Ezra Heywood

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Ezra Heywood (1829-189?) was a 19th century North American individualist anarchist, slavery abolitionist, and feminist. Heywood saw what he believed to be a disproportionate concentration of capital in the hands of a few as the result of a selective extension of government-backed privileges to certain individuals and organizations.

He said: "Government is a northeast wind, drifting property into a few aristocratic heaps, at the expense of altogether too much democratic bare ground. Through cunning legislation, ... privileged classes are allowed to steal largely according to law."

He believed that there should be no profit in rent of buildings. He did not oppose rent, but believed that if the building was fully paid for that it was improper to charge more than what is necessary for transfer costs, insurance, and repair of deterioriation that occurs during the occupation by the tenant. He even asserted that it may be encumbent on the owner of the building to pay rent to the tenant if the tenant keeps his residency in such a condition that saved it from deterioration if it was otherwise unoccupied. Whereas, Josiah Warren, Stephen Pearl Andrews, and William B. Greene supported ownership of unused land, Heywood believed that title to unused land was a great evil. Heywood's philosophy was instrumental in furthering individualist anarchist ideas through his extensive pamphleteering and reprinting of works of Warren and Greene.

He was arrested in 1878 for mailing "obscene material" at the instigation of postal inspector Anthony Comstock. He was sentenced to two year's hard labor but pardoned after six months by President Hayes in response to massive protests. He was later arrested four more times and died of tuberculosis within a year of his final release from prison.