E.B. Gaston and Cooperative Individualism

Paul Gaston

[2005]

Cooperative individualism is a term used by E. B. Gaston." I assume you got that information from my book, Man and Mission. So far as I was able to discover (from all the sources I plundered plus inquiries to several historians of the late 19th century) only one other person, an obscure Iowan, used the term before EBG. I'd be interested to know if you or anyone on your list knows of others who wrote of "cooperative individualism."

As I point out in the book, EBG came to what he called "cooperative individualism" out of his original advocacy of a Bellamy-like socialist colony and his subsequent experience with the Populist Party. In fact, Fairhope was really a creation of Iowa Populists, sitting around the stove in the office of the Farmers Tribune. (As you know, Henry George was no fan of the Populists.) EBG was searching for that elusive balance between unfettered individualism (which he regarded as the great curse of his time) and excessive community control (which he felt was the flaw in his earlier plan for his Bellamy-like colony, the "National Cooperative Company"). Hamlin Garland was one of his great champions (and Joe Fels Fairhope's greatest benefactor), but many (perhaps most) single taxers of the time rejected his ideas because of the stress on cooperation (communal ownership and operation of most public services, among other things).

Two prominent "individualist" single taxers, Brokaw and Springer, came to Fairhope and almost succeeded in destroying it. Most of the few people who have studied the relationship between Fairhope and the national single tax movement conclude that the failure of the movement to support Fairhope stemmed from the belief (held by George himself) that the cause could not be helped by small "demonstrations." They would fail, George believed, and thereby discredit the ideas they were established to demonstrate. Another, and equally important, reason, I believe, was the suspicion, in those early years, that Fairhope was not simon-pure single tax. Which, of course, it was not. The "cooperators," on the other hand, suspected that it was too far over on the "individualist" side and many withheld their support. Caught between these two ideological poles, EBG was never able to raise enough outside support to make Fairhope the "model community" he so eloquently outlined in the constitution and in his essay on "True Cooperative Individualism."