Free produce movement
The free produce movement was a flow in the abolitionist movement in the U.S. in the early 19th century, which had the aim to weaken through the sale of goods from " free labor ", the slave economy of the southern states economically.
The flow emerged from the environment of the Quakers, but was not limited to a religious context. The Quakers had ruled until 1780 successively slaveholders among its members. The idea of an effective boycott movement with the goal of abolition of slavery clashed during the Civil War well with their pacifist beliefs. People like Anthony Benezet and John Woolman impressed in these circles the narrative that also consumers of products slavery insofar a responsibility on the continued existence of the institution would have, since they share in their economic basis. The consumption of slave goods were also compared with the sharing of the spoils of war, which was ruled out for the " Society of Friends " for religious and moral reasons. In Wilmington ( Delaware) in 1829 became a founding document for the formal establishment of an organization to generate " free products " developed. At the same time Benjamin Lundy in Baltimore opened a store that sales only products of free workers. Among the most widely marketed " free products " were typically the goods otherwise mostly made of slaves and raw materials: dry goods - ie sugar, tea, coffee, tobacco, corn, cotton - as well as clothing, shoes, soap, ice cream, juices and sweets.
Founded in 1830 supporters of the movement, the " American Free Produce Association " and individual shops. The following year, the Colored Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania and the Colored Female Free Produce Society of Pennsylvania founded. A national organization, there were from 1838. Besides the business activities operated the structures involved, and individuals also an elaborate public relations. In addition to countless lectures, pamphlets and pamphlets appeared 1846-1854 the journal The non- slaveholder who, the position of the Free Producers maps most likely in the abolitionist media landscape of the time. By that time the media and individual speakers, the idea was also supported by the UK, where likewise been formed a boycott subculture with its own dynamics.
In the early years of the movement, the idea of a separate economic form of contemporary abolitionists was well received and partly euphoric. Other supporters of the free produce movement from the environment of the abolitionists were Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Based on the early days of the movement can be also William Lloyd Garrison classified as editor of the Liberator, the later, however, criticized the move as ineffective. Generally women played as a group in the movement dynamics probably a decisive role. Some people invested significant sums of their private assets in appropriate activities. Lucy Stone and Henry Browne Blackwell were as convinced that a mechanized sugar production slave labor could economically displace. They toured for Europe to become familiar with the production of beet sugar, but could not develop a marketable product.
From Sklavenhalteren and their apologists, the movement was largely ignored. A real economic effect on slavery as an economic form, it has probably not given; at least can not reconstruct in retrospect. The last shop that sold exclusively " free products", was closed in 1867 - five years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lawrence Glickman (2004) has proposed the history of contemporary political use to write starting from the free produce movement at least for the U.S. context. Even animal rights activists who make a vegan consumerism in the center of their political work were seen by Corey Wrenn (2013 ) in this tradition.