Scott Nearing Papers

Scott Nearing was the oldest of six children, and born on Augustust 6, 1883, in Morris Run, Pennsylvania. He elected to attend the Central Manual Training High School in Philadelphia instead of Central High School because it "linked practice with theory." He did both his undergraduate and graduate work at the Wharton School of Finance and Economy of the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. in economics there in 1909. Nearing taught economics at the Wharton School starting in 1906. He became interested in child labor law and served as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Child Labor Committee from 1905 until 1907. Finding his public lectures on child labor and his radical economic views incompatible with funding efforts, the trustees at the University of Pennsylvania dismissed Nearing in June 1915. His dismissal became a celebrated case and a landmark in the struggle for academic freedom. While teaching at the Wharton School, Nearing also taught for several years, beginning in 1908, at Swarthmore College. In 1916, Nearing began teaching at the University of Toledo but was fired in 1917, this time because of his anti-war sentiments. In 1917, Nearing published a pamphlet titled The Great Madness in which he exposedwar as "a big business murder game". He was arrested and indicted by the Federal Government under the Espionage Act for obstructing recruiting and enlistment into the service. He was acquitted in February 1919. Unable to find work in the academic world, Nearing supported himself by lecturing and free-lance teaching and writing. He became known as he ran for Congress on the Socialist ticket against Fiorello LaGuardia and debated the famous lawyer Clarence Darrow. He was a dues-paying member of the Socialist Party from 1917 until 1922. In 1927, Nearing joined the Communist Party but resigned early in 1930 when his views diverged from standard Leninist theory. He travelled abroad, living and studying in Germany during the late 1920s and early 1930s. He was living in Kiel in 1933 when Hitler came to power. Returning to the United States, Nearing became increasingly disillusioned and ashamed of Americans who, he felt, no longer practiced cooperation or valued the work ethic. Rather, he saw class-divided communities whose governing principle seemed to be "you work - I eat." The bombing of Hiroshima which ended World War II led Nearing to dissociate himself from the U.S. government. Nearing and his first wife, Nellie Seeds, with whom he had two sons, separated. After her death, he married Helen Knoethe, also a pacifist and vegetarian like himself, and, in 1932, they purchased a small farm near Stratton Mountain in Vermont where they grew their own food and undertook a successful maple sugaring operation. Nineteen years later, when the ski resort moved near them and they felt too engrossed in their sugaring business, they moved to Harborside, Maine, on Penobscot Bay. Here they built their own stone house and began subsistance farming, growing their own food organically and buying only one dollar's worth of goods for each four consumed. The Nearings practiced fasting and abstained from using any habit-forming substance. They set an example of homesteading that drew interest and visits from many. In 1954, they co authored the book Living the Good Life. The profits were used to publish and distribute Nearing's less-read books and pamphlets about his political and economic philosophies. In 1972, Scott Nearing completed and published his autobiography, The Making of a Radical: A Political Autobiography. The Nearings continued to travel many months of the year during which Scott lectured and they distributed his literature. They worked together until shortly before the end of Nearing's life on Augustust 24, 1983, at age 100. Helen Nearing resided in Harborside, Maine until her death in 1995 in a car accident.