UTOPIAS IN AMERICA
America has long been a gigantic Utopia. To every immigrant since the
founding of Jamestown this coast has gleamed upon the horizon as a
Promised Land. America, too, has provided convenient plots of ground,
as laboratories for all sorts of vagaries, where, unhampered by
restrictions and unannoyed by inquisitive neighbors, enthusiastic
dreamers could attempt to reconstruct society. Whenever an eccentric
in Europe conceived a social panacea no matter how absurd, he said,
"Let's go to America and try it out." There were so many of these
enterprises that their exact number is unknown. Many of them perished
in so brief a time that no friendly chronicler has even saved their
names from oblivion. But others lived, some for a year, some for a
decade, and few for more than a generation. They are of interest today
not only because they brought a considerable number of foreigners to
America, but also because in their history may be observed many of the
principles of communism, or socialism, at work under favorable
conditions. While the theory of Marxian socialism differs in certain
details from these communistic experiments, the foreign-made nostrums
so brazenly proclaimed today wherever malcontents are gathered
together is in essence nothing new in America. Communism was tried and
found wanting by the Pilgrim Fathers; since then it has been tried and
found wanting over and over again. Some of the communistic colonies,
it will appear, waxed fat out of the resources of their lands; but, in
the end, even those which were most fortunate and successful withered
away, and their remnants were absorbed by the great competitive life
that surrounded them.
There were two general types of these communities, the sectarian and
the economic. Frequently they combined a peculiar religious belief
with the economic practice of having everything in common. The
sectarians professed to be neither proselyters nor propagandists but
religious devotees, accepting communism as a physical advantage as
well as a spiritual balm, and seeking in seclusion and quiet merely to
save their own souls.
The majority of the religious communists came from Germany--the home,
also, of Marxian socialism in later years--where persecution was the
lot of innumerable little sects which budded after the Reformation.
They came usually as whole colonies, bringing both leaders and
membership with them.[15] Probably the earliest to arrive in America
were the Labadists, who denied the doctrine of original sin, discarded
the Sabbath, and held strict views of marriage. In 1684, under the
leadership of Peter Sluyter or Schluter (an assumed name, his original
name being Vorstmann), some of these Labadists settled on the Bohemia
River in Delaware. They were sent out from the mother colony in West
Friesland to select a site for the entire body, but it does not appear
that any others migrated, for within fifteen years the American
colony was reduced to eight men. Sluyter evidently had considerable
business capacity, for he became a wealthy tobacco planter and slave
trader.
In 1693 Johann Jacob Zimmermann, a distinguished mathematician and
astronomer and the founder of an order of mystics called Pietists,
started for America, to await the coming of the millennium, which his
calculations placed in the autumn of 1694. But the fate of common
mortals overtook the unfortunate leader and he died just as he was
ready to sail from Rotterdam. About forty members of his brotherhood
settled in the forests on the heights near Germantown, Pennsylvania,
and, under the guidance of Johann Kelpius, achieved a unique influence
over the German peasantry in that vicinity. The members of the
brotherhood made themselves useful as teachers and in various
handicrafts. They were especially in demand among the superstitious
for their skill in casting horoscopes, using divining rods, and
carving potent amulets. Their mysterious astronomical tower on the
heights of the Wissahickon was the Mecca of the curious and the
distressed. To the gentle Kelpius was ascribed the power of healing,
but he was himself the victim of consumption. The brotherhood did not
long survive his death in 1708 or 1709. Their astrological
instruments may be seen in the collections of the Pennsylvania
Philosophical Society.
The first group of Dunkards (a name derived from their method of
baptism, _eintunken_, to immerse) settled in Pennsylvania in 1719. A
few years later they were joined by Conrad Beissel (Beizel or Peysel).
This man had come to America to unite with the Pietist group in
Germantown, but, as Kelpius was dead and his followers dispersed he
joined the Dunkards. His desires for a monastic life drove him into
solitary meditation--tradition says he took shelter in a cave--where
he came to the conviction that the seventh day of the week should be
observed as the day of rest. This conclusion led to friction with the
Dunkards; and as a result, with three men and two women, Beissel
founded in 1728 on the Cocalico River, the cloister of Ephrata. From
this arose the first communistic Eden successfully established in
America and one of the few to survive to the present century. Though
in 1900 the community numbered only seventeen members, in its prime
while Beissel was yet alive it sheltered three hundred, owned a
prosperous paper mill, a grist mill, an oil mill, a fulling mill, a
printing press, a schoolhouse, dwellings for the married members, and
large dormitories for the celibates. The meeting-house was built
entirely without metal, following literally the precedent of Solomon,
who built his temple "so that there was neither hammer nor ax nor any
tool of iron heard in the house while it was building." Wooden pegs
took the place of nails, and the laths were fastened laboriously into
grooves. Averse to riches, Beissel's people refused gifts from William
Penn, King George III, and other prominent personages. The pious
Beissel was a very capable leader, with a passion for music and an
ardor for simplicity. He instituted among the unmarried members of the
community a celibate order embracing both sexes, and he reduced the
communal life of both the religious and secular members to a routine
of piety and labor. The society was known, even in England, for the
excellence of its paper, for the good workmanship of its printing
press, and especially for the quality of its music, which was composed
largely by Beissel. His chorals were among the first composed and sung
in America. His school, too, was of such quality that it drew pupils
from Baltimore and Philadelphia. After his death in 1786, in his
seventy-second year, his successor tried for twenty-eight years to
maintain the discipline and distinction of the order. It was
eventually deemed prudent to incorporate the society under the laws of
the State and to entrust its management to a board of trustees, and
the cloistered life of the community became a memory.
A community patterned after Ephrata was founded in 1800 by Peter
Lehman at Snow Hill, in Franklin County, Pennsylvania. It consisted of
some forty German men and women living in cloisters but relieving the
monotony of their toil and the rigor of their piety with music. As in
Ephrata, there was a twofold membership, the consecrated and the
secular. The entire community, however, vanished after the death of
its founder.
When Beissel's Ephrata was in its heyday, the Moravians, under the
patronage of Count Zinzendorf of Saxony, established in 1741 a
community on the Lehigh River in Pennsylvania, named Bethlehem in
token of their humility. The colony provided living and working
quarters for both the married and unmarried members. After about
twenty years of experimenting, the communistic regimen was abandoned.
Bethlehem, however, continued to thrive, and its schools and its music
became widely known.
The story of the Harmonists, one of the most successful of all the
communistic colonies is even more interesting. The founder, Johann
Georg Rapp, had been a weaver and vine gardener in the little village
of Iptingen in Württemberg. He drew upon himself and his followers the
displeasure of the Church by teaching that religion was a personal
matter between the individual and his God; that the Bible, not the
pronouncements of the clergy, should be the guide to the true faith,
and that the ordinances of the Church were not necessarily the
ordinances of God. The petty persecutions which these doctrines
brought upon him and his fellow separatists turned them towards
liberal America. In 1803 Rapp and some of his companions crossed the
sea and selected as a site for their colony five thousand acres of
land in Butler County, Pennsylvania. There they built the new town of
Harmony, to which came about six hundred persons, all told. On
February 15, 1805 they organized the Harmony Society and signed a
solemn agreement to merge all their possessions in one common lot.[16]
Among them were a few persons of education and property, but most of
them were sturdy, thrifty mechanics and peasants, who, under the
skillful direction of Father Rapp, soon transformed the forest into a
thriving community. After a soul stirring revival in 1807, they
adopted celibacy. Those who were married did not separate but lived
together in solemn self-restraint, "treating each other as brother and
sister in Christ."[17] Their belief that the second coming of the Lord
was imminent no doubt strengthened their resolution. At this time,
also, the men all agreed to forego the use of tobacco--no small
sacrifice on the part of hard-working laborers.
The region, however, was unfavorable to the growth of the grape, which
was the favorite Württemberg crop. In 1814 the society accordingly
sold the communal property for $100,000 and removed to a site on the
Wabash River, in Indiana, where, under the magic of their industry,
the beautiful village of New Harmony arose in one year, and where many
of their sturdy buildings still remain a testimony to their honest
craftsmanship. Unfortunately, however, two pests appeared which they
had not foreseen. Harassed by malaria and meddlesome neighbors,
Father Rapp a third time sought a new Canaan. In 1825 he sold the
entire site to Robert Owen, the British philanthropic socialist, and
the Harmonists moved back to Pennsylvania. They built their third and
last home on the Ohio, about twenty miles from Pittsburgh, and called
it Economy in prophetic token of the wealth which their industry and
shrewdness would soon bring in.
The chaste and simple beauty of this village was due to the skill and
good taste of Friedrich Reichert Rapp, an architect and stone cutter,
the adopted son of Father Rapp. The fine proportions of the plain
buildings, with their vines festooned between the upper and lower
windows, the quaint and charming gardens, the tantalizing labyrinth
where visitors lost themselves in an attempt to reach the Summer
House--these were all of his creation. Friedrich Rapp was also a poet,
an artist, and a musician. He gathered a worthy collection of
paintings and a museum of Indian relics and objects of natural
history. He composed many of the fine hymns which impress every
visitor to Economy. He was likewise an energetic and skillful business
man and represented the colony in its external affairs until his death
in 1834. He was elected a member of the convention that framed the
first constitution of Indiana, and later he was made a member of the
legislature. Father Rapp, who possessed rare talents as an organizer,
controlled the internal affairs of the colony. Those who left the
community because unwilling to abide its discipline often pronounced
their leader a narrow autocrat. But there can be no doubt that eminent
good sense and gentleness tempered his judgments. He personally led
the community in industry, in prayers, and in faith, until 1847, when
death removed him. A council of nine elders elected by the members was
then charged with the spiritual guidance of the community, and two
trustees were appointed to administer its business affairs.
Economy was a German community where German was spoken and German
customs were maintained, although every one also spoke English. As
there were but few accessions to the community and from time to time
there were defections and withdrawals, the membership steadily
declined[18]; but while the community was dwindling in membership it
was rapidly increasing in wealth. Oil and coal were found on some of
its lands; the products of its mills and looms, of its wine presses
and distilleries, were widely and favorably known; and its outside
investments, chiefly in manufactories and railroads, yielded even
greater returns. These outside interests, indeed, became in time the
sole support of the community for, as the membership fell away, the
local industries had to be shut down. Then it was that communistic
methods of doing business became inadequate and the colony ran into
difficulties. An expert accountant in 1892 disclosed the debts of the
community to be about one and a half million dollars. But the outside
industrial enterprises in which the community had invested were sound;
and the vast debt was paid. The society remained solvent, with a huge
surplus, though out of prosperity not of its own making. When the
lands at Economy were eventually sold, about eight acres were reserved
to the few survivors of the society, including the Great House of
Father Rapp and its attractive garden, with the use of the church and
dwellings, so that they might spend their last days in the peaceful
surroundings that had brought them prosperity and happiness.
Lead me, Father, out of harm
To the quiet Zoar farm
If it be Thy will.
So sang another group of simple German separatists, of whom some three
hundred came to America from Württemberg in 1817, under the leadership
of Joseph Bimeler (Bäumeler) and built the village of Zoar in
Tuscarawas County, Ohio. They acquired five thousand acres of land and
signed articles of association in April, 1819, turning all their
individual property and all their future earnings into a common fund
to be managed by an elected board of directors. The community provided
its members with their daily necessities and two suits of clothes a
year. The members were assigned to various trades which absorbed all
their time and left them very little strength for amusement or
reading. Their one recreation was singing. The society was bound to
celibacy until the marriage of Bimeler to his housekeeper; thereafter
marriage was permitted but not encouraged.
In 1832 the society was incorporated under the laws of Ohio, and until
its dissolution it was managed as a corporation. A few Germans joined
the society. No American ever requested admission. Joseph Bimeler was
elected Agent General and thereby became the chosen as well as the
natural leader of the community. Like other patriarchs of that epoch
who led their following into the wilderness, he was a man of some
education and many gifts. He was the spiritual mentor; but his piety,
which was sincere and simple, did not rob him of the shrewdness
necessary to material success. His followers were loyally devoted to
him. They built for him the largest house in the community, a fine
colonial manor house, where he dwelt in comparative luxury and reigned
as their "King." When he died in 1853 he had seen the prosperity of
his colony reach its zenith. It remained small. Scarcely more than
three hundred members ever dwelt in the village which, in spite of its
profusion of vines and flowers, lacked the informal quaintness and
originality of Rapp's Economy. The Tuscarawas River furnished power
for their flour mill, whose products were widely sought. There was
also a woolen mill, a planing mill, a foundry, and a machine shop. The
beer made by the community was famous all the country round, and for a
time its pottery and tile works turned out interesting and quaint
products. But one by one these small industries succumbed to the
competition of the greater world. At last even an alien brew
supplanted the good local beer. When the railroad tapped the village,
and it was incorporated (1884) and assumed an official worldliness
with its mayor and councilmen, it lost its isolation, summer visitors
flocked in, and a "calaboose" was needed for the benefit of the
sojourners!
The third generation was now grown. A number of dissatisfied members
had left. Many of the children never joined the society but found work
elsewhere. A great deal of the work had to be done by hired help.
Under the leadership of the younger element it was decided in 1898 to
abandon communism. Appraisers and surveyors were set to work to parcel
out the property. Each of the 136 members received a cash dividend, a
home in the village, and a plot of land. The average value of each
share, which was in the neighborhood of $1500, was not a large return
for three generations of communistic experimentation. But these had
been, after all, years of moderate competence and quiet contentment,
and if they took their toll in the coin of hope, as their song set
forth, then these simple Württembergers were fully paid.
The Inspirationists were a sect that made many converts in Germany,
Holland, and Switzerland in the eighteenth century. They believed in
direct revelations from God through chosen "instruments." In 1817, a
new leader appeared among them in the person of Christian Metz, a man
of great personal charm, worldly shrewdness, and spiritual fervor.
Allied with him was Barbara Heynemann, a simple maid without
education, who learned to read the Scriptures after she was
twenty-three years of age. Endowed with the peculiar gift of
"translation," she was cherished by the sect as an instrument of God
for revealing His will.
To this pair came an inspiration to lead their harassed followers to
America. In 1842 they purchased the Seneca Indian Reservation near
Buffalo, New York. They called their new home Ebenezer, and in 1843
they organized the Ebenezer Society, under a constitution which
pledged them to communism. Over eight hundred peasants and artisans
joined the colony, and their industry soon had created a cluster of
five villages with mills, workshops, schools, and dwellings. But they
were continually annoyed by the Indians from whom they had purchased
the site and were distracted by the rapidly growing city of Buffalo,
which was only five miles away!
This threat of worldliness brought a revelation that they must seek
greater seclusion. A large tract on the Iowa River was purchased, and
to this new site the population was gradually transferred. There they
built Amana. Within a radius of six miles, five subsidiary villages
sprang up, each one laid out like a German _dorf_, with its cluster of
shops and mills, and the cottages scattered informally on the main
road. When the railway tapped the neighborhood, the community in
self-defense purchased the town that contained the railway station. So
when the good Christian Metz died in 1867, at the age of seventy-two,
his pious followers, thanks to his sagacity, were possessed of some
twenty-six thousand acres of rich Iowa land and seven thriving
villages, comfortably housing about 1400 of the faithful. Barbara
Heynemann died in 1883, and since her death no "instrument" has been
found to disclose the will of God. But many ponderous tomes of
"revelations" have survived and these are faithfully read and their
naïve personal directions and inhibitions are still generally obeyed.
The Bible, however, remains the main guide of these people, and they
follow its instructions with childish literalism. Until quite recently
they clung to the simple dress and the austere life of their earlier
years. The solidarity of the community has been maintained with rare
skill. The "Great Council of the Brethren" upon whom is laid the
burden of directing all the affairs, has avoided government by mass
meeting, discouraged irresponsible talk and criticism, and, as an
aristocracy of elders, has shrewdly controlled the material and
spiritual life of the community.
The society has received many new members. There have been accessions
from Zoar and Economy and one or two Americans have joined. The "Great
Council," in its desire to maintain the homogeneity of the group,
rejects the large number of applications for membership received every
year. Over sixty per cent of the young people who have left the
community to try the world have come back to "colony trousers" or
"colony skirts," symbols of the complete submergence of the
individual.
Celibacy has been encouraged but never enjoined, and the young people
are permitted to marry, if the Spirit gives its sanction, the Elders
their consent, and if the man has reached the age of twenty-four
years. The two sexes are rigidly separated in school, in church, at
work, and in the communal dining rooms. Each family lives in a house,
but there are communal kitchens, where meals are served to groups of
twenty or more. Every member receives an annual cash bonus varying
from $25 to $75 and a pass book to record his credits at the "store."
The work is doled out among the members, who take pride in the quality
rather than in the quantity of their product. All forms of amusement
are forbidden; music, which flourished in other German communities, is
suppressed; and even reading for pleasure or information was until
recently under the ban.
The only symbols of gayety in the villages are the flowers, and these
are everywhere in lavish abundance, softening the austere lines of the
plain and unpainted houses. No architect has been allowed to show his
skill, no artist his genius, in the shaping of this rigorous life. But
its industries flourish. Amana calico and Amana woolens are known in
many markets. The livestock is of the finest breeds; the products of
the fields and orchards are the choicest. But the modern visitor
wonders how long this prosperity will be able to maintain that
isolation which alone insured the communal solidarity. Already store
clothes are being worn, photographs are seen on the walls, "worldly"
furniture is being used, libraries, those openers of closed minds, are
in every schoolhouse, and newspapers and magazines are "allowed."
The experiences of Eric Janson and his devotees whom he led out of
Sweden to Bishop Hill Colony, in Illinois, are replete with dramatic
and tragic details. Janson was a rugged Swedish peasant, whose
eloquence and gift of second sight made him the prophet of the
Devotionalists, a sect that attempted to reëstablish the simplicity of
the primitive church among the Lutherans of Scandinavia. Driven from
pillar to post by the relentless hatred of the Established Church,
they sought refuge in America, where Janson planned a theocratic
socialistic community. Its communism was based entirely upon religious
convictions, for neither Janson nor any of his illiterate followers
had heard of the politico-economic systems of French reformers. Over
one thousand young and vigorous peasants followed him to America. The
first contingent of four hundred arrived in 1846 and spent their first
winter in untold miseries and privations, with barely sufficient food,
but with enough spiritual fervor to kindle two religious services a
day and three on Sunday. Attacking the vast prairies with their
primitive implements, harvesting grain with the sickle and grinding it
by hand when their water power gave out, sheltering themselves in
tents and caves, enduring agues and fevers, hunger and cold, the
majority still remained loyal to the leader whose eloquence fired them
with a sustaining hope. Thrift, unremitting toil, the wonderful
fertility of the prairie, the high price of wheat, flax, and broom
corn, were bound to bring prosperity. In 1848 they built a huge brick
dormitory and dining hall, a great frame church, and a number of
smaller dwellings. Improved housing at once told on the general
health, though in the next year a scourge of cholera, introduced by
some newcomer, claimed 143 members.
In the meantime John Root, an adventurer from Stockholm, who had
served in the American army, arrived at the colony and soon fell in
love with the cousin of Eric Janson. The prophet gave his consent to
the marriage on condition that, if at any time Root wished to leave
the colony, his wife should be permitted to remain if she desired. A
written agreement acknowledged Root's consent to these conditions. He
soon tired of a life for which he had not the remotest liking, and,
failing to entice his wife away with him, he kidnaped her and forcibly
detained her in Chicago, whence she was rescued by a valiant band of
the colonists. In retaliation the irate husband organized a mob of
frontiers folk to drive out the fanatics as they had a short time
before driven out Brigham Young and his Mormons. But the neighbors of
the colonists, having learned their sterling worth, came to the
rescue. Root then began legal proceedings against Janson. In May,
1850, while in court the renegade deliberately shot and killed the
prophet. The community in despair awaited three days the return to
life of the man whom they looked upon as a representative of Christ
sent to earth to rebuild the Tabernacle.
Janson had been a very poor manager, however, and the colony was in
debt. In order quickly to obtain money, he had sent Jonas Olsen, the
ablest and strongest of his followers, to California to seek gold to
wipe out the debt. Upon hearing of the tragedy, Olsen hastened back to
Bishop Hill and was soon in charge of affairs. In 1853 he obtained for
the colony a charter of incorporation which vested the entire
management of the property in seven trustees. These men, under the
by-laws adopted, became also the spiritual mentors, and the colonists,
unacquainted with democratic usages in government, submitted willingly
to the leadership of this oligarchy. A new era of great material
prosperity now set in. The village was rebuilt. The great house was
enlarged so that all the inhabitants could be accommodated in its
vast communal dining room. Trees were planted along the streets. Shops
and mills were erected, and a hotel became the means of introducing
strangers to the community.
Meanwhile Olsen was growing more and more arbitrary and, after a
bitter controversy, he imposed celibacy upon the members. This was the
beginning of the end. One of the trustees, Olaf Jansen, a good-natured
peasant who could not keep his accounts but who had a peasant's
sagacity for a bargain, wormed his way into financial control. He
wanted to make the colony rich, but he led it to the verge of
bankruptcy. He became a speculator and promoter. Stories of his
shortcomings were whispered about and in 1860 the peasant colony
revolted and deposed Olaf from office. He then had himself appointed
receiver to wind up the corporation's affairs, and in the following
year the communal property was distributed. Every member, male and
female, thirty-five years of age received a full share which
"consisted of 22 acres of land, one timber lot of nearly 2 acres, one
town lot, and an equal part of all barns, houses, cattle, hogs, sheep
or other domestic animals and all farming implements and household
utensils." Those under thirty-five received according to their age.
Had these shares been unencumbered, this would have represented a fair
return for their labor. But Olaf had made no half-way business of his
financial ambitions, and the former members who now were melting
peacefully and rather contentedly into the general American life found
themselves saddled with his obligations. The "colony case" became
famous among Illinois lawyers and dragged through twelve years of
litigation. Thus the glowing fraternal communism of poor Janson ended
in the drab discord of an American lawsuit.
In 1862 the followers of Jacob Hutter, a Mennonite martyr who was
burned at the stake in Innsbruck in the sixteenth century, founded the
Old Elmspring Community on the James River in South Dakota. During the
Thirty Years' War these saintly Quaker-like German folk had found
refuge in Moravia, whence they had been driven into Hungary, later
into Rumania, and then into Russia. As their objection to military
service brought them into conflict with the Czar's government, they
finally determined to migrate to America. In 1874 they had all reached
South Dakota, where they now live in five small communities. Scarcely
four hundred all told, they cling to their ancient ambition to keep
themselves "unspotted from the world," and so have evolved a
self-sustaining communal life, characterized by great simplicity of
dress, of speech, and of living. They speak German and refrain
entirely from voting and from other political activity. They are
farmers and practise only those handicrafts which are necessary to
their own communal welfare.
While most of these German sectarian communities had only a slight
economic effect upon the United States, their influence upon
immigration has been extensive. In the early part of the last century,
it was difficult to obtain authentic news concerning America in the
remote hamlets of Europe. All sorts of vague and grotesque notions
about this country were afloat. Every member of these communities,
when he wrote to those left behind, became a living witness of the
golden opportunities offered in the new land. And, unquestionably, a
considerable share of the great German influx in the middle of the
nineteenth century can be traced to the dissemination of knowledge by
this means. Mikkelsen says of the Jansonists that their "letters home
concerning the new country paved the way for that mighty tide of
Swedish immigration which in a few years began to roll in upon
Illinois and the Northwest."
The Shakers are the oldest and the largest communistic sect to find a
congenial home in America. The cult originated in Manchester, England,
with Ann Lee, a "Shaking Quaker" who never learned to read or write
but depended upon revelation for doctrine and guidance. "By a direct
revelation," says the Shaker Compendium, she was "instructed to come
to America." Obedient to the vision, she sailed from Liverpool in the
summer of 1774, accompanied by six men and two women, among whom were
her husband, a brother, and a niece. This little flock settled in the
forests near Albany, New York. Abandoned by her husband, the
prophetess went from place to place, proclaiming her peculiar
doctrines. Soon she became known as "Mother Ann" and was reputed to
have supernatural powers. At the time of her death in 1784 she had
numerous followers in western New England and eastern New York.
In 1787 they founded their first Shaker community at Mount Lebanon.
Within a few years other societies were organized in New York,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Connecticut. On the wave of
the great religious revival at the beginning of the nineteenth
century their doctrines were carried west. The cult achieved its
highest prosperity in the decade following 1830, when it numbered
eighteen societies and about six thousand members.
In shrewd and capable hands, the sect soon had both an elaborate
system of theology based upon the teachings of Mother Ann and also an
effective organization. The communal life, ordaining celibacy, based
on industry, and constructed in the strictest economy, achieved
material prosperity and evidently brought spiritual consolation to
those who committed themselves to its isolation. Although originating
in England, the sect is confined wholly to America and has from the
first recruited its membership almost wholly from native Americans.
Another of these social experiments was the Oneida Community and its
several ephemeral branches. Though it was of American origin and the
members were almost wholly American, it deserves passing mention. The
founder, John Humphrey Noyes, a graduate of Dartmouth and a Yale
divinity student, conceived a system of communal life which should
make it possible for the individual to live without sin. This
perfectionism, he believed, necessitated the abolition of private
property through communism, the abolition of sickness through complete
coöperation of the individual with God, and the abolition of the
family through a "scientific" coöperation of the sexes. The Oneida
Community was financially very prosperous. Its "stirpiculture,"
Noyes's high-sounding synonym for free love, brought it, however, into
violent conflict with public opinion, and in 1879 "complex marriages"
gave way to monogamous families. In the following year the communistic
holding of property gave way to a joint stock company, under whose
skillful management the prosperity of the community continues today.
The American Utopias based upon an assumed economic altruism were much
more numerous than those founded primarily upon religion but, as they
were recruited almost wholly from Americans, they need engage our
attention only briefly. There were two groups of economic communistic
experiments, similar in their general characteristics but differing in
their origin. One took its inspiration directly from Robert Owen, the
distinguished philanthropist and successful cotton manufacturer of
Scotland; the other from Fourier, the noted French social
philosopher.
In 1825 Robert Owen purchased New Harmony, Rapp's village in Indiana
and its thirty thousand appurtenant acres. When Owen came to America
he was already famous. Great throngs flocked to hear this practical
man utter the most visionary sentiments. At Washington, for instance,
he lectured to an auditory that included great senators and famous
representatives, members of the Supreme Court and of the Cabinet,
President Monroe and Adams, the President-elect. He displayed to his
eager hearers the plans and specifications of the new human order, his
glorified apartment house with all the external paraphernalia of
selective human perfection drawn to scale.
For a brief period New Harmony was the communistic capital of the
world. It was discussed everywhere and became, says its chronicler,
"the rendezvous of the enlightened and progressive people from all
over the United States and northern Europe." It achieved a sort of
motley cosmopolitanism. A "Boat Load of Knowledge" carried from
Pittsburgh the most distinguished group of scientists that had
hitherto been brought together in America. It included William
Maclure, a Scotchman who came to America, at the age of thirty-three,
ambitious to make a geological survey of the country and whose
learning and energy soon earned him the title of "Father of American
Geology"; Thomas Say, "the Father of American Zoölogy"; Charles
Alexander Lesueur, a distinguished naturalist from the _Jardin des
Plantes_ of Paris; Constantine S. Rafinesque, a scientific nomad whose
studies of fishes took him everywhere and whose restless spirit
forbade him remaining long anywhere; Gerard Troost, a Dutch scientist
who later did pioneer work in western geology; Joseph Neef, a
well-known Pestalozzian educator, together with two French experts in
that system; and Owen's four brilliant sons. A few artists and
musicians and all sorts of reformers, including Fanny Wright, an
ardent and very advanced suffragette, joined these scientists in the
new Eden. Owen had issued a universal invitation to the "industrious
and well disposed," but his project offered also the lure of a free
meal ticket for the improvident and the glitter of novelty for the
restless.
"I am come to this country," Owen said in his opening words at New
Harmony, "to introduce an entire new state of society, to change it
from the ignorant, selfish system to an enlightened social system,
which shall gradually unite all interests into one, and remove all
causes for contests between individuals."[19] But the germs of
dissolution were already present in the extreme individuality of the
members of this new society. Here was no homogeneous horde of docile
German peasants waiting to be commanded. What Father Rapp could do,
Owen could not. The sifting process had begun too late. Seven
different constitutions issued in rapid succession attempted in vain
to discover a common bond of action. In less than two years Owen's
money was gone, and nine hundred or more disillusioned persons
rejoined the more individualistic world. Many of them subsequently
achieved distinction in professional and public callings. Owen's
widely advertised experiment was fecund, however, and produced some
eleven other short-lived communistic attempts, of which the most noted
were at Franklin, Haverstraw, and Coxsackie in New York, Yellow
Springs and Kendal in Ohio, and Forestville and Macluria in Indiana.
Fourierism found its principal apostle in this country in Arthur
Brisbane, whose _Social Destiny of Man_, published in 1840, brought to
America the French philosopher's naïve, social regimen of reducing
the world of men to simple units called phalanxes, whose barrack-like
routine should insure plenty, equality, and happiness. Horace Greeley,
with characteristic, erratic eagerness, pounced upon the new gospel,
and Brisbane obtained at once a wide circle of sympathetic readers
through the _Tribune_. Thirty-four phalanxes were organized in a short
time, most of them with an incredible lack of foresight. They usually
lasted until the first payment on the mortgage was due, though a few
weathered the buffetings of fortune for several years. Brook Farm in
Massachusetts and the Wisconsin phalanx each endured six years, and
the North American phalanx at Red Bank, New Jersey, lasted thirteen
years.
Icaria is a romantic sequel to the Owen and Fourier colonies. It
antedated Brisbane's revival of Fourierism, was encouraged by Owenism,
survived both, and formed a living link between the utopianism of the
early nineteenth century and the utilitarian socialism of the
twentieth. Étienne Cabet was one of those interesting Frenchmen whose
fertile minds and instinct for rapid action made France during the
nineteenth century kaleidoscopic with social and political events.
Though educated for the bar, Cabet devoted himself to social and
political reform. As a young man he was a director in that powerful
secret order, the Carbonari, and was elected to the French chamber of
deputies, but his violent attitude toward the Government was such that
in 1834 he was obliged to flee to London to escape imprisonment. Here,
unmolested, he devoted himself for five years to social and historical
research. He returned to France in 1839 and in the following year
published his _Voyage en Icarie_, a book that at once took its place
by the side of Sir Thomas More's _Utopia_. Cabet pictured in his
volume an ideal society where plenty should be a substitute for
poverty and equality a remedy for class egoism. So great was the
cogency of his writing that Icaria became more than a mere vision to
hundreds of thousands in those years of social ferment and democratic
aspirations. From a hundred sources the demand arose to translate the
book into action. Cabet thereupon framed a constitution and sought the
means of founding a real Icaria. After consulting Robert Owen, he
unfortunately fell into the clutches of some Cincinnati land
speculators and chose a site for his colony in the northeastern part
of Texas. When the announcement was made in his paper, _Le Populaire_,
the responses were so numerous that Cabet believed that "more than a
million coöperators" were eager for the experiment.
In February, 1848, sixty-nine young men, all carefully selected
volunteers, were sent forth from Havre as the vanguard of the
contemplated exodus. But the movement was halted by the turn of great
events. Twenty days after the young men sailed, the French Republic
was proclaimed, and in the fervor and distraction of this immediate
political victory the new and distant Utopia seemed to thousands less
alluring than it had been before. The group of young volunteers,
however, reached America. After heart-rending disillusionment in the
swamps and forests of Louisiana and on the raw prairies of Texas, they
made their way back to New Orleans in time to meet Cabet and four
hundred Icarians, who arrived early in 1849. The Gallic instinct for
factional differences soon began to assert itself in repeated division
and subdivision on the part of the idealists. One-half withdrew at New
Orleans to work out their individual salvation. The remainder followed
Cabet to the deserted Mormon town of Nauvoo, Illinois, where vacant
houses offered immediate shelter and where they enjoyed an interval of
prosperity. The French genius for music, for theatricals, and for
literature relieved them from the tedium that characterized most
co-operative colonies. Soon their numbers increased to five hundred by
accessions which, with few exceptions, were French.
But Cabet was not a practical leader. His pamphlet published in German
in 1854, entitled _If I had half a million dollars_, reveals the
naïveté of his mind. He wanted to find money, not to make it. The
society soon became involved in a controversy in which Cabet's
immediate following were outnumbered. The minority petulantly stopped
working but continued to eat. "The majority decided that those who
would not work should not eat ... and gave notice that those who
absented themselves from labor would be cut off from rations."[20] As
a result, Cabet, in 1856, was expelled from his own Icaria! With 170
faithful adherents he went to St. Louis, and there a few days later he
died. The minority buried their leader, but their faith in communal
life survived this setback. At Cheltenham, a suburb of St. Louis, they
acquired a small estate, where proximity to the city enabled the
members to get work. Here they lived together six years before
division disrupted them permanently.
At Nauvoo in the meantime there had been other secessions, and the
property, in 1857, was in the hands of a receiver. The plucky and
determined remnant, however, removed to Iowa, where on the prairie
near Corning they planted a new Icaria. Here, by hard toil and in
extreme poverty, but in harmony and contentment, the communists lived
until, in 1876, the younger members wished to adopt advanced methods
in farming, in finance, and in management. The older men, with wisdom
acquired through bitter experience, refused to alter their methods.
The younger party won a lawsuit to annul the communal charter. The
property was divided, and again there were two Icarias, the "young
party" retaining the old site and the "old party" moving on and
founding New Icaria, a few miles from the old. But Old Icaria was soon
split: one faction removed to California, where the Icaria-Speranza
community was founded; and the other remained at Old Icaria. Both came
to grief in 1888. Finally in 1895 New Icaria, then reduced to a few
veterans, was dissolved by a unanimous vote of the community.
* * * * *
In 1854 Victor Considérant, the French socialist, planted a
Fourieristic phalanx in Texas, under the liberal patronage of J.B.A.
Godin, the godfather of Fourierism in France who founded at Guise the
only really successful phalanx. A French communistic colony was also
attempted at Silkville, Kansas. But both ventures lasted only a few
years. Since the subsidence of these French communistic experiments,
there have been many sporadic attempts at founding idealistic
communities in the United States. Over fifty have been tried since the
Civil War. Nearly all were established under American auspices and did
not lure many foreigners.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 15: As is usual among people who pride themselves on their
peculiarities there were variations of opinion among these sects which
led to schisms. The Mennonites contained at one time no less than
eleven distinct branches, among them the Amish, Old and New, whose
ridiculous singularity of dress, in which they discarded all ornaments
and even buttons, earned them the nickname "Hooks and Eyes." But no
matter how aloof these sects held themselves from the world, or what
asceticism they practiced upon themselves, or what spiritual and
economic fraternity they displayed to each other, they possessed a
remarkable native cunning in bargaining over a bushel of wheat or a
shoat, and for a time most of their communities prospered.]
[Footnote 16: Under the communal contract, which was later upheld by
the Supreme Court of the United States, members agreed to merge their
properties and to renounce all claims for services; and the community,
on its part, agreed to support the members and to repay without
interest, to any one desiring to withdraw, the amount he had put into
the common fund.]
[Footnote 17: _Communistic Societies of the United States_, by Charles
Nordhoff, p. 73.]
[Footnote 18: The largest membership was attained in 1827, when 522
were enrolled. There were 391 in 1836; 321 in 1846; 170 in 1864; 146
in 1866; 70 in 1879; 34 in 1888; 37 in 1892; 10 in 1897; 8 in 1902,
only two of whom were men; and in 1903, three women and one man. The
population of Economy, however, was always much larger than the
communal membership.]
[Footnote 19: _The New Harmony Movement_, by G.B. Lockwood, p. 83.]
[Footnote 20: _Icaria, A Chapter in the History of Communism_, by
Albert Shaw, p. 58.]