‘ Free America’ represented an American custom of populism and decentralization that ended with World War Two.
Edward Hicks, The Cornell Farm (1848), National Gallery of Art (Wikimedia Commons)
Land and Liberty: The Best of Free America Modified by Allan C. Carlson. Beginning by Sir Roger Scruton. Afterword by James Matthew Wilson. Wethersfield Institute, 349 pages
This good-looking, extravagantly produced book saves from obscurity an important piece of American intellectual and literary history. Among the numerous interruptions the Second World War caused was the adjustment of American ideological camps. The long American custom of populism and decentralization was reaching brand-new heights in the 1930 s in the face of rapid social and financial dislocation, however it was derailed by the postwar battle against communism. As a result, a strong national government was safeguarded by “conservatives” setting in motion in response to the danger of the Soviet Union, which also assisted big business position itself as a defender of flexibility. With this collection, we see a different America, where those promoting the values of neighborhood also opposed widespread commercialism in such a way that became foreign to conservatives for years. In an age struggling with persistent polio outbreaks, the Great Depression, the introduction of fascism abroad, and centralization (governmental and commercial) at home, Free America asked concerns about sufficiency, citizenship, economics, and governance in defining and protecting the kind of residents the country needed.
Free America reflected that critical moment of realignment, as the older, more quixotic America was eclipsed by more ideologically driven camps. It was a quixotic, composite project, intentionally so, of 2 main groups. On the one hand were the Southern Agrarians, particularly the Twelve Southerners who published I’ll Take My Stand in1930 This group, loosely associated with Vanderbilt University, consisted of Allen Tate, Donald Davidson, Andrew Nelson Lytle, and John Crowe Ransom. The Statement of Concepts to that book states that the “neighborhoods and private persons sharing the agrarian tastes are to be found widely within the Union. Proper living is a matter of the intelligence and the will, does not depend on the regional climate or location, and can a definition which is basic and not Southern at all.”
Tate believed that the book’s title was needlessly adversarial and would welcome termination from critics; his proposed title, Tracts Versus Communism, possibly much better communicated the focus of a minimum of a few of its contributors. Tate proved prescient. As it took place, the Agrarian review of urbanism, industrialism, and centralization was overshadowed by an understanding that it was merely a defense of the South, including its racial hierarchies– a criticism that is not without some support. Six years later on, some of the Twelve Southerners would accompany future Free America factors and others to release Who Owns America? The title suggested a more direct attack on the concentrations of wealth and power.
On the other hand were the distributists, a more loosely-organized group of financial experts, authors, press agents, and dreamers situated mainly in the North, who traced their family tree to other sources. Most of these sources were English, such as G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, but they likewise included native influence such as the tax theories of Henry George and the Catholic rural life movement. But they too were overwhelmed by the war, and much of the infrastructure and momentum of the distributist and agrarian revival of the 1930 s was gone by, say, 1948.
Free America lasted till 1946, and initial copies are exceptionally difficult to find. The journal was the brainchild of 3 people: Herbert Agar, Ralph Borsodi, and Chauncey Stillman. Agar is possibly the very best understood of the three. Although born in New Rochelle, New York, Agar hung around in London where he worked for G.K.’s Weekly, among other journals, and absorbed distributist arguments about the dangers of concentrated power and residential or commercial property whether denominated “socialist” or “capitalist.” In 1933, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his history of the presidency, which draws on distributist arguments to make the case that the country was established by “small farmers, artisans, and merchants, with productive residential or commercial property owned by the large bulk of families.”
Borsodi was a more straightforward anarchist, and promoted intendent, totally productive homesteads. Stillman perhaps stabilized the two. He was no complete stranger to concentrations of wealth– he came from a rich Texas family whose ancestor was a founder of what became Citigroup– however he turned his attention rather to the country life than finance. He accepted fund Free America however made extra substantive editorial contributions of his own, particularly in the location of sustainable and innovative farming, which were techniques he practiced at his estate in the little New york city town of Amenia. His essay, “Difficulty to Scarcity,” argues for biodynamic farming as a service to soil tired by factory farming approaches.
In his outstanding introduction to Land and Liberty, Allan Carlson puts these diverse movements into context. Despite policy and useful disagreements, the editors “would evaluate every existing or proposed economic, political and social matter by a common denominator: how the things at concern would impact the little and the human.” In the inaugural issue, Agar makes the point that the factors were united in their opposition to collectivism and plutocracy, and the journal would act as “the meeting ground for those who are similarly opposed to finance-capitalism, communism, and fascism,” which were incompatible with democracy, given that democracy could only make it through when anchored by the prevalent belongings of property. The journal gathered contributors throughout from what we now would consider the ideological spectrum. Belloc contributed an essay, on “The Opponent,” as did the editor of Commonweal, Michael Williams, on “The Terrific Tradition.”
The journal combined theoretical analyses, like Borsodi’s two-part essay on decentralization, with more useful issues. (Carlson includes samples in areas titled “Recuperating Homecraft,” “The Efficient Home,” and “Practical Homesteading.”) The underlying theme of both type of articles was, as Wilson says in his afterword, “the belief that cultural kind, the way of life of an individuals, is partially based on the material ‘base’ or economic structure.” This is no Marxist concept, but shows a simple fact. If a society valorizes (and materially benefits) the high-flying management expert who leaves her home to reside in temporary homes across the nation (or world) through much of her early adult life, then that produces a specific kind of culture. A society that counsels rather that the children of management experts should go out into the nation to start a farm and reject the global capitalist machine would create another, even if not every organization in the country were worked on distributist bases. Similarly with property: a society that believes intangible financial “possessions” produce and sustain wealth in the exact same method as actual items and skills will reflect that belief in its societal plans.
Now, one must not idolize farming. It can be hard, intense work. The distributist concept fails if it is to force everybody to be a small farmer. Rather, the concept is to recognize that the material conditions that develop massive agricultural issues might not be as cost-effective as advertised, and likewise that the culture such concentrations develop is incompatible with a totally free society. In this connection it might deserve noting the antipathy most Free America writers had towards war, and for the exact same factor: it prefers bigness, which in turn changes totally free people into “customers” and hinders enhancements in innovation or equipment that could have been for the benefit of all.
The error critics of distributism or agrarianism typically make is in thinking that authors like those in Free America required a country to be all distributist, or agricultural, or not at all. Rather, it is the mass culture that requires uniformity and tasks onto distributism a totalizing mindset distributism mostly does not have. I see no needed problem in a distributist society with big cities or massive industry, and indeed argument over how to combine distributist concepts with America as it then existed peppers the pages of Free America The alternatives are varied, as H.A. Highstone noted in a 1943 essay. The challenge is in forming institutions such that they serve the citizens, rather than vice versa.
In one sense, the world conveyed in this book is now nearly impossible to think of. It is an America where lots of people were still knowledgeable about the rhythms of rural life and the scrim of machinery and technology had actually not obscured the natural realities of neighborhood. The yeoman farmer as the nationwide good example yielding to the soldier, the factory employee, the ad male, the “understanding employee,” and the town or little city to the “city.” In 2020, for instance, it is difficult to see how we might turn away from mass agriculture, but it is not difficult to picture a financial system that favors households and neighborhoods over financial institutions and global corporations. 
And even mass agriculture need not be accepted as is. In “Fallacy of Mass Production,” Borsodi sounds initially impractical in railing versus the evils of factory flour production in 1937, but his point makes more sense now, possibly. It is not merely the means of production (mass versus artisanal). Rather, one must take a look at “the part which favoritism in freight rates, taxation and other forms of federal government assistance to makers played in allowing the ‘huge’ mills to undersell their smaller rivals,” permitting these preferred enterprises to engage in predatory rates and misleading marketing with the general public.
In thinking about the future of distributism, Peter van Cabinet revealed a “degree of frustration” provided the explosive development of the state and corporate power however hoped that distributive principles could be “an ‘enclave’ within our present supervisory civilization” and “broaden its associations and alliances.” Still good advice, 70 years on.
Gerald J. Russello is editor of The University Bookman.
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