John Brown Smith (October 30, 1837 – April 4, 1917) was an American doctor, author, mutualist anarchist theorist, tax resister, and developer of
shorthand
Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek ''ste ...
.
He served in the
Washington House of Representatives
The Washington House of Representatives is the lower house of the Washington State Legislature, and along with the Washington State Senate makes up the legislature of the U.S. state of Washington. It is composed of 98 Representatives from 49 ...
.
Smith was born in
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
and moved to
Minnesota
Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...
at age 17. In August 1862 he enlisted in a company of the 10th Minnesota and served through the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
, being mustered out in July 1865. After the war, he turned his attention to medicine. In 1867, he married Dr. Ellen H. Goodell.
Tax resistance
In 1879–80, Smith spent nearly a year in jail for refusing to pay a $2 city poll tax in
Belchertown, Massachusetts
Belchertown (previously known as Cold Spring and Belcher's Town) is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 15,350 at the 2020 census ...
. The fact that his imprisonment cost the town far more than the town would have recovered from his tax had he paid it made the case a contentious one. Smith wrote of his civil disobedience:
I am not a citizen of the United States, and consequently am taxed without representation, which is quite contrary to the genius of republican institutions. I believe in self-government through love, as against the old forms of government by force, and as a natural consequence cannot pay this tax without violating my conscientious convictions. I trust that the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers still have left enough of respect for a man's honest convictions to provide a means of escape, so that he may possess those natural rights which belong to every inhabitant of earth to enjoy, including the liberty to breathe pure air without being taxed for it, especially in a case like mine, where the Collector refused to take the only kind of property I had been engaged in producing while a resident of Belchertown — my text-book on my improved method of shorthand. If nature qualifies a man to produce books, where is the justice in refusing them when offered, and then depriving him of his personal liberty?
He was freed when a friend paid the tax and accumulated fines ($5.62) "with the proviso that the town shall not sue him for board at the jail."
Utopianism
While Smith was in jail he worked on a
blueprint
A blueprint is a reproduction of a technical drawing or engineering drawing using a contact print process on light-sensitive sheets. Introduced by Sir John Herschel in 1842, the process allowed rapid and accurate production of an unlimited number ...
mutualist lines, which he called "The Brotherhood of Man." This society would be led (or "served," as he puts it) by a class of its most spiritually advanced members, who would in turn be selected by "Soul-Readers" — people with a special clairvoyant talent for tapping into the supermundane. It would eventually span the globe.
This utopia also incorporated sex equality,
eugenics
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
(only the first class citizens should breed), the adoption of a universal language, pricing according to the labor theory of value, and communal ownership of property.
Works
* ''The First Fonakigrafik Teacher'' Google Books version
* ''The First Stenographic Teacher''
* ''The Stenografik Teecher''
* ''The Kirografik Teecher''
* ''Marriage and Divorce: or, The Trial and Defence of John Carl Cheney''
* ''The Brotherhood of Man: being an address to the anti-tax league and toiling millions of Earth, proposing a new form of social organization for human society'' Google Books version