Barnhill was editor of The Eagle and The Serpent (1898) and also author of The Martyrdom of Percy Whitcomb. George Schumm was a long-time compatriot of Benjamin Tucker. He assisted in the translation of The Ego and His Own and published his own weekly journal in the 1880’s titled “Radical Review” (Chicago). As an aside, this is the same name as Benjamin R. Tucker’s pre-Liberty journal in 1870’s, and also the name of a Socialist journal that was published in 1917. Schumm also translated The Anarchists : A Picture of Civilization at the Close of the Nineteenth Century by John Henry Mackay.

“Henry is totally blind” Barnhill jots in a letter typed up in an abbreviated manner redolent of today’s text messages. There is a very long letter from Henry Replogle in Egoism: The First Two Volumes, 1890-1892 that discusses his blindness and how he copes with it.

The “Selfish” Bauble.

Outside of posited plumb-line Anarchism and its venereal corollaries, we get no paper in exchange that does not propose saving society by some political magic, except “Progressive Thought,” of Olathe, Kansas, an official organ of the Labor Exchange. But it too has its besetting sin, in the shape of vociferous harp on selfishness, and of course the implied injunction to goodness, without conspicuous emphasis on bald justice and tempting expediency. If selfishness in any sense except that of inexpediency be a bad or unnecessary thing why does not “Progressive Thought” itself dispense with the practice of it as a consistent pose from which to chide the paper’s adversaries. If the editors are altogether unselfish why are they concerned about the greed and selfishness of others, or indeed, about anything. If some men wield the power to extort others’ production and service and can roll in voluptuous luxury while these others suffer and even die from need of that which they have themselves produced, the first cannot do so to the discomfiture of genuine unselfishness; that lauded and prated and canted attribute could not be selfish enough to begrudge anything to anybody, or even to bewail the fate of the exploited, for that would be choosing—thrusting in self and self’s preference decidedly contrary to that good unselfish interposition which belongs alone to dead people.

Now if in this view of it, the “Progressive Thought” people point out that selfishness is in this sense unescapable and necessary, but that there is still a difference between themselves, who struggle for equality of conditions, and those wealthy and powerful who struggle to grasp more and more wealth and power, which difference entitles their conduct to classification as comparative unselfishness; if this be the contention, then I point out that the “Progressive Thought ” people do not happen to be wealthy and powerful and haunted by that dread of dependence and comparative insignificance which equality of conditions would impose upon them if they were the wealthy on one side of the line as against the oppressed on the other side or they might see how it is the selfishness of the poorer that seeks equality of conditions for the advantage over worse ones, accounting for much of that equality credit, and thus how the poorer’s side of the line makes their choice of choice in the selfish sense, look quite as culpable as the other. It is dread of greater disadvantage and desire for at least equal advantage with their competitors that actuates the rich to grasp; and it is dread of greater disadvantage, and desire for equal advantage with our competitors of which the rich are the greatest, that actuates us who struggle for equal conditions. And, indeed, we go them one better in intensity of selfishness; their selfishness is satisfied with goods, but we not only fight for material conditions each the equal of the best, but besides are satisfied with nothing less than credit in the fight which compels the highest approval of mankind. We insist on the convenience of goods for ourselves and all that can be wrung from the broadest ethics, while they content themselves with goods and its cheap distinction alone. We are not satisfied as they are with possession-pride and material comfort for ourselves, but must have the psychological comfort of having all we look upon between others pander to our choice. So it happens that selfishness is not only the rational motive for conduct, but the most social for the community as a whole. It is only in its blind inexpediency that it can be objectionable, and certainly nothing could be a more striking example of such blindness than the crude manifestation of desiring others to be unselfish or the desire to be so considered ourselves.greater disadvantage and desire for at least equal advantage with their competitors that actuates the rich to grasp ; and it is dread of greater disadvantage, and desire for equal advantage with our competitors of which the rich are the greatest, that actuates us who struggle for equal conditions. And, indeed, we go them one better in intensity of selfishness; their selfishness is satisfied with goods, but we not only fight for material conditions each the equal of the best, but besides are satisfied with nothing less than credit in the fight which compels the highest approval of mankind. We insist on the convenience of goods for ourselves and all that can be wrung from the broadest ethics, while they content themselves with goods and its cheap distinction alone. We are not satisfied as they are with possession-pride and material comfort for ourselves, but must have the psychological comfort of having all we look upon between others pander to our choice. So it happens that selfishness is not only the rational motive for conduct, but the most social for the community as a whole. It is only in its blind inexpediency that it can be objectionable, and certainly nothing could be a more striking example of such blindness than the crude manifestation of desiring others to be unselfish or the desire to be so considered ourselves.

Then it turns out that selfishness is the basic principle of human action, of justice as well as of injustice; that justice is the competition of individual selfishness supplemented by intelligence. Hence there is in this line nothing to urge except intelligence, and nothing to chide except inexpediency. We can consistently appeal only to the interests of the oppressed by showing them where and how they are beaten, and to the interests of the oppressors by indicating why it won’t pay them to continue. This then leaves the epithet ” selfish” either a remissness of analysis to be corrected or a demagogic appeal to indiscriminating crudity, to be despised by just people.

Egoism: The First Two Volumes 1890-1892
by Georgia & Henry Replogle (Author), Kevin I. Slaughter (Introduction)
212 pages, 8.5×11″, Perfect bound

Amazon | Amazon UK | Underworld Amusements
Amazon.CA | Amazon.DE | Amazon.FR

Egoism was the first journal explicitly based on Egoist ideas in the English language, and was published by individualist anarchists Georgia and Henry Replogle beginning in 1890. An advertisement from the period stated:

Its purpose is the improvement of social existence from the standpoint of intelligent self-interest. To gain recognition of the fact, and popularize the idea, that self-pleasure can be the only motive of any act; that any attempt to ignore it must as necessarily be disastrous to human happiness as an attempt to ignore any part of the order of nature. Thus developing a principle for a basis of action about which there can be no misunderstanding, and which will place every person squarely on the merit of his or her probable interests, divested of the opportunity to deceive through pretension, as under the dominance of altruistic idealism.
From this basis Egoism will defend the individual against every phase of invasion, whether it be the exactions of political-authority-protected privilege or the decrees of superstition-influenced custom.

In the late 19th Century a pocket of America was ready for an expression of “rugged individualism” to transform into a more coherent worldview. The greatest articulation of that sprang from German philosopher Max Stirner’s 1844 book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum. This book serves foundation of Egoism, which is a philosophy of putting the self in the central concern, rather than gods, other men, “mankind” in the abstract. Though relatively unknown compared to other flag-bearers of free thinking individualism like Friedrich Nietzsche, Robert Ingersoll, Ayn Rand and others, the message of Stirner’s book has had a critical impact on many writers and artists who were influential in Europe and America.

Stirner’s great work (published in New York in 1907 as The Ego and His Own), while having no explicit connection to Anarchism, was championed early on by that milieu. First in Germany by John Henry Mackay, who saved Stirner from the dustbins, to writers and radicals in Russia, France, Spain and England.

Here in America, Egoism’s first champions were Georgia and Henry P. Replogle, and British born James L. Walker (aka “Tak Kak”). Contemporaries with publishers Benjamin Tucker (Liberty), Moses Harman (Lucifer the Lightbearer), D. M. Bennett (Truth Seeker) and other radicals, the Replogle’s are not as well known as their more prolific comrades.

The Egoism journal is most notable for first serializing Walker’s The Philosophy of Egoism book, but it also contained writings from and about the anarchist and individualist discussion of the day. While Walker’s book would later be reprinted as a single volume in 1905, the journal itself became scarce and near impossible to access.

This issue of the Stand Alone journal reproduces the entire first two volumes published between 1890 and 1892. Additionally it includes rare and never before printed historical materials and a biographical sketch of the publishers by Kevin I. Slaughter. The journal is important for historians of Anarchism, Individualism and Egoism; three ideas that overlap greatly, but often depart in fascinating ways.