LABOR EXCHANGE NOTE INFORMATION SOUGHT

I'm an antiquarian bookseller in Winchester, Virginia, researching an item somewhat out of my field. I'm hoping you might help to point me in a useful direction for further research. I found your name through a series of brief blog-posts you wrote for the Numismatic Bibliomania website back in 2006, on the subject of labor exchange notes.

The item in question is a labor note issued by Josiah Warren's utopian community ("Modern Times") on Long Island, New York, in 1857. As you may know, Warren is generally considered the first American anarchist and, as a follower of Robert Owen, issued labor notes at various times in his career, beginning with his partnership with Owen at New Harmony, Indiana; later through his Labor Mercantile in Cincinnati; and finally for use within his utopian community at Modern Times [now Brentwood] New York.

As a bookseller, I specialize in American social history and in particular in the literature of American communal societies - so this currency is of particular interest to me (and, potentially, to my customers!). Notes like this are certainly well-known in the literature, but to my surprise, in fifteen years of specializing in this subject, I've never encountered another example - nor have any of my colleagues. But I'm also aware that the worlds of numismatics and bibliophily only occasionally intersect, and it's entirely possible that such notes are far less exotic in your world than they are in mine.

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