Dateline: 9 April 2017
In Part 1 of this series I introduced you to Ralph Borsodi and his 1948 book, Inflation is Coming And What To Do About it. My plan is to provide a series of scanned excerpts from the book, like you can see above. If needed, you can see a larger view of the scanned image by clicking on it.
I will also follow a few rabbit trails along the way. Here is another excerpt of significance from the beginning of Borsodi's book...
In the next installment of this series I will show the short excerpt from the book titled, Who Is Ralph Borsodi. I will then expand on that subject by revealing some of Borsodi's contra-industrial beliefs and contra-industrial accomplishments. He was, in my opinion, a keen observer of history and industrial civilization.
As noted in Part 1 of this series, I was first introduced to Borsodi back in the 1974 Mother Earth News interview he gave (when he was 88 years old, and I was 16). His thinking resonated with me.
Then, years later (the late 1990s), when I read Howard Douglas King's series of Christian-agrarian essays in Patriarch Magazine, I was re-introduced to Ralph Borsodi. Those Patriarch articles really resonated with me. As I've written in the past, King's essays on Christian agrarianism served to help me refocus my thinking and lifestyle.
In fact, I dare say it was first Borsodi and then Howard King who influenced my contra-industrial worldview and eventually led me to start my long-running blog, The Deliberate Agrarian, which was a celebration of Christian-agrarian life and thought.
In Howard King's essay titled Machines And Families he wrote the following...
"To date, no work has appeared (to this author's knowledge) which provides an adequate defense of Christian Agrarianism. Until this occurs, I know of no better critique of industrialism available than This Ugly Civilization, by Ralph Borsodi. Published in 1929, just before the Great Depression, this book clearly pointed to some of the problems which created the greatest economic downturn in our history. It is a wide-ranging, thorough-going and utterly damning critique of the causes, nature and ultimate results of industrialism."
In retrospect, I see my journey of thought and conviction regarding the wisdom of Christian-agrarianism as a divine orchestration of events.
To go to Part 3 of this series
Elizabeth L. Johnson said,
ReplyDeleteHerrick, your last comment above, was in my thoughts when I had just finished reading part 1, let alone this part 2! I had been thinking how grateful I was that you are this thinking individual that's brought up such things that I'd never considered, subjects I have come to believe are extremely important...and yes, divinely orchestrated to pass on to your readers. Every little bit helps. Even if you reach 300 instead of 3,000, I'm passing these things on and surely others of your readers are...to hundreds or thousands more. You are always doing the hard work on these subjects and bringing them to light for us. That's why we're so grateful to God using you! Thanks to you I'm signed up for Beyond Off Grid's webinar on food security, and have their recent movie about industrialization.
Hi Elizabeth,
DeleteThanks for the kind feedback.
As someone who believes in Sovereign orchestrations, I've always written with the thought that God brings people into contact with my internet writings, or not, for His own purposes. And I'm very comfortable with that. Readership numbers are interesting to me, but not an objective or motivation. I'm just thankful that I have this forum and that some people consider it worthwhile reading.
Thanks again.