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A Dirty Verb

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Recently, a New York resident had this to say about immigrants moving to her area: "They're not immigrating. They're colonizing."

Of course they are.

In an operational sense, the sense in which things actually work as opposed to how they are viewed by ideologues, only the individual matters. Individuals from abusive (because enclosed) environments colonize when they can. Note: Enclosure is that fixed and hopeless condition which prompts people to try to escape. See "First Principles".

In 1870, Benjamin Franklin Goodrich and his partner John Morris realized they were attempting to build their Hudson Rubber Company in the wrong place. Their location in Melrose, New York was near the heart of the rubber industry in New England, where Charles Goodyear had discovered vulcanization thirty years earlier. It was far too competitive an area for a start-up. Taking advantage of an opportunity presented by frontier prosperity, they moved to Akron, Ohio to become the first supplier of rubber belts and fire hose west of the Alleghenies. B. F. Goodrich Company, a modern industrial giant, owes its existence to the American frontier. The process works. It's called colonization.

In the East Texas town of Longview, not far from Dudley's Cajon Cafe, there used to be a little Mexican bakery owned by an individual who was exploiting an opportunity that does not exist in Mexico. His story made the pages of the Longview News-Journal, which is how I came to know about it. South of the border, he couldn't hope to compete within the established economic order. In the States, he served a local Mexican population out of reach of the large tortilla producers. Trade agreements born of globalization (read enclosure) may well kill the business, but its success, however temporary, illustrates the point. People are drawn to whatever looks like a frontier, a place of resources without proprietors. The resource in this case: an economic niche. The process works. It's called colonization.

At a time when the continuation of America's agrarian tradition is very much in question, the New York Times reports that an eclectic band of immigrant farmers turned into city menials by enclosure have set their caps for agricultural opportunities in the U.S. Encouraged by the operators of New York City's Greenmarkets, hundreds are touring farms and considering options. In some areas, loans are available for people with agricultural training or experience, even if it's in bananas. The process works. It's called colonization.

Not surprisingly, the Federal government has come down on the wrong side of all this. It's not surprising because ridiculing frontiersmanship has been a tradition with big-government Federalists (we now call them Democrats) since they heaped scorn on the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803 to 1806. In fact, a 1991 display of frontier art at the National Museum of Art in Washington D.C. presented such a negative reinterpretation of westward expansion, one so strained, shrill and humorless that, to some visitors at least, it betrayed a bludgeoning Eastern Block style unbecoming a Western democracy.

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