River. It stands in the midst of a rich plain, with swelling hills
behind, protecting it from cold winds in winter; a magnificent reach of
the river in view below; and tall hills on the opposite shore to give a
picturesque outlook. The town begins on the edge of the bluff; and under
the shade-trees planted there benches are arranged, where doubtless the
Harmonists take their comfort on summer evenings, in view of the river
below them and of the village on the opposite shore. Streets proceed at
right-angles with the river's course; and each street is lined with neat
frame or brick houses, surrounding a square in such a manner that within
each household has a sufficient garden. The broad streets have neat
foot-pavements of brick; the houses, substantially built but
unpretentious, are beautified by a singular arrangement of grape-vines,
which are trained to espaliers fixed to cover the space between the top
of the lower and the bottom of the upper windows. This manner of
training vines gives the town quite a peculiar look, as though the
houses had been crowned with green.
As you walk through the silent streets, and pass the large Assembly
Hall, the church, and the hotel, it will occur to you that these people
had, when they founded their place, the advantage of a sensible
architect, for, while there is not the least pretense, all the building
is singularly solid and honest; and in the larger houses the roof-lines
have been broken and managed with considerable skill, so as to produce a
very pleasing and satisfactory effect. Moreover, the color of the bricks
used in building has chanced to be deep and good, which is no slight
advantage to the place.
Neatness and a Sunday quiet are the prevailing characteristics of
Economy. Once it was a busy place, for it had cotton, silk, and woolen
factories, a brewery, and other industries; but the most important of
these have now ceased; and as you walk along the quiet, shady streets,
you meet only occasionally some stout, little old man, in a short
light-blue jacket and a tall and very broad-brimmed hat, looking
amazingly like Hendrick Hudson's men in the play of Rip Van Winkle; or
some comfortable-looking dame, in Norman cap and stuff gown; whose
polite "good-day" to you, in German or English as it may happen, is not
unmixed with surprise at sight of a strange face; for, as you will
presently discover at the hotel, visitors are not nowadays frequent in
Economy.
[Illustration: ASSEMBLY HALL--ECONOMY]
[Illustration: CHURCH AT ECONOMY]
The hotel is one of the largest houses in the place; it is of two
stories, with spacious bed-chambers, high ceilings, roomy fire-places,
large halls, and a really fine dining-room, all scrupulously clean. It
was once, before the days of railroads, a favorite stopping-place on one
of the main stage routes out of Pittsburgh; in the well-built stable and
barns opposite there was room for twenty or thirty horses; the
dining-room would seat a hundred people; and here during many years was
a favorite winter as well as summer resort for Pittsburghers, and an
important source of income to the Economists.
When I for the first time entered the sitting-room on a chilly December
morning, the venerable but active landlord was dusting chairs and
tables, and looked up in some amazement at the intrusion of a traveler.
"I can stay here, I suppose," said I, by way of introduction; and was
answered: "That depends upon how long you want to stay. We don't take
people to board here." My assurance that I meant to remain but two or
three days, and that I had been recommended by Mr. Henrici, the head of
the society, secured me a room; and the warning, as I went out for a
walk, that I must be in by half-past eleven, promptly, to dine; and by
half-past four for supper, because other people had to eat after me, and
ought not to be kept waiting by reason of my carelessness. "For which
reason," added the landlord, "it would be well for you to come in and be
at hand a quarter of an hour before the times I have mentioned." When I
had dined and supped and slept, I saw what a loss to Pittsburghers was
the closing of the Economy hotel; for the Harmonists live well, and are
substantial eaters in their German fashion. Nor was any ceremony omitted
because of the fewness of guests; and old Joseph, the butler and
head-waiter, who, as he told me, came to serve here fifty years ago, and
is now seventy-eight years old, attended upon my meals arrayed in a
scrupulously white apron, ordered the lass who was his subordinate, and
occasionally condescended to laugh at my jokes, as befitted his place,
with as much precision and dignity as when, thirty or forty years ago,
he used to serve a houseful of hungry travelers.
Later in the afternoon I discovered the meaning of my landlord's
warnings as to punctuality, as well as the real use of the "Economy
Hotel." As I sat before the fire in my own room after supper, I heard
the door-bell ring with a frequency as though an uncommon number of
travelers were applying for lodgings; and going down into the
sitting-room about seven o'clock, I discovered there an extraordinary
collection of persons ranged around the fire, and toasting their more or
less dilapidated boots. These were men in all degrees of raggedness; men
with one eye, or lame, or crippled--tramps, in fact, beggars for supper
and a night's lodging. They sat there to the number of twenty, half
naked many of them, and not a bit ashamed; with carpet-bags or without;
with clean or dirty faces and clothes as it might happen; but all
hungry, as I presently saw, when a table was drawn out, about which they
gathered, giving their names to be taken down on a register, while to
them came a Harmonist brother with a huge tray full of tins filled with
coffee, and another with a still bigger tray of bread.
Thereupon these wanderers fell to, and having eaten as much bread and
coffee as they could hold, they were consigned to a house a few doors
away, peeping in at whose windows by and by, I saw a large, cheerful
coal fire, and beds for the whole company. "You see, after you have
eaten, the table must be cleared, and then _we_ eat; and then come
these people, who have also to be fed, so that, unless we hurry, the
women are belated with their work," explained the landlord of this
curious inn to me.
"Is this, then, a constant occurrence?" I asked in some amazement; and
was told that they feed here daily from fifteen to twenty-five such
tramps, asking no questions, except that the person shall not have been
a regular beggar from the society. A constant provision of coffee and
bread is made for them, and the house set apart for their lodging has
bed accommodations for twenty men. They are expected to wash at the
stable next morning, and thereupon receive a breakfast of bread, meat,
and coffee, and are suffered to go on their way. Occasionally the very
destitute, if they seem to be deserving, receive also clothing.
"But are you not often imposed upon?" I asked.
"Yes, probably; but it is better to give to a dozen worthless ones than
to refuse one deserving man the cup and loaf which we give," was the
reply.
The tramps themselves took this benevolence apparently as a matter of
course. They were quiet enough; some of them looked like decent men out
of work, as indeed all professed to be going somewhere in search of
employment. But many of them had the air of confirmed loafers, and some
I should not have liked to meet alone on the road after dark.
Economy is the home of the "Harmony Society," better known to the
outside world as the followers of Rapp. It is a town of about one
hundred and twenty houses, very regularly built, well-drained, and
paved; it has water led from a reservoir in the hills, and flowing into
troughs conveniently placed in every street; abundant shade-trees; a
church, an assembly hall, a store which supplies also to some extent the
neighboring country; different factories, and a number of conveniences
which villages of its size are too often without. Moreover, it contains
a pleasant pleasure-garden, and is surrounded by fine, productive
orchards and by well-tilled fields.
At present Economy is inhabited by all that remain of the society which
was founded by George Rapp in 1805. These number one hundred and ten
persons, most of whom are aged, and none, I think, under forty. Besides
these, who are the owners of the place and of much property elsewhere,
there are twenty-five or thirty children of various ages, adopted by the
society and apprenticed to it, and an equal number living there with
parents who are hired laborers; of these hired laborers, men and women,
there are about one hundred. The whole population is German; and German
is the language one commonly hears, and in which on Sunday worship is
carried on. Nevertheless all the people speak English also.
The Harmonists themselves are sturdy, healthy-looking men and women,
most of them gray haired; with an air of vigorous independence;
conspicuously kind and polite; well-fed and well-preserved. As I
examined their faces on Sunday in church, they struck me as a remarkably
healthy and well-satisfied collection of old men and women; by no means
dull, and very decidedly masters of their lives. Their working dress has
for its peculiarity the roundabout or jacket I have before mentioned; on
Sunday they wear long coats. The women look very well indeed in their
Norman caps; and their dress, wholesome and sensible, is not in any way
odd or inappropriate. Indeed, when Miss Rapp, the granddaughter of the
founder of the society, walked briskly into church on Sunday, her
bright, kindly face was so well set off by the cap she wore that she
seemed quite an admirable object to me; and I thought no head-dress in
the world could so well become an elderly lady.
II.--HISTORICAL.
George Rapp, founder and until his death in 1847 head of the "Harmony
Society," was born in October, 1757, at Iptingen in Würtemberg. He was
the son of a small farmer and vine-dresser, and received such a moderate
common-school education as the child of parents in such circumstances
would naturally receive at that time in South Germany. When he had been
taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, he left school and
assisted his father on the farm, working as a weaver during the winter
months. At the age of twenty-six he married a farmer's daughter, who
bore him a son, John, and a daughter, Rosina, both of whom later became
with him members of the society.
Rapp appears to have been from his early youth fond of reading, and of a
reflective turn of mind. Books were probably not plentiful in his
father's house, and he became a student of the Bible, and began
presently to compare the condition of the people among whom he lived
with the social order laid down and described in the New Testament. He
became dissatisfied especially with the lifeless condition of the
churches; and in the year 1787, when he was thirty, he had evidently
found others who held with him, for he began to preach to a small
congregation of friends in his own house on Sundays.
The clergy resented this interference with their office, and persecuted
Rapp and his adherents; they were fined and imprisoned; and this proved
to be, as usual, the best way to increase their numbers and to confirm
their dislike of the prevailing order of things. They were denounced as
"Separatists," and had the courage to accept the name.
Rapp taught his followers, I am told, that they were in all things to
obey the laws, to be peaceable and quiet subjects, and to pay all their
taxes, those to the Church as well as to the State. But he insisted on
their right to believe what they pleased and to go to church where they
thought it best. This was a tolerably impregnable platform.
In the course of six years, with the help of the persecutions of the
clergy, Rapp had gathered around him not less than three hundred
families; and had hearers and believers at a distance of twenty miles
from his own house. He appears to have labored so industriously on the
farm as to accumulate a little property, and in 1803 his adherents
determined upon emigrating in a body to America, where they were sure of
freedom to worship God after their own desires.
Rapp sailed in that year for Baltimore, accompanied by his son John and
two other persons. After looking about in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and
Ohio, they concluded to buy five thousand acres of wild land about
twenty-five miles north of Pittsburgh, in the valley of the
Connoquenessing. Frederick (Reichert) Rapp, an adopted son of George
Rapp, evidently a man of uncommon ability and administrative talent, had
been left in charge in Germany; and had so far perfected the necessary
arrangements for emigration that no time was lost in moving, as soon as
Rapp gave notice that he had found a proper locality for settlement. On
the 4th of July, 1804, the ship _Aurora_ from Amsterdam landed three
hundred of Rapp's people in Baltimore; and six weeks later three hundred
more were landed in Philadelphia. The remainder, coming in another ship,
were drawn off by Haller, one of Rapp's traveling companions, to settle
in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania.
The six hundred souls who thus remained to Rapp appear to have been
mainly, and indeed with few exceptions, of the peasant and mechanic
class. There were among them, I have been told, a few of moderately good
education, and presumably of somewhat higher social standing than the
great body; there were a few who had considerable property, for
emigrants in those days. All were thrifty, and few were destitute. It is
probable that they had determined in Germany to establish a community of
goods, in accordance with their understanding of the social theory of
Jesus; but for the present each family retained its property.
Rapp met them on their arrival, and settled them in different parts of
Maryland and Pennsylvania; withdrawing a certain number of the ablest
mechanics and laborers to proceed with him to the newly purchased land,
where he and they spent a toilsome fall and winter in preparing
habitations for the remainder; and on the 15th of February, 1805, these,
and such as they could so early in the season gather with them, formally
and solemnly organized themselves into the "Harmony Society," agreeing
to throw all their possessions into a common fund, to adopt a uniform
and simple dress and style of house; to keep thenceforth all things in
common; and to labor for the common good of the whole body. Later in the
spring they were joined by fifty additional families; and thus they
finally began with about one hundred and twenty-five families, or, as I
am told, less than seven hundred and fifty men, women, and children.
Rapp was then forty-eight years of age. He was, according to the best
accounts I have been able to gather, a man of robust frame and sound
health, with great perseverance, enterprise, and executive ability, and
remarkable common-sense. It was fortunate for the community that its
members were all laboring men. In the first year they erected between
forty and fifty log-houses, a church and school-house, grist-mill, barn,
and some workshops, and cleared one hundred and fifty acres of land. In
the following year they cleared four hundred acres more, and built a
saw-mill, tannery, and storehouse, and planted a small vineyard. A
distillery was also a part of this year's building; and it is odd to
read that the Harmonists, who have aimed to do all things well, were
famous among Western men for many years for the excellence of the whisky
they made; of which, however, they always used very sparingly
themselves. Among their crops in succeeding years were corn, wheat, rye,
hemp, and flax; wool from merino sheep, which they were the first in
that part of Pennsylvania to own; and poppies, from which they made
sweet-oil. They did not rest until they had established also a
woolen-mill. It was a principle with Rapp that the society should, as
far as possible, produce and make every thing it used; and in the early
days, I am told, they bought very little indeed of provisions or
clothing, having then but small means.
Rapp was, with the help of his adopted son, the organizer of the
community's labor, appointing foremen in each department; he planned
their enterprises--but he was also their preacher and teacher; and he
taught them that their main duty was to live a sincerely and rigidly
religious life; that they were not to labor for wealth, or look forward
anxiously for prosperity; that the coming of the Lord was near, and for
this they were waiting, as his chosen ones separated from the world.
At this time they still lived in families, and encouraged, or at any
rate did not discourage, marriage. Among the members who married between
1805 and 1807 was John Rapp, the founder's son, and the father of Miss
Gertrude Rapp, who still lives at Economy; and there is no doubt that
the elder Rapp performed the marriage ceremony. During the year 1807,
however, a deep religious fervor pervaded the society; and a remarkable
result of this "revival of religion" was the determination of most of
the members to conform themselves more closely in several ways to what
they believed to be the spirit and commands of Jesus. Among other
matters, they were persuaded in their own minds that it was best to
cease to live in the married state. I have been assured by older members
of the society, who have, as they say, often heard the whole of this
period described by those who were actors in it, that this determination
to refrain from marriage and from married life originated among the
younger members; and that, though "Father Rapp" was not averse to this
growth of asceticism, he did not eagerly encourage it, but warned his
people not to act rashly in so serious and difficult a matter, but to
proceed with great caution, and determine nothing without careful
counsel together. At the same time he, I am told, gave it as his own
conviction that the unmarried is the higher and holier estate. In short,
there is reason to believe that he managed in this matter, as he appears
to have done in others, with great prudence and judgment. He himself,
and his son, John Rapp, set an example which the remainder of the
society quickly followed; thenceforth no more marriages were contracted
in Harmony, and no more children were born.
A certain number of the younger people, feeling no vocation for a
celibate life, at this time withdrew from the society. The remainder
faithfully ceased from conjugal intercourse. Husbands and wives were
not required to live in different houses, but occupied, as before, the
same dwelling, with their children, only treating each other as brother
and sister in Christ, and remembering the precept of the apostle: "This
I say, brethren, the time is short; it remaineth that both they that
have wives be as though they had none," etc. These are the words of one
of the older members to the Reverend Dr. Aaron Williams, from whose
interesting account of the Harmony Society I have taken a number of
facts, being referred to it by Mr. Henrici, the present head of Economy.
The same person added: "The burden was easier to bear, because it became
general throughout the whole community, and all bore their share alike."
Another member wrote in 1862: "Convinced of the truth and holiness of
our purpose, we voluntarily and unanimously adopted celibacy, altogether
from religious motives, in order to withdraw our love entirely from the
lusts of the flesh, which, with the help of God and much prayer and
spiritual warfare, we have succeeded well in doing now for fifty years."
Surely so extraordinary a resolve was never before carried out with so
simple and determined a spirit. Among most people it would have been
thought necessary, or at least prudent, to separate families, and to
adopt other safeguards against temptation; but the good Harmonists did
and do nothing of the kind. "What kind of watch or safeguard did or do
you keep over the intercourse of the sexes," I asked in Economy, and
received for reply, "None at all; it would be of no use. If you have to
watch people, you had better give them up. We have always depended upon
the strength of our religious convictions, and upon prayer and a
Christian spirit."
"Do you believe the celibate life to be healthful?" I asked; and the
reply was, "Decidedly so; almost all our people have lived to a hale old
age. Father Rapp himself died at ninety; and no doubt many of our
members would have lived longer than they did, had it not been for the
hardships they suffered in Indiana, where we lived in a malarious
region." I must add my own testimony that the Harmonists now living are
almost without exception stout, well-built, hearty people, the women as
well as the men.
At the same time that the celibate life was adopted, the community
agreed to cease using tobacco in every form--a deprivation which these
Germans must have felt almost as severely as the abandonment of conjugal
joys.
The site of the Pennsylvania settlement proved to have been badly chosen
in two respects. It had no water communication with the outer world; and
it was unfavorable to the growth of the vine. In 1814, after proper
discussion, the society determined to seek a more desirable spot; and
purchased thirty thousand acres of land in Posey County, Indiana, in the
Wabash valley. Thither one hundred persons proceeded in June 1814, to
prepare a place for the remainder; and by the summer of 1815 the whole
colony was in its new home, having sold six thousand acres of land, with
all their valuable improvements, in their old home, for one hundred
thousand dollars.
The price they received is said to have been, and no doubt was, very
much below the real value of the property. It is impossible to sell off
a large and expensively improved estate like theirs all at once. It is
probably true that the machinery and buildings were worth all they
received for the whole property; and it would not be an overestimate to
give the real value of what they sold at one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars. They had begun, ten years before, with one hundred and
twenty-five families; as after the second year they had bred no
children, and as they then lost some members who left on account of
their aversion to a celibate life, it is probable that they had not
increased in numbers. If they had property worth one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars, they would then have been able to divide, at the end
of ten years, at the rate of twelve hundred dollars to each head of a
family--a considerable sum, if we remember that they began with probably
less than five hundred dollars for each family; and had not only lived
comfortably for the greater part of ten years, but enjoyed society, had
a good school for their children, a church, and all the moral and civil
safeguards created by and incident to a well-settled community or town.
Setting aside these safeguards and enjoyments of a thoroughly organized
society, it seems to me doubtful if the same number of families,
settling with narrow means at random in the wilderness, each
independently of the others, could at that period, before railroads were
built, have made as good a showing in mere pecuniary return in the same
time. So far, then, the Harmony Society would seem to have made a
pecuniary success--a fact of which they may have made but little account,
but which is important to a general and independent consideration of
communistic experiments.
On the Wabash they rapidly built up a town; but, possessing now both
experience and some capital, they erected larger factories, and rapidly
extended their business in every department. "Harmony," as they called
the new town, became an important business centre for a considerable
region. They sold their products and manufactured goods in branch stores
as well as at Harmony; they increased in wealth; and, what was of
greater importance to them, they received some large accessions of
members from Germany--friends and relatives of the founders of the
colony. In 1817 one hundred and thirty persons came over at one time
from Würtemberg. I was told that before they left Indiana they had
increased to between seven and eight hundred members.