Crosby, Ernest Howard

CROSBY, ERNEST HOWARD (1856-1907). In the words of historian Philip S. Foner: Ernest Howard Crosby was “A Single Taxer, Tolstoyan, Pacifist, and Christian Socialist [who] attacked militarism, capitalism, the trusts, the profit motive, machines, slum conditions, low wages, and championed organized labor.” According to at least one other scholar, Crosby was “arguably the most prominent radical social reformer in New York City in the 1890s and early 1900s.”

Crosby was the founding president of the New York Social Reform Club (an offshoot of the American Fabian movement), and, later, a member of the New York Anti-Imperialist League as well as the New York Vegetarian Society. He was also a vocal supporter of the anarchist Modern School movement, immigrants, New York’s Yiddish-speaking laborers, and prison abolition. He was a member of several radical organizations including the New York Free Speech League (headed by Emma Goldman). A devoted follower of Leo Tolstoy, Crosby also admired the Boston anarchists Benjamin Tucker and Josiah Warren and the Single-Taxer Henry George.

Born to a prominent New York family, educated at New York University and Columbia Law School, and a member of the State Assembly (1887-1889), Crosby was well-connected to the New York elite as well as to the city’s downtrodden. He notably petitioned Andrew Carnegie and others for the release of Alexander Berkman for his attempted assassination of industrialist Andrew Clay Frick. At the heart of Crosby’s radicalism was the belief that society in general should be built on a spirit of love for all as opposed to the “spirit of militarism.” This teaching he took from Tolstoy, although he also deeply admired the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and the British libertarian socialist Edward Carpenter. Serving as Tolstoy’s “leading disciple” in the United States, Crosby led a group of Tolstoyan social reformers that included William Dean Howells and Jane Addams.

Though critical of state socialism, Crosby was friends with many socialists, including the free-speech advocate Leonard Abbott, the well-known socialist mayor of Toledo, Ohio, Sam “Golden Rule” Jones, the most famous Christian socialist of his generation, George Herron, and the leading socialist critic, Horace Traubel. Crosby was also a prolific writer of Whitmanite poetry and scathing social critique. His book of poetry, Broadcast, was much admired by radicals (including glowing reviews by the Russian anarchist Piotr Kropotkin), and the novel Captain Jinks, Hero catapulted him to international fame as an anti-imperialist writer, matched only by Mark Twain. He also regularly wrote for the Single-Tax Review, The Conservator, The Arena, and other radical papers, in addition to publishing, along with anarchist Benjamin Prieth, the Tolstoyan paper The Whim, and lecturing widely across the country.

Crosby died of pneumonia in Baltimore, Maryland. He was remembered and admired by figures across the American left, including William James, Emma Goldman, Booker T. Washington, J. William Lloyd, Hamlin Garland, Felix Adler, Leo Tolstoy, William Jennings Bryan, William Lloyd Garrison, Jr. and Edwin Markham. After Crosby’s death, Leonard Abbott memorialized him for helping “to shape the soul of the world.”

Gianakos, Perry E. “Ernest Howard Crosby: A Forgotten Tolstoyan Anti-Militarist and Anti-Imperialist.” American Studies. Vol. 13, # 1 (Spring 1972).

Stauber, Rory William. “Lifting the Banner of Tolstoyan Non-Resistance in America: Ernest Howard Crosby's Lonely Quest, 1894-1907.” PhD Diss., Drew University, 1994.

Wachtell, Cynthia. “Ernest Howard Crosby’s Swords and Plowshares : A Lost Anti-Imperialism, Anti-Militarism, and Anti-War Classic,” South Central Review, Vol. 30, #1 (Spring 2013).