Locke, The Wagon Trains of the Wild West and Anarcho-Capitalism
What the wagon trains of 19th Century America tell us about the feasibility of a society without government
In his Second Treatise, John Locke identified three ‘inconveniencies of the state of nature’, those being: first, ‘there wants an established, settled, known law’, second, ‘there wants a known and indifferent judge’, and, third, ‘there often wants a power to back and support the sentence when right’. Critics of anarchism take Locke’s three problems to lead to constant conflict which gives us reason to favour the minimal state at least. The experience of wagon trains on the Great Plains of America in the 19th Century are some evidence private arrangements can overcome such problems.
From 1840 to 1860, 300,000 emigrants made the journey from setting off points such as Independence and St Joesph in Missouri under the oversight of government, across the Great Plains, or, Wild West, under a state of anarchy, back into government oversight again on the East Coast of America. As Terry Anderson and Peter Hill argue in their The Not So Wild, Wild, West: ‘If there was ever a time and a place where chaos might have reigned it was on the long, hard, hazardous journey across the Great Plains.’ Why? Well, the physical conditions were harsh, people didn’t have deep social bonds initially, and, individuals had a lesser incentive to care for their reputation given they’d be unlikely to know each other after the crossing.
Yet despite all of this, 300,000 still managed the great migration with an annual mortality rate which only amounted to 4% compared to 2.5% for those that stayed behind in the East. Most of that difference must be put down to cholera, mountain fever, scurvy and river drownings. Even if a large part of it were put down to murder, rape and thievery though, Hobbes’s case that the state of nature is ‘nasty, brutish and short’ hardly rings totally true. So, how did men and women deal with Locke’s three problems on the great journey which took an average of 164 days in the 1840s falling to about 118 days in the 1850s?
‘There wants a settled, known law’. Aware that the US Government did not yet govern the states of the Great Plains (Utah only became a US State in 1896), individuals formed wagon trains, i.e., organisations of trailers to transport livestock and tangible property and people, with detailed constitutions, signed up to in advance of their departure. A passage from the constitution of the Green and Jersey County Company makes this clear: ‘Resolved, that we the subscribers…[adopt] strict rules and regulations to govern our passage…that may be made by a vote of the majority of the company’. The Union Emigration Company of 1849 would be another example which created a similar constitution. What type of things were agreed?
Only generalisations can be made due to the sheer number of wagon trains, but here are a few of them. The mess system had all of the emigrants pool their property and it be governed by an agreed to voting procedure, and, then returned to them upon their arrival. The joint stock company was another arrangement where people would pool their property and then it be sold at the end of the journey. Specific rules concerning things such as rotating who was at the front of the wagon train (people didn’t want to be permanently at the back due to the dust), and, financial contributions to an experienced guide to lead them, were also agreed too. The fact many of these rules were agreed in advance meant there was less room for conflict on the trail.
‘There wants a known and indifferent judge’. As David Friedman has theorised in his Machinery of Freedom, individuals are likely to seek to establish judges between themselves in order to avoid expensive conflict; this is borne out on the wagon trains. Many wagon trains adopted the rule whereby both the prosecution and the defence would each choose an arbiter and then both would agree to a third arbiter together. Another scheme to ensure impartiality was to contact another wagon train and get them to govern proceedings. Moreover, many of the wagon trains had elected officials, guidelines for the dissolution of the joint-stock company or mess, and, detailed lists of punishments for violations of the rules. Violations of the rules to which we momentarily turn.
On a side note, Locke clearly didn’t imagine private enforcement of this sort, because, when writing about the state of nature he wrote one of the central problems with it is ‘it is unreasonable for men to be judges in their own cases [due to the fact], that self-love will make men partial to themselves and their friends’.
‘There often wants a power to back and support the sentence when right’. Following the verdict of the three arbiters’, sentences were backed by force, and, failing actual punishment criminals were often evicted from the wagon train therefore making their survival a lot more difficult. The American historian John Philip Reid summarises the thoughts of the emigrants:
‘Just as emigrants believed they had a right and a duty to arrest suspected wrongdoers and to determine their guilt by subjecting them to a trial judged by their peers, so they also believed they had the right to impose a sanction upon those convicted’
Anarcho-capitalism on the Great Plains was clearly stable enough to support the mass migration. According to Hobbes this should have been impossible because in the state of nature there exists ‘no instruments of moving’, yet, the wagon trains existed. Following Hobbes, we would have only expected to have seen mass migration across the great plains follow the frontier of government. This might be the same for Locke too who argued ‘the inconveniences of the state of nature…must certainly be great’
Against my argument it could be said the wagon trains were tight knit enough that peer pressure alone tied them together and that on the Great Plains the little interaction of separate wagon trains stopped any conflict: Conflict which would have inevitably broken out where lots of people are all together in large towns or cities where said peer pressure is close to non-existent. There Hobbes’s three foes of power, security and status seeking would raise their ugly heads. This objection may have some force to it given the average wagon train was made up of about 15 wagons and just 50 people. A weak point against this is the case of Abilene cattle town in Texas which in 1869 was totally without government enforcement of law and yet still achieved a society without a single murder.
However, the frequent peaceful interaction of wagon trains with each other and the Indians at river crossing tells against the objection generally. Indians supplied many river crossing services at the early stages of the migration at places such as Wolf Creek. On the Oregon Trial, the three trading posts of Fort Hall, Fort Boise and Fort River, the latter two being run by the Hudson Bay Company, supplied riding animals, food, fuel and shelter. Another example of economic development in this state of nature is Samuel K. Barlow’s 90-mile toll road constructed in the Cascade Mountains. According to Hobbes: ‘In such a condition [i.e., the state of nature], there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain’. Yet we see clear examples of industry; showing anarchy can work due to moral beliefs, social norms, reputational concerns and private enforcement.
The experience of the wagon trains on the Great Plains of America in the middle of the 19th Century is some evidence that anarcho-capitalism can work, or, more modestly, does not break down into the kind of warfare that Hobbes, and, to a lesser extent, Locke thought likely. Importantly, the Great Plains represents a hard case for the anarcho-capitalists because the journey often involved near starvation, storms, wagon breakdown and disease. To quote Anderson and Hill: ‘The fact that so many completed the overland migration attests to human will and cooperation’. Human will, cooperation and the yee-haw of freedom.