Surveying Activities

ELIAS HICKS, HENRY THOREAU, AND ALEXANDER SELKIRK AS SURVEYORS1 And yet — in fact you need only draw a single thread at any point you choose out of the fabric of life and the run will make a pathway across the whole, and down that wider pathway each of the other threads will become successively visible, one by one. — Heimito von Doderer, DIE DÂIMONEN Supposed to be written by the Editor of the ——— Newspaper, during his solitary Abode in ——— Prison.2 (COWPER) I AM tenant of nine feet by four, My title no lawyer denies, From the ceiling quite down to the floor I am lord of the spider and flies.… On an internet discussion list, a champion of private property commented about “Thoreau’s famous rejection of private property,” in the context of his proposition that “secure ownership of property is an integral part of being free.” I responded to this by commenting that although I’ve been studying the complete writings of Thoreau for many years, I needed to confess that I had no grasp of what this “Thoreau’s famous rejection of private property” might consist of. So far as I knew, I wrote in response, the only remarks about the institution of private property that Henry Thoreau ever made were quite commonsense remarks with which we could all agree, such as that property ownership involved obligations as well as privileges, and that there were aspects of life to which the concept of ownership simply does not apply. For instance, I pointed out, theoretically anyone who owns a 1. The redline map outlines of the surveys have been provided by Allan H. Schmidt <http://allanhschmidt.wordpress.com/>, who is presently considering accepting author and originator responsibility for this file on Thoreau’s surveying activities. 2. By Horace Twiss, “Verses” HDT WHAT? INDEX SURVEYING SURVEYING square of land in fee simple owns that land underground all the way down to a pinpoint on the earth’s core, and owns an expanding wedge above his or her head all the way out into the starry universe. That is, theoretically — but we all do understand that this wedge ownership does not permit one to stand out in one’s back yard and discharge one’s telescopic .50-caliber sniper rifle at airplanes overhead, even when one is discharging this shoulder weapon absolutely straight upward into the air. Theoretically — but we all do understand that this ownership does not permit one to install tripwires and explosives in one’s hedge to blow the feet off hat newsboy who has been taking a shortcut. Theoretically — but we all do understand that one of the great privileges of the property owner is being entitled to make regular property tax payments to his or her municipality. Etc. Of course, these extreme examples are surrounded by all sorts of gray areas, such as whether it is permissible or impermissible, if one owns a stretch of the creek bank behind one’s house, for someone else to amble alongside that creek. Presumably, I wrote, Thoreau would have qualified as one of the sort of people who would be very liberal, in allowing people to walk along backyard creeks even when this involved their going across houselots, as long as they, in so doing, carried out their own litter. I simply do not see such attitudes as constituting any serious attack, or even any attack at all, upon the institution of private property. It is simply the exploration of a gray area of the law in which we are all expected to make use of 1.) good common sense and 2.) neighborly good naturedness. I proceeded to mention that there were attacks upon the freedom of private property in Thoreau’s day, and Thoreau was one of the people who were making such attacks. He was an abolitionist, which is to say, he wanted to utterly abolish and forbid people’s freedom to have property in other people. By way of radical contrast, this, this was indeed a serious attack, and was considered at the time to be a serious attack, upon the institution of private property. There were people during his era who were going absolutely apeshit about their absolute freedom to have property in as many other human beings as they could afford. Some of these people lived right there in Concord, Massachusetts. (The apeshit arguments that were in the 19th Century being deployed by these slaveowning Americans have been pirated and copied, without the courtesy of attribution, by a bunch of Americans arguing even today, even in this enlightened 20th Century, such as for one fine example that posse-comitatus cowboy Clive Bundy who is letting his cattle graze free on the public land, while he protects himself behind a line of Aryan Nation goons with telescopic rifles, and while he spouts his racist claptrap about black Americans being obviously, HDT WHAT? INDEX SURVEYING SURVEYING inherently inferior to white Americans.) On another discussion list, a scholarly moderated one, I proceeded to mention, there had been a recent discussion of the uses of the terms “freedom” and “liberty” during the 19th Century. The question approached has been, were these terms then being used as synonymous with each other, or not? You may have seen this discussion even being reported upon in an article in the New York Times. The general consensus we reached on that list was that during the 19th Century these words “freedom” and “liberty” were being used more or less interchangeably, or as mere synonyms. My suggestion in that discussion had been that since they were then being used as synonyms, we should now exercise our creativity, by formulating a new real distinction between the two terms. My proposal would be that we now should begin to restrict the term “liberty” to 19th-Century usages such as the slavemaster Patrick Henry’s famous shout in the Virginia House of Burgesses, “Give me Liberty or give me Death!” (What Mr. Henry-The-Freedom-Fighter, Esq. meant was “either I get to own other human beings, or, I’ll kill any SOB who gets in my way.”) We should now restrict the term “liberty” to that sort of usage, and reserve the word “freedom” for a more modern world in which we all understand that unless and until everyone is free, no-one is free. Yes indeed, I wrote, it is correct that “secure ownership of property is an integral part of being free.” However, I added, this happens not to be the only integral part of being free. There are in fact other integral parts of being free, and these other integral parts of being free are also things which we cannot and should not do without. Thoreau, I opinioned, was one HDT WHAT? INDEX SURVEYING SURVEYING who chose to place his focus upon these other integral parts of being free. However, placing one’s focus upon these other integral parts of being free, as he did, suggesting as he did that perhaps these other integral parts to being free might be of even greater importance to us than absolutely secure ownership of any and all property in any and in every way, does not, repeat, does not in any sense, I emphasized, constitute any sort of confrontation with the general “duh” proposition that secure ownership of property is also integral to being free. “It just doesn’t,” I orated. To summarize, I pointed out that Robert Frost wrote a poem in which a dubious claim is made that it is good fences that make good neighbors. Such a claim could be better supported if it were a claim that it is good surveying that makes the good fences that make good neighbors. Thoreau was a surveyor, which is to say, his Right Livelihood involved the creation of good neighbors. “A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread” — What kind of work is there that spares innocence, then? Note that the kind of work that Thoreau chose, surveying, involves a kind of community peacekeeping function. Many Quakers of the period, such as Friend Elias Hicks for one fine example, chose surveying as a trade, and they did To be a Christian is to be Christ- like. ELIAS HICKS not make such a choice in a vacuum. It is effectively a form of mediation. As a point of information, 19th-Century surveying really was not, from a technical standpoint, all that complex. Thoreau, for instance, made his own equipment with the exception of his compass (does anybody know what the poet Emma Lazarus eventually did with this piece of equipment, where it is now?). The stock in trade of the 19th-Century surveyor was not technical expertise but probity. The key thing that one expected HDT WHAT? INDEX SURVEYING SURVEYING from the local surveyors was that they not play favorites, not favor their cronies or their allies — any technical expertise that a surveyor developed was a plus to the job, but the personal rep of probity was its basis. Everybody knew what a good job of surveying was — a good job of surveying was one that kept neighbors out of each other’s hair. A surveyor was a peacekeeper. By paying attention to this particular choice that Thoreau made, we can learn more about what he meant when he discussed Right Livelihood in the abstract. Over and above all this, there is the issue of the popular impression of Thoreau as being someone who led a lackadaisical, self-absorbed, selfish existence at the expense of others.

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