to avoid all speculative and hazardous enterprises. They are content
with small gains, and in an old-fashioned way study rather to moderate
their outlays than to increase their profits. Naturally--as they own in
common--they are not in haste to be rich. Those of them who have
suffered from debt feel it to be both a danger and a curse. None of the
communes make the acquisition of wealth a leading object of life. They
have greater regard to independence and comfort. Their surplus capital
they invest in land or in the best securities, such as United States
bonds.
12. In those communes where the family relation is upheld, as the people
are prosperous, they marry young. At Amana they do not permit the young
men to marry before they reach the age of twenty-four.
In the celibate societies a number of precautions are used to keep the
sexes apart. Among the Shakers, especially, there are usually separate
doors and stairways in the dwelling-houses; the workshops of the sexes
are in different buildings; they eat at separate tables; and in their
meetings men and women are ranged on opposite sides of the hall.
Moreover, no one is lodged alone, even the elders and ministry sharing
the sleeping-room with some other brother. It is not even permitted that
a man and woman shall stand and talk together on the public walk. In
most of their schools the sexes are also separated. In some of their
dwellings, where but a single staircase exists, there is a rule that two
persons of opposite sexes shall not pass each other on the stairs. They
are not allowed to keep pet animals; nor to enter the room of another
sex without knocking and receiving permission; nor to visit, except by
appointment of the elders or ministry; nor to make presents to each
other; nor to visit the shops of the other sex alone. At Economy there
are separate entrance-ways to the dwellings for the two sexes.
It is not pretended in the celibate communes that the celibate life is
easy; they confess it to be a sacrifice; but as they are moved to it by
their religious faith, they rigorously maintain their rule. I am
satisfied that very few cases of sexual irregularity have occurred among
them, and they rigorously expel all those who transgress their rules.
It is natural that they should assert that celibacy is healthful; and,
indeed, they point to the long life and general good health of their
members in proof; and the fresh and fair complexions of a great number
of their middle-aged people might be cited as another proof. Yet I have
been told that the women are apt to suffer in health, particularly at
the critical period of life. I must add, however, that I could hear of
no cases of insanity or idiocy traceable to the celibate condition. Of
course there is no force used to keep members in a commune; and those
who are uncomfortable leave and go out into the world. The celibate
communes keep very few of the young people whom they train up.
13. The communal life appears to be, at first view, inexorably dull and
dreary; and the surprise was the greater to a visitor like myself to
find the people every where cheerful, merry in their quiet way, and with
a sufficient number and variety of healthful interests in life. But,
after all, the life of the communist has much more varied interests and
excitements than that of the farmer or his family; for a commune is a
village, and usually forms a tolerably densely crowded aggregation of
people--more like a small section cut out of a city than like even a
village. There is also a wholesome variety of occupations; and country
life, to those who love it, presents an infinite fund of amusement and
healthful work.
That this is a correct view is shown by the curious fact that at Amana,
when the farmers of the surrounding country bring in their wool, which
they sell to the society, they bring with them their wives and children,
who find enjoyment in a stay at the little inn; at Zoar the commune's
hotel is a favorite resort of the country people; the neighbors of the
Icarians come from miles around to attend the school exhibitions and
other diversions of these communists; and about Aurora, in Oregon, the
farmers speak of the commune's life as admirably arranged for amusement
and variety.
14. Several of the societies have contrived ingenious mechanical means
for securing harmony and eliminating without violence improper or rather
uncongenial members; and these appear to me to be of high importance.
The Shakers use what they call "Confession of sins to the elders;" the
Amana people have an annual _"untersuchung,"_ or inquiry into the
sins and the spiritual condition of the members; the Perfectionists use
what they rightly call "Criticism"--perhaps the most effective of all, as
in it the subject is not left to tell his own tale, but sits at the
_oyer_ of his sins and disagreeable conduct, being judge rather
than witness. But all these devices are meritorious, because by their
means petty disputes are quieted, grievances are aired and thus dispersed,
and harmony is maintained; while to one not in general agreement with the
commune either is unbearable, and will drive him off. As I have
described these practices in detail, under their proper heads, I need
not here do more than mention them.
In judging of the _quality_ of the communal life, I have found
myself constantly falling into the error of comparing it with my own, or
with the life of men and women in pleasant circumstances in our great
cities. Even when thus studied it has merits--for the commune gives its
members serenity of spirit, and relieves them from many of the follies to
which even the most sensible men and women nowadays are reluctantly
compelled to submit; not to speak of the petty and lowering cares which
these follies and the general spirit of society bring to almost every
one. It is undoubtedly an advantage to live simply, not to be the slave
of fashion or of the opinion of others, and to keep the body under
control.
But to be fairly judged, the communal life, as I have seen and tried to
report it, must be compared with that of the mechanic and laborer in our
cities, and of the farmer in the country; and when thus put in judgment,
I do not hesitate to say that it is in many ways--and in almost all
ways--a higher and better, and also a pleasanter life.
It provides a greater variety of employment for each individual, and
thus increases the dexterity and broadens the faculties of men. It
offers a wider range of wholesome enjoyments, and also greater
restraints against debasing pleasures. It gives independence, and
inculcates prudence and frugality. It demands self-sacrifice, and
restrains selfishness and greed; and thus increases the happiness which
comes from the moral side of human nature. Finally, it relieves the
individual's life from a great mass of carking cares, from the necessity
of over-severe and exhausting toil, from the dread of misfortune or
exposure in old age. If the communal life did not offer such or
equivalent rewards, no commune could exist. For though in almost all of
those I have described a religious thought and theory enter in, it may
nevertheless be justly said that all arose out of a deep-seated
dissatisfaction with society as it is constituted--a feeling which is
well-nigh universal, and affects men and women more the more thoughtful
they are; that they continue only because this want of something better
is gratified; but that a commune could not long continue whose members
had not, in the first place, by adverse circumstances, oppression, or
wrong, been made to feel very keenly the need of something better. Hence
it is that the German peasant or weaver makes so good a communist; and
hence, too, the numerous failures of communistic experiments in this
country, begun by people of culture and means, with a sincere desire to
live the "better life." J. H. Noyes, the founder of the Perfectionist
communes, gives, in his book on "American Socialisms," brief accounts of
not less than forty-seven failures, many of them experiments which
promised well at first, and whose founders were high-minded, highly
cultivated men and women, with sufficient means, one would think, to
achieve success.
[Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.]
Now, why these successes in the face of so many failures? Certainly
there was not among the Shakers, the Rappists, the Baumelers, the
Eben-Ezers, the Perfectionists, greater business ability or more
powerful leadership? Greater wealth there was not, for most of the
successful societies began poor. If education or intellectual culture
are important forces, the unsuccessful societies had these, the
successful ones had them not.
Mr. Noyes believes that religion must be the base of a successful
commune. Mr. Greeley agreed with him. I believe that religion must be
the foundation of every human society which is to be orderly, virtuous,
and therefore self-denying, and so far I do not doubt that they are
right. But if it is meant, as I understand them, that in order to
success there must be some peculiar religious faith, fanatically held, I
do not believe it at all.
I believe that success depends--together with a general agreement in
religious faith, and a real and spiritual religion leavening the
mass--upon another sentiment--upon a feeling of the unbearableness of
the circumstances in which they find themselves. The general feeling of
modern society is blindly right at bottom: communism is a mutiny against
society.
Only, whether the communist shall rebel with a bludgeon and a petroleum
torch, or with a plow and a church, depends upon whether he has not or
has faith in God--whether he is a religious being or not. If priestcraft
and tyranny have sapped his faith and debauched his moral sense, then he
will attack society as the French commune recently attacked
Paris--animated by a furious envy of his more fortunate fellow-creatures,
and an undiscriminating hatred toward every thing which reminds him of
his oppressors, or of the social system from which he has or imagines he
has suffered wrong. If, on the contrary, he believes in God, he finds
hope and comfort in the social theory which Jesus propounded; and he
will seek another way out, as did the Rappists, the Eben-Ezers, the
Jansenists, the Zoarites, and not less the Shakers and the
Perfectionists, each giving his own interpretation to that brief
narrative of Luke in which he describes the primitive Christian Church:
"And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; and
sold their possessions and goods; and parted them to all men as every
man had need."
These words have had a singular power over men in all ages since they
were written. They form the charter of every communistic society of
which I have spoken--for even the Icarians recall them.
IV.--CONDITIONS AND POSSIBILITIES OP COMMUNISTIC LIVING.
Reviewing what I have seen and written, these questions occur:
I. On what terms, if at all, could a carefully selected and homogeneous
company of men and women hope to establish themselves as a commune?
II. Would they improve their lives and condition?
III. Have the existing societies brought communal life to its highest
point; or is a higher and more intellectual life compatible with that
degree of pecuniary success and harmonious living which is absolutely
indispensable?
I. I doubt if men and women in good circumstances, or given to an
intellectual life, can hope to succeed in such an experiment. In the
beginning, the members of a commune must expect to work hard; and, to be
successful, they ought always to retain the frugal habits, the early
hours, and the patient industry and contentment with manual labor which
belong to what we call the working class. Men cannot play at communism.
It is not amateur work. It requires patience, submission;
self-sacrifice, often in little matters where self-sacrifice is
peculiarly irksome; faith in a leader; pleasure in plain living and
healthful hours and occupations.
"Do you have no grumblers?" I asked Elder Frederick Evans at Mount
Lebanon; and he replied, "Yes, of course--and they grumble at the elder.
That is what he is for. It is necessary to have some one man to grumble
at, for that avoids confusion."
"Do you have no scandal?" I asked at Aurora, and they said, "Oh
yes--women will talk; but we have learned not to mind it."
"Are you not troubled sometimes with disagreeable members?" I asked at
Oneida; and they answered, "Yes; but what we cannot criticize out of
them we bear with. That is part of our life."
"_Bear ye one another's burdens_" might well be written over the
gates of every commune.
Some things the communist must surrender; and the most precious of these
is solitude.
The man to whom at intervals the faces and voices of his kind become
hateful, whose bitterest need it is to be sometimes alone--this man need
not try communism. For in a well-ordered commune there is hardly the
possibility of privacy. You are part of a great family, all whose
interests and all whose life must necessarily be in common. At Oneida,
when a man leaves the house he sticks a peg in a board, to tell all his
little world where he is to be found. In a Shaker family, the elder is
expected to know where every man is at all hours of the day. Moses,
wandering over the desert with his great commune, occasionally went up
into a mountain; but he never returned to the dead level of his
Israelites without finding his heart fill with rage and despair. Nor is
this surprising; for in the commune there must be absolute equality;
there can be no special privileges; and when the great Leader, resting
his spirit on the mountain, and enjoying the luxury of solitude and
retirement from the hateful sight and sounds of human kind, "delayed to
come down," his fellow-communists began at once to murmur, "As for this
Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not
what is become of him."
Fortunately--else there would be no communes--to the greater part of
mankind the faces and voices of their kind are necessary.
A company of fifty, or even of twenty-five families, well known to each
other, belonging to the same Christian Church, or at least united upon
some one form of religious faith, composed of farmers or mechanics, or
both, and strongly desirous to better their circumstances, and to live a
life of greater independence and of greater social advantages than is
attainable to the majority of farmers and mechanics, could, I believe,
if they were so fortunate as to possess a leader of sufficient wisdom
and unselfishness, in whom all would implicitly trust, make an attempt
at communistic living with strong hopes of success; and they would
undoubtedly, if they maintained their experiment only ten years,
materially improve their condition; and, what to me seems more
important, the life would affect their characters and those of their
children in many ways beneficially.
I think it would be a mistake in such a company of people to live in a
"unitary home." They should be numerous enough to form a village; they
should begin with means sufficient to own a considerable tract of land,
sufficient to supply themselves with food, and to keep as much stock as
they required for their own use. They should so locate their village as
to make it central to their agricultural land. They should determine, as
the Rappists did, upon a uniform and simple dress and house, and upon
absolute equality of living. They should place _all_ the power in
the hands of their leader, and solemnly promise him unhesitating trust
and obedience; specifying only that he should contract no debts, should
attempt no new enterprise without unanimous consent, and should at all
times open his purposes and his acts to the whole society. Finally, they
should expect in the beginning to live economically--_very_
economically, perhaps; and in every case within their income.
They would, of course, adopt rules as to hours of labor and of meals;
but if they had the spirit which alone can give success, these matters
would be easily settled--for in a community men are more apt to
over-work than to be idle. The lazy men, who are the bugbears of
speculative communists, are not, so far as I have heard, to be found in
the existing communes, and I have often and in different places been
told, especially of the early days: "We worked late and early, each
trying how much he could accomplish, and singing at our work."
In a commune, which is only a large family, I think it a great point
gained for success to give the women equal rights in every respect with
the men. They should take part in the business discussions, and their
consent should be as essential as that of the men in all the affairs of
the society. This gives them, I have noticed, contentment of mind, as
well as enlarged views and pleasure in self-denial. Moreover, women have
a conservative spirit, which is of great value in a communistic society,
as in a family; and their influence is always toward a higher life.
Servants are inadmissible in a commune; but it may and ought to possess
conveniences which make servants, with plain living, needless. For
instance, a common laundry, a common butcher's shop, a general barn and
dairy, are contrivances which almost every commune possesses, but which
hardly any village in the country has. A clean, hard road within the
communal village limits, and dry side-walks, would be attainable with
ease. A church and a school-house ought to be the first buildings
erected; and both being centrally placed, either could be used for such
evening meetings as are essential to happy and successful community
living.
Finally, there should be some way to bring to the light the
dissatisfaction which must exist where a number of people attempt to
live together, either in a commune or in the usual life, but which in a
commune needs to be wisely managed. For this purpose I know of no better
means than that which the Perfectionists call "criticism"--telling a
member to his face, in regular and formal meeting, what is the opinion
of his fellows about him--which he or she, of course, ought to receive
in silence. Those who cannot bear this ordeal are unfit for community
life, and ought not to attempt it. But, in fact, this "criticism,"
kindly and conscientiously used, would be an excellent means of
discipline in most families, and would in almost all cases abolish
scolding and grumbling.
A commune is but a larger family, and its members ought to meet each
other as frequently as possible. The only advantage of a unitary home
lies in this, that the members may easily assemble in a common room
every evening for an hour, not with any set or foreordained purpose, but
for that interchange of thought and experience which makes up, or
should, a large and important part of family life. Hence every commune
ought to have a pleasantly arranged and conveniently accessible
meeting-room, to which books and newspapers, music, and cheap, harmless
amusements should draw the people-women and children as well as
men--two or three times a week. Nor is such meeting a hardship in a
commune, where plain living, early hours, and good order and system make
the work light, and leave both time and strength for amusement.
Tobacco, spirituous liquors, and cards ought to be prohibited in every
commune, as wasteful of money, strength, and time.
The training of children in strict obedience and in good habits would be
insisted on by a wise leader as absolutely necessary to concord in the
society; and the school-teacher ought to have great authority. Moreover,
the training of even little children, during some hours of every day, in
some manual occupation, like knitting--as is done at Amana--is useful
in several ways. Regular and patient industry, not exhausting toil, is
the way to wealth in a commune; and children--who are indeed in general
but too proud to be usefully employed, and to have the sense of
accomplishing something--cannot be brought into this habit of industry
too early.
What now might the members of such a community expect to gain by their
experiment? Would they, to answer the second question above, improve
their lives and condition?
Pecuniarily, they would begin at once a vast economy and saving of
waste, which could hardly help but make them prosperous, and in time
wealthy. A commune pays no wages; its members "work for their board and
clothes," as the phrase is; and these supplies are either cheaply
produced or bought at wholesale. A commune has no blue Mondays, or idle
periods whatever; every thing is systematized, and there is useful
employment for all in all kinds of weather and at all seasons of the
year. A commune wastes no time in "going to town," for it has its own
shops of all kinds. It totally abolishes the middleman of every kind,
and saves all the large percentage of gain on which the "store-keepers"
live and grow rich elsewhere. It spends neither time nor money in
dram-shops or other places of common resort. It secures, by plain living
and freedom from low cares, good health in all, and thus saves "doctors'
bills." It does not heed the changes in fashion, and thus saves time and
strength to its women. Finally, the communal life is so systematized
that every thing is done well, at the right time, and thus comes another
important saving of time and material. The communal wood-house is always
full of well-seasoned firewood: here is a saving of time and temper
which almost every Western farmer's wife will appreciate.
If you consider well these different economies, it will cease to be
surprising that communistic societies become wealthy; and this without
severe or exhausting toil. The Zoarites acknowledge that they could not
have paid for their land had they not formed themselves into a commune;
the Amana Inspirationists confess that they could not have maintained
themselves near Buffalo had they not adopted the communal system.
I have said nothing about the gain of the commune by the thorough
culture it is able and likely to give to land; its ability to command at
any moment a large laboring force for an emergency, and its advantage in
producing the best, and selling its surplus consequently at the highest
market price. But these are not slight advantages. I should say that the
reputation for honesty and for always selling a good article is worth to
the Shakers, the Amana and other communes, at least ten per cent. over
their competitors.
On the moral side the gain is evidently great. In a society so
intimately bound together, if there are slight tendencies to evil in any
member, they are checked and controlled by the prevailing public
sentiment. The possibility of providing with ease and without the
expenditure of money good training and education for children, is an
immense advantage for the commune over the individualist who is a farmer
or mechanic in a new country. The social advantages are very great and
evident. Finally, the effect of the communal life upon the character of
the individual is good. Diversity of employments, as I have noticed in
another chapter, broadens the men's faculties. Ingenuity and mechanical
dexterity are developed to a surprising degree in a commune, as well as
business skill. The constant necessity of living in intimate association
with others, and taking into consideration their prejudices and
weaknesses, makes the communist somewhat a man of the world; teaches him
self-restraint; gives him a liberal and tolerant spirit; makes him an
amiable being. Why are _all_ communists remarkably cleanly? I
imagine largely because filth or carelessness would be unendurable in so
large a family, and because system and method are absolutely necessary to
existence.
But, to come to my third question, the communes I have visited do not
appear to me to make nearly as much of their lives as they might. Most
of them are ascetics, who avoid the beautiful as tending to sin; and
most of them, moreover, out of the force of old habits, and a
conservative spirit which dreads change, rigidly maintain the old ways.