The following list highlights some of the important events of the life and work of Ralph Borsodi. It was compiled by Bill Sharp.
- About 1903, Borsodi became active in the Henry George movement, gave speeches, edited the newsletter and taught classes. In 1919 he was the chair of the association.
- In 1920 he relocated his family to an independent homestead outside of New York City where he achieved, and documented, personal financial independence. He built a remarkable stone home and named it Dogwoods for the flowering trees that surrounded it.
- During the 1920s he wrote three books critical of the American economy, including This Ugly Civilization (1929) which anticipated the Great Depression.
- This Ugly Civilization was serialized in a major national magazine, drew the attention of Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband Franklin who was then governor of New York. The book inspired a back-to-the-land movement, including Scott and Helen Nearing who over the coming years popularized “the good life.” With it Borsodi established the basic, three-part, outline of the work that would occupy him throughout his life.
- In 1933 he published his popular Flight From the City, a homesteader’s handbook, which documented the economic advantages of homesteading.
- In 1933 he was called to advise on the Dayton Homestead Project. There he expanded his vision from personal homesteading to community. He left as the New Deal Homesteading Division took over (and they failed).
- In 1934 Borsodi established his School of Living with a mission to provide practical and philosophical foundations of the good life.
- In the second (1935) edition of Flight From the City he described the School of Living association and a life-long, adult educational model for the improvement of our understanding and achievement of the good life.
- In 1935, Borsodi formed the Independence Institute to fund homesteading land trusts.
- He formed the first of two homesteading communities in Rockland County, New York in 1935. This project inspired the formation of many other land trust communities.
- Borsodi organized a variety of craft guides and production units. They built houses for homesteaders. (I know the School of Living made looms.)
- Borsodi and friends launched a decentralist movement to promote localized and self-sufficient economic production. This included a journal, Free America, started in 1937. Borsodi became a leader of the movement.
- 1938 – 1939, he and his wife produced a series of popular Homesteading Bulletins (booklets) entitled “How To Economize” to demonstrate the productive economics of household tasks. These sold well at a quarter per copy.
- In 1938 Borsodi published Prosperity and Security. A Study in Realistic Economics, in which he established a comprehensive economic framework for his homestead community model.
- In 1939 he co-authored Agriculture in Modern Life with two senior US Department of Agriculture staff, where he further elaborated his economic model.
- During the World War II years, he developed a peace plan that anticipated the United Nations.
- In 1943 Borsodi published Inflation is Coming and What to Do About It. It went through a number of editions and sold some 500,000 copies. This book was also popular in the 1970s during another period of troublesome inflation.
- Towards the end of the war, he was giving well-attended seminars on the universal problems, both theory and practical application.
- In 1945, Borsodi closed the School of Living at Suffern and transferred the headquarters to Ohio under the directorship of Mildred Loomis. Mildred would continue to lead that branch of the School of Living for four decades. Borsodi focused on his education model.
- Following World War II, he articulated his educational principles in Education and Living, two volumes, published in 1948. In this book he described optimal living at the personal, family and community levels.
- In Education and Living he also established the framework of the universal problems of living which defined the following three decades of his lifework.
- In 1950 Borsodi sold Dogwoods, moved to Melbourne, Florida and opened a new School of Living program there.
- In 1952 Borsodi and wife traveled to Asia (an around the world cruise) on an extensive fact-finding mission and later published The Challenge of Asia in which he examined the impact of global industrial development with particular emphasis on India. He made friends in India at that time with whom he kept in touch.
- In 1954 Borsodi launched the Melbourne University experiment. He developed a graduate level curriculum for the problem-centered system. It offered both a masters’ and doctorate degree.
- 1955 – 1957, Borsodi published The Journal of Praxiology in which he promoted problem-centered education and practical application.
- In 1958 Borsodi returned to India for a two-year stay during which he worked closely with an agriculturalist who was a disciple of Gandhi.
- In 1958 Borsodi published, at the request of Indian colleagues, The Pan Humanist Manifesto in which he outlined his decentralist views (renamed The Decentralist Manifesto).
- In 1961 Borsodi returned to the US and settled in Exeter, New Hampshire. He found it an idyllic place to live and work.
- In 1963 he published The Education of the Whole Man; a book written while working in India, in which he systemized his problem centered framework and provide curriculum material for university level education.
- In 1967 Borsodi incorporated the International Independence Institute (III) to support the idea of land trusts. With friends he developed an organization to promote this model. From this emerged the Community Land Trust, which is one of his enduring legacies.
- In 1968 at age 79, he published his monumental Seventeen Problems of Man and Society. With this book he provided a textbook, a taxonomy of approaches people had throughout history used to solve the problems of living, and elaborated on his rationale and philosophy.
- In 1972, Borsodi incorporated Independent Arbitrage International which issued the Constant, an inflation-proof local currency.
- In 1973 he incorporated the International Foundation for Independence in Luxembourg and established an international banking system to support an alternative, inflation-proof currency worldwide.
- Borsodi died in 1977. He left an unpublished manuscript for a comprehensive book on economics.