The Laurance Labadie Papers measure 9.5 linear feet and date from 1882 to 1973. The collection documents, through correspondence and writings, Labadie's ideas on anarchism and the social problems of the time, as well as the views of many of his anarchist contemporaries, mainly from 1932 to 1972. Unfortunately, there is little material from the years before this, and little, if anything, on Labadie's family. The correspondence is especially rich for the 1930s and 1940s, when Labadie was corresponding with anarchists who had been active in the late 19th and early 20th century, and who had known Labadie's father. The papers from the 1950s and 1960s document his involvement with the School of Living, a decentralist, back-to-the-land organization that he supported. The Joseph A. Labadie papers held by Laurance are chiefly notebooks and booklets of poetry with broad subject range, and scrapbooks of news clippings about Joseph Labadie, anarchy and labor movements in the 19th century, and Walhalla, the farm of Labadie's friend Carl Schmidt.
Laurance Labadie, anarchist writer and theorist, was born on June 4, 1989, the son of noted labor leader and anarchist Joseph A. Labadie. He attended St. Leo's and Cass High School in Detroit, graduating in 1917. A craftsman of many skills like his father, Labadie worked in the 1920s as a tool maker with various automobile companies. Permanent employment, however, never interested him. He preferred instead to use his time for reading, self-improvement, and the development of his talent as an essayist. For most of his life, he took only an occasional odd job to support himself.
Labadie wrote mainly about anarchism and economic theory. A great admirer of the writings and philosophy of Benjamin Tucker and the ideas expressed by Josiah Warren, P.J. Proudhon, and William B. Greene, Labadie became an individualist anarchist. The distinction between this form of anarchism and communistic anarchism is important. All anarchists view government as a detriment to individual freedom, but while the communistic anarchists advocate the revolutionary overthrow of the government, the individualist anarchists take a non-violent approach. Individualist anarchists, furthermore, accept the concepts of individual ownership of property and free enterprise. Such views are, of course, anathema to the communistic anarchists who view the capitalist system and the existence of private property as major sources of social injustice and economic inequality in the world. Though Labadie wrote about a great variety of issues associated with individualist anarchist philosophy, many of his essays concerned economic theory, specifically his criticisms of monetary policy.
Apart from his writings and the ideas expressed in his correspondence, little is known of Labadie's life. He was an essayist and theorist, and therefore did not have a public career as such. One issue that did interest him was the possibility of subsistence homesteading as an alternative way of life. In particular, Labadie became a proponent of the ideas of Ralph Borsodi and Mildred Loomis, who had established the School of Living in order to put into practice their ideas on homesteading. Borsodi's school, "Dogwoods," was in Suffern, New York; Loomis and her husband John had established a branch in Brookville, Ohio, which they called Lane's End.
Following a dispute within the School of Living, Borsodi moved from New York, and in 1951 Labadie purchased the Suffern property. Though he continued to live there until his death, Labadie became less involved with the School of Living organization. He became something of a recluse, receiving almost no visitors and corresponding with fewer people. He died 12 August 1975.
