Scott Nearing

Scott Nearing is something of a hero these days to the causes of environmentalism, pacifism, radical socialism, and vegetarianism; he was perhaps among the first in America to champion all four, and was a strong supporter of free speech to argue them.

Nearing was born in 1883 in Pennsylvania. He attended the Wharton School of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, and began teaching there in 1906. His rhetoric against child labour and economic injustice already in full swing, he was dismissed from his post after some 9 years; despited an outcry of public support, he could find no other job than at the University of Toledo. His beliefs, now firmly set against the ongoing war, again lost him the position, this time after only one year.

Nearing spent the next 50-odd years working occasional jobs, writing and publishing; no university would hire him, newspapers rejected his submissions. His main income came from the maple syrup he sold from his Vermont farm. One of his most famous letters of the time was written to Harry Truman on the day Hiroshima was bombed: "Your government is no longer mine".

Scott Nearing died in 1983.His publications (with their publication dates) include the following:

• The Solution of the Child Labor Problem, 1911
• Women and Social Progress, 1912
• The Great Madness, in 1917, to protest the conscription of World War I, and for which he was put on trial.
• Oil and the Germs of War, 1923
• Black America, 1929
• Fascism, 1933, written as a warning against capitalism gang aft agley
• Living the Good Life, 1950, republished in 1970, a book which convinced far too many people to throw themselves at the mercy of their agricultural ignorance for the sake of some primitive naturist ideal. (What did I tell you about disliking this man?).
• The Making of a Radical, his 1972 autobiography.