BORSODI AS I KNEW HIM

A Collection Of 25
Testimonials To
Ralph Borsodi

1886 ' 1977

Creatively Edited and Condensed
Mildred j. Loomis

School Of Living

by

BORSODI AS I KNEW HIM

A Collection Of 25
Testimonials To
Ralph Borsodi

1886 ~ 1977

Creatively

Edited and Condensed

by

Mildred j. Loomis

1900 ' 1986

School Of living

R. D. 1 Box 1508
Spring Grove. PA 17362

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92.3.{P
t!> rl~~

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DEDICATED IN MEMORY OF
MILDRED JENSEN LOOMIS
JANUARY 5,1900SEPTEMBER 18, 1986

BORSODI

AS I KNEW HIM

By Friends and Co-Workers

Mildred J. Loomis, Editor
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE

Publishers Note:
The un-proofed typeset pages of this book were
found shortly after Mildred's passing. It was a last
wish of Mildred that this collection be published.
To expidite this wish we have reproduced in book
form the typesetting, most of which was done 8-10
years ago and was not in very good shape. We
apologize for the typos and hard to read places, etc.

The 25 manuscripts submitted or otherwise

collected had been "creatively edited" by Mildred
to make sure the reader would not get a mis-irnpression of what Borsodi's real ideas were. An apology to those thus edited and a notice to Borsodi
historians.
Mildred Loomis' more definitive biography of
Ralph Borsodi, "Reshaping American Culture", is
scheduled to be published soon.

Proof Edition

99 copies

October, 1986

1986 The School of Living

90-t\31'0--

Introduction.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 1
Universal Questions - Christine Anderson
2
A Granddaughter's
Eyeview - Clare Kittredge
4
Look At It This Way - Chester S. Dawson. . . . . . . . . . .. 9
Borsodi: Expanding Thinker - Mabelle Brooks
11
Borsodi: Sociologist - Richard Dewey
12
Our Three Generation Homestead - William Treichler . 16

The Best Teacher I Ever Had - Gordon Lameyer

18
Soil, The Source Of Health - Paul Keene
22
Builder Of Homes And Society - Ken Kern
27
From Prison To Decentralism - H. R. Lefever
29
Social Significance Of Homesteading - Selma Von Haden. 32
Change The Whole System - John Shuttleworth
36
Rockland Homesteaders - Mel Most
39
A Challenge In India - Shyam S. Chawla
42
Education And Living - Peter Van Dresser
45
Borsodi: An American Gandhi - Ralph Templin
47
Household Economy In The 1980's - Scott Burns
51
Quest For Honest Money - Carter Henderson
53
Solution For Inflation - Walter Chase
56
Significant Change In Land Tenure - Robert Swann
61
A Man For All Seasons - Henry Winthrop
67
Challange To The Quality - Minded - Dorien Freve
72
On Mankind's Enduring List - Don Werkheiser
76
Moral Law Bypassed - David Stry
81
Borsodi And Adversity - Mildred Loomis
" 83

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INTRODUCTION
Ralph Borsodi, 1886 to 1977, was a leading voice and activist in the American decentralist movement. His long life
influenced many persons who are currently practicing, and
in many cases, articulating, the self-suffiency trends with
their local and global impact on Western culture.
These pages are from his friends and co-workers, reporting
immediate person-to-person experiences. Some include mention of what he/she did with Borsodi's influence on them.
Their items, now condensed, fall into five groups: two from
students: five from teachers; four from homesteaders: six from
editors and writers; three from social activists, and concluding
with five over-all assessments. That each responds to a different aspect ofBorsodi's life indicates something ofthe range
and complexity of his achievements. But as he said, "Life is
complex. One who lives it fully finds himself immersed in a
variety of real and significant problems of living." A more
researched and chronological biography of Ralph Borsodi is
being published soon and will be available from the School
of Living.

i
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UNIVERSAL QUESTIONS
By Christine Anderson

First, a bit about myself. I attended Swarthmore College

in Philadelphia for a year and .a half. Though my
questioning of the accepted suburban middle class life that
I had been accustomed to, began earlier, I first began to
seriously challenge the fundamental assumptions of our
society in a Political Science class during my last two
semesters of college.
Two questions hit me. The first, about justice. I asked
myself whether there was some place between the two
major, though conflicting. theories of justice: the one,the
Platonic theory in which there is an absolute good-one
which can be known. but only by an enlightened person. the
philosopher king. who alone beings the ideal state into
reality; the other, the contract theory presented by Hobbes
and Rousseau, in which an absolute good does not exist. A
group of people must enter into a contract in which
individual or group interest tempers the self interest of
others.
Why can't the knowledge of the good which is planted
within each individual make possible a means of interaction
where the contract affects only the bare essentials of life? I
wondered and sought answers, but found nothing.
My other question was this: in a college of supposedly
high academic standing where students were supposed to
be highly motivated and of great intellectual capacity, why
were students discouraged, if not prevented, from testing
out these political theories through local involvement in
some movement or organization? If we who spoke in such
high and lofty language of justice and good of many, would

not become involved and test our theories in practice, howl

could we then possibly justify our existence as an
intellectual elite when the justification in theory was based I
on our later becoming responsible citizens who would be II
the leaders in bringing in a better society?
From these questions, these wonderings, ~ read
Mildred's biography of Ralph Borsodi. How can I best
share my enthusiasm? This man's life seemed to me to
draw together in harmony these polarities which I have
seen so often separated. He based his actions on a very
extensive philosophy that evolved from asking the basic
questions such as: What is necessary for a good life? What
is the nature of man? What is health? How should one live? I
what should one own? His philosophy was rooted in a great,
knowledge of past thinkers and doers. But he acted upon
what he believed.
It is lives like that about which my friend s and I need to
read. We need to link up with those in the past who;
struggled with the same issues we are struggling with now.
We need to see the importance of rooting this "Back-to-the
-land" movement; not in drugs and euphoric dreams, but in
a careful analysis of what we believe, and what we are
willing to risk to bring our dreams to reality.
What is even more important, I think people involved in I
this movement are looking for this. But they are turned off I
by philosophical treatises and dry intellectual discussions.
I realize these have their place. But such written material
as Mildred's, that involves the readers and carries them
with Borsodi as he questions, asks, meets failure, tries:
again, has its place too. It sets squarely in the gap between
the spiritually minded and the social activist. It draws in
both.
I write to you from my experience, but I know I can speak
the same for others.
I believe the questions Borsodi
struggled with are universals.
I

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3\

~'

RALPH BORSODl:
A STEP-GRANDDAUGHTER'S

EYEVIEW

Clare Kittredge
When Ralph Borsodi married my grandmother in the
middle of his life, he inherited a raft of new grandchildren,
of whom 1 am one. It is perhaps because of this, or just
because of his nature, that I remember him not so much in
the capacity of a grandfather,
but in that of a friend. We
all called him RB. It didn't seem to matter that he was
nearly ninety when I knew him best.
As young children, we visited Granny and RB in
the ire bungalow in Florida, but the orange trees in their
front yard, a forest fire, and my sister's faIIing into the
fishpond made greater impressions on me than anything
else. I became more conscious of RB's presence when we
visited them on home-leave
from Japan, in their old
farmhouse on the outskirts of Exeter, New Hampshire. By
then, I was watching RB with curiosity and a kind of awe,
as he sat in his armchair flanked by stacks of books,
reading through thick glasses. In the morning, the books,
all of them unread, were piled up on the left side of the
chair, and by the end of the day, they were on the right.
He must have read a dozen books a day. When I asked him
how this could be, he tried to explain speed-reading to me.
The books looked obscure and difficult - history and
philosophy and economics books - and I would retire to
my room, more interested in listening to the BeatJes on
the radio under my pillow.
In those days, RB made compost in his backyard,
explaining the process as he trooped through the house
with another load of garbage.
The word "compost"
sounded exotic, and a little unreal. He also did woodworking in his shop - he made a pretty inlaid table with tiles.
He said that he found working with his hands "relaxing".
I got to know RB best after he and Granny had moved
to their smaII house in a back street of Exeter, and I had
founded a commune with some coIIege friends. I found

him to be intensely interested in what we were trying to

do, and in the problems we were running into. This was at
a time when our venture was considered by many people
to be "a little weird". HE interrogated
me, and I think
quickly realized that we weren't going about it in a very
organized way the mood the late '60s was antiscientific, anti-technological,
anti-rational.
While part of
society seemed to be going haywire over Vietnam, we
were busy trying to exclude it. We were growing our own
food, raising animals, milking, canning and freezing, but
not doing it as methodically or carefully as he had a few
decades
before.
"Farming,"
he pointed
out,
"is
difficult. "
"Well,
RB,"
economists. "

I'd

say.

"We're

artists,

not

"No,"
he'd answer.
"Art is part and parcel of
everyday life lived well and beautifully. In a good life, art "
and production are integrated.
In that phase, I once brought him the J Ching book
that had/become
popular with many of my friends. He
looked at it, then put it down, saying that it was nothing
but a conglomeration
of adulterated
Chinese texts. The
idea that people practiced divination, flipping a coin in
order to make a decision, scandalized him. "I hope you
don't believe in astrology,"
he said.
A little deflated,
reincarnation.

I asked him what he thought

He thought about it for a split-second,

into space and chuckled. "Reincarnation?

about

then looked off

No thanksl"

It was shortly after that when I drove him to the

University of New Hampshire to give classes on Alternative Life-Styles" for a program called "Elderhostel",
Elderhostel
was a series of classes given during the
summer specifically for the education of older people. I
was moved by the sight of this dapper old man, standing
in front of a class of people two-thirds his age, lecturing
them about possibilities for the future. This included their
own fuw!es:=_~eJa.lked
to them abouttaking
care of.thelr

bodies, eating right, having dignity and cultivating

wisdom so as to have more successful old ages.
RB and my grandmother made a good pair - I can
still see them sitting opposite each other, playing Scrabble
in the evening on their glassed-in back-porch, RB cackling
delightedly when he managed to outwit my grandmother.
This they followed with their ritual of cheese and crackers,
nuts and dried fruit, and then the news.
RB's approach to food by far antedated the "Natural,
Foods Revolution." He ate "health foods" long before
they had been commercialized. Discipline, he said, was
the key to healthful eating, which in turn would keep mind
and body functioning well together. I remember watching
him mix several awful-looking powders into a bowlful of
water and eating them for breakfast - a breakfast I found
frighteningly spartan. When I asked what on earth these
powders were, he explained that they were brewer's
yeast, bone meal, liver powder, calcium. He outlined their
functions in the body, laughing at my ill-concealed revulsion. Years later I was to grow fond of some of those
powders myself.
In the creation of a meal, RB gave central importance
to salad. "Forage," he would say, finishing the bowl. My
grandmother made her own sprouts, and after they'd
moved to town she sought out fresh, unchernically-grown
vegetables, shunning canned and frozen foods as much as
possible. They ate plenty of dried and fresh fruits and
cheese, and ate moderate amounts of meat. Refined sugar
was taboo in the household.
RB treated the eating of meals with almost religious
respect. He considered the sharing of a meal a ceremony,
insisting that not only should food be well-selected and
prepared, but that its presentation was important for
stimulation of the digestive tract. "You eat with your
eyes, and then with your mouth," he'd say appreciatively,
thanking the meal maker - usually my grandmother - for
having prepared the meal. "It is important," he would
add, "to salivate." He seemed to take pride, afterwards,
in doing his chore - washlE&..!h~dishes.

He didn't often share a meal without discussing some

thought that was on his mind. He like to talk about the
importance of teachers in society, inflation, c~mmun~1
life vs. the family, farming in India, the value of wisdom 10
old age, vitamins, the timeliness of investing in gold, the
harmful properties of white sugar, cleanliness. He invited
people's arguments and took seriously what they said,
though it was difficult to argue him out of his own point of
view. One evening he and a law-student friend of mine
had such a long and arduous discussion about the role of
soap in the development of civilization that my grandmother had to remind them that their meals were getting
cold and to point out that everyone else had finished
theirs.
On the Fourth of July, RB like to read to us, his
assembled step-grandchildren, the Declaration of Independence, reading it through in a serious, gravelly voice.
He was sentimentalonce, after he'd been forced to
tell me what an anti-macassar was, joking that the hairless
spot on his head was staining the furniture, I searched
around and presented him with one, just an old shred of
lace I'd found in a second-hand store. He was so delighted.
that he pinned it to the back of his chair, where it sti11
remains. He believed in touching people to express affection. He often took people by the hand, saying that
touching had gone out of style. He made me feel that I was
liked.
Even in his eighties, he kept to his disciplined
schedule. When he was working on a project, he got up in
the middle of the night and typed until dawn. Then he took
his daily cold shower, followed by limbering and stretching exercises.
"A cold shower, eh?" I'd say, looking out the window
at falling snow.
He'd laugh. "If I didn't do that, I'd be in a wheel.:hairl" Then he'd explain that he needed to stimulate his
.circulation.

--When he got sick, his habit was to fast. He said he

found this restful, and more effective than medicine for
some things. Part of his regimen was to take a mile or
two-mile walk every day, to the post office or library and
back, walking with a slight shuffle and his head tilted
upwards.
He always wore a coat and hat, and I never saw him
, without his bowtie or a strange little black string-tie,
which may actually have been something else.
I don't think I ever asked him.

LOOK AT IT THIS WAY

By Chester S. Dawson
It's ajoy to recollect Borsodi as I knew him. Recollect
is not quite the right word. Ralph is not that far away.
Exactly when he and I met is uncertain ~ probably
about 1950. The place I can't forget - a busy homestead
run by John and Mildred Loomis near Dayton, Ohio, to
which came the seekers, the curious, the revellious, the
non-alcoholics - and Ralph Borsodi. They came not only
for the fun and stimulation from such a gang, but also for
Mildred Loomis' imperishable
whole-grain bread fresh
from the oven with vitamins and enzymes.
Borsodi was never husky. Slender, around six feet,
his most noticeable characteristic was his style of walking.
He trod as if he expected to step on a wasp. Most carefully
he made his way, eyes usually on the ground, not missing
however what he was expected to observe. Years later, I
realized that a visual impairment lay at the root of this
measured step.

His tone was kind. and in the 30 years I knew him. I

cannot remember him ever becoming verbally inflamed,
or noisy in any way. He could laugh as easily as other
men. But never ell cavalier, and for this reason, among
others. people enjoyed conversing with him. Among his
signal detestations
was despotism,
and consequently it
was common for him to alter the conversation - if it
seemed to be approaching a dogmatic dimension - with.
"Well, yes. But look at it this way ... "
Ralph had the rich ability and willingness to talk on
any subject. and minus notes. I remember in 1975 visiting
him in his lovely New Hampshire home armed with my
tape-recorder.
I called my interview "Nine Questions for
Nine Decades", a tribute obviously to his age. Prepared
for the firing squad, Ralph responded cheerfully, and
survived. I'm glad for this tape, for it offers us a chance to
again hear the style and the keen responses of this unique
gentleman.

While Ralph could chuckle - I never found him

either sour or dour - it was simply that the man preferred
essential discussion as distinguished'
from discussion.
With "Well, yes, but look at it this way ... " the larger
conclusions were always brought (0 the surface.
Ralph's eager offerings of an alternative
position
came, no doubt, from his life-long study of what he called
"the universal problems of living." "All people, everywhere, confront certain major problems,"
he'd say. "I
believe there are seventeen of such universal queries.
People deal with them differently - some people give
them religious answers, some materialistic answers, and
some what I call ratio..al, humanist answers."
Ralph had all these problems clearly in mind - with
their alternate answers. Here was source for the depth,
the variety, and the delight with which he thought and
conversed.
One misses such as him. One misses Bertrand
Russell. We humans have few ways, or no ways, of really
perpetuating the greatness of our great men and women.
Only in the living memory of those fortunate enough to
have had some personal contact, do they survive. Perhaps
this is enough. In all events, Ralph is resting now, after 90
active and sane years. My own consolation lies in having
known him at all. I somehow suspect, were I to tiptoe over
his grave to toss a complex question, the same genial
voice would rise, " Well, now, look at it this way ... "

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10

~,:

RALPH BORSODl, AN EXPANDING THINKER

Mabelle Brooks
My life and education began on an Indiana farm near
the turn of the century, and for me, resulted in two
anticipated results. First, I became a teacher and second, I
never lost my interest in seeking and learning. Interest in
America's economist-philosopher,
Henry George, led me
to the Henry George School. Responding to a note on its
bulletin board led to friendship with Mildred Loomis at
Lane's End Homestead, near Dayton, Ohio. And this, of
course, led me to acquaintance with School of Living and
its founder, Ralph Borsodi.
Here was an outstanding

intellectual,

whose books,

This Ugly Civilization and Flight From the City, J studied.

I understood his concern for life on the land; I honored his
crusade for justice. I would help develop a seminar for
Borsodi in the Midwest's metropolis, Chicago, where J
taught school. With him, we examined the major problems of individuals and society as we saw them in 1950.
Members of that seminar, and others, organized to secure
land in Florida, and there establish an "intentional
community" for productive community living. These families
each secured several acres, from the larger community
tract, on which to build their homes, develop a garden,
keep chickens and a goat, so that they could be largely
self-supporting.
It was an enticing idea, but my Florida
residence came later. For many - until our country's war
hysteria brought Cape Canaveral cascading into Melbourne Village, Melbourne
was a quiet, productive
setting. Now (1980) unfortunately it has become a subburb
of a military-industrial
complex, with sky-rocketing land
values.
I retired, but I'm busy in adult education for social
change. I continue to study Henry George and Ralph
Borsodi to better understand
and deal with the major
universal problems which life hands each of us. Borsodi
was not a static thinker. His flair for exact definition to
each problem aided his logical thinking. His travels,
research and experiments kept expanding his solutions.

11

,
I

----RALPH BORSODI AS I KNEW HIM

Richard Dewey
When I first met Ralph and Clare Borsodi - more
than two decades ago - Ralph seemed tired and old. One
lense of his glasses was opaque, which added to the
impression of advanced age and disability. Shortly thereafter. however, there occurred a remarkable physical
renaissance accompanied by a no-less impressive social
psychological revival, and who is to say which came first?
No small part of the renaissance is attributable, in my
opinion. to a small group called "The Inquirers" which
met monthly at the Exeter Unitarian-Universalist Church.
The group was the brain-child of Elbridge Stoneham, who
also acted as moderator, or, as he said. "the sparker." As
months went by. Ralph participated more and more, and
soon became a central figure in the group. He began to
read again, adjusting well to the consequences of cataract
operations, and as we well know, he returned to his
writings, and to his travels to India, Mexico, and elsewhere. His wife Clare, of course, was a constant source of
support during these trying years.
Ralph was usually very certain that his ideas were the
right ones, having rigorously tested them in terms of
logic and fact before presenting them to others. His
certitide was often perceived by listeners as dogmatic, and
to some degree, I know that he would agree, but his
assertiveness (he preferred this word to aggressiveness
which he viewed as destructive) was usually solidly
grounded, and not spun from irresponsible subjective
reveries. If, after some very rigorous arguments (not
fights, but searching interchanges of the Socratic variety)
he would see that he had some rethinking to do, a
delightful but tell-tale grin would greet the group or
person involved in the discussion. His certitude was not
immune to logical challenge, but challengers had their
work cut out for them and any weaknesses in reason or
fact would immediately be pointed out, usually gently but
firmly.

12

Ralph was an excellent teacher. His knowledge, his

sensitivity to the attitudes and opinion of others, his quick
I mind and ready supply of illustrative data, and his sense
I of humor were more than enough to compensate for his
I lack of any formal training in pedagogy. He was equalIy at
I home with undergraduates or in graduate seminars, with
lay people or professional academicians. If one stood, as I
often have, behind Ralph while he lectured and parried
questions from undergraduates, he or she would have
inferred from the expressions on the faces of the young
men and women, especially the latter, that a currently
. popular "star" of movies or TV were the lecturer. He had
the capacity to excite and stimulate his audiences. Not the
least advantage among Ralph's assets was his longevity of
experiences which enabled him to make history come alive
through his personal accounts of events and persons
known to his audiences only through the pages of historical documents. He was living testimony to his recommendations that those who had reached their period of
"seniority" (by his calculations by the age of sixty) should
be sought out for the wisdom they had gained and could
impart.

In a world much given to seeking and to offering

psychological and social-psychological explanations of the
problems. Ralph was a notable exception. Though he
would probably prefer to be judged as a philosopher, I see
his strengths as lying in his sociological insights. At a time
in history when even sociologists cannot agree among
themselves on the definition of their subject-matter-field,
it will not be easy, or perhaps even possible, for me to teII
you why I perceive Ralph Borsodi as, primarily, a sociologist. but it is worth a try. My remarks may weII appear as
cryptic to some but will bore others.
Most of us are quite familiar with the general ideas of
two of the most influential thinkers and writers of recent
time, those of Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, and if we
keep their ideas in mind, they wiII serve as sharp contrasts
to Borsodi's. The former built his explanations of human
behavior upon psychological (.instinctive) and social--1'.si'Eh~~gical_.(learned) indi vidual; bases-wher.eas_~he_

13

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p
S

.~

-----latter selected one of the basic human institutions, that of

the economy, as the foundation
for explaining
other
phases of organized life. Both were using abstractions
from the life-whole, and went well beyond the limits which
such abstractions
warranted.
Each tried to explain the
whole in terms of parts of that whole. Sociological explanations involve a consideration
of the interaction of all of
I the basic institutions, those without which human life is
not possible, namely, the economy, education, religion,
government, inter-sex relationships,
adult-child relationships (pa dotrophia).
If we add to these the auxiliary
institutions of recreation, art, and the corrective ones, we
have the whole of the sociological framework. None of
these institutions has meaning apart from the others none can succeed without the support of the others. An
economy, whether the Marxist model or otherwise, cannot
exist in the absence of an educational system of some sort
(education is not to be confused with schooling), and what
a society's religions is cannot be separated
from the
institutions of education, economy, or government.

Borsodi saw this, and although he used terms which might

differ from those which I or other sociologists
might
employ, their referents were, in general, the same universal groupways without which human life cannot be sustained. He saw the whole in terms of which the parts of life
must find their explanations. This is especially apparent in
his Seventeen Problems, which I used as a text in sociology "social problems" courses. In contrast to many writers
in the field, he did not dwell on the symptoms
of basic
problems. such as divorce, violence. prostitution,
drug
addiction. crime, or racism, but perceived that these were
the inevitable consequences
of the failure of the several
universal institutions.
He saw more clearly than most
sociologists that it is not possible to rid ourselves of
mental illness, child abuse, drug addiction, etc., and leave
, the social structure untouched. Many would-be reformers
, and "students"
of the problems would cure the problems
'while leaving untouched those inadequate
and distorted
! educational.
religious. and governmental
institutions out
of which these problems, emerge. He realized ,that_th.e_

14

over-concentration
in cities cannot be left unabated and
still correct the products of this over-population.
He knew
very well that the so-called "social sciences" will never be
scientific unless their vocabularies
are improved.
He
spelled out this problem in his Definition of Definition.
He understood
the futility of those naive followers of
Freud who believe that a few hundred thousand psychiatrists and clinical psychologists can cure the world's ills.
He perceived no less clearly that the selection of one or
two of the basic institutions as the sources of our difficulties was equally fruitless. He taught that the improvement
of the economy (production of goods and services) was not
simply a matter of buyer protection (governmental
action)
or new technologies, but also a function of proper education of the consumers and the development of an institutional religion which focused upon moral values rather
than futile supernal debates. His sociological orientation
explains why he never sought, or promised, any quick,
, easy. and cheap means of attaining the goal of widespread
life-satisfying
experiences
among the masses. He was
quite aware of the fact that there can be no cultural
change. Knowing this, he was sad about the many unsolved problems of our species, but not pessimistic about
a long-term improvement of life chances and life standards. He remained idealistic to the very end, even when I
talked with him less than a week before he died, testifying
to C. Wright Mills' opinion that. in today's world, the only
realists are idealists. His legacy for all of us is clear - to
try to improve all of the basic institutions wherever and
whenever we can, in large measures
or small, as the
opportunities arise. The world as it should be (educationally. economically.
etc.) provides the criteria for our
actions, not the world as it is.
Obviously. there is much more to the Ralph Borsodi
that I knew quite intimately for some twenty years, but it
is this one important quality of RB as a sociologist that
seems essential to emphasize in a world that has mistaken
individual independence for freedom, subjective desire for
justifiable "rights"
and novelty for progress.

15

OUR THREE-GENERATION

HOMESTEAD

William Triechler
In my youth, (1950) Borsodi's ideas of homesteading, normal living, home production, three-generation
families and
the creative, independent life seemed right for me because I
was fortunately a member of a close family on a small farm
in Iowa. Few of our neighbors, however, chose this way. They
lived on farms and in the village because they liked the community. But few were interested in making do with what
they had, or could raise. They went to work in Cedar Rapids,
becoming more and more dependent on a money income. (We
were too, because of continually rising taxes.) We grew nearly
all the food we ate, cut wood for all heating and cooking needs;
sawed lumber and built our own house; economized on clothing. But we needed money for those unavoidable taxes. So
we got ajob at a private boarding school. We could still garden
and farm, and our children attended the school in which we
taught. So we saved money to buy a beautiful abandoned
farm in New York's Finger-Lake district. We've worked and
enjoyed it for five years; Morter has a job as nutritionist in
a hospital: George, Lisa and their youngster, and also our
sons Joe and John live here on the farm, and besides their
own projects, help us garden and farm.
In upstate New York we find more families who try to
produce much of their food. Yet the New York Farm
Bureau promoted commercial farming, and encourages its
members that farming is a business.
Further "breakdown" in the system will probably reinforce efforts of new
homesteaders
to the home-productive
aspects of a good
life. I recall our visits to Lane's End Homestead, saw that
it wasn't drudgery or lonely, that it left time for studying
and writing, and in touch with others who were enthusiastic about this way of life.
An outstanding
idea for me from Borsodi was that
economics of factory and centralized production disappear
when all the costs (including social costs) of production
and distribution arc reckoned. Earlier social costs were
ignored, but today we are aware of the costs of pollution,
increasing costs of energy, along with the slackening of

16

productivity.
I think Borsodi's observation
that home
production is often more efficient than large-scale production is the economic argument for decentralism.
The only
other place I've seen a similar idea was in Muenger's
Failure of Technology,
Van Mises mentions autarchic
production in Human Action, but quickly goes on to extol
the efficiencies of division of labor. Yet von Mises doesn't
convince me that specialization
is an economic way to
achieve our necessities - certainly not for food, nor
entirely for shelter or education. Exchange and cooperation are necessary and rewarding, but I think they are
secondary to primary education, when all costs and values
are considered. Borsodi was interested in exchange - he
was for free-market
exchange,
and suggested
his
Constant currency to assure free trading.

I
I

Long ago I was introduced to Murray Rothbard in

School of Living's Balanced Living. He now puts forth, I
think, the best arguments for private property in For A
New Liberty. Today's Libertarians are issuing exciting
ideas and sparkling writing from the City. I didn't think
anything good could come out of the cities, yet this vital
new argument for freedom and political liberty is coming
from the people in the cities who can see first hand what is
wrong.
Also Howard J. Ruffs How to Prosper in the Coming
Bud Years is a best-selling decentralist book - almost a
homesteader's
manual. Magazines like Country Journal
are among the fastest-growing
periodicals. Country living
is spreading - a natural complement, I think, to libertarianism. Borsodi was one of the first to see this, and to move
his family out of the city in 1920.
We must have a biography of Ralph Borsodi - and
feature articles on him in The New Yorkers. Esquire, and
other journals like them. Borsodi's experiments at Dayton
liberty Homesteads in the '30s, with the School of Living,
. Melbourne University later, and then his Land Trust and
Constants
were partial "failures".
But that doesn't
mailer. They were amazing ideas which he tried, too early
for the times. I hope we can now reach millions of people
with Borsodi's ideas - which he not only articulated, but
worked out in practice. Borsodi is a man for our times.
17

---RALPH BORSODI -

THE BEST TEACHER

I EVER HAD

Gordon Lameyer
\
I met Ralph Borsodi in the spring of 1964 while
looking for a home to buy in Exeter, New Hampshire.
Ralph and Clare had decided to sell their farmhouse on the
outskirts and move into town to be near the libraries and
stores. Still recovering from a near-fatal illness he had
contracted
in India, Ralph showed us around the old
Colonial farmhouse, its red barn, and about twenty acres
of fields and fifty of woods. Trudging up and down stairs
he shows us the camphor-wood closets, the large family
room, and the gardens. He was sorry to give up country
living for a single-story home near Exeter Academy, but
his health and eyesight made the care for a farm rather
precarious. He was now nearly eighty. As it turned out, I
did not buy his house, but I did come to buy many of his
ideas as I got to know him better.
Although he was nearly forty-five years older than I,
Ralph became not only my best friend in Exeter, he
became the mentor of my post-graduate
education. We
soon started a small group to investigate, through weekly
I papers given by its members, the nature of a free society.
I then read Ralph's Education of the Whole Man, published in India. That led to my offer to proofread his Seventee" Problems of Man and Society which he was then
writing, a massive magnum opus to which he had devoted
nearly twenty years of his life. Later, we formed a small
corporation, . Borsodi Associates",
established to typeset
books in India and print them by offset here in America.
The only book we ever did print here was Ralph's Deflnition of Definition, a title I suggested
because of its
similarity to Ogden and Richards' The Meaning of Meaning. We also worked on "The Interdisciplinary
Vocabulary", for which I got professors in each department of the
University of New Hampshire to submit terms which were
often ambiguous in their own, or other, disciplines. At one
point, a former student of mine, novelist John Irving,
worked with us.

18

Having completed 3 trip to India to set up the printing

arrangement, Ralph was full of ideas to lend money to the
farmers in the Gandhian movement through a mechanism
here, and having Jayaprakash
Narayan to come here and
raise funds for the non-profit foundation. I was soon at
work writing a short biography of "J.P."
Narayan and
organizing a national welcoming committee of dignitaries.
Unfortunately, due to a great famine in northern India the
next year, Narayan could not come. But the International
Foundation for Independence
was launched and with it an
Institute of Independence
as a kind of peace corps to
spread the lending ideas which Ralph wanted to link to a
"constant"
non-lnflatlonary
currency.
For various reasons, this program was not established in India, but the World Council of Churches set up a
fund that did help farmers in this country. A loan of
$25,000 was made to a new Southwest Alabama Farmers
Cooperative, founded soon after the "Walk on Selma".
Under the management
primarily of Robert Swann, the
Foundation and the Institute grew during the next decade
as an instrument of financial rural renaissance
in the
Western Hemisphere.
It operates
as the Institute for
Community Economics at 120 Boylston St., Boston.
When asked several years later to contribute to a
mass tribute being given for Ralph Borsodi in California, I
wrote the following:
"Ralph Borsodi is the Socrates of New Hampshire,
the Sam Johnson of the North, the Gandhi of
America, the Free World's answer to Karl Marx, the
Aristotle of Classification of the Social Sciences, and
the best teacher I ever had."
The Socrates of New Hampshire. Ralph believed that
the answers to problems were often quite apparent if we
knew how to frame the questions. The difficulty came in
defining the terms and in knowing what questions could
lead to satisfactory conclusions. To have heard Ralph in
any discussion was to have heard a probing mind that was
not put off by semantic difficulties of ambiguities.
He
knew what he meant by' the words he used and was

19

------'
therefore often able to clarify others' terms so that they
could see what they really were saying. Once Ralph loaned
me a book by his friend, Stringellow Barr. Dr. Barr was
dean at St. Johns College, which had given Ralph an
honorary degree. As a "Great Books" college, St. Johns
arranges for all its students to read the Socratic dialogues
in the first year. I sensed from Dr. Barr's book that he was
consciously emulating
Socrates.
Ralph, I think, did it
unconciously. He knew what questions to ask, and his
integrity led him often to unpopular answers.

The Sam Johnson of the North. I owe this apostrophe

to a gentleman at Brown Brothers Harriman in Boston,
who came up with this appelation
when I explained
Borsodi's attempt to sort out the ambiguous jargons of the
various academic disciplines in the new Interdisciplinary
Vocabulary Project. Ralph, like Hobbes before him, wanted ideally a technical term to have only one meaning.
Sometimes binomials were necessary to make distinctions
but Ralph devised a whole method of defining not only
words, but various families of words - that is, a word's
relations. I tried to interest Merriam- Webster of Springfield, Massachusetts,
in this project, but they were so
locked into descriptive definition that they could not catch
a vision of becoming a "French Academy" and setting the
King's English straight in America. Our Definition of
Definition was a beginning in clarifying the fog of academic jargons, being continued by Dr. Richard Dewey of
the Department
of Sociology,
University
of New
Hampshire.
The Gandhi of America. Although not a charismatic,
political figure with a grand following, Borsodi perceived
the ingeniousness
of Gandhi's economics from his long
exposure to the Gandhian movement in India. Similarly
wedded to rural revival, Ralph gave his energies
to
promoting decentralism
and to fostering
viable small
communities. In the last year of his life, Ralph met E.F.
Schumacher, author of Small Is Beautiful, who died only a
few months before Ralph did. They agreed on the manner
ill which to implement rural renaissance,
but they were
taking different means. Schumacher focused on interrne-

20

diate technologies, while Ralph wanted fundamental

reforms in land tenure and monetary issues. Striving for an
honest monetary system and a Georgist land-tenure
arrangement, Gandhian ideas such as Gramdam appealed to
Ralph. But he wanted to give them the vision of a
non-inflationary currency where the government could not
come in and "bamboozle"
people. Incidentally, the intentional homesteading
communities
which Ralph helped
form in the '30s were the nearest thing to what Gandhi
envisioned for his own country.

The Free Worlds Answer to Karl Marx. When I

worked on revising Borsodi's Seventeen Problems under
the title Questfor Wisdom, I realized that most Americans
were chiefly confused on the Possessional Problem. Working with economist Lydia Ratcliff, our revision was published in Green Revolution. It set down clearly Ralph
Borsodi's perception of what people can morally own, and
can possess or pass on.
Ralph disliked Communism intensely, but he was no
mere apologist for Capitalism as we know it. By carefully
examining
the nature of objects necessary for human
survival, he offered a third alternative.
He understood
that land and produced goods are obviously different in
nature. Natural resources are clearly given, as the American Indians said, "by the Great Spirit."

Up to the end, his handshake had been as firm as a

man of twenty-five. Like an Indian sage, he gave of his
wisdom in the years - the many years - which he had
after his "retirement".
Ralph did not know how to retire.
, He was a learner all his days and an inspiration to all who
knew him. I was privileged to think of Ralph Borsodi, a
man old enough to be my grandfather, as my best friend.
He was a teacher in the highest sense of the word.

21

-----'

SOIL - THE SOURCE OF HEALTH

Paul Keene

Ralph Borsodi is the source, for my wife Betty and

of much of our learning about the depth, complexity
and meaning of simple, every-day things. We were young
when we met him in the early '40s, after our brief
missionary project in India. The School of Living attracted
us - its do-it-yourself approach, the canning and freezing
Ill' food.
the weaving and tailoring of sturdy clothes. We
were glad to settle in as students.
and later as teachers
with the School's Gandhian-like atmosphere shielding us
from commercialized.
industrialized
America.
11l~.

Ralph Borsodi was a walking encyclopedia - everything was his specialty. His knowledge of government. of
economic reform. of functional art, of ethics was all
profound. But for us. his thinking
and experience
in
modern homesteading
were especially appealing - the
gardening. planting, tending. harvesting. And the soil the ground beneath our feet was fascinating and enlivening. No longer was it mere "dirt",
not just a bunch of
minerals and chemicals. The soil was alive! - full of
living organisms. microscopic plants. animals. fungi, and

synthesizing the sun, soil.-;~n~irinto

chlorophyl
which our bodies absorb into flesh and blood and nerves.
This (pointing to the waste) is the dark side of the Wheel
- just as active. just as alive - where the organic matter
decomposes.
and with the microscopic plants, animals.
fungi and bacteria. turns into health-giving
humus. Do
you know how wonderful these compost heaps are?" he
asked us. "Do you know that here are countless tiny
colloids - the most minute bits of living matter, the
rnycorrizul fungi?"
We shook our heads.
or mycurrizal.

"We've

never heard of colloids

"You know what a molecule is." he explained, "and

an atom - and how the atom is made up of protons and
neutrons. The soil is 'structured
that way too - some
particles inorganic from the rocks. with nitrogen. potassium, potash, and many trace minerals. But the soil has
organic, living matter too - from decomposing vegetable
matter. When the acids and the alkalis have done their
work on the inorganic. a marvelous substance. humus. the
rich brown earth, results."
"Here," he said. dropping to his knees and scooping
up a handful of the moist earth. "Smell it."
"It smells sweet and good."

I said.

bacteria.
We began to enjoy the soil - the digging and
sp.idiug it; the tilling and feeding it; of talking about it
with neighbors and teachers; hearing scientists and gardeners; of reading the wonderful books in the School of
living library. Much of our learning came from the small
barn and its surrounding
area. Here were' a beautiful
Jersey cow and her calf; two pigs in their stalls; two goats.
a dozen chickens. with bins and lofts for their grain and
hay. and outside, a fenced-in area under a few trees, with
its several heaps of manure and waste.

"Yes, it was once dung and straw and earth. These

three, with air and water. and the tiny mycorrihizal fungi,
make this earth. The mycorrhizial are the link between the
plant and the earth - so tiny. yet so complex that they
have two prongs - one prong is attached to the inorganic
bit. one prong is embedded in a plant cell. Through this
vit al link , the nutrient from the earth travels into the plant
cell.

I remember the morning when. Ralph Borsodi stood

there. stretching out his arms toward the garden and to
the waste heaps - "Here."
he said impressively, "is the
wheel of life. The growing of plants in the fertile soil.

"And myeorrhizi exist in soil only where humus

exists only where decomposing
organic matter is
available. Do you see why these heaps - where humus
and mycorrhizi are developing - are so vital to our

22

"Marvelous!"

Betty nodded.

23

health? The produce the life - the vital element

plants - which we and animals consume.

in the

In northern India live the Hunzas - the most healthful humus-based

people in the world. At 120 and older,
the men are active burden-carriers
over their mountains
for travellers and scientists. You must read their story in
McCarrison's books."
We talked until visitors arrived, with RB winding up,
"McCarrison is a British health officer who discovered the
Hunzas and their stamina from fertile soil. Some years ago
- in 1921 - he told his story to the American Medical
Association. But what happened? They paid no attention
to it! It's only now as McCarrison's,
and Dr. Wrench's,
book, The Wheel of Health have come out and Lady Eve
Balfour has established
the Soil Association in England
.that these facts and principles are seeping out."
Now we began to understand
why to Ralph Borsodi
his homestead
particularly
the barn, garden,
and
compost area - were a sanctuary.
Our two years at the Borsodi School of Living were
rich and formative beyond all asking. Its students and
teachers were pioneering into the future - working with
"ideas whose time had come." To challenge, interpret,
direct and expand were Myrtle Mae and Ralph Borsodi,
original thinkers, indefatigable
doers, born teachers. In
due time, these ideas, these people, places and processes
began rolling off our tongues as though we were veterans.

100 rolling acres in Central Pennsylvania _ a farm full of

black walnut trees, an indicator, we learned, of the
dcsired limestone.
No mother ever looked more fondly on her new-born
babe than we viewed Walnut Acres as we rattled proudly
up the winding lane by the creek. Glory was everywhere
- in spite of rusted roofs and unpainted buildings, no
plumbing, no telephone. But the wood was sound - and it
was great to pioneer.
We
Rudolph
seekers.
acres of

were full of the challenge from Ralph Borsodi,

Steiner, the Hunzas, and countless good-life
And we had a house and" barn and a hundred
land!

The years went by, and slowly the life returned to the
"oil. We did everything - built terraces, grassed waterways, and contoured steps to control water run-off; we
planted clover and alfalfa everywhere, and allowed heavy
sods to grow. We chopped legumes and grass back into
the soil, instead of making hay with all of them; we left all
the straw on the ground after harvest; we fed the soil
peanut hulls. corn stalks which (unlike chemical fertilizers) had first to be broken down by fungi before the soil
could use them. We fed hundreds of tons of ground rocks,
lcaving each field to itsown recuperative devices one year
out of four.

But we needed to know more - we could not go back

to teaching mathematics.
Our vision now was of fertile
fields, growing crops, of barns and animals, tender living
things and the "wheel of life". We must live on the land,
more closely in touch with the wheel.

In the early years; we had insect problems; later, they

diminished, and now we find probably one crop a year that
may need special attention. Yields approximate that of our
more chemicalized neighbors. We continue what we began - we farm the same humus-based
way which we
began thirty years ago. We'venever
used chemical fertilizers. insecticides,
herbicides,
or any of the many
"<cidcs. "

So we studied at the Steiner Kimberton Farm of 1,000

acres in Pennsylvania, headed by Dr. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer.
And then we rented a farm. That first year we suffered the
tragic loss of all our crops in July hailstorms
washing
much of our soil into the Delaware River. But we made the
break. In the Spring of 1946, we borrowed $5,000 to buy

People heard about our farm and came to visit. They

tasted our food and wondered if they might buy some.
They were willing to pay "extra" for balanced, tasteful
produce. Postcards and leiters came from afar, and one
day as I painted a barn roof. a car drove in from New York
in search of "organic"
food.

24

25

----Originally, we just wanted to get away from that

infirtile crescent from Boston to Richmond to live
simply and quietly, raising our children healthfully. But
we were caught up in something larger, and we gave it the
best we had. We found ourselves the first in the natural
food business. Now we are seventy friends and neighbors
working together in unity and fellowship producing a
great variety of food fit to eat. On the farm enlarged to 500
acres, we compost, grow, harvest, store, grind, bake,
roast, toast, combine, can, freeze, package and ship
literally hundreds of quality food-products.
Every ingredient is listed on each label. In every case for every purpose,
from soil to seed to consumer, we have sought the best.
Consumers responded. Thousands tell us what better
whole-food products have meant. We are cheered by the
bloom, awareness, and alertness of the second-generation
children fed by Walnut Acres. To see the results of one's
effort in living human beings is a rare and heart-warming
privilege - a tremendous
testimonial,
a great responsibility.
Occasionally, we look back, even a bit wistfully, to the
quiet simplicity of our wood-burning
horse-drawn
days.
But we have had the best of two worlds - we would not
have missed any part of either. We have been approached
with million-dollar offers to sell out, to expand enormously. These offers do not appeal. We simply would not upset
the philosophy and practice of a lifetime for money.
Basically, we think small - we feed and plant one small
field at a time. Our church, school, and neighborhood are
S III all.
We're glad for what we learned from Ralph Borsodi
about soil and life; we're glad to be part of a circle which
knows that small is human, that living soil is the basis of
health, and that the Earth abides.

26

RALPH BORSODI-BUILDER
OF HOMES AND SOCIETY
Ken Kern
As long as I can remember, I have wanted to build my
house. In college, I majored in architecture, and fortunately, my professor, Dr. "Ernest Guydon, encouraged me. So I
left college f~1I of ideas and some skill.
Hitchhiking down the Pacific Coast, a genial driver
offered a ride. We got to talking about do-it-yourself
housing, and he said, "You belong with us in the School of
Living. Our founder, Ralph Borsodi, is a No. 1 do-ityourself man. His Dogwoods Homestead has become a
symbol for us - for building, raising food, even educating
our children, by ourselves."
In the library, I found Borsodi's F/ightfrom the City,
and was captivated by his description of the Flagg method
of building rock walls - layering dry rocks inside wooden
forms, and pouring wet congrete in behind them to seal
and mortar them in. This led to my homestead building. In
the forty years since then, we've constructed
a dozen
types of buildings - in wood, adobe, stone, concrete, and
various combinations.
Borsodi's life too was full of building, and he had the
unique habit of each project expressing,
or becoming
involved in, some philosophical
or social reform. His
family producing at Dogwoods became a research center
for comparing costs of producing food at home, with costs
at the corner grocery. His Dayton Liberty Homestead
project was a challenge
to the centralized
industrial
system, undergirded with a unique reform in land tenure.
There he met his first reversal. In stringent depression
years, money was tight - and Borsodi, on principle,
returned to his Dogwoods base, rather than work with
government money.

27

"Political action is not our forte," he said. "If ever a

real decentralist movement is to occur, we will need a new
education. I will start it. I will build a School of Living in
which adults can examine both the principles and practices of living humanely."
For the Borsodi family - his wife, Myrtle Mae, and
his sons Bill and Ed - the Dayton experience confirmed
rather than refuted the need for Ralph Borsodis kind of
revolution. Together they planned a school in which adults
could evaluate their life-styles and their culture; in which
they would work out and develop plans for homesteads,
and for the institutions of society - so they could live with
maximum security and freedom.
Actually, their own Dogwoods Homestead
had already become such a school in miniature.
Mail was
flooding in; hundreds of people appeared on their doorstep, asking to see and discuss their homestead.
More
adequate facilities were needed. It should be in the
country. but near population so that urban people could
become involved. It should be an operating homestead,
with activities available for participation of students and
teachers.
Funds for land and buildings was a first need.
Borsodi launched a cooperative credit and loaning agency
- the Independence
Foundation - in 1936. In it, people
could invest at a modest return, say 4%. Funds would be
loaned at 5% or 6%, to buy land and to assist homesteaders in building and equipping
their homesteads.
The
earnings of 1% and 2 % would pay the administrative
, costs of the fund. Any surplus would be rebated back to
borrowers and lenders. prorated to the amounts they had
loaned or borrowed.
I

With Independence
funds, they bought forty acres
from the Bayard family, five miles from Dogwoods. The
center four acres were assigned to the School of Living, on
which was built a larger-than-family-sized
house of native
rock and wood. In it were well-equipped kitchen, a large
living-dining room with a copper-hooded
fireplace, and
beautiful murals of regional homesteads
in the United
States. Also. an office. a library of seminal books on
problems of living. seven cubicle bedrooms and three
baths for student-apprentices.
a basement for weaving,
crafts. churning, milling, and recreation.

28

FROM PRISON TO DECENTRALISM

Harold R. Lefever
In my sixty years I doubt if any individual's ideas
have had as much influence on me as Ralph Borsodi's.
Few of his many admirers received much of his influence,
as I did. in prison. Because of my conscientious objection
to war. I was sentenced in October, 1942, for refusing to
report for World War II.
My roots go back to the French Huguenots who
resisted war and tyranny. They left a legacy of resistance
to much that produces war in the modern system. Our
geneology shows my family to be the 13th-generation
descendants
of Mangen LeFevre who settled with others
in Pennsylvania more than 200 years ago.
Sometime between high school and graduation from
Penn State, I came in touch with a monthly, mimeographed paper entitled Brethren Action. Its editors in
Ohio included Elizabeth Miller and Mildred Loomis, and
its contributors
largely Church of The Brethren people.
Their analysis of war and pacifist action was in advance of
the denominational
office position. Mildred Loomis was
interpreting
Ralph Borsodi's work and showing the relationship of rural life and decentralist economic and political institutions to world peace.
From there I began to be motivated toward my own
self-sufficient
and homestead
living. (Several others in
prison saw this too and have contributed to decentralist
thinking and acting.) We purchased our 60 Sonnewald
acres (Sunny Woods in Pennsylvania German) near Spring
Grove, not far from York. in 1944. We built a Quonsetstyle hut with one side largely glass facing South - a
beginning of solar heating. Jane and I lived in it for seven
years. and three of our children were born there. But we
lost Jane when the children were little. Grace and I were
married a few years later and we built our present.
solar-heated
home.

29

Our whole family attends the School of Living conferences - over the years in Ohio, Indiana, llIinois and other
places. We'd attend every Borsodi seminar on Major
Problems of Living we could get to - at Antioch College,
Exeter, N.H., Lane's End in Ohio, Heathcote Center in
Maryland. Both Grace and I have been members of the.
School's trustees; we helped move the School's headquarters East, and now our Sonnewald Educational Homestead functions as one of the School of Living centers.
Each summer one of Sonnewald's educational outreaches is to a group of 10 to 30 persons who study and
share our activities for a three-day weekend, called our
Homestead Seminar. They "tour" our homestead - the
gardens, the equipment, the trailers out back where our
homestead-apprentices
live, our pond, our compost
heaps, woods and fields. With volleyball, swimming and
folk games and discussion, a good time is had by all. We
must have had SOO people in the last ten years. We
continually hear of "our students" having developed
homesteads in places of their choice, and of the community action they are taking.

While some people are weak and sick, we have little

need for doctors. When some others are lonely, we enjoy
family, neighbors, and friends. When others are apathetic
' or helpless, we are interacting almost daily with people in
civil rights, war resistance, natural foods, energy selfsufficiency, ecology, Georgism, land trusts and the School
of living.

When millions trek to monotonous jobs in factories

and offices, we Lefevers are busy in our creative, responsible work on or near our own homestead. For much of this
we are greatly indebted to Ralph Borsodi and his followers. While I came upon some of it in prison, it has been
our road to freedom and security through positive exciting
voluntary action.

Our two oldest, Bart and Evan and our fourth, Dan,
as they grew, have worked with us on the homestead,
farming, gardening, repairing, maintaining and building.
They have gone alony way "on the job", learning plumbing and the electrical business. Our daughter Nancy and
Willa know outdoor homesteading too, but have chosen
other aspects of homesteading which are important, or
more so.
What has it meant to us to know Borsodi? He was,
and still is through his writings and influence, a conscious
student and teacher of living, To have known him is, in
many ways, to live and act in the humane decentralist
pattern which he analyzed, advocated and demonstrated.
As a result of our four decades of homesteading and
community life, while others are threatened by shortages
of food and resources we have more than enough (of which
we are ashamed) even though we are classified as poor by
some monetary standards.

30

31

THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE

OF HOMESTEADING-

Selma vonlladen, homesteader.

Vista. California

Our vonHaden family went homesteading

in 1947,
thirty-three years ago. We've had our ups and plenty of
downs. and we grant the complaints of some of our friends
- "the trouble with the simple life of you homesteaders
is
that it's too complicated!"
But we have never regretted it
- 'vc'd do it again. and our satisfaction is real and intense
in what we consider the social significance of our way of
life.
As young marrieds, we lived in New York City, not far
from the articulate voice of Ralph Borsodi, twenty-five
miles north in Rockland County. We listened, and attended his School of Living. We didn't like being dependent on
big business and big government
and we had a
four-year-old-daughter
who spoke horse language fluently
and needed someone to talk to. We read about the long
growing season in California - the orange and avocado
groves of San Diego County, its fertile soil and wonderful
gardens. While our friends thought this outlandish,
all
this beckoned us and we landed in 1949 on thirty acres
near Vista.
We quickly built a temporary shelter - and lived in it
for several years while we worked on our main house.
Cash? Even though we needed less money living on our
homestead.
there was less opportunity
for making the
cash we did need. Around us several homesteads
died
aborning, of cash starvation. but we hung on.
Then the Cold War. The Marines Landed
Pentagon enlarged the Marine base near us; the
plants in San Diego began operating full-time, and
- milking the sacred cow - began lapping up
cream of an affluent, warbent society.

-From School of Living's Balanced Living, July,

32

- the
aircraft
Vis tans
the rich

1975.

No matter how many organic vegetables and breastfed babies we raise. no individual homestead or intentional community can hope to survive on a war economy.
Sooner or later. it will fall prey to the speculator or the
missile plant unless we are willing to build our oases in
isolated areas. cut off from many of the cultural' sources
which most of us find essential to balanced living.
We homesteaders must also face the fact that in a war
economy. homesteading is no longer a way of beating the
cash salary (as it was in the past.) In dollars and cents.
most fairly-well-educated
people can make so much more
on outside jobs that self-sufficiency savings are minor.
Why then. in the face of these enormous obstacles.
should families try to homestead or build homesteading
communities?
We see five important reasons.
First. by his own personal effort in a social climate of
freedom. the homesteader creates for himself the opportunity to be his own boss. to make his own decisions. and
even to learn from his own mistakes.
Second. some degree of self-sufficiency
is our only
means of protecting ourselves and families against the
extreme fluctuations of an industrial
and commercial
economy.
Third. homesteading enables us to secure better, fresher food at a time when processed and denatured food is
being recognized increasingly as the cause of degenerative diseases.
Fourth. homesteading provides a better environment for
our children. where they work constructively
with plants
and animals and find plenty of space for their activities.
Fifth. we believe that a culture whose social climate was
determined by a homesteading
way of life would offer a
degree of peace and freedom unknown today, worthy of
work and sacrifice to bring it about.
In the 1950s. our acres are surrounded by a typical
suburb. beset with skyrocketing
land values and high
taxes. Instead of groves and gardens. we have proliferating freeways, traffic problems, sewer problems. double

33

school sessions and juvenile delinquency.

Vista has been
discovered by Hollywood and is now an exurb as well as
suburb. Along with a fungus growth of stucco boxes we
now exhibit executive mansions of incredible opulence.
Fifty-dollar cashmeres appear on our school campus, and
hundreds-of-dollars
formals at the prom. The child who
used to consider himself fortunate to own a horse now
thinks he's underprivileged
if he can't have a truck and
trailer to haul it to the horse shows.
But we see homesteading
as a means for us to help
reverse some negative and hostile social trends. Times of
prosperity have always been unfavorable for homesteading. But signs are multiplying that our affluent society is
playing itself out. The increasing automation of industry
and agriculture (and replacement of aircraft by missiles) is
beginning to result in mass unemployment
that neither
industry nor government seems able to handle.

of independence of that economy offers our only hope for replacing it with a new social order of sanity, peace and freedom,
where individuals solve their own problems on a personal
basis.
Our hope is that more and more people will undertake
homesteading with courage and determination.
Realizing
that homesteading meets their deepest needs, they will reap'
its rewards. Homesteading is a prime way to realize "we are
masters of our fate." With it we can replace the boredom and
futility now permeating our society, with a new sense of responsibility and purpose.

Total self-sufficiency for everyone would seem to be

. impractical, but a flexible program
of relative
selfsufficiency would answer many of our social problems. In
times of economic, political, and natural disaster, a homestead family could increase its self-sufficiency as circumstances dictated. Needs and abilities of families vary, and
changes develop during different periods in a life-span.
Each family can determine for itself the source and size of
an appropriate outside cash income.
We must, as Borsodi said, labor unceasingly
to
supply an ideological vacuum created by the failure of
finance capitalism and state-communism
to feel the real
needs of human beings. Homesteading-decentralists
offer
more than an ideology. In a world sick to death of
depersonalized relations and institutions,
we offer genuine loving concern for the fate of every individual. In contrast
to IBM cards or "humanity in general" we prefer to work in
small groups to solve vital problems. We can do these things
with the homestead and homestead-community.
While we know the great difficulty of establishing a family
homestead or a homestead community in an exploding
economy, it also strengthens our conviction that the increase

34

35

ALL WE NEED IS TO CHANGE

THE WHOLE SYSTEM

John Shuttleworth
This article appeared

in Mother

Earth News, 1972.

"The dissatisfaction
with 'modern'
society that the
survey-takers now talk about is nothing new. We've had it
again and again - especially during and after great
depressions - since the nation was founded. The unrest
usually spawns a back-to-the-land'
movement that catches
fire for a while - then times get better and we repeat the
cycle all over again."
The man who recently made that statement is Dr.
Ralph Borsodi and he knows what he's talking about. Dr.
Borsodi has been one of the world's leading spokesmen
for "decentralist"
and "self-sufficient"
lifestyles since he
himself left New York City for the country. That was in
1928. Today, Ralph Borsodi is still one of the foremost
champions of this movement.
The decentralist trend that Dr. Borsodi has in mind,
however, reaches far beyond the bare-bones subsistence
farming practiced by some contemporary
"dropouts".
If
Dr. Borsodi has his way, we'll upgrade those subsistence
farms into prosperous family enterprises
and bind them
together into a network of small villages that are deeply
satisfying places in which to live.
"We've gone from one extreme to the other in this
country,"
says Dr. Borsodi.
"From
the splendidlyisolated 160-acre family farms made possible by the U.S.
Government's
original Homestead
Act to the packed
sardine boxes of our largest cities.
"Well, there's all the evidence in the world that the
building of cities is one of the worst mistakes mankind has
ever made. But we are gregarious
animals. We really
should live in communities of some kind. Communities
that are not too large and not too small. Places where,
when you walk down the road, everyone says, 'Good
morning' - because everyone knows you. I call such a.

36

place a community

of 'optimum

size'."

OK - that sounds good. I'm sure that lots of people

have had the same idea. The only difference between
"lots of people" and Ralph Borsodi, though, is that he has
spent a large portion of his life successfully turning his
dream into reality.
"I tirst proved that an individual could live a healthier, more satisfying life on a self-sufficient
homestead
during the depression of 1931. While millions were tramping the streets of our cities looking for work, my family
had plenty of eggs, meat, milk, fruit and vegetables to eat.
"1 was a city boy, but I learned to milk a cow, churn butter
and otherwise operate a largely self-sufficient seven-acre
farm. I even learned to construct stone houses and weave
Illy own suits during that period.
"This activity led me to think about reorganizing
society so that thousands of other families could share the
independence that my family enjoyed. I wrote some books
- the most popular were This Ugly Civilization and Flight
From rite City - about our experiences and eventually
founded two model communities near Suffern, N.Y. This
was in the '30s, during the Great Depression.
"We proved that my ideas would work. By putting
them into action, families that had been barely scraping
by in New York City were able to purchase a piece of land,
build a modern home, produce most of their food, and
otherwise raise their standard of living."
Perhaps there's a lesson in these experiments for all
of us. Especially now, when millions of people are looking
for something
to believe in some security, some
guarantee that their children and grandchildren
will be
able to live satisfying lives.
Like many others, Ralph Borsodi views the future
with concern. "The warning flags are up all around us.
The energy crisis, you see, is interesting to me for this
very reason because for the first time, the public is getting
a faint glimmer of the fact that we're living in the twilight
of industrialism.
The crunch is beginning.

37

"In another 20,30, or 40 years, all the oil will be gone

at the rate we're using it. And that's not all, of course.
There are other shortages. Nearly all the industries are
experiencing shortages of minerals and materials.
"Our highly-industrialized
network of factories and
distribution systems, you see, can last only as long as our
irreplaceable
resources are cheap and available. Well,
those resources are never going to be cheap again, and
they're going to become increasingly unavailable."
What can we do about this rapidly deteriorating
of affairs?

state

"We must change every social and economic institution in the country,"
says Dr. Borsodi. "Switch from a
technology of centralization,
mass production, and money
to a technology of decentralization,
self-sufficiency,
and
good living. We must learn to supply our energy requirements with wind-plants and solar collectors, instead of
petroleum. Raise our food in our own backyards, instead
of buying it in cans.
. 'I would also introduce a rational system of land
tenure that would favor individuals over speculators
and a rational system of money that couldn't be inflated at
the whim of politicians."
This all sounds like rather big medicine - but, then
again, there does now seem to be a large sickness
gnawing away at the core of life in this country. Dr.
Borsodi's "back to basics" approach has worked before.
Maybe it's time to try his ideas on a truly massive scale.

THE ROCKLAND HOMESTEADERS:

FIITY YEARS LATER
MelMost
impressions und the living testimonies
from pioneers who had worked with Borsodifrom early Oil
- and had him to thank for their homes and communities,
The welcoming crowd of residents
and returnees
laughed as they swapped recollections about "that time
the pigs broke loose when we were eating outside," or
letting their goats graze on the farmer's land across the
line.
Then there was the problem with the hordes of
visitors, pleading to look inside the homes or use the
bathrooms.
One man who came up from Florida was so
excited he drove his car into a pile of building rocks. "I
don't care about that," he said. "I just wanted to do the
same as you ,down in Florida."
Two or the 18 properties
farmed actively. Armin Brendel
welcome Borsodi and Loomis,
waterfowl he raises, from ducks

at Bayard Lane are still

got off his farm tractor to
and to show them the
and geese to swans.

The other is the farm of Mr. and Mrs. Leonard

Plotkin. He was the original owner of Bayard Lane, and
kept only five acres for himself when Borsodi converted
him. He divided the rest into two-acre parcels.
"Mr. Plotkin gave us the land for nothing down and
let us pay him only as each home was occupied,"
Borsodi
remembered.
"That made it all possible."
They greeted
each other affectionately.
Borsodi's plan was the origin of the land trust idea,
now a standard practice in homesteading
projects. "It's
not a commune or communal living," Mrs. Loomis explained. "Each homesteader
keeps his own property as
long as he uses it."
It was the same at Van Houten Fields where Clyde
Robinson, who owns a plastics company in West Nyack,
recalled, "They gave us the land for $4.68 a month, taxes

38
t---~------ ,_.'-- --.

Library" of
R~Y!~.Qn_Coll~ge

included. Can you imagine'? And the bank was so enthusiastic, we were asked if we didn't want more when we took
a building loan."

Ironically, Flight From the City was rediscovered by

young people in rebellion against the same commuter
suburbs Borsodi once promoted, and against the home
appliances
he urged as a means of emancipating
the
housewife. In the introduction to a recent reprint of Flight,
published in paperback to meet the new demand, author
Paul Goodman wrote:

The Robinsons built the third house at Van Houten

Fields, with a fine view from its hillside perch over land
once cleared for gardening. It's next to one built by Frank
Rockwell, then garden editor of The Times,

"There is rich irony in the re-issuing of this book at

the present time. To many young people, the Borsodis
must seem to have been the squarest of the square, yet
Flight From the City has become part of the hippie
counterculture. "

The community attracted a number of other New York

newspapermen,
including Richard Lyman, retired after 37
years as a feature writer for the New York HeraldTribune. Borsodi stopped in at their sone house, not
forgetting that they lived in the present garage while the
house was being built.

Later he was to make three different sojourns in

India, writing a book, The Challenge of Asia. He taught
there and founded Melbourne University in Florida (he
wrote two books on education) and backed up the homesteading movement by founding an institute for land
trusts.

Still keeping up their full home garden were Mr. and

Mrs. Walter Ballou with a complete range of vegetables
and a greenhouse
for seedlings,
William Van Alan Clark Sr., 90, retired (now Honorary) Chairman of the Board of Suffern's biggest industry,
Avon Products,
Inc., telephoned
warm greerings
to
Borsodi from Greenwich, Connecticut, apologizing that he
wasn't in condition to come,

Yet from his start in Rockland, Borsodi became

increasingly concerned with the price-squeeze on human
living. For two years, the Bayard Lane School of Living
published a nationally-subscribed
series of ten booklets on
"How To Economize On ... " - everything from land to
soap, which he capped with a prophetic book warning that
Injlatiou Is Coming.

Borsodi found Dogwoods now owned, though not

occupied, by Laurance Labadie, who described himself as
an anarchist recluse. Borsodi had known him well. They
talked of the past and their differing views, each an
, individualist and lover of the soil in his own way.
I

"Do you remember when we made a trip to California

about 25 years ago?" Labadie asked. "The doctors gave
you six months to live!"

Mrs. Loomis had included several selections from

Labadie on country living in her new anthology, Go Ahead
and Live! published last year. But Labadie is convinced
it's no use - civilization is doomed, he says.
Acquaintance
with anarchists and bankers, carpenters and millionaires, pacifists and Navy commanders,
is
nothing new to Borsodi, who is setting up an international
bank in Europe to issue a commodities-based
currency
designed to keep pace with prices.

This year he established

a non-profit international
banking organization
in Luxembourg - which has no
currency restrictions - to circulate this currency as an
international
money based on commodities prices.
"I'm setting it up this year so that it can go on
operating if anything happens to me," Borsodi said. "No
chance," said an admirer - "he'll be around for years
more."
.

Standing tall and lean "as ever on

the steps. Ralph Borsodi gazed up
silently at the house he started
building stone by stone 50 years
ago - once-famed as Dogwoods
ill a book that swept the country,

40

41

- -- --_.- ---- - ---- --,----

-----._-

RALPH

BORSODI-

A CHALLENGE

Shyarn Sundar
assistant

editor

IN INDIA

Chawla

of the Ambala

[II/dia]

Times

Not too hopeful that India was fertile ground for his
vision of a decentralist,
human world, Borsodi accepted
the invitation to come to India in 1958. He would meet his
elderly friend,
Lotvala, and the libertarians,
and the
energetic professor Kahol, whose correspondence
he had:
_ enjoyed. Perhaps a smaller country, Burma, might serve
for launching
his program
for a better world through
righ toed uca tion.

Ralph Borsodi had a marvelous

reception
in India.
His reknown had spread; his arrival in Bombay was news;
editors vied with one another in publishing profiles of him,'
highlighting
his views - in both the plebian press and the
more influential
English press, including
The Times oj
India, The bombay Standard,
and others. Wherever
he
went. he was the talk of the town - a name to conjure
with.
In a month, Ralph Borsodi had made a tremendous
irnpactr on the Indian intelligentsia.
He was invited to
speak several times a day to distinguished
groups. His
intelligence.
his eloquence, his uncanny humor and twinkling eyes impressed
all who heard him - editors, presidents. and students
of six universities,
mayors, econo-'
mists. research
students,
celebrated
artists,
musicians
and engineers.
The warmth of Indian goodwill deeply moved Mr.
Borsodi. Mr. Nand Kishore volunteered
Borsodi a room in
his home, with courtesies
of every sort. Despite Nehru's
centralism and industrialism,
Gandhian
philosophy had a'
lot of thoughtful
followers who saw that Borsodi's
own'
program in many ways was parallel to that of Gandhi and,
Vinoba Bhave. Perhaps,
thought Borsodi, India would be
the "launching
pad" for his human program.

Borsodi flew to his typewriter.

In the last week of
October, 1958, his Pan-Hum anist Manifesto
was finished
and published in December by Lotvala's Libertarian
Institute. ~he Manifesto
was Mr. Borsodi's spirited plea for:
scrapplOg the old world, with specific guidance in economics. politics, and education for ushering in a new one:
The Ambala Tribune called it "a stirring idea - perhaps
the greatest since the launching of Sputnik."
Other enthu-.
siasts acclaimed it as an earth-shaking
document.
Said The Tribune: "Ralph Borsodi in 1928 described
The Ugly Civilization.
Now his Manifesto,
despite
its
small size, ranks among the greatest revolutionary
pieces
of the world a magnificent
dream by a practical
man ...
Needless to say, Mr. Borsodi's ideas are not in
keeping with centralist trends, but his are ideas that will
ultimately fill the ideological vacuum yawning all over the
world today."
Invitations to Borsodi increased,
including one from
Vidyanagar,
a rural university near Anand, Gujarat. Its
president,
B.D. Patel, a man of extraordinary
courage and
vision, aimed at a rural renaissance
through educationMr. Borsodi was delighted to join them. In his opening
address to the faculty, Borsodi mentioned
some lacks in
prevailing
systems of education.
Dr. Patel asked Ralph
Borsodi to prepare
his idea of a textbook
for the
university.
Here was an Indian replica of Borsodi's
Melbourne
effort - a university wanting his text for studying major
problems of living. Borsodi sent to America for his files
and notes, to set to work on a "curriculum
of adult
education".
Before his project was completed,
political
turmoil over Gandhian
vs. Commercial
trends
upset
Vidyanagar.
But those interested
in Borsodi's
work, including Dr. G.S. Desai, an influential scientist in Ahmedabad, grew more enthusiastic.
Dr. Desai arranged
for
Ralph Borsodi to continue his work in a cooler climate. In
Simla, with the company of Mrs. Borsodi, who arrived'
from America, Borsodi worked on the basic problems of
human beings and society, on which he had already put
twenty years of research.

42

----------------------

43

-------

-- ----- -------- -----------------------i-------------------

Now Ralph Borsodi's

co-workers,
including
A.J.
Bragg, an American graduate of Columbia University in
India, organized
an International
Institute
of Social
Sciences to sponsor Borsodi's
work. A seminar on the
Major Problems was held at Hotel Cecil, Simla, from May
20 to 27, 1960. An intellectual
feast for the participants,
the seminar also finalized the charter for the Institute, and
organized other seminars.
Borsodi said that the progress
in India eclipsed anything that had happened in America.
Relieved of administration,
he gave undivided attention to
creative work. He did more - despite his advancing years
- in his 14-hour-long days than many a younger person.
The result is that besides
The
Borsodi completed
in India two of his
The Education of the Whole Mall and
Problems of M ell and of Society, both
Charotar Publishers
in Bombay ..

Manifesto,
important

Ralph
books:

Seventeen

Major

published

by the

.*.*

Gandhian leaders, through their Janata Party, with

advancing strength in India, are now actively working on
the twin reforms - the village land-holding
or Gramdan
system which implements
community
trust-holding
of
land, and commodity-backed
people's currency. They are
issuing currency backed by rice and wheat - a significant
step away from the strangling, exploitative money-lending
Indian system.

It may be that the world will observe in India the

decentralist,
human. ethical practices in a new land tenure
and in credit-money
transactions,
the significant
double
challenge of Ralph Borsodi.

~~,!,,:':'

44

---- _. -----------------------

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY

Peter van Dresser

[Peter vall Dresser wrote this review of Ralph Borsodi's

book, Education and Living. for The American Journal of
Economics and Sociology for January, 1950.]
Ralph Borsodi, spokesman
and philosopher of the
Decentralist movement in the United States, has in this
unusual book begun a summary
of his views on the
present state of man and society. The reader here will find
a brand of thinking which cuts across the stalemated
frontiers
of "radical"
and "conservative"
ideology.
Strongly humanistic in his outlook, the author addresses
himself impartially against authoritarianism
and regimentation whether embodied in the political Welfare State or
in the domain of industrial finance-capitalism.
In his conviction of the fundamental
significance of
the family and the local community as the matrix for
national economic and political organization, he rephrases
much of the grassroots Jeffersonian
faith; while in his
analysis of the extreme specialization of industrial society
as the underlying cause of a host of neuroses and social
ills. he corroborates
the findings of modern psychiatry.
His insistence on private enterprise and the free market as
the only basis of a goods society should delight the
disciples of Adam Smith and disappoint socialists of all
complexions.
But his equal insistence on the end of all
monopoly in money, land. banking. patents, and corporation statutes as a necessary political condition for such a
society places him squarely in the tradition of American
libertarian radicalism marked by Josiah Warren, Thoreau,
Henry George and Benjamin Tucker.
Borsodi envisages a continuous process of education,
conceived around the requirements
for "normal living",
as the means by which we may evolve towards a happier
balance. He deplores the specialization
of contemporary
pedagogy and its capitulation
to the demands of an
industrial economy, chiding even the. great John _Dew.ey

!4,;J".

RALPH BORSODl'S

45

--

----------

---

------------

for his early contributions to this trend. His proposal for

"schools of living" centered in each locality and dedicated
to working out the real-life problems of the men and
women of the community in terms of the enduring wisdom
and science of mankind is an interesting and challenging
one.
One hopes that Borsodi's adoption of a rather formidable terminology and system of logical classification does
not discourage readers of an otherwise significant and
constructive work. It is an interesting point that, no doubt
as an outgrowth of the author's philosophy of the balanced
life, he set the type and largely composed the book on his
own linotype machine in his country homestead, much in
the tradition of William Morris and kindred craftsmenphilosophers.

RALPH BORSODl, AN 'AMERICAN'

GANDHI

Ralph T. Templin
author, Democracy and NOli-violence"
Part of my wife's and my preparation
for working
with Ralph Borsodi was our 15 years managing a boys'
schuol in India under the Methodist Church. There we
learned
the tri-part
meaning
of Gandhi's
"basic"
education.
Gandhi's swadeshism is self-education,
self-development. using personal power and the peoples' authority to
manage and control society. Satyagraha
signifies the
innter spirit - the integrity of conscientious assertion of
human power. Both develop Sarvodya, the extension of
the human community and the general welfare.
When World War 11broke out, some of us declared
English imperialism to be against the principles of Jesus.
and we published a Krstagraha Manifesto (Our Stand with
Christ and Non-violence.) To this, our bishops took exception. and three couples were immediately dismissed (Lila
and Ralph Templin, Paul and Betty Keens, and Jay and
Rena Holmes). The Keenes contacted the School of Living
and told us "it was the closest thing in America to
Gandhi's three-part program."

lJ-.J.l.~(7/

~~~r'll<.~"~
'~,..,.-...,

:-

At the new year in 1941, we and the Keenes became

students of the Borsodis at their School of Living. We
experienced re-education as Borsodi saw it, and understood his vision of revitalizing all of America, and the
whole of humanity. We canvassed the whole range of
Borsodi's major, universal ~roblems of living; we aimed at
the distribution
of ownership
and control among the
people. We agreed with the need for self-development,
personal integrity, conviction of consensus,
intelligent
possession of natural resources, and sharing in community development. The similarity of Borsodi's concepts and
programs with Gandhi's was' striking.
We discovered
school - a group

the School of Living was indeed a

of eager students,
Iearning on a

47

46

---------------- ----- -----------------_._-_

.._--

----------_._-_._--------_.

"productive
homestead",
which Borsodi hoped would
develop in every community of the land. The Suffern
model in Bayard Lane community of homesteads was one
of four in the New York area. The Borsodis shaped it, but
there was cooperative control to make it democratic and
durable. Significant was the community ownership of the
land, now widely called "community land trust."

Title to the forty acres was held by the Association, with

access to (and continued use of) the land, obtained by each
homestead-family
paying an annual rental to the community in lieu of a purchase price.
Thus four alternative counter-culture
institutions aided the formation and growth of Bayard Lane Community:
1) a cooperative

Ralph Borsodi was director and chief lecturer; Myrtle

Mae had charge of nutrition and meals; an assistant
directed gardening
and care of animals; Bill Borsodi
supervised the Guilds, and Ed Borsodi was office manager
and accountant. The on-going life, the building of homes
and community, was the School of Living. Said Ralph
, Templin. a student (and later director of the School),
"There was nothing we could not question and explore,
but not in a haphazard and desultory way. Subjects and
problems were clearly defined, well thought-out,
and
organized. Ralph and Myrtle Mae were more than adequate to our needs - equally at home in practical affairs
and philosophical issues. Outstanding authorities on many
issues joined them from New York and nearby universities. "
i

2) cooperative

building
exploitative.
J)

land-holding
financing

via

and land tenure;

and credit. as well as the actual

Guilds

was

cooperative

and

non-

an alternative education for adults. Borsodi felt that

land holding, financing and building were essentially
cooperative
by nature and uniquely basic for social
change. going beyond the usual cooperation in marketing.
4)

Ralph Borsodi, a complex and fervently dedicated

innovator. has been challenger and "model" for many of
us, on many levels. Few of us, in the early days, knew how
revolutionary he was. Some agreed he was a "voice crying
in the wilderness."
Now in the '80s, we hope his contributions can be better undersood and practiced, that the
revolution can be the quiet one of re-education which
Borsodi began.

Around the School building, sixteen families built

their own attractive two- or three-acre homesteads,
with
funds borrowed from the Independence
Foundation, and
labor provided by the cooperative Guilds. Men of various
skills - carpenter, mason, finisher - constituted a Guild
and planned with the home builder an adequate house,
agreed with the home-owner on a cost and schedule for
completing it. If the Guild, with no interruptions from the
home-owner, could complete the house for less than the
agreed-upon estimate, that earning was divided between
the Guild and the home-owner.
If the actual cost went
above the estimate, this too was divided between the
Guild and the home owner.

Borsodi's new education included Free America, one

of America's best journals, publishing and distributing
decentralistr ideas and literature. For my thesis at Teachers College. Columbia University, during my School of
Living study. I presented
the School of Living as an
all-life. human approach to adult education in America. It
established recognition among some adult educators that
adult education should not be oriented to "hobbies",
that
it would not be pre- or post-college courses, but would be
out among the people, defining the nature of their living
problems, and guiding their human solutions.

The sixteen families became members of the first

cooperative agency. The Bayard Lane Homestead Association, to implement the community land tenure which
Borsodi had introduced in Dayton Liberty Homesteads.

When Ralph Borsodi went to study and work at a

Gandhian University in India, my wife Lila and I became
directors of the School of Living (1941 to 1945). This
confirmed the similarity of the Gandhian non-violent

48
49

- ----

----~~ -"-------

----- ----_._------------

- -

---------------._------------------_._--_._-----_._-------

..

---

-_._----._--._--._--

.-- ..

revolution with Borsodi's concept for a western nation's

conditions and needs. Profound "revolution"
in a strict
sense is always basically education. The more vital the
education, the more likely the change. as Erick Erikson
has shown in GWldhi's Truth (Norton, N.Y. 1969).
I'm glad for having known and worked with both
Mahatma Gandhi and Ralph Borsodi in their unique
education for living. I'm glad we have their demonstrations and writings. Itreasure Borsodi's Seventeen Univer:;(/1Problems of Individuals and Society. produced and
published in 1968 at Vidyanagar, Ahmnedabad, India. It's
a curriculum for both study and action. I think of Ralph
Borsodi as an American Gandhi, a guide toward the
human mastery of human destiny, grounded within one's
self. moving outward to the pursuits of truth, and finally to
human freedom.

HOUSEHOLD

ECONOMY IN 1980s

Scott Burns

.'Our European cousins have long tolerated

our self-indulgence and extravagance,
like driving thirty milesfor dinner
in afancy restaurant, knowing thai
our complacence about energy catch
up with us. 11 has. We're learning to live
within our limitations. Our new self-interest
must be to survive in our homes ..
The most prolific advocate of the household economy
was to be Ralph Borsodi, whose ideas are being reviewed
today. His books developed the reasons for "dropping out
of the market place" and pursuing a life in the household
economy. Increased health from outdoor exercise and
homegrown food; creative, independent
living; and a
reduced cost of food and shelter were leading arguments.
in 1923 with National Advertising vs,
held that the growth of national
advertising did much for the manufacturer and nothing for
the consumer. He postulated that the savings in mass
production were lost in the rising cost of distribution.
an
idea he developed more fully in 1927 with the publication
of The Distribution Age.
Beginning

Prosperity. Borsodi

Here Borsodi anticipated Ralph Nader by forty years.

It is impossible to read his work without concluding that
he may have been the grandfather
of "consumerism".
"When we come to the practices which today prevail." he
wrote, "in buying for ultimate consumption, we find that
less than one hundred years of divorce between production and consumption has almost entirely destroyed the
consumer's capacity for measuring quality."
And later: "With the manufacturer no longer forced
to meet the critical judgment
of the consumer,
it is
perfectly natural for the manufacturer to develop methods
of marketing which will yield him the highest net profit.
regardless of the intrinsic value of his oroduct." In such
50.

51

BORSODI'S QUEST FOR HONEST MONEY

Carter Henderson
statements lay the beginning of all the consumer advocacy
rnartialed by Betty Furness and Virginia Knauer.

By 1929, Borsodi's emphasis had become something

of an ideology. This Ugly Civilization announced to an
enthusiastic
audience that "the factory system" was a
temporary artifact of the steam engine. Electricity meant
that production could be returned to the home, where it
bclonged. In example after example, Borsodi showed that
the household economy can compete with the marketplace
in the production of food, clothing, shelter and wood fuel.
At no time, however, did he argue that the marketplace
should be abandoned altogether.
Rather we were more
salle to live in an inexpensive house in the country (where
the family could provide so much for its own needs) than
to live in an expensive city apartment,
committed to
specialized
employment
that may be unstable
and
insecure.
There isn't a single commune in America today that
docs not owe an unrecognized
debt to Ralph Borsodi.
Considering the burgeoning interest in returning to the
land - from members of the counterculture
to tired
computer salesmen - Borsodi has made a remarkable
contribution.
The peculiarity of his subject may account
for his obscurity. Can anyone be serious in comparing the
manufacturing
might of General Foods with that of the
rural household? Indeed, yes. We must remember that
Borsodi was dealing with essential goods - food, clothing, shelter, education - not automobiles.
And essential
goods, services and character are what brings moderns
into the household economy sector.
What Ralph Borsodi complained of in the Thirties is
still with us. It became worse when Vance Packard wrote
The Wasr"emakers, and set the tone for a decade of rising
consumer anger. The household economy, in spite of its
invisibility, may be the only instrument
for creating a
positive and viable future. From my view, time and nature
are on the side of the household.

52

Open any economics textbook and you'll see money

defined as "a medium of exchange",
"a unit of accounting", "a temporary abode of purchasing power" and the
like.
To Ralph Borsodi, founder of the School of Living, all
these definitions
were beside the point. To Borsodi,
money was a "claim against the issuer", an IOU, a paper
"promise to pay" which those who accepted it in return
for their goods or services should be able to exchange for
an identical amount of the same thing anytime in the
future. In other words, someone selling a cord of unsplit
hardwood for SSS today, should be able to buy another
cord just like it for SSS tomorrow, or a decade from
tomorrow.
Borsodi knew that money, as he defined it, did not
exist, nor was it ever likely to exist since the nation's
money supply in the form of currency, checks, and most
recently, credit cards, savings bank NOW accounts,
money-market funds, etc., was constantly being inflated
(i.e., debased) by commercial banks and financial firms in
their pursuit of profits, and by the U.S. Treasury as it ran
its printing presses overtime to create the additional
money needed to cover the federal government's
massive
annual budget deficits which in the last four fiscal years
alone have totalled some SIS0-billion.
To Ralph Borsodi, this irresponsible
creation of
money, vastly in excess of the economy's real needs, was
nothing less than a swindle against everyone who accepted it in good faith - a swindle that began in earnest
during the 1960s when President Lyndon Johnson decided
to pay for the Vietnam War by printing money instead of
raising taxes. From that point on, with a kick from
skyrocketing
world oil prices beginning
in 1973, the
American dollar has been losing purchasing power with a
vcngence so that in 1979 it is worth just about half as much
as it was less than 10 years ago.

53

Borsodi knew that the Washington political establishment would never attempt to make the American dollar an
honest currency because it was so much easier to cover
up its costly mistakes (e.g., the abortive S6-billion Safeguard anti-ballistic missile system), or hand out goodies to
their constituents
(e.g.,
the $1. 7-billion TennesseeTombigbee
Waterway
boondoggle)
by printing money
rather than risking their political necks by raising taxes.

Since Borsodi understood

he could never expect
honest money from the U.S. Government, he decided to
create one himself which actua\1y circulated for one year in
and around his hometown of Exeter, New Hampshire.
Borsodi ca\1ed his paper money the "Constant",
since it
was, in theory, backed by a "basket"
of thirty commodities from aluminum to zinc whose combined market value
, would hopefu\1y rise and fall with the Consumer Price
Index.

Hundred of people readily traded their U.S. do\1ars

for Borsodi's "Constants"
which did protect them against
inflation. But since the experiment
was discontinued
before the Constants were backed by actual commodities,
Constant holders received their inflation dividends from
special interim bank accounts Borsodi had established for
that purpose.
Ralph Borsodi had done lengthy studies of how to
create an internation
"Bank for the Issue of A Stable
Currency" which might be domiciled in a foreign country
such as Luxembourg, and would make commodity-backed
Constants avilable throughout the world.
In correspondence
and conversations
I had with
Borsodi in the years before his death in 1977, as we\1 as in
an unpublished
manuscript
he wrote on the subject,
Borsodi talked of such things as backing his Constants
with a sma\1 "reserve of spot commodities",
particularly
gold and silver, which could be used to meet calls for
redemption, and of arbitraging commodities and currencies (i.e., simultaneously
buying and selling them on
world markets such as Chicago and Singapore) in order to
gain ownership of them without having to accept delivery

54

until they were actua\1y needed. Arbitraging commodities

and currencies would also, it was hoped, have protected
the Bank against price fluctuations,
while enabling it to
profit from the minute price differentials which frequently
exist between various commodity and currency markets
thereby generating income to help defray the cost of the
Bank's operations. The Bank would also protect its commodity reserve against price movements by "hedging on
the futures market" (i.e., contracting to buy or se\1 fixed
amounts of certain commodities at a set price sometime in
the future.)
Creating a commodity-backed
currency, as the foregoing suggests, is not a simple undertaking,
and at the
time of his death at age 89, Borsodi was still working on
the problem during the "one-and-a-half
hours a day of
good thinking time" he said he still had at his disposal
(albeit with a twinkle in his eye.)
Ralph Borsodi was a thinker and a doer with courage.
He was one of a rare breed who used what Mahatma
Gandhi called "truth force" to do what Fritz Schumacher
called "good work".
The trail-blazing
legacy Borsodi has left us on the
cause and cure of inflation, along with the hands-on
experimental work he did on creating a stable currency arguably the single most powerful antidote to inflation represent valuable baseline knowledge in our struggle to
defuse the most explosive economic issue we face today.

Carter Henderson is a writer and lecturer

on business, economics, and the future.
He is currently at work on a book ca\1ed

New Age Investing.

55

RALPH BORSODl's SOLUTION FOR INFLATION

Walter P. Chase
As a small-businessman, Ijoined millions of others in
1972 anxiously watching reports on investments and
prices. "What did it all mean?" I asked myself, "those
New York Times headlines about 'devaluing the dollar to
curb inflation?' "
"And what's this in our local paper (Exeter, N.H.,
News]- 'Group Studies Borsodi's Experiments to Find A
Stable Currency?' " It had a sound ring and it was right at
my doorstep. I immediately asked to talk with Borsodi. He
was a surprise - quiet, professorial, in a comfortable
cottage with his comely wife, Clare. In his immaculate
office with a few valuable books, he answered my questions about money, currency, and inflation. I also caught a
glimpse of the depth, scope, and persistence of his goals
for a human, "normal" society of freedom and security.
"This problem of money-prices-inflation is serious,"
he said, "and significant. It affects the daily life and
breadbasket of every citizen. I've been concerned about
this ever since my business days back in the '20s. I've
written several books and done some research studies just
on the matter of getting an honest money system back into
the hands of the people."
From his shelf he took a large paperback book with a
tornado on the cover, titled, Inflation Is Coming! "I did
this years ago in the late' 30s," he said, handing it to me. I
thumbed through its attractive pages with graphs and
illustrations. Across the center was a double-spread of a
breadline of hungre men approaching a sign:
FREE
Soup. Coffee, and Doughnuts
For The Unemployed
"This was my effort to alert people back then to the
fact that in spite of several years of a great war boom, a
terrible financial disaster hung over the American people.
The government in Washingto.~ I said, would try to stop

56

it. And with increasing control of prices and money it can

temper and tamper with inflation - but unless the
fundamental government- debt and the government's
money- issuing is changed, it will only result in more and
more government control - and perhaps a Fascist or
Collectivist State.
"This was my effort to alert the American people to
the dangers in Washington's control of money."
"Strong warnings!" I said. "What response did the
book get?"
"It had a rough time," Borsodi said, "in spite of an
early bright report. In the first few days after it appeared
on the newsstands, our dealer reported that 80% of the
supply had been sold in New York in the first week. We
quickly doubled our order for a new supply at the printer.
But," he said with a wry smile and shake of his head, "the
report in a few days was a different story. Another book,
the same size as ours with a similar but different name,
No Inflation Coming! was selling like wildfire and ours
was standing still. They had got the first reports mixed up.
While Baxter's No Inflation was selling, our Inflation Is
Coming! was loaded on trucks and 'brought back to be
stored in our attic!
"Over the years, though, they found a place. Our
books had both immediate action plans - for families to
put their savings into homesteads, as well as long-range
plans for a commodity-based money supply. We not only
sold that first edition, but later another edition."
"I'rn inspired to know that you've had a prelude of
30-35 years to your 1972 'Experiment with Constants in
Exeter' ," I said.
"Yes," he replied firmly. "I've written and published many books and articles on 'money' - and so have
countless other persons. Now I think it's time to do
something - to demonstrate the ideas and try them out in
actual practice. Fortunately, a group of friends, businesspeople here in Exeter, two bankers, and some Philips
Academy people, have joined in a year's experiment. It

57

gave us a chance to try and prove that a commoditybacked currency - backed by goods - will circulate in
actual trade. I'm hoping, of course, that it will be duplicated, extended, and eventually become a substitute for
'legal' tender."
"In order to describe the system to others,
appreciate knowing the steps you took," I suggested.

I'd

"I was aiming at some important changes," Borsodi

said. "The first was to make money or currency a cooperative technique among people. Rightly, money should not
be issued and controlled by the government.
It then
becomes a tool among politicians. The government should
establish and approve the standard of money - the gold
in a dollar, etc. - just as it OKs that 12 inches are a foot
and 36 inches are a yard. But money should be issued by
the people by the depositors
in their community
banks."
"Doesn't
our Constitution
say that Congress
issue and coin money?" I asked.

shall

"True. But it doesn't say that no one else can. Money

is a tool of trade - a claim on goods. Why shouldn't
producers issue their own money to do their exchanging?
The second step I took was to describe our experiment to
the U.S. Dept. of Treasury - the issuing of Constants
backed by actual goods, a whole basket of corn, cotton,
wheat, oats, coal, oil, peanuts, etc., and ask whether this
was legitimate and possible."
"They

approved,

I take it," I said.

"Yes. They said we could issue money on clam shells,

pine cones, or anything the people would acceptl"
Borsodi continued. "So our next step was to gather a
group of co-workers, who would agree to use and honor
such money. Exeter's two bankers were willing, some
businessmen
said they would accept Constants the same
as coins or paper dollars. We all deposited a few thousand
dollars for printing, office expense, incorporation,
etc.
Soon we had Constants in operation.

58 .

"Slowly, Exeter citizens began spending their Constants for lunch at the Good Earth Restaurant, at the drug
store - even paying parking fines in Constants. They
looked like a check - they circulated, they exchanged
goods. When the prices went up, the value of the Constants kept pace with prices."
"I notice that a Boston bank is interested,"

I interrupted.

"Yes,
our experiments
have been reported
in
Barrons, Business Week and Forbes. Robert Swann and
others, who have joined in the International
Institute of
Independence
are cooperating. I think our year's experiences proved their usefulness; I hope 1.1.1. and others will
launch Constants permanently - they are useful in international trade, using arbitrage (simultaneous
sale on
foreign markets to take advantage of small differences in
prices.) On my trip abroad in a few months I will register
the International
Institute of Independence
in Luxembourg, to assist this commodity-backed
currency to more
than U.S. use."
"Good," I nodded. "I see how a sound money and a
good credit system would help people set up their own
homesteads,
businesses and communities - so much a
part of your decentralist program."
"Yes," Borsodi agreed. "Big banks don't find it very
lucrative to loan to the small homesteader
and businessman. A system of people's cooperative banks with the
depositors controlling them and their deposits, would help
revitalize small communities - and the housing and jobs
available there."
Borsodi added, "Alert people - not large groups but four or five people anywhere, can combine to get
Constant currency used in their community.
Constants
don't need to be backed at first by a fu1l30-item "basket".
A local group can start by issuing money on wheat
certificates (wheat stored in their neighborhood),
or "fuel
certificates.'
Local commodities in storage can be a base
for security and self-sufficiency."

59

"What appeals to me about this system,"

I volunteered, "is that it doesn't turn people into another large
'centralized' institution. People are involved in their own
self-sufficiency and independence."
Since my talk with Borsodi my energies have gone
into assisting the decentralist
movement. With cooperative commodity-backed
money, people will be more in
charge of their own economy - less subject to inflation
and deflation, recession and boom. They can then withdraw from the Federal Reserve with its tendency to
manipulate policy toward wars - and consequent
big
loans for armaments and government
spending. For the
success of human goals and spiritual values, we do well to
develop an ethical, responsible people's currency.

*In 1980, Borsodi's inflation wisdom was put in a revised

edition, Let's Stop Inflation.

RALPH BORSODI AND ROBERT SWANN

DISCUSS SIGNIFICANT CHANGES
IN LAND TENURE AND MONEY
[Ralph Borsodi, decentralist. and Robert Swann. director
of the Institute of Community Economics. in two conversations, 1968, and 1977.]
Robert Swann: You know I've just returned from Israel
where a group went to study the Jewish National Fund. I'd
like to talk with you about their land system and the
possibility of using it in the U.S. South - help provide
land there for people who have for many years been
pushed off the land.
Rulpl: Borsodi: Yes, I highly regard the Jewish National
Fund - its land holding practices are similar to the
practices I introduced in the Dayton Liberty Homesteads
in 1933, and later in our School of Living communities near
Suffern, N.Y. I agree that this system needs spreading,
and that it could be very helpful in the South.
Bob: The key to establishing
such a program is the
concept you call "trusterty"
- holding land in the form of
a trust, rather than outright "property"
to be bought and
sold. We conceive of it as a Community Land Trust. A
group of people in a local community joining a trust
organization to hold title to an area of land and offer it to
users on a lease arrangement.
RB: That's the basic idea, and a good name. The Jewish
National Fund, of course, is really a very large Community
Land Trust.
Bob: The Jewish National Land Fund holds about twothirds of all Israel's land - for lease, instead of purchasetitle. It's similar to Gandhi's Grandan village holding of
land in India, which you know.

.-.-.-.-.

-....

RB: Yes, in my visits to India I mentioned to associates in

the Gramdan movement - J.P. Narayan, for one - that
they could probably learn from the Israelis. They've been
at it much longer, since the 1900s, I believe.

60
61

Bob: That's correct. Can you tell me more about your experiences in the land arrangement in your Suffern School of Living communities, particularly about the legal documents? I
think it would be very helpful to us now.
RB: I'm very proud of the legal documents we developed,
particularly the "Indenture of Trust". That's the land-user's
contract for the land, comparable to the lease agreement of
the land-user with the Jewish National Fund. We had several
lawyers working on this - including an able man from the
U.S. Department of Agriculture. Our "Indenture for the Use
of Land" is a document of historical importance for dealing
with man's relationship to the land and to society.

II -

Late 1977

RB: I'm very glad, Bob, that you~ nine years of organizing
Community Land Trusts has been so successful. A sizable
group by now.
Bob: Yes, there are some thirty Community Land Trusts established, and many more in process. I'd like to discuss the
future of this movement with you today.
RB: OK. People often ask me about social reform, and I always
tell them that there are two key problems which stand in the
way of virtually all other efforts at social reform.
Bob: Would you name them?
RB: They are both part of the uni versal Possessional Problem.
One is the land problem, and the second is the money problem.
The total confusion about these two problems makes real
social reform virtually impossible.

62

Bob: Yes, I agree. Economists have ignored the land problem

in the United States. They seem to prefer to think it doesn't
exist.
RB: Remember, Bob, I was raised on Henry George. My father
was a close friend of Bolton Hall, who was one of George's
friends and disciples. But the economists seem to want to .
forget Henry George.
Bob: You call our Community Land Trust a part of the Georgist movement?
RB: In my judgment, yes. I've been trying to interest my
Georgist friends for years in understanding, and creating,
land trusts - so far without much success. They're impressed
with George's plans for taxation of land-site values. They
don't seem to understand how the Community Land Trust is
one form of community use of land-site values.

c:

::!

c:

Bob: Are you suggesting that the land-trust movement

could replace the Georgist emphasis on site-value taxation?

~
;;;
c

.:
r

RB: No, not necessarily. But as the land-trust movement succeeds in community use of "ground rent", as George called
it, then we would be accomplishing two very important things.
One is the educational value of having these principles
spread broadly among people who are actually carrying them
out - not merely in the hands of "fickle" legislators. The
other is that by practising Georgist principles in land trusts,
we would be creating permanent community institutions.
They would be carrying out George's principles. We wouldn't
have to depend on legislators reluctantly changing tax laws,
which can be as easily changed again by the next set of legislators.
Bob: Don't you think any tax changes should be advocated?
RB: Certainly, but if we have enough land trusts with people
in them who understand George's principles, then

63

}:

f
(

~
~

it will be easier to get the first changes in the tax laws, and
it will be harder to reverse the legislation once it is passed.
Bob: Isn't the Georgist movement beginning to understand
this?
RB: Well, I hope so. But I have another "problem" with the
Georgist movement.
lIt seems to me that the Georgist movement is obsessed
with the urban setting, and doesn't have much interest in
rural life problems.
Bob: What is that?
RB: I'm not sure. Maybe because George ran for Mayor of
New York City twice. Or maybe because most Georgists live
in cities and don't understand much about rural life.
Bob: Do you think the rural-lifers and the ecologists and the
Georgists should get together in some way?
RB: Sure, Georgists could be a great help to people in land
trusts. They could help educate on the principle of ground
rent, and provide assistanc~ in how to determine rent or any
specific piece of land. That's not easy to do - even though
the principle is easy enough.
Bob: Do you think we need a new political movement?
RB: Indeed, I do. The Georgists, land-trusters, ecologists and
decentralists in general have to form a political movement
- and eventually a party which will advance the ideas we've
been discussing.
Bob: You mean a party like the Libertarian

Party?

RB: Partly. But the Libertarians for the most part have never
been clear on the land problem. They're so involved with
private property that they can't see that private corporations
are stealing from the puhlic, right and left,

64

by walking away with billions of dollars worth of natural

resources.
;js you know, I don't think very much of the nationstate. Or to put it another way, I don't think very much chance
exists for the human race if the nation-state continues as the
primary power and political force in the world.
Bob: What do you think the land-trust
about that?

movement could do

RB: Eventually, if land trusts grow all over the world, then
a new non-national political movement with real economic
power would grow out of it which could slowly replace nationstates. This is what J.P. Narayan and I envisioned in India
when we decided to launch an "international" movement, out
of which our Institute for Community Economics has grown.
Bob: Would you explain that more fully?
RB: In order to replace the nation-state we agreed that two
things were essential. One of these was a non-national approach to holding of important natural resources such as land,
oil, coal, and other mineral resources.
Using the Gramdan movement as a model, but building on
other experiences such as Israel and here, a movement for
creating a world trusteeship for such resources could develop.
Thus such resources as oil would eventually be held by this
trusteeship. I worked out global peace plan in 1943 based on
this idea."

In this way, national competition for such resources would

be reduced and eliminated. The power of the nation-state
would diminish along with its threatening ability to eliminate
the entire human race. This very problem is at the heart of
the discussions going on now in the "Law of the Seas" conferences. Can you imagine how much safer the world would be
ifmost of the oil resources were not controlled by a few nationstates?

65

Bob: Yes, but oil may not be much of a problem in the

future, since oil is going to be running out in a few years
, anyway .. ;
.
:, .... ',,',.:
'''..

it:~

Tru~!

NB:
butwhat is needed to replace
'a'renew~ble '
- SQ4ccc::of eqergy which we have all around Uli and which
derives from solar energy.
" .. "
r~

"

Bob:"What's

that?

NB: Trees, plants and vegetables. Since they are

distributed over tbe entire earth, it will be easier
land-trust movement to provide equitable access
on a non-national basis,
.'

broadly
for the
tothem
_ ~.

, Bob: Now to the other problem which you and Narayan

thought was essential to gradually eliminate the nationstate and make the human race more secqre?
RB: We must now have a world economy rather than'
national economies. To do so we need a global, universal
money system - one which is not controlled by any group
of politicians within national states - one which can be
used for exchange anywhere in the world. I'm convinced'
that the human race cannot long endure - even survive
- the insecurity and the inequity which our present
money system creates.
Bob: Yes, I realize that's what
the International Foundation
established
to help create, a
that's why you worked so hard

our parent organization _

for Independence
- was
new money system. And
to create the Constant in

1972,
RB: That's right. I believe that only when a money system
independent
of government
has been established
can
there be any real security from wars which nation-states
wage, with the borrowing and lending of billions.
In addition, I believe that such a money system must
have an independent standard of vaslue - derived in a
broad base of the actual resources of the Earth - not
simply gold. Remember, land trusts or a World Resource
Trust will hold those resources ... The land-trust system
is growing, but not fast enough. The world is falling apart
very fast, and help must come soon.

66

RALPH BORSODI: A MAN FOR AU SEASONS

Henry Winthrop,

Ph.D.

My first meeting with Ralph Borsodi came on his visit

to me at my teaching post, Wichita University, Kansas, in
1958. I arranged a meeting between RB and the University
president. He, learning that Borsodi was president of the
Melbourne University declined, declaring he was completely unfamiliar with Melbourne (Australia) University.
His inferiority feelings vanished when RB's materials
showed they were produced at the Borsodi university in
Melbourne, Florida. Wanting RB to have his full time, I
was silent during the dialogue - which seemed more like
a talk between a Rotarian or Chamber of Commerce
booster and a student of Aristotle. Both ended the interview visible relieved.
Another effort for deserved recognition for RB fared
little better. An outstanding
intellectual on our campus
was a favorite of the president and son of a millionaire.
(This should have given me pause but I rated his intellectual gifts above his father's
plutocratic
status.) After
dinner at my home, RB opened the subject of seventeen
major problems of living. Again, I was silent, knowing
that RB could advance his own ideas. But all hell broke
loose. Our millionaire friend was a passionate
logical
positivist; he challenged everything RB said. He demanded strict, accurate definition of every word - which RB
relished. He invoked Keynesian
economics and swept
aside RB's ideas by invoking findings of American sociologists on community. He countered RB's ideas with research by political scientists
on the American power
structure. The one thing he would not do was allow RB to
present fully any of his ideas. He wound up telling RB his
notions were anachronistic
and did not take stock of the
realities of industrial America.
In my view, here was a depressing
exhibit of academic bigotry. How different if this young man had been
on a panel of individuals like Paul Goodman who were
knowledgeable
and admiring of RB's work. Even more

67

valuable would a panel member have been were he

conversant with F.A. Hyaek's arguments
against scientism in the social sciences in his Counter-Revolution
of
Science. Typically, RB was not upset by what took place,
but he was puzzled there could be so little meeting of
minds. Not having been associated with what Sorokin
called the metromania and quantrophenia
of the modern
university, he found the behavior of his intellectual opponent somewhat inexplicable.
At a meeting in New York City several years later,
when work pressure caused me to decline an assignment
for the School of Living, I asked RB why he thought there
was so little understanding
of decentralist ideals.
"The causes are many," he answered, "but a leading
one is that so few people give any thought to what is a
good life? People do not function like Socrates. They have
no notion of the fact that 'the unexamined life is not worth
living.' "
RB continued, "But even if such a thing were grasped, it would be little appreciated and even less-frequently
acted upon. Life pressures on the average person make
thinking in depth impossible. Most people live lives of
quiet desperation - such lives are not prone to philosophical thinking. decentralist,
or otherwise."
To why there was so little appreciation of small-scale,
community innovation,
RB said. "The urban level of
complexity is unhealthy.
Gibbon, Joad, and Toynbee
agree that urban life is decadent - yet mass man finds
these stimuli satisfying. How can they then appreciate the
qiucter, more nature-centered
life of a small community?
If one prefers moral "illth".
in urban centers is where
they'll find it."
From my very first meeting with Ralph Borsodi, it
was dear that he was an "original",
His ideas stemmed
more from his experiences and research than from books,
more from his own deep examination of issues than from
the wooden borrowing of other men's thoughts on the
matters that interested him. Long before that first meet-

68

ing. I had already developed a bias in favor of his thinking

- a bias that took root from my reading of This' Ugly
Civilization. Borsodi is a deeply creative thinker and a
man of action whose innovations were always a product of
his deep commitment to think for himself. His general
conservatism always appealed to me, and I believe that
this conservatism was fed to some degree by his recognition of the general social complexity of our time. That
same conservatism
received proper expression
in his
concern
with community
and
in his decentralist
philosophy.
Borsodi was an unusually-gifted
man and displayed a
very rare, three-forked
lifestyle. He was interested in
general ideas: he could immerse himself in analytic and/
or empirical detail, and he was quick to translate the
former two concerns into some concrete form. In this
sense. Borsodi was a whole man in an age in which the
single-channeled,
particularistic
viewpoint held sway. It
was this strong. holistic bent that appealed to many influential intellectuals who paid him tribute.
He is now gone but those who have understood him
will carryon
and keep alive the ideas and concerns to
which his genius gave expression.
He has been a milestone on the road to the intellectual development of the
W cst. In the drastic reconstruction of society which will be
a great part of the social agenda of the decades to come,
his thinking is sure to play a major role. His ideas
concerning the achievement of an organic sense of community and his ideas concerning the proper ways for
achieving personal development.
self-realization and the
construction of a civilized way of life in a world growing
increasingly complex socially, will all, I am sure, have a
decisive inllucnce in the future.
When I asked whether he found that the decentralist
outlook among his co-workers drew the more thoughtful,
mature person, he hedged a bit. "Wonderful
intelligent
people have responded - the social workers and teachers
in Dayton. the head of Pratt Institute among the Suffern

69

I homesteaders,

homesteader

Dr. Richard Dewey on Unifaculty." But he went on with

heartbreaking
reports of dishonest
behavior even
, croncyism, cultism, reprobates,
and bigots among de.
centralists. Subsequent experiences have proven this true
for me - the fund of virtue and morality seems no greater
among decentralists
than among mass man.
I versity of New Hampshire's

number of men and women in the world. If humankind is

to be saved from a mechanical and materialistic barbarism, the educators of mankind must furnish the leadership
which the crisis calls for. They will consecrate themselves
to what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful. They
will motivate those whom they influence to live on a high
moral, intellectual, and cultural level.

After 1960, I devised courses at the University of

South Florida to introduce decentralist thinking and Ralph
Borsodi's ideas. I found there that neither contemporary
faculty nor students understood nor appreciated
the outlook nor RB's particular contributions
to the decentralist
tradition. They - and the faculty were the worst sinners
- ridiculed decentralization,
voluntary association, community innovations, criticism of pathology in industrialism
and the capitalintensive
use of machinery. They would
not even read Borsodi; they were scientistic
with a
vcngence,
I decided that my goals would be better served in
producing a book for this purpose. It finally became in
1968 Ventures in Social Interpretation (Appleton,
Century, Croft) dealing in part with deficiencies and breakdowns in Western culture and economies. Part IV dealt
with the Pathologies of Over centralization and Part V with
Technology,
Decentralization,
and the Restoration
of
Community. In discussing the book with RB, he discovered the unsympathetic
reactions of students and faculty to
decentralism and his own work.

"None of this surprises me," he said. "I would have

been more surprised to a better reception, particularly' to
my own ideas." RB and I appreciate the twelve favorable
reviews of my book executed by scholars and decentralists
both here and abroad.
RB's confidence was in re-education.
While social
renaissance calls for the abandonment
of Socialism and
Communism and transforming capitalism into a free and
just order, no such changes are possible without the
re-education and humanization of a least a determining

70
71

RALPH BORSODlCHALLENGE TO THE QUALITY-MINDED

By Dorien F~eve

While Ralph Borsodi is well-known

to a circle of
active decentralists,
I have pondered why his name is not
as popular as that of Bertrand Russell or E.F. Schumacher. Though I am convinced that great fame will come to
him - indeed. that for the world's good - it must come in
the not-too-distant
future. I see three reasons why he is
not widely acclaimed today.
The first is that he dared to be different - different in
his view of knowledge.
He dared to believe there was an
objectivity to certain truths. when other thinkers declared
reality to be an illusion and truths to be relative.
In
Education and Living (1948). Dr. Borsodi said:
"The school fulfills or fails to fulfill its role in society
in proportion to the extent to which it passes on from
generation to generation
the eternal verities. instead
of merely passing on the culture in which it exists.
Certain truths are eternal."
In 1984. George Orwell said. "Reality is something
objective.
external.
existing in its own right."
Though
millions may disagree with him. a man is not insane for
being "a minority of one."
Dr. Borsodi must often have felt "a minority of one".
yet he said there were "norms of living" - normal and
abnormal ways of living. True. Borsodi saw such norms of
living as ranges. not absolute points or spots. Within a
range. some activities and attitudes were normal; below
and above these ranges. they were subnormal or supernormal.
Truly. Borsodi was a voice in a wilderness.
This
belief. this adherence
to truths. morality. normality and
objective reality is what we call idealism. The modern age
docs not believe in idealism. so ignored Ralph Borsodi for
being an idealist. It turns out that we. who have read and
understood
him. know he was also a thorough-going
practical man.

The second reason Ralph Borsodi did not receive the

accolades he deserves for his work derives. I believe. from
the first. Daring to be different. he had the audacity to be
a humanist in the sense of a person interested in the entire
spectrum of human affairs and human nature - not in the
restricted
sense of a person interested
in Greek and
Roman literature.
In a scientific age. individuals
are "supposed"
to
restrict
themselves
to one field or discipline.
and to
1 specialize on only one aspect within that field. So persons
spend their entire lives studying hair follicles soaked in
various concentrations
of alcohol (biology); or studying the
trau marie effects of electric shocks on white rats (psychology). Though I do not belittle what Albert Einstein did.
even this renowned
man specialized
in physics.
and
studied
the other disciplines
only where they forced
themselves
upon him.
In contrast. Ralph Borsodi studied
and gave us some findings in Seventeen
and Society.

Man from A to Z.
Problems of Mati

Each of the problems of living which Borsodi identifies is often encompassed

in an entire department
in
modern-day
universities.
Given this sweep and scope. Dr.
Borsodi obviously stepped upon many of our intellectual's
favorite theories.
prejudices.
and biases. Thus they ignored him. rather than faced the real problems of living
with which he confronted them.
The third reason Dr. Borsodi has not attained the
reknown which will come is his writing for quality-minded
people. In This Ugly Civilization (1928). he said. "Of a
thousand people. 997 will in all likelihood be herd-minded
like John Doe and his fellows; two will be quantity-andpower minded like John D. Rockefeller.
and one qualityminded. like Charles W. Eliot." With the exception of
Flight From the City. Ralph Borsodi
wrote for the
"quality-minded
person."
It was his hope. repeated
1975. that the quality-minded

in a conversation
to me in
people would act on the

72

73

principles he set forth, and become examples for the herdIII indcd to follow. Ralph Borsodi' s books appeal
to reason
and wisdom rather than to the emotions
and follies of
human beings. This means a small circle of readers for as
Dr. Borsodi said, "Relatively
few people enjoy thinking.
Thinking is quality-minded
man's greatest departure
from
the mass."
This adds up to the fact that publishers
of his books
will not reap great profits, and we all know what kind of
sin small profits are in our society. For profit-oriented
quantity-minded
men, such a writer should be cast into
oblivion. Thus Dr. Borsodi's ideas did not receive acclaim.
Each of his 20 books questioning
and suggesting
alternatives for big industry, big cities, big corporations
and
big government,
has been a quiet event, which, in our
society, means being ignored.
But we can, I think, look at the record,
suggest something
about the future.

and perhaps

Ralph Borsodi was advocating decentralization

when
everyone from the fanatic "individualist"
to the stalwart
communist
was screaming for more centralization.
Ralph Borsodi told us that small-scale production
more efficient and better when everyone was saying
bigger the better."

was
"the

Ralph Borsodi suggested we should eat whole foods

for good health when everyone was saying medical science
will conquer disease and give us a m e al-in-a-pill.
We now have more and more people advocating
the
decentralization
of power because we have come to realize
how inefficient
and inhuman large centralized
systems
arc.
We now have some very influential
"Small is beautiful."
We now have
natural food stores.
These

more

people

are only three of many

74

people

following
ways

saying,

us into

in which

....

Borsodi dared to be different and has since been vindicated because he never lost sight of right and wrong, truth
and falsity. And these examples
are only part of the
greater whole which always concerned him:
"The most important
problem in the world today is
the philosophy by which human beings live, and the
philosophy by which society is animated,"
he wrote.
"And this is just another way of saying the philosophy of living is the most important
problem with
which education deals."
As a tribute to Ralph Borsodi and his work, I suggest
we all re-examine
the philosophy
by which we live, to be
certain our own lives are in accord with the principles of
Normal Living, with acting rationally
and morally. A
re-dedication
to Normal Living will, for most of us, mean
changes in our lives we have been avoiding. For some, it
will be giving up smoking; for others it may mean giving
up employment
if it uses immoral means of production, or
produces immoral products such as cigarettes
or bombs.
Dr. Borsodi never said, nor implied, that it would be
easy. But if quality-minded
people are to have a quality
world to live in, then they should lead the way and educate
people by example. If the quality-minded
do not simplify
their lives - if they refuse to lead and provide an example
- then they might not even have a world to live in. For, as
we know, the quantity/power-minded
are hell-bent upon
destroying
it in the name of, and to the glory of, greater
profit,
The ideas of Ralph Borsodi,
and his name, will
become household
concerns
soon, or we will have no
household,
no society, no world. Ralph Borsodi's commitment to truth must be vindicated
or there will be strife,
chaos, pollution, and perhaps even total destruction.

the

Ralph

75

::-

RALPH BORSODI: ON MANK]ND'S

ENDURING

LIST

Don Werkheiser
]f greatness
includes early recognition
of a cultural
problem and doing something
constructive
about it, my'
friend, American decentralist,
Ralph Borsodi, is high on
the list. In 1928, before the Depression,
before the prime
of centralized
industrialism,
before burgeoning
bureaucracy, before inflation and unemployment,
before dust
bowls, pollution and pesticides,
Ralph Borsodi told us
clearly that This Ugly Civilization was headed into these
problems. Harpers published
his book. Some people responded, but most continued on their accepted way. A few
persons began working on partial or fragmentary
reforms.
Came the Great Depression,
the struggling
Forties,
the faltering Fifties, the protest Sixties, the alternative
Seventies. In 1972, Antioch sociologist Dr. Robert Fogarty'
said, "Let's read Borsodi again."
Porcupine
Press republished This Ugly Civilization.
All my adult life I have sought for a more human
world. About 1940 I learned about Henry George and his.
proposal to use land-site
values for public purposes,
instead of collecting taxes. A Georgist introduced
me to
his decentralist
friend, Ralph Borsodi. For me, decentralism was an unfamiliar
term.
Borsodi
agreed
with
Georgists that if the entire site-value of land was collected
for community use, there would be no incentive to specu-'
late in land. This would reduce and eventually
eliminate
the price of land. The effect would be to decentralize
land
ownership, since everyone could afford land. So I became
interested in decentralism
because it would be an effect of
Georgism.

"movement
organ"
for a while, I could predict
what
would be said about almost any issue. But The Interpreter
expressed a wider scope, consistent with the basic tenet of '
the School of Living - that living is a process which we
can learn to do better, and that the totality of human
experience
is available for such learning. This was why I
was not bored with Borsodi decentralism
- there was
always a possibility of learning something
new. Borsodi
was a wise and erudite man. His intellect was still growing
and he attracted others who were still growing.
In the mid-19S0s, when I spent a year at the Loomis
homestead near Dayton, Ohio, Ralph Borsodi was there. I
learned to know him more intimately,
and to address him
respectfully
and affectionately
as RB. Our meals were
lively affairs. RB was a master of conversation
and mutual
exchange of ideas and information.
Usually, he gave more
than .he received.
Occasionally,
he would select me as a "partner
in
combat",
and tease me about a point where I showed
emotional
conviction.
Sometimes,
if my counter-attack
became aggressive,
John Loomis would admonish
me to
be more deferential.
RB appreciated
John's regard, but
deference
was not RB's need. The reciprocal thrust and
parry of opposing minds was precisely what he wanted.
In a deep sense, RB spent most of his life as an
intellectual
knight-errant,
doing battle for justice
and
freedom. Always he was original, often first - or among
the first - to perceive the error of established
ways. His
generalization
about modern factory practice, known as
the Borsodi Law, is still too advanced for most conventional economists to assimilate into their ideological systems,

In the '50s, I began to read Thelnterpreter,

edited by
Mildred Loomis and Ralph Borsodi,
in which current
events were interpreted
according
to the Borsodi de-,
centralist viewpoint. I was impressed
that it was not as
narrow or as doctrinaire as were other viewpoints to which
I had been exposed.
Previously.
when I had read a

According to Borsodi's Law, as the unit costs of mass

production
decrease,
the unit costs of distribution
(including advertising
and transportation)
increase. A major
implication of this law is that there is always an optimal
magnitude
at which the production
of any item can be
most economically
produced and made available to consumers. Much current business practice is uneconomical.
That this law is ignored
by conventional
economists

76

77

(because it does not fit any conventional

paradigm)
indicates the need for a revolutionary
shift of the mind with
reference to economic theory and practice.
It would be a mistake, of course, to suppose that RB's
achievements
are restricted
to economics.
He probed all
major, universal
problems
of living. To the final days,
aged 91, RB was a learner - that is why he was a great
teacher. He first taught himself, then others. Perhaps his
greatest accomplishment
is his global vision, an approach
that only recently has emerged into explicit formulation
in
our culture.
BR doesn't present us maps, charts, and a global
geography.
He joins people globally by emphasizing
the
common elements in the experiences
and problems in all
people, everywhere.
True, treatments
and solutions
of
these problems vary from place to place, but the nature of
these problems is similar, and binds us all into the search
for the best - the most "human"
- solutions. This is a
tremendous
idea.
RB saw
groups:

these

problems

falling

into

three

great

some are intellectual,

others

are emotional

still others

or value-centered,

are inevitably

and

action-centered.

RB pondered
these problems
endlessly.
Recognizing,
defining, clarifying and dealing with actual living problems seemed to him the purpose of living - and therefore.
of education. Friends gathered in his home to probe and '
discuss them. Borsodi's comprehension
grew to embrace
eleven universal problems, then thirteen,
and finally, the
seventeen
distinctive,
universal
problems
of living we
studied at Lane's End Homestead.
The School of Living which Borsodi and friends set up.
in Suffern, N.Y., in 1934, was to express his vision, assist
in research,
and publish his findings.
In seminars
and
workshops,
the nature
of universal
problems
was
analyzed, Borsodi's definitions assessed,
and various his-

78

torical and modern

"solutions"
were considered
and
compared.
Often such meetings were repeat experiences
, for concerned
students who thereby tested their knowledge, values, and daily life-styles,

Most students
readily agreed that there are these
three great types of problems - thought,
feeling, and
action. A1l human beings confront four primarily intellec, tual queries: .
about

the nature

about

human

the nature

of the world,

nature,

of beginning,

and the nature

All human
preferences:

of knowledge
beings

or truth.

establish

values,

or

emotional

as to right or wrong actions,

beautiful
constructive

or ugly objects,
or destructive

high or low "standards"

purposes

in living,

of living.

Most philosophers
encompass
these
basics.
But
Ralph Borsodi added two unusual "techniques".
He not
only defined and classified the problems, but deliberately
examined,
classified, and tested the various "answers"
which people throughout history have lived by. Moreover,
RB integrated
the answers - the solutions, or actions,
into his ideological system. Noetic (thought) problems and
axiologic (value) problems are guides to action in Ralph
Borsodi's system. Which are the best? the-most human?,
RB continually asked, "Are there norms or standards
among the various solutions to guide our practice? If so,
what are they? Can they be used to humanize life?"
Practica1ly no philosopher
has so vigorously
sorted
out the third - group (praxiological)
problems.
Here
Borsodi redefined some accepted disciplines that referred
to space, time, physiology, reproduction,
creativity, economic survival, politics, etc.) into nine universal problems
of action,
.

79

RALPH BORSODI AND THE MORAL LA W

physical-mental
health,
production,
possessions,
dealing with violence,

For these problems,

Borsodi sought

occupation,
distribution,
organization,
with institutions,
and education.
"norms"
for solution.

Basically, Borsodi's highest norm is included in the

single word "liberty"
- the opportunity
for deliberate
choice of one's own action. But since so many factors are
involved in anyone choice, including values, facts, and a
complexity of problems, Borsodi expressed
more meaning
in his term" normal" than is usual. For Borsodi, a human
norm is "an attribute
or prescription
for action which
describes
the range within which it may vary, yet fulfill
that attribute and activity, and also permit the fulfillment
of all the other functions of a human being ... This is a
challenging
concept to guide education
to construct
a'
human society.
Borsodi summarized
problems of living and normal
solutions in Education and Living in 1948. Twenty years
, later at the Vidyanagar
Gandhian
University in India he
I published his cataloguing of problems and solutions in
I Seventeen
Major Universal Problems of Mankind. - Dr.'
I Ralph Templin,
author of Democracy and Non- Violence,'
says of this volume, "Here's
enough to keep mankind
working for a thousand years."
Scientific endeavor has two major aspects - analysis,
or taking things apart, and synthesis,
or putting things
together to make them whole. A new science - General
Systems Theory - is being developed
to synthesize
200
years of scientific analysis. This is yet to be done in the
social sciences. But the scope of Borsodi's work and his.
attempt
to formulate
a synthesizing
philosopy that embraces the whole of human phenomena
may be a notable
beginning.
It certainly
puts Ralph Borsodi among the
great persons of our time - or any time.

80

David Stry
My home, Melbourne Village, Florida, founded in
1950, was a wonderful and beautiful community, one of
whose guiding lights was Ralph Borsodi. RB was often a
guest in our home; I was his student attending his classes,
studying his remarkable writings. RB and I were friends;
, from him I learned the basic principles of simple living,
how to be self-sufficient,
but also how to further social
change for security and independence.
RB was a great
student, a good writer, and a tireless worker. He was busy
and at home in his garden or his shop as in his library or at
his desk. When we'd protest his manual labor, he'd
remind us that "one's character is better formed in one's
work than in one's leisure."
RB was persistent in searching for truth. One of his
"universal
problems of living" was the Ethical Problem
- "Howdo we know what is right or wrong?"
Another is the Epistemic Problem - "How do we
validate our actions?" Borsodi always had a strong foundation for his conclusions, but he was never dogmatic. We
could differ - and on some things we did - but we
respected each other and continued in our search and
findings.
In the Health area, I am a frugivore, basically a
fruit-eater; Borsodi viewed humans as omnivorous, eating
both vegetable and animal flesh. This led Borsodi to
support animalhusbandry,
while I claim animals have the
same rights to be left alone as humans have. Borsodi was
content for people to live in colder climates while I claim
Man is a naked ape and belongs in the tropic where he
'doesn't
need furnaces, insulation, and heavy clothing. I
believe our ideal is to eat fresh foods the whole year,
where it is grown, while Borsodi adapts to temperate
zones, cooking, 'preserving, and storing of food.
In spite of these differences,
person and a brilliant teacher.

81

I loved Borsodi both as a

He educated for "maxi-

\ mum living'" - not for commercial, job-inspired convenI tional existence. In my mind, Borsodi ranks with Tolstoy,
: Plato, Gandhi, Goethe and other world philosophers.
He
devoted his whole life to examining western civilization,
pointing out what was wrong (i.e., inhuman), setting up
standards, working and demonstrating
what was better.
The sadness of the day (October 16, 1977) when he was
stilled by death is lessened by his books and writings.
Outstanding among them is his challenge to clarify and
formulate "the moral law." He left it for us as his final
speech, given October, 1976, before the Fellowship of
Religious Humanists at St. Louis, Missouri, titled, "The
Moral Law By-Passed."

Ralph Borsodi de-educated

and re-educated
thousands of people. Those who know him march through
life to a different drummer". I am indebted to him. I think
he will live forever, having served mankind far better than
political leaders and warriors for whom huge statues are
erected. So thanks, Ralph - I am forever grateful to you
and your Clare.

ACTIVIST BORSODI MEETS DIVERSITY

Mildred

J. Loomis

For the most of his 90 years, Ralph Borsodi's life was

an upward progression
toward conscious, quality-minded
goals. From his birth in 1886 and his youthful assistance
with his father, a publisher,
to his death in 1977, Borsodi
and his family took definite steps toward his increasingly
clear vision of a good life In a good society.
Along with his many successes,
he encountered
severe critics, adversaries,
and enemies. Three outstanding projects brought reverses that would have discouraged
less intrepid souls: the Dayton Liberty Homestead
Project
in 1933, the sale of the School of Living near Suffern,
N.Y., in 1945, and his Melbourne
(Florida) University
being engulfed
in the 1960s by the military-industrial
complex. My 35 years of study of, and work with Ralph
Borsodi allowed my participation,
and close observation
of
them.
I knew Ralph Borsodi as an inner-directed
person, a
brilliant mind, sensitive and responsive to simple, beautiful things, but always disciplined and committed to acting
on clear, ethical principles.
I have seen him impatient and
occasionally blunt, but predominately
quiet, considerate,
and compassionate.
We who know him well marveled at
his energy on so many levels. While many know him only
as writer and author, I am reporter of his activities and
experiments
in progress.
i insert here a Iist of Borsodi's
activities
with an explanatory
column indicating
how
Borsodi pre-dated
or influenced
the 1980 "new age"
trend:
11)18 Borsodis
discarded
packaged
cereals,
white bread, white
sugar.

82

Food-reform
evidenced
by
Natural Food Associates.
National
Health
Federation,
countless
nutrition
journals
and
whole-food
markets.

83

1920 From
the ground
up. built Dogwoods
homestead.

A 1980s ground-swell in doit-yourself and back-to-the-.

land movement.

1921 Small kitchen

mill
electrified for home
grinding of flour.

Appropriate
and
small
technology seen as popular
alternatives.

1926 Exposed
high distribution
costs
in
Distribution
Age
and National
Advertising vs. Prosperity.

Counter-culture
media raising questions re centralized
industrialism.

1928 First

Late 1970s saw E.F. Schumacher's SmalJ Is Beautiful

a best seller.

full-scale
critique of modern industrialism
in This
Ugly Civilization.

1933 CounselJed
Liberty
steads.

Dayton
Home-

1934 Flight
From
City published
Harpers.

Intentional
proliferate.

Communities

The
by

For the first time in 50

years.
1977 U.S. Census
reports more people leav'ing than entering cities.

School of
Living.
Suffern.
N. Y., for adults to
humanize
modern
culture.

Widespread
experimentatation in education.
Jree
universities. etc.

1936 Formed

J 942 Predicted

rising
prices and inflation
in
lnflat ion
Is
Coming.

Worldwide inflation, U.S.

Keynes "controlled"
inflation not a solution.

1948 Produced

Education and Living. in

2 volumes.
on his
own linotype.

84

A concept
oj humanized
goals and norms from Esalen, Humanists. and others.

1948 Major

Problems
of
Living Seminars
in
20 colleges;
annual
regional
decentralist conferences.

Proliferation
oj new-age
groups and conferences
to
deal with "modern crisis ",

1958 T.o!:!!~_9.Chin~._al)d
India; urged East to
improve family/village
systems
in
Challenge oj Asia.

M ~mfl!..r_d.~o!!~_. _S.czleJ..
Roszak show that bigness
and power displace normal
human ends.

1960 Studied. lectured at

India's
Gandhian
University and published A Decenirulist Manifesto.

Eastern
mysticism.
Buddhism permeates
Western
New Age.
U.S. citizens
JO"," "Citizens" Party.

1968 Produced

U.S. directory Alternative

America lists 5000 decentralist entries.

1970 Formed JII for Community Land Trust.

Currency
and Free
Trade.

Increased inquiry into root

causes of poverty and despair; London Forth World
and other international for111I1 s seck basic change.

]977 Ralph Borsodi died.

October 26. J 977.

Friends and students publish Dec. 1977 Green Revolution as a memorial

to
Borsodi.

1978 School
of Living.
RD 7. York,
Pa.
17402.
publishes
Borsodi '5_ 'Decentralist Pan-Humanist Manifesto.
$1.

Current challenge: build a

truly free market. political
liberty and human creativ-

curriculum for new adult

education:
17 Problems oj Individuals
and Society.

85

I knew Ralph Borsodi as an inveterate seeker, committed to human "norms" (for which he said records of
life for thousands of centuries had left adequate guides).
As an indefatigable worker, he achieved on many levels.
He was always ready to move on. leaving behind, if need
by, those who chose not to understand, or who preferred a
different standard.

For instance, the Dayton Liberty Homesteads,

in
which I was part of a cooperative homestead-household.
I
remember the shock we all felt when Borsodi explained
among some new principles community title, rather than
individual title. to land.

"Land, like people, should not be subject to buying

and selling," Borsodi said simply. "Land is not a
h um anly-produced product: land is everyone's common
herritage ... We would-be homesteaders, to put it mildly.

were startled.
We had long and vigorous discussions; fear and.
anger frequently cropped up. Borsodi was sure of his
approach. Factions developed. for and against "community lands tenure." Delays and no action. Some said this
time was filled with "bickering" - I called it "miscommunication" and inept group-process, stemming from
our woeful rnis-education in land-ethics.
Another of Borsodi's firm principles was that the
financing of Liberty Homesteads should not be governmental or tax-supported. We were in the days of tight
money and the Great Depression. When the local funds
for the homesteads ran out, homesteaders
suggested
borrowing money from the U.S. Government.
"But that brings risk of losing our control," said
Borsodi. "Remember, 'he who pays the fiddler caJls the
tune.' " You know that government action is compulsion.
And where does government get its money? They tax
everybody - for everyone must contribute. And even
politicians are reluctant to do that - so government
officials, being close to the source, arrange for the govern-

86

ment to 'Print' money. And that's what increases the

government debt and forces inflation and upward pricesl"
The homesteaders
listened. but we knew "no altern a- '
tive." So. we homesteaders voted for Federal subsidy.
"Sorry." said Borsodi. "The Liberty Homestead Project is yours to complete. I do not choose to work under
government direction." He returned to Suffern, N.Y .
Many of us agreed that Borsodi was teaching us the
responsibilities
of dOemocracy. Others caJled Borsodi
"high-handed".

I
I

That very year. 1933. Borsodi said to his family and

Suffern friends, "If American people are to develop
wisdom about their lives and their problems - what to
use government for. where to live, how to be healthy - a
new education is needed. Let us build a School of Living I
for this.".
'
They responded. It took a few years. but by 1936 he
and his friends build a School of Living at the center of
Bayard Lane's forty-acre community of homesteaders.
Here Borsodi implemented his cherished land reform.
They took land out of speculation and put land title into
the community land trust. Each homesteader paid a smaJl
rental to the group for their use-title to two acres, rather
than a purchase price. Each family. as a member of the
land trust, owned its own home.
The Suffern School of Living developed. and so did its
problems. Students, apprentices, scholars. and sociologists came to study and observe. One member, Hiram
Merrifield. was dissatisfied with the family contract which
"confined"
their two acres to homestead production.
Merrifield was successful with his dozen chickens. He was
ambitious. envisoning 1000 layers growing into a thriving
poultry-and-egg
business. Why fiddle with a meager
dozen hens? But the homestead contract said "no com- \
m ercial business."
Well. then. let's rescind that "community control" pattern I Hiram undertook a "campaign."

87

_._-_ .._.-

--"'---'--"

'---'---

-~

.. _----

Hiram's energy matched his dislike of "community

tenure".
Lack of strong conviction
re land ethics
among other homesteaders
aided his campaign. When the
, vote was taken, Hiram had a majority - and the MerriI fields repaired
to their chicken raising. They build threestory laying-houses,
they had their 1000 layers, and a
truck was kept busy servicing them feed and transporting
eggs. The homesteaders
were dismayed with this traffic,
along with the incessant c~ckling and doubtful odors from
the Merrifield's
area.
I land

Borsodi too was dismayed,

but not discouraged.
It's
more education people need; he would withdraw - let
others direct the School of Living while he traveled in
India where Gandhians understood
a decentralist
culture.
Several new directors
managed
the School's program,
1936-1945. Some, who do not know the details of this
period. have been know to say, "The School of living felI
apart after Borsodi's departure."
But World War II came;
School's contributors
withdrew.
In 1945, the School of
Living was sold to homesteaders,
the Larry Wray family,
and its library and most of its work was transferred
to the
Loomis Lane's End Homestead
in Ohio. From my view, it
was "Commercialism
and War" that eclipsed the Suffern
School of living.

A Borsodi-oriented
community
developed
near Melbourne, Florida, in the 1950s. Co-workers of the Dayton
Liberty Homesteads
included Virginia Wood, Elizabeth
Nutting,
and Margaret
Hutchison.
They "carried
the
torch" to 240 acres near Melbourne,
and developed there
a modern homesteading
community.
Some fifty families
developed Melbourne Village Homestead,
one- and twoacre plots among winding roads, ponds, and hammock
, woods.

Returning
wife, Clare,
Yearning for
small white
school. Here

from India, Ralph Borsodi and his second

joined them on an attractive
two-acre site.
a "teaching
center",
Borsodi brought here a
building,
replica
of America's
one-room
he established
a linotype, published a quar-

, 88

terly journal,
Praxiology, and
universal problems of living.

led

seminars

on

major

A few years later, a Melbourne citizen gave this smalI

Melbourne University a gift of land nearby. Clare, Ralph,
and a few friends built there a dignified one-story building, Melbourne University, on whose outer wall one read:
A SELF-GOVERNING
AN INSTITUTION

ASSOCIATION

FOR THE GUIDANCE

FOR STUDY
OF PEOPLE

AN AGENCY FOR RESOLVING THE PROBLEMS

OF MANKIND
Some of us organized
a "dedication"
seminar
on
"What Is the Nature of Man?" As we approached
that
early morn, December
10, 1951, (to sweep out the last
shavings
from the carpenter's
work) we stood silently
absorbing
the words and the vision of Ralph Borsodi. It
stayed with us during that crucial and difficult seminar and during the many years since.
Dr. Willis Nutting,
then on sabbitical
from Notre
Dame University, assisted Dr. Borsodi in presiding at this
seminar.
Eminent panelists upheld various responses
to
the crucial question: Dr. Joseph Wood Krutch, naturalism; Dr. Paul Tillich, theology; Dr. Philip Wylie, humanism .. We listened, questioned,
and "emoted".
At the end
of four days, Philip Wylie said, "We have examined more
ideas in a week than most people have ever heard of examined
them both exhaustively,
and in my case, exhausting lyl "
As in his earlier projects, interruptions
came. Again
the industrial
and military complex appeared
on the
scene. In the 1960s, moderns
perpetrated
the Cuban
Incident. Would Communists
settle, or start war in Cuba?
Americans responded with moon-shots and with a military
build-up to "provide employment"
and stave off revolution. Nearby Cape Canaveral, Florida, mushroomed
into a
military air-and-space
center, that innundated
the Melbourne area. Inpouring military personnel built mansions
on "cstates".
Land values skyrocketed everywhere.

89

After he had set up a School of living

(on
coopcratively-held
land, via cooperative labor guilds and a
cooperative
lending
agency)
he wrote Education
and
Living; calling for a curriculum of adult education defining
and dealing with universal, major problems of living.

Pressure from commercial

interests mounted to purchase the Borsodi University
site. Its trustees
stood on
their authority that "this site must always be for education." Citizens responded,
"We will build thereon an
Engineering
Academy
to match
Canaveral's
need.
Again. supporters of Borsodi's goals were defeated. Now,
1982, the Borsodi University is embedded
in a six-story
engineering
school. Its walls are visible on one hallway, to
one who knew its origin. It's three-sentence
goals speak to
us from a photo of the School of Living wall, and in the
hearts and purposes
of many of Borsodi's
friends and
co-workers.
II

Having discarded
white flour, white sugar,
and
packaged
foods from his diet in 1918, he did careful
research in the cost of home-production,
issuingf in a
dozen bulletins
in the 1930s on various do-it-yourself
homesteading
projects:
gardening,
preserving,
milling
and baking, etc.
Having lived through two World Wars, he traveled
and studied in China, Thialand, and India, and wrote his
volume, Challenge of Asia, championing
harmony instead
of violence; and his unique World Peace Plan in 1943,
arranging for world collection of the economic (unearned)
rent or mineral, oil, and fuel deposits into a world trust
fund.

Exeter,
N.H. (with
with private issuing
he write and publish
eliminate inflation.

After years of writing and explaining

new social,
economic. and political approaches
to social change, did
he call for a clear and new definition of terms of sociology,
i.c . Definition of Definition.
After fifty years of action ands publishing in humanizing modern. centralized culture, he wrote (at Vidyanagar
University,
Ahmnebadad,
India) a new curriculum
for
adult education,
17 Major Universal Problems of Living
and their alternative
solutions. He established
Melbourne
(Florida) University
as a base for post-graduate
study,
which was shortlived,
but held important
seminars integrating a search for a good life and a good society.

90

./

Three times Borsodi's immediate projects were hampered by "establishment"

enterprises,
all a part of widespread "mis-education",
which Borsodi strove to replace.
First was the ignorance
of us co-workers
in the Dayton
Project; second the support of money values rather than
quality-living
among the Bayard
Lane/Suffern
homesteaders, and third, the pressure of an expanding militaryindustrial civilization at Melbourne,
Florida.

After a whole decade of initiating and developing

a
half-dozen intentional communities
on a land-trust
base,
he and Robert Swann executed the international
Community Land Trust, registering
it in Luxembourg.
After a year's
experiment
in
approval of U.S. Dept. of Treasury)
and circulation of the Constant, did
material on how the Constant could

'

91

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,...--'---'

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----

_.- -

_ .. _-- --- ._-_. --- -