AN EXPERIMENT IN SOCIALISM
New Harmony, the scene of Robert Owen’s experiment in socialism,
lies in Posey County, in the far southwestern corner of Indiana. The
village is without direct communication with the outer world, but may
be approached by boat on the Wabash River, or by a branch railroad
which ends abruptly at New Harmony after a rough course through wheat
fields, which are, in spring and summer, a charming feature of the
landscape of this region. George Rapp gave expression to his peculiar
religious ideas in the community which he established there, and he
sold his large estate to Owen, who began building on the foundations
left by Rapp a social structure after plans of his own. Owen’s ideas
are not strikingly novel when taken in connection with the history
of socialism; but the movement carried to Indiana many distinguished
persons, and the life of subsequent generations in and about the
village has, to this day, been colored by it.
George Rapp came to the United States from Germany, in 1803, in
search of a more tolerant home for the sect which he had founded. He
purchased a tract of land in Butler County, Pennsylvania, and during
the summer of 1804 six hundred of his followers, chiefly mechanics
and laborers, joined him, and in the following year the community
known as the Harmony Society was formally organized. The members were
banded together in a Christian brotherhood, and were orthodox in all
essentials. Property was held in common, and thought was directed away
from mundane affairs to the second coming of the Lord, which Rapp
believed to be imminent. The members experienced, in 1807, a great
spiritual awakening, and one of its results was their acceptance of
celibacy as an implied if not obligatory tenet of the sect.
In 1814, the community sold the greater part of its holdings of real
estate in Pennsylvania and purchased 30,000 acres of land in Indiana,
of which Harmony became the centre. The following year the Rappites
moved to the lower Wabash and continued in a new wilderness their
severe labors and ascetic practices. They marked out a village in
squares, with broad streets, and built houses in which beauty was
sacrificed to stability. It is a tribute to their excellent workmanship
that many of these structures are still in use, having survived two
communistic experiments and falling at last to the incidental needs
of a Western village. The Rappites had been annoyed during their
sojourn in Pennsylvania by unsympathetic neighbors, and fearing similar
experiences with the rough characters that roamed the Wabash country in
those days, they deemed it wise to prepare a defence. They thereupon
built, of brick and stone, a substantial fortress which was used as a
granary. The walls were three feet thick and the loopholes were barred.
The story that this building was connected with Rapp’s house by an
underground passage is authoritatively denied at New Harmony.
The Rappites had first used a frame building as a place of worship,
but later they erected a large brick meeting-house, carving on the
pediment above the main door a wreath and a rose, the date, 1822, and
the inscription, “Mich IV, 8; in Memory of the Harmony Society; by
George Rapp, 1805.” The colonists were industrious and thrifty. They
cleared the land, planted vineyards, manufactured woollen and cotton
goods and shoes, and found a ready market for all their products. The
original population of the Pennsylvania settlement had been about six
hundred persons; and during the community’s life in Indiana accessions
of friends from Germany increased the number of members to between
seven and eight hundred. In 1824 Rapp again decided to move, and
appointed Richard Flower to negotiate a sale. Flower visited Scotland,
sought Robert Owen, a manufacturer and social reformer, and sold him
the Rappites’ land for $132,000. Subsequently there was an additional
sale of live-stock, tools, and merchandise for $50,000, so that the
total of Owen’s original investment at New Harmony was $182,000. The
Rappites thereupon disappeared from Indiana, returning to Pennsylvania,
where they established a new settlement called Economy, and prospered
greatly.
Robert Owen was born in Wales, March 14, 1771. His father was a
saddler, and Robert began his career under no favoring circumstances.
He became interested in cotton spinning, for which he showed genius and
at which he made a fortune. He married the daughter of David Dale, the
owner of extensive cotton mills at New Lanark, on the Clyde, became
Dale’s successor, and with growing fortune gave an increasing attention
to social and political questions. He was a pioneer in the reform of
factory abuses; and in his own establishment at New Lanark he made
practical application of his theories. He visited the Continent, where
he became acquainted with many persons of note, not the least of these
being Pestalozzi and Fellenberg; he was much in London, usually in
advocacy of some reform; he acquired skill in writing and speaking,
and taken altogether his biography gives the impression of a strong,
zealous, and indefatigable nature. He was intense and uncompromising,
and, it must be confessed, sadly lacking in humor. He expected to find
in the new world larger opportunities for the demonstration of his
principles. The New Harmony incident illustrates a curious conflict
between the ideal and the practical in Owen. It was quite like him to
undertake the planting of a communistic settlement in America, and to
invest his own money in it; but a natural business caution checked his
generous impulses, and while he extended a sweeping invitation to the
industrious and well-disposed of all creeds to join him, he was in no
haste to divide his property.
Owen’s lectures in the hall of the House of Representatives at
Washington, February 5 and March 27, 1825, before audiences composed
of the famous men of the day, gave wide publicity to his views. He
displayed a model of the ideal village which he proposed to found
on the Wabash. The community buildings were to form a hollow square
1000 feet long. The material needs of his proposed colony were all
provided for in the buildings of his model village; and he announced a
comprehensive system of education in which the young of the community
should be led from the lowest to the highest branches. Owen had
announced that “these new proceedings,” as he called his plans, were
to take effect at New Harmony--he gave the prefix to Rapp’s name for
the place--in April, 1826. He spent the summer of 1825 in England, but
returned to America in the fall, reaching New York November 7. His
hospitable invitation had awakened the interest of a large number of
persons, ranging from sincere converts to eccentric and irresponsible
vagabonds, drawn from all parts of the United States and Europe. What
is known in New Harmony literature as “the boat load of knowledge” set
out from Pittsburg in December, 1825. About thirty people assembled on
a keel boat, which they made comfortable for the voyage, and turned
toward New Harmony. The ice closed upon them near Beaver, and they did
not reach their destination until the middle of January. The passengers
included Robert Owen and his sons, Robert Dale and William, William
Maclure, Thomas Say, Charles A. Lesueur, Achilles Fretageot and wife,
Captain Donald Macdonald, Dr. Gerard Troost, Phiquepal d’Arusmont, and
Stedman Whitwell, a London architect.[40] Joseph Neef followed in the
spring, and Frances Wright, of Nashoba fame, who married d’Arusmont,
first appeared there in the second year of the community. Schoolcraft
and Rafinesque were both visitors at New Harmony, but not during the
life of the Owen community, though Rafinesque has been erroneously
named as an original member.
The strength of the keel boat’s contribution to the community lay
in special scientific knowledge; and if Owen’s inclination toward
socialism had been increased by the success of Rapp’s submissive
peasants, he erred gravely in his own choice of followers. William
Maclure (1763-1840) was a wealthy Scotchman, who turned from a
successful mercantile career to the natural sciences. He first visited
the United States in the last years of the eighteenth century, and
planned a geographical survey of the whole country. He explored at
his own expense a vast territory, and prepared maps showing the result
of his investigations. He was a founder of the Academy of Natural
Sciences, at Philadelphia, to which he gave generously of his fortune,
and was its president for more than twenty years. His friend, Thomas
Say (1787-1834), called “the father of American zoölogy,” was also
connected with the Academy in its formative years. The place of both
is secure in the history of American science. Lesueur came to the
United States from the West Indies. His scientific researches had
included extensive investigations in Australia, and he was an early,
if not indeed the first, student of the Mound-builders’ remains in
Indiana. He was an artist of considerable merit, and some of his
work may be seen in the New Harmony library. Troost (1776-1850) was
a scientist of wide and exact knowledge, who went to Tennessee after
the collapse of New Harmony, taught the sciences for many years in the
University of Nashville, and was for eighteen years State geologist.
Neef was a native of Alsace. He had been a teacher in Pestalozzi’s
school, in Switzerland, and met there his wife, who was educated under
the direction of Madame Pestalozzi. They removed to Philadelphia
immediately after their marriage, and became acquainted with Maclure,
who, like Owen, had been attracted by the Pestalozzi system, and who
persuaded them to join the Owenites. Little is known of Macdonald,
though there is a tradition at New Harmony that he returned to Scotland
and inherited a title of nobility.
Owen’s followers moved into the houses that had been vacated by Rapp’s
colonists, and set about organizing the new community. On April 27 Owen
addressed them in the Rappite church, which had been preëmpted for
sectarian uses and dedicated to liberal thought and free speech. He
spoke with great enthusiasm, declaring that he had come to introduce
a new and enlightened state of society, eliminate ignorance and
selfishness, and remove all cause for contest between individuals;
but the change from the new to the old could not be accomplished in
a day, and he called New Harmony a halfway house between the evils
he complained of and the ideal. In May, the _modus vivendi_ of a
preliminary society was promulgated, as a means of preparation for the
perfect community to which Owen looked forward. Negroes were excluded
from membership, though they might become “helpers,” or they might
form an independent community. Age and experience alone were to confer
precedence. For the first year a committee to be appointed by the
founder was to have charge of affairs, and later the society might
elect three representatives of this council. Members were required
to provide their own household effects, to accept houses assigned to
them, and to render their best services to the community. They were to
receive credit at the community store for their labor, which was to be
appraised by the committee of management. Members might be expelled
for cause, or they might voluntarily retire by giving a week’s notice,
receiving in merchandise any balance that remained to their credit.
Persons wishing to live in the community as non-participants in its
labors might do so by paying for the privilege, and the capital of any
who cared to become investors would be received. American products
were to have the preference in the purchase of supplies. The young
were to be drilled in military tactics, to the end that they might be
of service to their country in emergencies, until society had been
reformed and war made unnecessary.
Within six months nearly one thousand persons had gathered at New
Harmony, and a considerable proportion of these seem to have been
incapable, either through inexperience or disinclination, of aiding
in the success of Owen’s plans. Rapp’s industries had certainly not
fallen into the hands of skilled or adaptable laborers. Many of the
manufactories which he had made profitable were not operated under
the new régime, and less than a hundred farm laborers volunteered for
service in carrying on the plantations. Plans for education and social
pleasure were received more kindly than those requiring skilled labor.
All children between two and twelve were placed in a separate house,
and clothed, lodged, and educated at the public expense. The fall of
1825 found 130 children so cared for, and there were also day and
evening schools where old and young alike might receive elementary
instruction. A band was organized to provide music, and Tuesday
evenings were set apart for balls and Friday evenings for concerts.
Wednesday evenings were reserved for the more serious business of
discussing the purposes of the society. Military exercises, as proposed
by Owen, were duly conducted, and companies of artillery and infantry
were formed and drilled.
The senior Owen was absent in Scotland during the summer and fall
of 1825, but returned January 18, 1826, and was received with great
cordiality. He expressed his satisfaction with the progress that had
been made during his absence, and in a few days announced that he felt
justified in suspending the preparatory stage and inaugurating full
equality. A new constitution was adopted February 5, after careful
consideration in town meetings. It provided for community of property
and business and social coöperation. The members were to dwell together
as one family, and no discrimination was to be shown on account
of occupation. Similar houses were to be provided for all, and no
differences in food or clothing were to be permitted. The community
was to be divided into departments of Agriculture, Manufactures and
Mechanics, Literature and Science, Domestic and General Economy,
Education and Commerce. Superintendents for these departments were
to be chosen by an assembly consisting of all adult members of the
community; but the individuals in the several departments might select
their own foremen. A schism occurred before this constitution had been
signed by the members of the preliminary society. The exact cause is
not assigned in the _Gazette_, the official organ of the society,
conducted by Robert Dale Owen, which announced, February 15, that a
new community was about to be formed within two miles of the village
“by some respectable families who were members of the preliminary
society, but from conscientious motives have declined signing the new
constitution.” Two new communities were, indeed, organized, one called
Macluria and the other Feiba Peveli. This latter name was coined after
an intricate system of geographical nomenclature, invented by a member
of the society, by which the latitude and longitude of any place could
be represented. The sole direction of the community was intrusted to
Robert Owen two weeks after the reorganization, the inference from
this fact being that the separation of the two branches had eliminated
those who were antagonistic to the founder. At the end of the first
year the population was distributed about as follows: the original New
Harmony settlement, 800; Macluria, 120; Feiba Peveli, 60 or 70. The
relations between Owen and the seceders were apparently friendly. In
an address delivered at New Harmony, May 9, he spoke with satisfaction
of the success of his undertaking, saying that his hopes had been
surpassed, and mentioning both Macluria and Feiba Peveli with approval.
At Macluria temporary cabins had been built and more land had been
cultivated than was necessary to sustain the members. Spinning and
weaving were practised by the women and children, who produced cloth in
excess of their requirements. Feiba Peveli was a farming and gardening
community, reported by Owen to be doing well.
At this time the first Rappite church was given up to carpentry and
shoemaking. Boys received industrial training there and slept in the
loft. The second and more pretentious edifice had become a town hall,
used for lectures, open discussions, dances, and concerts. Rapp’s
former home--the best residence in the place--was occupied by Maclure,
who had given $45,000 to assist Owen in his enterprise. Owen lived at
the tavern, which was conducted by the society. The rank and file were
accommodated in four boarding-houses pending changes that would bring
all together at a common table. A uniform dress for the members had
been adopted, but it was not generally worn. Wide trousers, buttoned
over a short collarless jacket, were prescribed for the men; the women
wore a coat reaching to the knee, and pantalettes. Bernard, Duke of
Saxe-Weimar, who visited New Harmony in the spring of 1826, and wrote
a most entertaining account of the community, described the costume
and remarked that the members who had already donned it were of the
higher social class, and that these did not, in the gatherings at
the public hall, mingle with the ruder element. Previous conditions
and employments were evidently remembered in the community, in spite
of the founder’s insistence that there should be no discrimination.
Many in the settlement found the practical details of community life
exceedingly irksome; and one, a Russian lady, confided to the German
nobleman her disgust with New Harmony, stating that “some of the
society were too low, and the table was below all criticism.”
The educational features of the community were, from all testimony,
a great failure and disappointment. It was one thing to assemble
distinguished scientists, and quite another to organize them into an
effective teaching corps. The school taught by d’Arusmont lasted but
a short time, and Robert Dale Owen, who was himself a teacher in one
of the community schools, while admitting the man’s good qualities,
described him as “a wrong-headed genius, whose extravagance and
wilfulness and inordinate self-conceit destroyed his usefulness.”
Neef had been an officer under Napoleon, and his rough military habits
had not been wholly corrected by his subsequent association with
Pestalozzi. The Duke of Saxe-Weimar gives a lively picture of him,
drilling his boy pupils in military tactics as he led them to the
performance of certain labors in the village. Maclure, Say, and Troost
did not engage actively in teaching. Paul Brown stated, in a pamphlet
assailing the society, that he began teaching in the boarding-school in
September, 1826; but from his own story Brown was chiefly employed with
meditations on the evils of the place, and his manifestations of temper
argue against his value as a teacher. Madame Fretageot was associated
with Neef, and the two had charge of the boarding-school. Madame Neef
was not regularly employed as a teacher, but sometimes assisted her
husband.
Robert Owen’s unfriendly attitude toward religion had awakened
hostility in England before he came to the United States. Packard, one
of his biographers, expresses no doubt as to Owen’s disbelief in the
inspiration of the Bible and in the divine origin of Christianity.
Lloyd Jones, the writer of another life of Owen, seeks to mitigate the
effect of some of the statements in Owen’s “New Moral World”; but it
is sufficiently clear that when he was at the height of his fame and
usefulness in England, Owen estranged many of his most influential
friends and admirers by his flings at religion, which were serious
enough to arouse the wrath of an occasional heresy-hunting bishop.
Sargent, the author of “Robert Owen and his Philosophy,” says that
Owen suffered for his religious opinions “neglect, hatred, contempt,
calumny, and all the evils that follow the excommunicated man.” In his
“Declaration of Mental Independence” at New Harmony, July 4, 1826, Owen
inveighed against “a trinity of the most monstrous evils that could be
combined to inflict mental and physical evil upon the whole race. I
refer to private or individual property, absurd and irrational systems
of religion, and marriage founded on individual property combined with
some of these irrational systems of religion”--a statement that was
somewhat advanced for the Wabash Valley of that period. He seemed to
ignore the spiritual element in man, though, according to Sargent, he
expressed in his old age his belief that a Divine Providence had guided
him through his long career; and late in life he became a convert to
spiritualism. There is no evidence that Owen ever held loose ideas of
the relations of the sexes, though such opinions were attributed to
him. He believed that marriage should be founded on mutual sympathy
and congeniality, and he wished the imagination to be excluded and
judgment made the sole guide in such matters. This, like many of
his teachings, seems equivocal; but he believed that where these
prerequisites ceased to exist it should be possible to terminate a
marriage. Owen and Maclure both believed fully in the equality of the
sexes. New Harmony schools were co-educational, and women were admitted
to all the councils of the society. It is not clear that they were
always permitted to vote, though widows succeeded to the suffrages of
their husbands. A woman’s society was organized, and is supposed to
have been similar to literary clubs as now known, though there is but
one reference to the organization in the _Gazette_--a notice of the
postponement of a meeting in November, 1825.
Owen’s refusal to make a formal transfer of his property to the
community continued to be a cause of dissatisfaction. The founder spoke
hopefully of the future, but he took care that his enthusiasm should
not run away with his judgment, so he continued to hold his little
principality in fee simple. When questioned as to his intentions in
this particular, he replied, as officially reported in the _Gazette_ of
August 30, 1826: “I shall be ready to form such a community whenever
you are ready for it.... But progress must be made in community
education before all parties can be prepared for a community of common
property.” The assembly thereupon adopted a resolution that they meet
three evenings in the week for community education, but this was
evidently regarded by the members as a severe penalty to pay for the
cause of socialism. Robert Dale Owen wrote that the meetings continued
“with gradually lessening numbers.”
Troubles came thick and fast in the fall of 1826. Several adventurers
openly tried to defraud Owen, and an era of suspicion began. A man
named Taylor joined the community, at Owen’s invitation, to take
charge of the industries, but after getting possession of a tract of
land he started a distillery, greatly to the founder’s annoyance.
Brown describes with great particularity the unhappy condition that
prevailed during the fall and winter of 1826. He complains that Owen
was living in luxury at the tavern, while the laborers in the large
boarding-houses fared badly. Although there were several professional
gardeners in the community, there was a lack of vegetables, and the
necessities were doled out sparingly. Brown believed that the founder
was trying to retrieve his fortunes, and he speaks of him as “willing
to shift into the character of a retailer and tavern keeper.” The
_Gazette_ was, in Brown’s belief, the personal organ of Owen, whom he
calls “the lord proprietor of the press”; but this may be merely the
wail of the rejected, for Brown admits that his own contributions were
repeatedly scorned, so that to gain publicity he was obliged to post
them on the gateway of the educational society, taking them in at night
for safety. He says that in spite of the balls and promenade concerts
the people remained strangers, and he deplores the amount of time and
candles wasted in these frivolities. As to the educational features
of the place, Brown expresses his opinion that there was no other
place in the United States where a like number of children in the same
compass “were of so harsh, insolent, rash, boisterous, and barbarous
dispositions.” Brown deals drastically with the auditing department of
the community. He intimates that when a debit balance appeared against
a member on the books, credit was immediately stopped at the store. He
gives the instance of a gardener named Gilbert, who was suddenly served
with his discharge in December, when his family were ill, because he
was performing no labor and had fallen in arrears. Gilbert asked for an
investigation, which was held, and the court found in his favor.
Twenty heads of families were notified to quit February 1, 1827; March
21 there was an exodus of about eighty persons, who took a steamboat
for the upper Ohio, and March 28 the _Gazette_ contained an editorial
admitting the failure of New Harmony, the central community, but
maintaining that the auxiliary societies were successful. The reason
assigned for the collapse was that “the members were too various
in their feelings, and too dissimilar in their habits, to govern
themselves harmoniously as one community.” Owen delivered a farewell
address to the citizens, May 26. He spoke with patient forbearance of
the element that had joined the community merely to become a burden
upon him; but he was severe upon his associates who had undertaken
the educational work of the society but had failed to organize such
schools as he had expected. He had wished the children to be “educated
in similar habits, dispositions, and feelings, and be brought up truly
as members of one large family, without a single discordant feeling.”
If the schools had not proved ineffectual, he believed that even with
the heterogeneous mass that had collected on his lands a successful
society could have been founded. However, turning from these unpleasant
reflections, with characteristic optimism, he declared that “the
social system is now firmly established; the natural and easy means
of forming communities have been developed by your past experience....
New Harmony is now, therefore, literally surrounded by independent
communities, and applications are made almost daily by persons who
come from far and near to be permitted to establish themselves in a
similar manner.” The eight communities referred to were probably little
more than tentative colonies, planted on Owen’s lands under lease.
There is no evidence that a community organization was maintained for
any length of time at Macluria or Feiba Peveli after the collapse at
New Harmony village, and of the remainder of the eight to which Owen
referred there is no further record. They vanished with the others, and
presently passed to individual owners or lessees. Brown summarizes the
disappearance of communism and the return of the old order in these
words: “The greater part of the town was now resolved into individual
lots; a grocery was established opposite the tavern; painted sign
boards began to be stuck up on the buildings, pointing out places of
manufacture and trade; a sort of wax figure and puppet show was opened
at one of the boarding-houses, charging twenty-five cents for adults
and twelve and a half for children; and everything went on in the old
style.”
Owen’s teachings and example led to other experiments in America
besides those he personally conducted on the Wabash; but American
socialism of the Owen period was most fully expressed at New Harmony.
Owen’s ardor for social reforms continued unabated. He visited Mexico
shortly after the New Harmony failure, to secure a concession of land
for further experiments. The negotiations failed, and he is next heard
of at Cincinnati, in April, 1829, debating religious questions with
Alexander Campbell. He did not appear in America again until the fall
of 1844, when he spent a short time on his New Harmony lands, lectured
in many cities, established friendly relations with Brisbane and other
Fourierites, and, in the spring of 1845, visited Brook Farm. He was
last at New Harmony in the fall of 1846.
It could hardly be expected that a village which had been the home of
two orders of exiles could descend at once to the commonplace, and the
subsequent history of New Harmony is not disappointing. Through many
years scientists of distinction and radicals of all degrees visited the
place; Maclure made it his headquarters; Say lived and died there; the
sons of Robert Owen became residents and gained honorable distinction
in science and politics; books that still have value were written and
published in the village. Robert Dale Owen (1801-1877) turned from
communism to politics and literature, and few citizens of Indiana
have lived lives more useful or memorable. He was educated at Hofwyl,
under Fellenberg, and after a few years of commercial experience at
New Lanark, he joined the New Harmony community. He shared, in large
measure, his father’s interests in social and economic matters, and
after the fall of New Harmony he and Frances Wright conducted a radical
paper called the _Free Enquirer_ at New York. In 1833 he returned to
New Harmony and was soon launched upon a brilliant career. He was
elected a representative to the Indiana General Assembly and to the
National Congress, and he was an influential and active member of the
convention that revised the Indiana constitution. The Indiana laws
granting independent property rights to women were largely due to his
efforts, and he introduced in Congress, in December, 1845, the bill
under which the Smithsonian Institute was organized. He was appointed
chargé d’affaires at Naples in 1853, and when the grade of the post
was raised he was continued as minister until 1858. In 1863, he was
chairman of a commission appointed by the Secretary of War to examine
the condition of the freedmen. He had written to the President, urging
emancipation before this step had been determined upon, and Secretary
Chase said that Owen’s letter to Lincoln had greatly influenced the
President to make his proclamation. Mr. Owen wrote often and well, and
with a facility and force that gave him wide reputation for learning
and literary accomplishment. His books include “Pocahontas: A Dream”
(1837); “Hints on Architecture” (1849); “Footprints on the Boundary
of Another World” (1859); “Beyond the Breakers: A Novel” (1870);
“Debatable Land Between this World and the Next” (1872); and “Threading
my Way” (1874). He became deeply interested in spiritualism, and two
of his books, as the titles indicate, are devoted to this subject. He
travelled much and knew many of the men and women eminent in the early
years of the nineteenth century, including La Fayette and Mrs. Shelley.
His daughter Rosamund married Laurence Oliphant.
David Dale, another son of Robert (1807-1860), was educated at Hofwyl
and Glasgow, and reached New Harmony in the year of the community’s
failure. He was employed by the Indiana legislature to make a
geological survey of the State, and in 1839 the general government
engaged him to examine Western mineral lands. He explored Illinois,
Iowa, and Wisconsin under this appointment. Ten years later he made
similar surveys in Minnesota. During all this time New Harmony was his
home and headquarters, and the rendezvous of his associates, and his
collections of specimens were assembled there. He was State geologist
of Kentucky from 1854 to 1857, and then turned to Arkansas, of which
he made thorough geological surveys. In 1859 he was appointed State
geologist of Indiana, and held the office until his death. He was a
skilled chemist and a doctor of medicine as well as a trained natural
scientist and geologist. He knew the use of pencil and brush, and
illustrated his reports with sketches that greatly enhanced their value.
Military talent expressed itself in the Owen family in Richard, still
another of Robert’s sons (1810-1890), who was also a graduate of
Hofwyl. He came to America and engaged in business until the Mexican
War, in which he served as captain, and later assisted his brother,
David Dale, in his surveys of the Northwest. He taught the natural
sciences in the Military Institute of Kentucky, and when it was merged
in the University of Nashville he continued in the same capacity with
the new institution. Meanwhile he had, with the energy and ambition
characteristic of his family, earned the degree of Doctor of Medicine,
though he never practised. He served in the Civil War as colonel of the
Sixtieth Indiana Regiment, principally in the Southwest, and was once
taken prisoner. After the war he taught in the University of Indiana
for fifteen years, retiring finally to New Harmony, where, in the old
Rapp mansion, he continued his studies, writing constantly for the
scientific periodicals. He married a daughter of Neef. William Owen,
who had reached New Harmony in time to aid his brother, Robert Dale,
in editing the _Gazette_, continued to live in Indiana, and became a
successful financier. Descendants of Robert Owen still live at New
Harmony, and the name is one to conjure within all the lower Wabash
Valley.
The excellent work of the New Harmony press proves that good
craftsmanship was encouraged and appreciated in the early days.
The _Gazette_, and its successor, the _Disseminator_, are models
of accurate and tasteful typography, and the books published from
this isolated village are even more creditable. Say’s “American
Conchology” was wholly printed at New Harmony, the title page bearing
date 1830. Its copious illustrations are the work of New Harmony
lithographers, and the tinting of the engravings, which was done by
Mrs. Say, reproduces accurately the delicate shadings of the shells.
Her colors are still fresh and true in copies of this work. Parts of
Say’s “American Entomology,” which he had begun at Philadelphia, were
finished at New Harmony. Maclure was an industrious writer, and the
imprint of the New Harmony press is found in two substantial volumes,
one dated 1831, the other 1837, in which he collected short essays
on innumerable topics. Josiah Warren was for a time at least the New
Harmony publisher, and Michaux’s “North American Sylva” was reprinted
by him from plates brought from Paris by Maclure, though the unbound
sheets of the New Harmony edition were consumed by fire.
Warren was a reformer as well as a publisher. He was connected with New
Harmony for a short time in community days, but left, returning in 1842
to establish a “time store.” In the “time store” he sold merchandise
to none who could not return the actual cash cost, plus a profit which
must be paid in a “labor note.” This form of currency represented a
specified number of hours of labor, pledged by mechanics or others.
When a customer entered his shop and began discussing a purchase,
Warren started a clock which marked the amount of time consumed in the
sale: this was the basis for computing the merchant’s profit. Warren
could often be seen in the streets of New Harmony with large amounts of
labor currency. This medium of exchange required careful handling, as
some would appraise their labor too high, and now and then depreciation
followed an over-issue by some careless or unscrupulous individual.
Warren conducted this enterprise for about two years, departing to
carry the gospel of “equitable commerce,” as he called it, elsewhere.
In 1838 the Workingmen’s Institute and Library was organized at
Maclure’s suggestion and with money that he contributed. Later, Dr.
Edward Murphy generously gave to this association a handsome building,
which contains the library, an art gallery,--largely Dr. Murphy’s
gift,--a hall, and museum. The building stands in a pretty park and is
ideally adapted to its purposes. The library contains 12,000 volumes,
well selected and particularly rich in scientific works. It includes
every available book relating to American socialism, and many of the
original New Harmony records are preserved there. Dr. Murphy has
provided an endowment for it and for an annual course of lectures.
The lecture course is greatly prized by the citizens, who have heard
under its auspices many of the learned men of the day. There was no
church in the village for many years; indeed, with the passing of Rapp
little attention was paid to religious matters at New Harmony until
late in the century, and though there are Episcopal and Methodist
organizations in the village now, the life of the people does not
centre about the churches as in most communities of the same size. An
old citizen describes the attitude of the inhabitants toward religion
as one of tolerance merely. Several branches of the Owen family are
Episcopalians. Dancing as a feature of social life has survived from
community times, and a first-of-May ball, followed by a dance for
children, has long been fixed in the local calendar.
Thus Robert Owen’s brief experiment, failing of his purpose, led to
the founding of an American family whose members have shown unusual
talents, creditable alike to their distinguished progenitor and to the
State which became, by chance, their home. He failed to establish an
asylum for the oppressed, as he had intended, but he was responsible
for the impulse that made of his village a centre of scientific inquiry
and the home of men of renown. It is impossible to separate the New
Harmony of to-day from the village of the past. At every turn, the
buildings of the Rappites and the traces of Owen’s disciples suggest
the old times; and descendants of the Owens, Fretageots, Beales,
Fauntleroys, Dransfields, Wheatcrofts, and many others dating back to
community times, still live there. New Harmony is a pleasant place in
May and June, when the great lines of maples in the broad streets are
at their best, and all the quiet valley is fresh and green. It invites
by its air of antiquity and peace; the sheltered life is still possible
there. In the present, it is the ideal Western village; in its memories
it marks the first high tide of cultivation at the West.