Ralstonism

There once was a man named Webster Edgerly. He believed in a healthy diet, walking in curves, balancing rose leaves on glasses of water, and the ability to control the minds of others with one’s will. Writing under his own name as well as the pseudonyms Everett Ralston and Edmund Shaftesbury, he published a number of books around the turn of the 20th century, on topics as seemingly diverse as Personal Magnetism, Ventriloquism, the Adamic Language, and the appropriate methods of Acting. (You might notice that these topics are not as varied as they might appear at first glance. All his topics focus generally on the properties and control of the body, sometimes from a Christian-origins perspective.) He created his own brand of health foods (Ralston Wholefoods, distributed by the Purina brand), and started the Magnetism Club, through which he sold his books to the many who attempted to integrate his ideas into their lives (a group which was claimed to number as many as 800,000 people, although that may simply be the number of individuals who bought at least one book from the Club).

R.A.L.S.T.O.N. was an acronym for Regime, Activity, Light, Strength, Temperation, Oxygen, and Nature – a decidedly random collection of words, which leaves one with no real clue of which came first, the name Ralston or the words involved, or why he chose those words at all. What is clear is that Edgerly’s beliefs centered largely around the idea of ‘life energy.’ His primary concern was the loss of this vital force, and he claimed that via such activities as remaining perfectly still unless motion was called for, and moving your body only in arcs and curves (so that no vital force would ‘leak out’ when one made a hard stop or turn) one could build up a store of vital energy. His most memorable elaboration of this theme was called “The Great Rose Leaf Experiment,” in which a man was said to be able to fill a stemmed glass to beyond full (the point at which water bulges out slightly above the top of the glass, yet does not spill), balance a rose leaf upon the water, and then swing it around without spilling a drop; the man who had learned to control his movements fine enough, would be able to perform this feat with the required smoothness. There was, of course, an ultimate goal behind engaging in such extreme bodily control. After building up a store of human ‘vital force,’ one could tap their own power, exerting a force of will on others whom they wished to control – something of a combination of hypnotism, charisma, and actual mind control.

I stumbled across this nearly forgotten historical figure via the pages of Archaeology Magazine, when Janet Six wrote an article from the ruins of Ralston Heights, Edgerly’s failed attempt at building a utopian community peopled entirely with his followers. I have since developed an unhealthy obsession not only with Edgerly’s works, but with the entire era of the late nineteenth / early twentieth century and the pseudo-scientific belief structures that appear to me to have sprung up in various guises, usually around the concepts of diet and ‘life force,’ at that time.

Since discovering him, it has been my intention to do two research projects simultaneously. The easier of the two is to do a complete historical biography of the man himself, which has yet to be tackled by any historian (though Janet Six was attempting it, last I heard; this has been several years back). The second, and more difficult, is to research as completely as possible the entire atmosphere of esoteric religions of the era and assemble a cultural historical work on that subject. Obviously as a current graduate student, this is far beyond my abilities at present. I simply don’t have the time. But I am assembling bits and pieces as I can. This page, which is not even (as of yet) a complete record of my own linkages and ideas, is a place for me to keep track of various items of use for the work.

Any outside help would be appreciated. Feel free to use the “comments” section to make any suggestions that may occur to you. If you happen to have a pdf or scanned copy of any Edgerly books (or others that you feel might be related) that you would like to provide, I would greatly appreciate that form of help as well, as purchasing hundreds of antique books can get unbearably expensive.

(The first image, Edgerly dressed as Christopher Columbus, was taken from the Archaeology Magazine article by Janet Six. The second, one of the example images of the Great Rose Leaf Experiment, was taken from Oddbooks.com.)

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(the following list is now painfully out of date)

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Edgerly books I currently own

• “Child Life” – 1897 edition
• “Lessons in Artistic Deep Breathing” – 1888 edition
• “Life Building Method of the Ralston Health Club” – 1920 edition
• “Life’s Secrets Revealed” – 1928 edition
• “Mental Magnetism” – 1934 Edition
• “The Natural Reader” – 1902 edition
• “Univeral Magnetism Volume 1” – 1934 edition

Sources for Downloads of Edgerly texts

• Lessons in the Mechanics of Personal Magnetism – 1888 edition; provided by Google Book Search
• The Ralston Brain Regime – 1891 edition; provided by Google Book Search
• Cultivation of the Chest – 1895 edition; provided by Google Book Search
• Book of General Membership of the Ralston Health Club – 1898, seventh edition; provided by Google Book Search
• Book of General Membership of the Ralston Health Club – 1898 edition; provided by Archive.org.
• Instantaneous Personal Magnetism – 1935 edition; provided by Archive.org.
• Life Building Method of the Ralston Health Club – 1920 edition; provided by Archive.org.
• Companion Book of Complete Membership in the Ralston Health Club – 1895 (seventh) edition; provided by Google Book Search.

Articles on Edgerly

• Edgerly page at Oddbooks – not very useful, but a potential source for books
• Abstract of Janet Six’s article “Hidden History of Ralston Heights” – incomplete, but I have the issue

Scholarly Works on Applicable Concepts

• “Sex, Diet and Debility in Jacksonian America: Sylvester Graham and Health Reform” – Stephen Nissenbaum
• “Eros and Modernization: Sylvester Graham, Health Reform, and the Origins of Victorian Sexuality in America” – Jayme A. Sokolow
• “The History of American Homeopathy: The Academic Years” – John S. Haller, Jr.
• “Healing the Republic: The Language of Health and the Culture of Nationalism in Nineteenth Century America” – Joan Burbick
• “Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul” – Roy Porter
• “Rereading Sex: Battles Over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in 19th Century America” – Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz
• “America’s Communal Utopias” – Donald E. Pitzer
• “Clean Living Movements: American Cycles of Health Reform” – Ruth Clifford Engs
• “An Ordered Love: Sex Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Utopias” – Louis J. Kern
• “Head Masters: Phrenology, Secular Education, and 19th Century Social Thought” – Stephen Tomlinson

Potentially Applicable Non-Edgerly Primary Texts I Own

• Aleister Crowley – “Magick (Book 4)”
• Aleister Crowley – “Magick Without Tears”

Non-Edgerly Primary Texts on ‘Personal Magnetism’ Available Online

• William Walker Atkinson’s “Practical Mental Influence” – 1908
• William Abner Barnes’s “Personal Influence (Practical Psychology)” – 1906
• William Walker Atkinson’s “Mind-Power: The Secret of Mental Magic” – 1912
• Lauron William De Laurence’s “The Master Key” – 1914
• Sydney Abram Weltmer’s “The Mystery Revealed, or The Secret of Weltmerism” – 1901 (anyone who turns his own name into an -ism is probably worth reading)
• K.T. Ramasami’s “Hindu: Occult Art Magic” – 1921 (though it comes pretty late in the game, this text’s apparent assertion that the idea comes from Hinduism is interesting.)
• Richard J. Ebbard and F.W. Vogt’s “How to Acquire and Strengthen Willpower” – 1907 (seems a more rigidly scientific text)
• Sheldon Leavitt’s “As Ye Will…” – 1908
• Ralph Waldo Trine’s “What All the World’s A-Seeking” – 1896 (I must admit, I’m excited about the potential of this one)
• William Walker Atkinson’s “Thought Vibration: or The Law of Attraction in the Thought World” – 1908 (I’m also getting excited about the potential of William Walker Atkinson. He wrote a lot of this stuff as well.)
• Louis Allen Vaught’s “Practical Character Reader” – 1902 (Damn. The first page tells you that a person’s nose determines their character type…)
• “Proceedings” of the National Speech Arts Association – 1893 (virtually a direct attack on Edgerly, though not by name)
• Frederic Lyman Wells’s “Mental Adjustments” – 1917

Non-Edgerly Nutrionist Texts Available Online

• John Harvey Kellogg’s “Plain Facts for Old and Young” – 1881
• Hereward Carrington’s “Vitality, Fasting and Nutrition” – 1908

Other Non-Edgerly Primary Texts Available Online

• A. Victor Segno’s “The Law of Mentalism” – 1902 from “American Institute of Mentalism”
• Theron Q. Dumont’s “Mental Therapeutics” – 1916
• Jay Hudson’s “A Scientific Demonstration of the Future Life – 1904
• Warren Felt Evans’ “Esoteric Christianity and Mental Therapeutics” – 1886
• Eliphas Levi and A.E. Waite’s “Transcendental Magic: It’s Doctrine and Ritual” – 1896
• Antoine-Joseph Pernety’s “Treatise on the Great Art: A System of Physics According to Hermetic Philosophy and Theory and Practice of the Magisterium” – 1898
• Gabriel Delanne’s “Evidence for a Future Life” – 1904
• Frank Podmore’s “Apparitions and Thought Transference: An Examination of the Evidence for Telepathy” – 1894
• John Milne Bramwell’s “Hypnotism: It’s History, Practice, and Theory” – 1906
• The Metaphysical Magazine”
• Charles Baudauin’s “Suggestion and Autosuggestion”
• Allan Estlake’s “The Oneida Community: A Record of an Attempt to Carry Out the Principles of Christian Unselfishness and Scientific Race Improvement” – 1909
• Charles Godfrey Leland’s “The Alternate Sex: The Female Intellect in Man and the Masculine in Woman” – 1904
• Herbert Parkyn’s “Suggestive Therapeutics and Hypnotism”
• Daniel Simmons’s “The Science of Religion: Fundamental Faiths Expressed in Modern Terms” – 1916

Other potentially applicable works to find

• The “Shaftesbury Magazine of Oratory” – a Rutgers Library listing of properties “for cleanup” lists this magazine with a publication date of 1893-1895, and further issues from 1895-1897 under the abbreviated name “Shaftesbury Magazine.”
• “The Southern Evangelist” Newspaper – In the Oct 4, 1899 issue of the “Morning Herald” from Lexington Kentucky, this was listed as “a new paper” with contributions from “Dr. Webster Edgerly PhD.” I have no other information on the paper.
• “What to Eat” Magazine – A magazine apparently devoted to a Ralstonite diet. No idea if there will be anything other than recipes and extrapolition from Edgerly within its pages, but it published for at least five years, beginning in 1896. A 1901 issue was on ebay in October of 2006.
• The books and records of the Everett Debating Society (1871-1908) were supposedly turned over to the Lynn Historical Society in 1908 for safekeeping. Minutes of meetings, or lists of ‘performances’ could be useful if able to be found. They would probably also be a good source for random bits of history of Edgerly’s early life, or nailing down precisely what type of ‘merchant’ his father was.
• The Syracuse University Library has the papers of Gladys Edgerly Bates in its special research collections.

Other social movements and moments with potential links

• Mid nineteenth century Nutriotionists: John Harvey Kellogg (sanitariums, enemas, anti-masturbation), Sylvester Grahama and the Grahamites (proper diet as a cure for lust), and possibly C.W. Post
• Eugenics, Phrenology, and other sciences designed to institutionalize racism
• Eliphas Levi, Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn (and Hermeticism in general).
• Arthur Edward Waite and the tarot (Rider-Waite Tarot deck, 1910). His connection to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and his occult writings prior to 1910 are the more important connection, however.
• The failure of previous (1800s) utopian communes; Oneida in particular (dissolved completely in 1880) as it was a religious and morality based community. Though it is probably not wise to disregard more secular communist communities like New Harmony, the Rappites, and the Zoar Separatists, or the link all the way back to the early American tradition (1700s) of religiously organized communities, like the Shakers, Ephrata Cloister, Labadists, etc.
• House of David (religious commune with no sex, no haircuts, and no shaving). Their barnstorming baseball team also brings up the valid point that baseball as a new sport for ‘healthful exercise’ was still in its early days at this time as well.
• Though tangential to religion, the film industry also arose at this time. With Edgerly having written a book on acting, there may be important links there.
• The Adamic Language or Proto-World language supposedly spoken by all mankind (and God) before the “confusion of tongues” (Genesis 11:1-9). The 19th century Latter Day Saints movement was big on the idea, and traces of it can be seen in Crowley as well.
• Speaking of the Latter Day Saints, they also were a strongly ‘health food and abstinence’ oriented group. See Joseph Smith Jr.’s teachings.
• The mythologizing of the ‘West.’ The concept of the Western hero as stoic survivor may or may not have come at this time, but the rise of popular westerns did begin at around 1900. (“The Virginian” was published in 1902) This opens up a whole can of worms on the cult of masculinity in a social situation increasingly seen as ‘feminized.’ See Gaylen Studlar’s article on the film Fat City, “Shadowboxing: Fat City and the Malaise of Masculinity,” for a discussion of the rise of physical prowess as key ingredient in leisure sports starting in the 1890s.
• Of course, now that I’m just listing social movements at random, one can’t forget that feminism, prohibition, race consciousness, and all those things became national topics in the mid to late 1800s as well. In very simple terms, they were at least partly responsible for the eugenics movement and crazy scientific/nutrionist theories like spermatology.
• Technology improved by leaps and bounds around this time. The automobile was in its early stages (H. Nelson Jackson made the first cross country drive in 1903), the Wright Brothers made their first flight (also 1903), and the first wireless radio broadcast and round-the-world transmission were made (again, 1903).
• Earlier, Thomas Armat and Francis Jenkins invented the first motion picture projector to be successfully used in the United States, later renamed the Edison Vitascope. Notably, they worked in Washington D.C., the site of Edgerly’s school. Another potential (but unlikely) link between Edgerly and the movies.
• Part of the technological leap was due to the ‘cult of the inventor’ active at the time. Edison was the most famous man in the world, and there was a sense that an invention was the key to the American ‘rags to riches’ success myth. Edgerly’s widespread interests, as well as his constant assertions that his acting/magnetism/whatever methods were “the best” were probably playing off of the same mindset – the best invention is the most successful invention.
• On the same subject, it is interesting, though probably meaningless, that Edgerly decided to build his Ralstonite community in Hopewell, NJ, only about 30 to 40 miles away from Edison’s home in West Orange, NJ. Interesting to wonder if Mr. Charisma was acquainted with The Wizard of Menlo Park.
• There appears to have been quite a wave of plays on the life of Columbus premiered around 1892 (400th anniversary of the discovery of America). It would be interesting to compare the relative success of Edgerly’s play against the others, and to actually compare the plays themselves. Being a devout believer in a form of super-race, what was Edgerly’s take on Columbus? Did he take advantage of the patriotism surrounding the anniversary to ‘make his name’? (This was his first play, as far as I can tell.)
• The American economy was problematic at the end of the 19th century, culminating in the Panic of 1893. How this affected Edgerly, the “zealous capitalist,” is not clear. The Martyn College / Ralston University may also have been impacted.
• “The Exposition of the Three Americas” World’s Fair was to be held in Washington D.C. in 1892. It was apparently never held.

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