LYSANDER SPOONER (1808-1887)

Lysander Spooner had a lot of ideas about capitalism and finance. He expressed some of these ideas in his 1861 book, A New System of Paper Currency. He suggested that money should not be in coins backed by the trust of the government, but rather, backed by physical property, such as mortgages. His "invention" was not broadly successful.

If Spooner had an opinion on something, he was likely to write a pamphlet about it. The Library of Congress lists 35 titles. He composed other manuscripts which were never published and have not survived.

Spooner was born on a farm near Athol, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1808. His parents were Asa Spooner (1778-1850) and Dolly Brown Spooner (1784-1845). From age sixteen to twenty-five, Lysander worked at the family farm. He left home to take a job in the office of Deeds and Records in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Spooner aspired to be an attorney. At that time in Massachusetts, a person with a college education could become an attorney if they "read law" for three years. A student would apprentice with an established judge or attorney. A student without a college education was required to read law for five years.

Spooner thought this was unfair and gave an advantage to people from wealthy families who could afford to go to college. Lysander began his study in 1833 at the law office of John Davis (1787-1854), later Senator and Governor of Massachusetts. In 1835, after only three years, Lysander set up a law office. The law was changed in 1836. Spooner did not make enough in his first year to cover expenses.

Spooner went West to Ohio to make his fortune in land speculation. He bought eighty acres of land along the Maumee River including the village of Gilead. Land could be acquired with a small down payment and payments were made with banknotes backed by mortgages. That bubble burst with the Panic of 1837 and Spooner lost his investments. He continued to believe that wealth could be linked to the ownership of land.

Spooner returned to the family farm to ponder what had happened. He blamed the Panic of 1837 on the government regulation of banks and rich capitalists. He advocated for small banks serving their local communities.

Spooner was annoyed with the high prices and government monopoly on mail service. He established the American Letter Mail Company in 1844 in competition with the United States Post Office. Spooner published The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails. His service was faster and cheaper than that of the government, However, the government put him out of business in 1851 with burdensome lawsuits. Spooner is given credit for forcing the Post Office to reduce their rates to three cents for a common letter.

Spooner is described as an individual anarchist. He thought the national Congress should dissolve to allow citizens to rule themselves. He advocated for communities of small property owners. He opposed capitalism, believing that capitalism exploited the labor of the working poor. He wrote articles defending Charles Guiteau who had assassinated President Garfield.

He turned his interests to the abolition of slavery. His pamphlet on The Unconstitutionality of Slavery was published in 1845. He supported an armed revolt of slaves against their owners. As a lawyer, he often took on cases for free including the defense of slaves who had escaped their masters.

On June 3, 1856, Spooner was granted a patent for "Improvement in Elastic Bottoms for Chairs and other articles." He commented in a letter to George Bradburn,

 

Spooner opened the Spooner Copyright Company in 1863. He intended to provide banks with his New System of Paper Currency and charge banks one percent for the use of his invention.

Following the end of the Civil War, spooner published in 1866 Proposed Banking System for the South. He believed this would increase wealth in the South.

In 1878 he wrote Gold and Silver as Standards of Value: The Flagrant Cheat in Regard to Them. In brief, Spooner thought that gold and silver coins have no real value and only become valuable when made into jewelry or plate. That same year, the United States Mint began to produce Morgan Dollars as a standard of value. These have now taken on a collectors' value far above their original face value.

The practice of law did not make Spooner a wealthy man. There were years when he survived on an income of $200 per year. He lived in a boarding house near the Boston Athenaeum where he wrote and studied. An unsigned obituary stated, "As a lawyer, he had few cases, and he lived in his later years principally upon an annuity from a wealthy brother (William) with whom he declined to have personal intercourse."

Later in life, he switched from publishing pamphlets to writing articles. In 1882 he defended the Mormons in an article in Liberty,

Spooner never married. He had relationships with women but poverty kept him single. He died at home in Boston on May 14, 1887, and is buried at Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston. Dozens of newspapers around the country gave him credit as "The Father of Cheap Postage," None gave him credit for reforms to paper currency.

How many banks issued notes backed by property or mortgages? Can any E-Sylum reader provide an image of a mortgage-backed banknote?

 

To read the American Numismatic Society's copy of the Spooner book on the Newman Portal, see:
A new system of paper currency. (https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/booksbyauthor/531757)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web