1. Ralph Borsodi was an American agrarian theorist and practical experimenter interested in ways of living useful to the modern family desiring greater self-reliance.
15 Facts About Ralph Borsodi
1. 2.
Ralph Borsodi spent the early years of his life in Manhattan.
3.
Ralph Borsodi's father, William, was a publisher with connections in advertising, and Ralph worked in this business as a boy.
4.
Ralph Borsodi was influenced by the reformer Bolton Hall, a friend of his father's; Hall introduced Ralph Borsodi to the ideas of the economist Henry George.
5.
Ralph Borsodi was influenced by Thomas Jefferson, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, and Laurance Labadie.
6.
Ralph Borsodi is chiefly known for his practical experiments in self-sufficient living during the 1920s and 1930s and for the books he wrote about these experiments.
7.
Some commentators claim Ralph Borsodi's books inspired "hundreds of thousands of people" to follow his example during the Great Depression.
8.
Ralph Borsodi launched a community land trust in 1935 as a practical test of his ideas.
9.
In 1948 Ralph Borsodi self-published Education and Living, a two-volume work designed to suggest a curriculum for the ongoing School of Living.
10.
In 1950, Ralph Borsodi moved to the Town of Melbourne Village, whose founders had been influenced by his teachings.
11.
Ralph Borsodi spent decades analyzing the ills of modern society and imagining remedies for the problems.
12.
Ralph Borsodi's followers felt he usually worked at solving issues for at least 20 years before most analysts realized the problem existed.
13.
Ralph Borsodi created a commodity-backed bartering currency called the Constant, reminiscent of Josiah Warren's "labor notes" at the Cincinnati Time Store.
14.
Ralph Borsodi was cited as an important modern critic and creative thinker by Helen and Scott Nearing in such writings as Living the Good Life, a book sometimes credited as being the clarion call of the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s.
15.
Ralph Borsodi was a significant influence on the American libertarian movement.