John Bellers, ein Vertreter des frühen Quäkertums (John Bellers, a Representative of Early Quakerism), and: John Bellers: Quaker, Economist, and Social Reformer (review)

BOOK REVIEWS47 John Bellers, ein Vertreter des frühen Quäkertums (John Bellers, a Representative of Early Quakerism). By Karl Seipp. Nürnberg, Quäker-Verlag, 1933. 83 pp. 4 illustrations. John Bellers: Quaker, Economist, and Social Reformer. By A. Ruth Fry. London, Cassell and Co., 1935. xi+174 pp. 3 illustrations. JOHN BELLERS was one of the really great men of the first century of Quakerism; and it is striking that his significance has been so largely overlooked, or at least that his life and work have not been more fully treated by later writers. The British Dictionary of National Biography devotes an article of three columns to him (Fox gets nine columns, and Penn, the aristocrat and statesman, eighteen) ; the Encyclopedia Britannica does not mention him even in the index. W. C. Braithwaite , in The Second Period of Quakerism, devotes some twenty pages in his chapter on "The Church and Social Questions" to Bellers, saying of him (p. 594) : "John Bellers was by far the greatest of the early Quaker social reformers, and it has been right to give prominence to his work, so that he may become known in his own land." His significance as a social reformer was dwelt upon at length by Jörns in Studien über die Sozialpolitik der Quäker (translated by the present reviewer under the title The Quakers as Pioneers in Social Work, New York, Macmillan, 1931). But his originality and energy and sound social thinking have deserved more attention than they have received. Karl Marx, in Das Kapital, attributed to Bellers priority in the formulation of many of the basic ideas of socialism, and calls him "a very phenomenon in the history of political economy" ; and Eduard Bernstein, in his brilliant study entitled Cromwell and Communism, outlines Bellers's plans for social betterment in detail, assigning to him an important place in the history of European economic and sociological thought. There are three tasks that need to be done to introduce the present generation to Bellers. First, a more or less popular work, with something of the life of Bellers and a discussion of his plans, to bring out the interest of his life and the significance of his ideas for his time as well as for ours. Second, his writings, which are varied but not very voluminous, should be reprinted in a critical edition, with notes to show the changes in the text as Bellers's ideas changed from edition to edition, to explain allusions, and in general to supply a biographer with reliable data. Third, an interpretative biography, showing fully the entire social and religious background against which Bellers's ideas developed—in, itself a fascinating study,—and tracing Bellers's life and the fortunes of his several proposals. This last task will not be easy, for the dependable records of Bellers's life are very scanty; but the background could receive correspondingly fuller treatment. The two books under review meet partly the first and partly the second need suggested above. Karl Seipp's German monograph contains a few biographical details, but is mostly devoted to a portrayal of the back- 48 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION ground and to a discussion of Bellers's concrete proposals for social reform. Seipp discerns the causes of the terrible poverty of Bellers's time—poverty which Bellers understood as the result of a maladjusted social order, and which is duplicated in our day from very similar causes. A particularly interesting chapter traces the connection between the social thinking of the time and the broader religious movements. England was predominantly Protestant—not with the Protestantism of Luther, who preached salvation through faith, but of Calvin, who preached the necessity of works. The Puritans, who were mainly of the well-to-do classes, found it comfortable to believe that poverty was a punishment for sin, especially the sin of indolence, and that their prosperity was their just reward for their works. "Works" to them meant working, meant having a job, meant the successful administration of affairs. This kind of works could never be achieved by the great underprivileged and unemployed classes, from which most of the minor religious bodies were drawn ; and...