Saturday, June 15, 1895, a group of 13 men crossed the Delaware border by train from Philadelphia’s Broad Street Station to begin one of the most unusual and colorful campaigns in the state’s history. For those who happened to be on the streets of Wilmington, Hockessin, or Newark on that particular day, the group would have been hard to miss; all were conspicuously dressed in blue flannel shirts and ties, brown canvas leggings, and military style hats. Many of the men also carried knapsacks stuffed with campaign literature. And if that wasn’t enough to draw attention to themselves, their leader, a 36-year-old sculptor by the name of George Frank Stephens, or Frank as he was known, was likely strumming a banjo and singing campaign songs he had written for the occasion, songs with lyrics like:

      Oh! We want the earth again,

      For the landless sons of men,

      We know how to get it back and keep it there.

      Get the landlords off your backs,

      With our little single tax,

      And there’s lots of fun ahead for Delaware.

      The group that day, which also included Frank Stephens’s 8-year-old son, Don, was the advance guard for what would become known as the Delaware Invasion. All of the men were disciples of the American economist Henry George. Their objective was to convince Delawareans to support candidates in the 1896 election who were sympathetic to George’s philosophy of the single tax, which George defined in his book Progress and Poverty (1879) as a tax on the value of land, exclusive of improvements. Reminiscent of Englishman Gerrard Winstanley’s 17th century Diggers, Georgists, as they were known, asserted as their fundamental principle that all men are equally entitled to the use of the earth. They proposed therefore, that no one should be permitted to hold land without paying to the community the value of the privilege thus accorded, and from the fund so raised, all expenses of government should be paid.

      The Delaware Invasion quickly became a national campaign. Henry George declared himself heartily in favor of the Delaware campaign, and traveled to Wilmington several times to speak, as did such single tax luminaries as Louis Post and Edward McGlynn. Foot soldiers came from across the country, living for weeks at a time at campaign headquarters in Wilmington’s McVey Building at Eighth and Market Streets while they made their way across the state. By one account, in the first four months of campaigning, single taxers held 469 meetings, with 1,060 addresses by 76 speakers, before an estimated audience of more than 90,000. They were aflame with enthusiasm according to Stephens, and indeed, from the writings that have come down to us, many seem almost religious in their zeal. If it wins, proclaimed one campaigner, it will mark the greatest turning point in the political, industrial, and economic development of this country, perhaps of the civilized world. Delaware authorities apparently, however, felt otherwise. As in the battles over free speech and the right to assembly simultaneously being waged in Philadelphia, many campaigners, including Frank Stephens, were sentenced to time in the Dover jail. In Stephens’s case, he received a pardon from the governor before serving out his full sentence of 30 days.

      After a year of educational effort and campaigning, in September 1896, Georgists finally announced their slate of candidates, standing behind the candidate for governor, Dr. Lewis Slaughter, and others who had pledged themselves sympathetic to their cause. In the end, however, Delawareans appear to have agreed with the editor of the Delaware Daily Republican, who declared single tax the greatest humbug of the day. Of the 38,000 votes cast that year, little more than 3 percent voted Single Tax. Although Justice (the single tax newspaper) tried to portray the results in a positive light, it is hard not to view the election as a resounding defeat for the Single Tax Party. It is here, however, in the wake of that defeat, that the story of Arden begins.

      According to an unpublished lecture by Frank Stephens, he and Will Price met through one of Stephens’s Philadelphia decorative arts firms. Most likely it was through his architectural terra cotta business, Stephens, Armstrong, and Conkling, which was located at 46th Street and Gerard Avenue in Philadelphia, and whose products were used by architects nationwide. Price was an early convert of Stephens to the great gospel of the land for the people, and a participant in the Delaware Invasion. Now it was he, in turn, who came to Stephens and proposed an arts and crafts colony that should let us work out the truths of both Henry George and William Morris. After looking at a property in New Jersey, which they ironically lost to a land speculator, the two men decided upon a 162-acre farm outside of Wilmington, Delaware, 2 miles east of the Delaware River near the crossroads of the village of Grubb’s Corner. The farm was owned by David Derrickson and it was purchased by Frank Stephens on June 12, 1900, for $9,000, $2,500 paid in cash and the remainder held in mortgage, which was later acquired by Joseph Fels, heir to the Fels–Naptha soap fortune and a passionate

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