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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In "History of American Socialisms," John Humphrey Noyes meticulously chronicles the evolution of socialist thought and its various manifestations throughout American history. Through an analytical lens, Noyes examines key figures, movements, and ideological frameworks while employing a keenly descriptive prose style that balances scholarly rigor with accessibility. The work is not only a historical account but also a critical analysis of the socio-political forces that shaped these movements, situating American socialism within a broader global context, and revealing intersections with religious, economic, and cultural spheres of American life. Noyes, a prominent social theorist and founder of the Oneida Community, infused his understanding of utopian socialism and communal living into this comprehensive study. His firsthand experiences with radical social experiments informed his perspective, propelling him to articulate the complexities of the American socialist landscape. Defying conventional norms, Noyes sought to illuminate the underlying philosophical and ethical considerations that characterized the socialist movements he examined, paving the way for future discussions on social justice and egalitarianism. This seminal work is a must-read for scholars, students, and anyone intrigued by the underpinnings of American social movements. Noyes's scholarship provides not only a valuable historical account but also fosters critical engagement with contemporary socialist dialogues. Readers will gain insights into the persistent relevance of socialist ideas in American consciousness, making this text a cornerstone for understanding the socio-political fabric of the Nation. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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History of American Socialisms
Table of Contents
Introduction
At stake in History of American Socialisms is whether communal ideals can survive the tests of belief, governance, and daily labor in the American experiment. John Humphrey Noyes, a prominent nineteenth-century communal leader, offers a work of historical nonfiction that surveys cooperative movements in the United States. First published in 1870, the book looks back on multiple efforts to establish intentional communities across the nation. It situates those experiments within the social and moral currents of the time, examining how ideas translated into lived arrangements. The result is both a chronicle and an analysis, written from the perspective of someone deeply engaged with the subject.
The premise is straightforward yet rich: catalog and compare a range of American communal ventures, tracing their principles, organization, and trajectories. Readers encounter a study that alternates between descriptive accounts and interpretive commentary, attentive to details of practice as well as to the aspirations that animated them. The voice is measured and direct, avoiding ornament in favor of clarity, and the mood balances curiosity with scrutiny. Rather than a polemic, the book presents a considered appraisal of how social blueprints meet everyday realities, offering a historically grounded guide to experiments in cooperative living without presuming a single, definitive outcome.
Methodically assembled, the narrative proceeds through case-based inquiry, drawing together the documentary materials that were accessible to Noyes at the time. He attends to founding ideas, leadership structures, economic arrangements, and the social habits that bind or strain communities. The style leans toward documentary synthesis, blending narrative momentum with comparative frames that invite readers to weigh patterns across different attempts. This approach delivers breadth without losing sight of particularities, and it encourages reflection on how ideals are negotiated in practice. The book’s structure supports both continuous reading and selective consultation, making it useful to historians and general readers alike.
Central themes surface repeatedly: the tension between idealism and administration, the challenge of securing commitment without coercion, and the persistent question of how to align private interests with collective welfare. The book probes the interplay of belief, labor, and governance, and it considers the cultural forces that either strengthen or undermine communal bonds. It also traces how American notions of liberty intersect with cooperative discipline, revealing both friction and ingenuity. By examining what holds groups together—and what pulls them apart—it sheds light on the fragile architecture of shared purpose, and on the practical compromises that visions of solidarity must often endure.
Published in 1870, the work stands at a moment when readers could take stock of several decades of experimentation in the United States. Set against a backdrop of rapid social change, it captures how movements for reform and association sought to answer industrial, moral, and spiritual questions of the age. The historical vantage allows patterns to emerge across time: phases of enthusiasm, consolidation, and reconfiguration. Without dwelling on spectacle, Noyes situates these endeavors within the wider national story, noting how context—geographic, economic, and cultural—shapes outcomes. The book thus operates as both a record and a reflection on an evolving American social landscape.
For contemporary readers, its relevance lies in the recurring dilemmas it documents: how to design equitable institutions, distribute work and resources fairly, cultivate trust, and resolve conflict without eroding autonomy. The debates it surfaces around leadership, transparency, and shared values echo in present-day conversations about cooperatives, mutual aid, and intentional communities. It offers no simple formula, but it does provide a vocabulary of problems and possibilities, inviting readers to interrogate their own assumptions about community and freedom. By showing how ideas encounter practice, it fosters a critical empathy that is applicable well beyond the nineteenth-century settings it describes.
Approached today, History of American Socialisms offers a careful, wide-ranging early survey that rewards both focused study and exploratory browsing. It illuminates the craft of building common life—an undertaking as ordinary as budgeting and as grand as moral vision. Readers interested in social history, political thought, or the pragmatics of collective organization will find steady guidance rather than sensationalism. The book neither romanticizes nor dismisses; it documents, compares, and asks pointed questions. In doing so, it opens space to imagine how communities can negotiate ideals and constraints, and it invites renewed attention to the patient work of making cooperation durable.
Synopsis
John Humphrey Noyes’s History of American Socialisms surveys communal experiments in the United States from the colonial era through the mid-nineteenth century. Written by the founder of the Oneida Community, the book compiles firsthand testimonies, documents, and statistical summaries to present a record of attempts at shared property and cooperative living. Noyes organizes the material by movements and periods, distinguishing religious communism from secular schemes. He aims to clarify origins, organizing principles, leadership patterns, economic strategies, and outcomes. The narrative proceeds chronologically and thematically, offering case studies alongside general observations to derive patterns of success and failure across diverse American “socialisms.”
The account opens with religious predecessors that established durable models of communal life. Noyes introduces the Shakers, led by Ann Lee, emphasizing their celibacy, strict discipline, unified worship, and efficient industries that sustained multiple prosperous villages. He references earlier pietist experiments and communal monastic forms as antecedents to American communism. The discussion highlights legal arrangements for common property, administrative hierarchies, and the steady accumulation of capital resulting from sober habits and cohesive belief. By setting the Shakers first, Noyes frames a baseline of longevity and order against which later, more speculative ventures are measured throughout the book.
Noyes then examines German pietist communities that migrated to America, focusing on their leadership and economic organization. The Harmony Society under George Rapp built towns, relocated repeatedly, practiced celibacy, and thrived on manufacturing and trade. The Zoarites, guided by Joseph Be4umeler (Bimeler), consolidated property and worked communally with strong internal governance. The Inspirationists of Amana instituted a system of communal kitchens, work brigades, and doctrinal oversight, achieving stability through religious discipline. Bishop Hill, founded by Swedish sectarians, illustrates both the possibilities and strains of rapid growth, centralized authority, and agricultural communalism. These cases underscore religious cohesion as a strategic resource.
Turning to secular reform, Noyes presents the Owenite movement, centered on Robert Owen’s New Harmony experiment. He outlines Owen’s theory of character formation through institutions and cooperative education, alongside attempts to establish equitable labor exchanges and communal ownership. New Harmony’s brief tenure exposed difficulties in governance, division of labor, and securing capital. Subsequent Owenite communities and associated enterprises faced similar challenges, including leadership dispersion and organizational ambiguity. Noyes documents these efforts to show how high ideals confronted practical necessities, often revealing conflicts between individual autonomy and communal discipline that would recur in later experiments.
The book next surveys Fourierism and its American phalanxes, introduced chiefly through Albert Brisbane’s advocacy and popularized in reform circles and the press. Noyes recounts the founding of multiple phalanxes, including prominent examples like the North American Phalanx and the conversion of Brook Farm to the phalanx model. He summarizes Fourier’s theory of harmonizing passions through planned association and graded labor, then contrasts this with practical obstacles: insufficient capital, premature expansion, and internal disagreements. While some phalanxes achieved temporary efficiency and cultural vitality, most dissolved within a decade, furnishing data on organization, finances, and the limits of theoretical uniformity.
Broader reformist endeavors receive attention as complementary or contrasting cases. Noyes describes the Northampton Association’s abolitionist and industrial experiment, Adin Ballou’s Practical Christian Socialism at Hopedale, and short-lived ventures like Fruitlands and Skaneateles. He also includes Josiah Warren’s initiatives—Utopia and Modern Times—representing an anti-communist, cost-based mutualism that sought cooperation without common property. These examples illustrate varied designs: corporate forms replacing communalism, cash-based reforms, or austere spiritual communities. Noyes catalogs their rules, industries, and dissolution patterns, using them to refine distinctions among communal, cooperative, and individualist reform, and to underline the recurring constraints of leadership, finance, and social discipline.
Noyes devotes substantial space to his own Perfectionist communities at Putney, Oneida, and Wallingford, presented as case studies of what he terms Bible Communism. He describes their principles of common property, complex marriage, communal child-rearing practices, mutual criticism, and structured councils of governance. Their economic base included diversified industries such as animal traps and later manufacturing, designed to stabilize the community materially. Noyes records membership procedures, disciplinary mechanisms, and relations with surrounding society, aiming to show how religious doctrine, shared social norms, and internal oversight supported continuity. These chapters supply detailed organizational data consistent with the book’s documentary approach.
From the assembled cases, Noyes extracts comparative conclusions. He argues that religious motivation and cohesive belief correlate with durability, whereas secular schemes often falter over authority and family arrangements. Celibate or strictly regulated sexual systems tend to concentrate resources and reduce domestic conflict; communities with conventional marriage, he notes, face recurrent tensions. Clear leadership, tested routines of labor, and adequate capital emerge as prerequisites for stability. Conversely, debts, diffuse authority, and incompatible personal aims commonly precede dissolution. Noyes formalizes these observations into general “laws” of association, intending to provide a practical diagnostic framework rather than purely theoretical advocacy.
The book closes by presenting the communal past as a repository of lessons for future associationists. Noyes emphasizes documentation over polemic, compiling rosters, timelines, and financial snapshots to preserve a record of experiments both successful and short-lived. He holds that American socialisms constitute a systematic series of trials through which principles of cooperative living are tested. While he presents Oneida as a working example within this succession, the overarching message is historical: careful organization, disciplined ethics, and economic foresight shape outcomes. The narrative thus serves as both chronicle and guide, clarifying patterns that recur whenever people attempt common life and shared property.
Historical Context
John Humphrey Noyes’s History of American Socialisms (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1870) surveys communal experiments from the early republic through the Civil War era, written from the vantage of an upstate New York religious socialist who founded the Oneida Community (Oneida, New York, 1848). The book is set against the turbulent social and economic transformations of the United States between about 1800 and 1865: revivalism in the “Burned-over District,” the Market Revolution, westward settlement, and recurring financial panics. Noyes’s research spans New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the Ohio Valley, and the Midwest—regions where communitarian projects clustered along canals, rivers, and emerging rail corridors. Compiled during Reconstruction, it reflects postwar debates about labor, property, and the family, while relying on antebellum reform networks, newspapers, and pamphlets—especially those circulating through New York and New England print culture.
The Second Great Awakening (c. 1790s–1840s) shaped the religious soil from which many communal societies sprang. Evangelical revivals led by figures like Charles Grandison Finney in upstate New York (1820s–1830s) promoted “perfectionism,” an ideal of sanctification that inspired groups seeking collective holiness. Earlier, the Shakers, brought to America by Ann Lee in 1774, had already modeled celibate communal living. Noyes himself embraced perfectionist doctrine in the 1830s, established the Putney, Vermont, community (1836–1847), and then the Oneida Community (1848). In the book, he interprets communitarian ventures through this revivalist legacy, arguing that millennial expectation, spiritual discipline, and moral reform were decisive forces in the formation and endurance of American socialisms.
The Market Revolution (c. 1815–1860) reconfigured work and community: canals (notably the Erie, opened 1825), turnpikes, and railroads bound regions together; factories and wage labor expanded; and towns proliferated across the West. Financial convulsions—the Panic of 1837 and the Panic of 1857—exposed the volatility of credit and markets. Many communal experiments attempted to buffer members from boom-and-bust cycles via shared property, cooperative industry, and planned consumption. Noyes catalogs how communities adopted joint-stock or common-storehouse models to manage risk and capital. By presenting balance sheets, membership rolls, and production data where available, the book situates communalism as a practical response to market dislocation, not merely a spiritual or philosophical ideal.
The Fourierist movement surged in the 1840s after Albert Brisbane’s Social Destiny of Man (1840) and Horace Greeley’s promotion in the New-York Tribune. Dozens of “phalanxes” appeared from New England to the Midwest, aiming to harmonize labor, capital, and talent in cooperative “series.” Brook Farm (West Roxbury, Massachusetts, 1841–1847) converted to Fourierism in 1844; its grand Phalanstery burned in March 1846, hastening collapse. The North American Phalanx (Monmouth County, New Jersey, 1843–1856) endured longer, but a devastating fire in 1854 and capital shortfalls led to dissolution. Ceresco, the Wisconsin Phalanx (Ripon, 1844–1850), transitioned its lands into the growing town. Noyes’s book assembles detailed case studies of these ventures, correlating their fortunes with land values, transport access, leadership cohesion, and credit conditions, and arguing that Fourierism’s administrative complexity and capital needs made it especially vulnerable to fire losses, debt, and managerial strain.
Robert Owen’s New Harmony (Indiana, 1825–1827) was the emblematic early secular socialist experiment. Owen purchased the town from George Rapp’s Harmony Society in 1825 and attempted to found a rational, cooperative society with universal education and scientific agriculture. The famed “Boatload of Knowledge” brought scientists and educators down the Ohio River in winter 1825–1826, including William Maclure and Thomas Say. Internal factionalism, governance experiments, and resource mismanagement fractured the community within two years. In Noyes’s account, New Harmony inaugurates an American lineage of secular communitarianism distinct from religious societies, offering cautionary data about leadership, property arrangements, and the difficulty of sustaining cohesion without a binding religious ethic.
Religious communitarians supplied durable models. The Shakers organized villages from New Lebanon, New York, to Kentucky and Ohio, practicing celibacy, communal property, and gender-parallel governance; they peaked in numbers in the 1830s–1840s. The Harmony Society under Johann Georg Rapp founded Harmony, Pennsylvania (1805), moved to Indiana (1814), then returned to form Economy, Pennsylvania (1824), amassing wealth through industry. The Separatists of Zoar (Ohio, 1817) under Joseph Bäumeler (Bimeler) adopted full communism by 1819. The Inspirationists formed Ebenezer near Buffalo (1843) and relocated to the Amana Colonies, Iowa (1855). Noyes compares their bylaws, discipline, celibacy or marriage rules, and industrial organization, showing how theological authority and stable leadership often correlated with economic longevity.
É tienne Cabet’s Icarian movement transplanted French democratic communism to the United States. After Cabet’s followers arrived in 1848, they occupied the vacated Mormon city of Nauvoo, Illinois (1849–1856), then splintered to Cheltenham near St. Louis (from 1858) and to Corning, Iowa (from 1860), enduring decades of schisms over governance and doctrine. Noyes registers these migrations and constitutional disputes to illustrate the challenge of sustaining secular equality under frontier pressures. He also treats his own Oneida Community (Oneida, New York, 1848–1881) as empirical evidence: complex marriage, mutual criticism, and cooperative industry (notably Newhouse animal traps and silk) aimed to fuse spiritual perfection with economic efficiency. By 1869, Oneida’s “stirpiculture” experiment sought regulated reproduction—controversially underscoring the book’s theme that radical social aims demanded rigorous institutional design.
Composed in the aftermath of the Civil War, the book functions as a critique of competitive capitalism, possessive individualism, and the monogamous household as the central economic unit. By arraying records of failures and survivals, Noyes exposes how credit panics, speculative land regimes, and precarious wages destabilized ordinary Americans while religious discipline or cooperative law sometimes mitigated those forces. His comparisons interrogate property rights, women’s status, sexual regulation, and religious liberty within the legal climate shaped by anti-polygamy sentiment (e.g., the 1862 Morrill Act) and local prosecutions. The work thus indicts the era’s inequality and moral incoherence, proposing communal governance, shared industry, and reformed domestic relations as pragmatic alternatives to the period’s social and political injustices.
History of American Socialisms
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.ToC
Many years ago, when a branch of the Oneida Community lived at Willow Place in Brooklyn, near New York, a sombre pilgrim called there one day, asking for rest and conversation. His business proved to be the collecting of memoirs of socialistic experiments. We treated him hospitably, and gave him the information he sought about our Community. He repeated his visit several times in the course of some following years, and finally seemed to take a very friendly interest in our experiment. Thus we became acquainted with him, and also in a measure with the work he had undertaken, which was nothing less than a history of all the Associations and Communities that have lived and died in this country, within the last thirty or forty years.
This man's name was A.J. Macdonald[1]. We remember that he was a person of small stature, with black hair and sharp eyes. He had a benevolent air, but seemed a little sad. We imagined that the sad scenes he had encountered while looking after the stories of so many short-lived Communities, had given him a tinge of melancholy. He was indeed the "Old Mortality[2]" of Socialism, wandering from grave to grave, patiently deciphering the epitaphs of defunct "Phalanxes." We learned from him that he was a Scotchman by birth, and a printer by trade; that he was an admirer and disciple of Owen, and came from the "old country" some ten years before, partly to see and follow the fortunes of his master's experiments in Socialism: but finding Owenism in ruins and Fourierism[3] going to ruin, he took upon himself the task of making a book, that should give future generations the benefit of the lessons taught by these attempts and failures.
His own attempt was a failure. He gathered a huge mass of materials, wrote his preface, and then died in New York of the cholera[4]. Our record of his last visit is dated February, 1854.
Ten years later our attention was turned to the project of writing a history of American Socialisms. Such a book seemed to be a want of the times. We remembered Macdonald, and wished that by some chance we could obtain his collections. But we had lost all traces of them, and the hope of recovering them from the chaos of the great city where he died, seemed chimerical. Nevertheless some of our associates, then in business on Broadway, commenced inquiring at the printing offices, and soon found acquaintances of Macdonald, who directed them to the residence of his brother-in-law in the city. There, to our joyful surprise, we found the collections we were in search of, lying useless except as mementos, and a gentleman in charge of them who was willing we should take them and use them as we pleased.
On examining our treasure, we found it to be a pile of manuscripts, of letter-paper size and three inches thick, with printed scraps from newspapers and pamphlets interspersed. All was in the loosest state of disorder; but we strung the leaves together, paged them, and made an index of their contents. The book thus extemporized has been our companion, as the reader will see, in the ensuing history. The number of its pages is seven hundred and forty-seven. The index has the names of sixty-nine Associative experiments, beginning with Brook Farm and ending with the Shakers. The memoirs are of various lengths, from a mere mention to a narrative of nearly a hundred pages. Among them are notices of leading Socialists, such as Owen, Fourier, Frances Wright, &c. The collection was in no fit condition for publication; but it marked out a path for us, and gave us a mass of material that has been very serviceable, and probably could not elsewhere be found.
The breadth and thoroughness of Macdonald's intention will be seen in the following circular which, in the prosecution of his enterprise, he sent to many leading Socialists.
PRINTED LETTER OF INQUIRY.
"New York, March, 1851.
"I have been for some time engaged in collecting the necessary materials for a book, to be entitled 'The Communities of the United States,' in which I propose giving a brief account of all the social and co-operative experiments that have been made in this country—their origin, principles, and progress; and, particularly, the causes of their success or failure.
"I have reason to believe, from long experience among social reformers, that such a work is needed, and will be both useful and interesting. It will serve as a guide to all future experiments, showing what has already been done[1q]; like a light-house, pointing to the rocks on which so many have been wrecked, or to the haven in which the few have found rest. It will give facts and statistics to be depended upon, gathered from the most authentic sources, and forming a collection of interesting narratives. It will show the errors of enthusiasts, and the triumphs of the cool-thinking; the disappointments of the sanguine, and the dear-bought experience of many social adventurers. It will give mankind an idea of the labor of body and mind that has been expended to realize a better state of society; to substitute a social and co-operative state for a competitive one; a system of harmony, for one of discord.
"To insure the truthfulness of the work, I propose to gather most of my information from individuals who have actually been engaged in the experiments of which I treat. With this object in view, I take the liberty to address you, asking your aid in carrying out my plan. I request you to give me an account of the experiment in which you were engaged at ——. For instance, I require such information as the following questions would call forth, viz:
"1. Who originated it, or how was it originated?
"2. What were its principles and objects?
"3. What were its means in land and money?
"4. Was all the property put into common stock?
"5. What was the number of persons in the Association?
"6. What were their trades, occupations and amount of skill?
"7. Their education, natural intelligence and morality?
"8. What religious belief, and if any, how preached and practised?
"9. How were members admitted? was there any standard by which to judge them, or any property qualification necessary?
"10. Was there a written or printed constitution or laws? if so can you send me a copy?
"11. Were pledges, fines, oaths, or any coercive means used?
"12. When and where did the Association commence its experiment? Please describe the locality; what dwellings and other conveniences were upon it; how many persons it could accommodate; how many persons lived on the spot; how much land was cultivated; whether there were plenty of provisions; &c., &c.
"13. How was the land obtained? Was it free or mortgaged? Who owned it?
"14. Were the new circumstances of the associates superior or inferior to the circumstances they enjoyed previous to their associating?
"15. Did they obtain aid from without?
"16. What particular person or persons took the lead?
"17. Who managed the receipts and expenditures, and were they honestly managed?
"18. Did the associates agree or disagree, and in what?
"19. How long did they keep together?
"20. When and why did they break up? State the causes, direct and indirect.
"21. If successful, what were the causes of success?
"Any other information relating to the experiment, that you may consider useful and interesting, will be acceptable. By such information you will confer a great favor, and materially assist me in what I consider a good undertaking.
"The work I contemplate will form a neat 12mo. volume, of from 200 to 280 pages, such as Lyell's 'Tour in the United States,' or Gorrie's 'Churches and Sects of the United States.' It will be published in New York and London at the lowest possible price, say, within one dollar; and it is my intention, if possible, to illustrate the work with views of Communities now in progress, or of localities rendered interesting by having once been the battle grounds of the new system against the old.
"Please make known the above, and favor me with the names and addresses of persons who would be willing to assist me with such information as I require.
"Trusting that I shall receive the same kind aid from you that I have already received from so many of my friends,
"I remain, very respectfully, yours, "A.J. Macdonald."
Among the manuscripts in Macdonald's collection are many that were evidently written in response to this circular. Many others were written by himself as journals or reports of his own visits to various Associations. We have reason to believe that he spent most of his time from his arrival in this country in 1842 till his death in 1854, in pilgrimages to every Community, and even to every grave of a Community, that he could hear of, far and near.
He had done his work when he died. His collection is nearly exhaustive in the extent of its survey. Very few Associations of any note are overlooked. And he evidently considered it ready for the press; for most of his memoirs are endorsed with the word "Complete," and with some methodical directions to the printer. He had even provided the illustrations promised in his circular. Among his manuscripts are the following pictures:
A pencil sketch and also a small wood engraving of the buildings of the North American Phalanx;
A wood engraving of the first mansion house of the Oneida Community;
A pencil sketch of the village of Modern Times;
A view in water-colors of the domain and cabin of the Clermont Phalanx;
A pencil sketch of the Zoar settlement;
Four wood engravings of Shaker scenes; two of them representing dances; one, a kneeling scene; and one, a "Mountain meeting;" also a pencil sketch of Shaker dwellings at Watervliet;
A portrait of Robert Owen in wood;
A very pretty view of New Harmony in India ink;
A wood-cut of one of Owen's imaginary palaces;
Two portraits of Frances Wright in wood; one representing her as she was in her prime of beauty, and the other, as she was in old age;
A fine steel engraving of Fourier.
In the following preface, which was found among Macdonald's manuscripts, and which is dated a few months before his death, we have a last and sure signal that he considered his collection finished:
PREFACE TO THE BOOK THAT WAS NEVER PUBLISHED.
"I performed the task of collecting the materials which form this volume, because I thought I was doing good. At one time, sanguine in anticipating brilliant results from Communism, I imagined mankind better than they are, and that they would speedily practise those principles which I considered so true. But the experience of years is now upon me; I have mingled with 'the world,' seen stern reality, and now am anxious to do as much as in me lies, to make known to the many thousands who look for a 'better state' than this on earth as well as in heaven, the amount (as it were at a glance) of the labors which have been and are now being performed in this country to realize that 'better state'. It may help to waken dreamers, to guide lost wanderers, to convince skeptics, to re-assure the hopeful; it may serve the uses of Statesmen and Philosophers, and interest the general reader; but it is most desirable that it should increase the charity of all those who may please to examine it, when they see that it was for Humanity, in nearly all instances, that these things were done.
"Of necessity the work is imperfect, because of the difficulty in obtaining information on such subjects; but the attempt, whatever may be its result, should not be put off, since there is reason to believe that if not now collected, many particulars of the various movements would be forever lost.
"It remains for a future historian to continue the labor which I have thus superficially commenced; for the day has not yet arrived when it can be said that Communism or Association has ceased to exist; and it is possible yet, in the progress of things, that man will endeavor to cure his social diseases by some such means; and a future history may contain the results of more important experiments than have ever yet been attempted.
"I here return my thanks to the fearless, confiding, and disinterested friends, who so freely shared with me what little they possessed, to assist in the completion of this work. I name them not, but rejoice in their assistance.
A.J. Macdonald.
"New York City, 1854."
The tone of this preface indicates that Macdonald was discouraged. The effect of his book, if he had lived to publish it, would have been to aggravate the re-action against Socialism which followed the collapse of Fourierism. We hope to make a better use of his materials.
It should not be imagined that we are about to edit his work. A large part of his collections we shall omit, as irrelevant to our purpose. That part which we use will often be reconstructed and generally condensed. Much of our material will be obtained from other sources. The plan and theory of this history are our own, and widely different from any that Macdonald would have been willing to indorse. With these qualifications, we still acknowledge a large debt of gratitude to him and to the Providence that gave us his collections.
CHAPTER II.
BIRDS-EYE VIEW OF THE EXPERIMENTS.ToC
A general survey of the Socialistic field will be useful, before entering on the memoirs of particular Associations; and for this purpose we will now spread before us the entire Index of Macdonald's collections, adding to it a schedule of the number of pages which he gave to the several Associations, and the dates of their beginning and ending, so far as we have been able to find them. Many of the transitory Associations, it will be seen, "made no sign" when they died. The continuous Communities, such as the Shakers, of course have no terminal date.
INDEX OF MACDONALD'S COLLECTION.
On general survey of the matter contained in this index, we may begin to sort it in the following manner:
First we will lay aside the antique religious Associations, such as the Dunkers, Moravians, Zoarites, &c. We count at least seven of these, which do not properly belong to the modern socialistic movement, or even to American life. Having their origin in the old world, and most of them in the last century, and remaining without change, they exist only on the outskirts of general society.
Next we put out of account the foreign Associations, such as the Brazilian and Venezuelan experiments. With these may be classed those of the Icarians and some others, which, though within the United States, are, or were, really colonies of foreigners. We see six of this sort in the index.
Thirdly, we dismiss two or three Spiritualistic attempts that are named in the list; first, because they never attained to the dignity of Associations; and secondly, because they belonged to a later movement than that which Macdonald undertook to record. The social experiments of the Spiritualists should be treated by themselves, as the sequelæ of the Fourier excitement of Macdonald's time.
The Associations that are left after these exclusions, naturally fall into two groups, viz.; those of the Owen movement, and those of the Fourier movement.
Robert Owen came to this country and commenced his experiments in Communism in 1824. This was the beginning of a national excitement, which had a course somewhat like that of a religious revival or a political campaign. This movement seems to have culminated in 1826; and, grouped around or near that year, we find in Macdonald's list, the names of eleven Communities. These were not all strictly Owenite Communities, but probably all owed their birth to the general excitement that followed Owen's labors, and may therefore, properly be classified as belonging to the Owen movement.
Fourierism was introduced into this country by Albert Brisbane and Horace Greeley in 1842, and then commenced another great national movement similar to that of Owenism, but far more universal and enthusiastic. We consider the year 1843 the focal period of this social revival; and around that year or following it within the forties, we find the main group of Macdonald's Associations. Thirty-four of the list may clearly be referred to this epoch. Many, and perhaps most of them, never undertook to carry into practice Fourier's theories in full; and some of them would disclaim all affiliation with Fourierism; but they all originated in a common excitement, and that excitement took its rise from the publications of Brisbane and Greeley.
Confining ourselves, for the present, to these two groups of Associations, belonging respectively to the Owen movement of 1826 and the Fourier movement of 1843, we will now give a brief statistical account of each Association; i.e., all we can find in Macdonald's collection, on the following points: 1, Locality; 2, Number of members; 3, Amount of land; 4, Amount of debt; 5, Duration. We give the amount of land instead of any other measurement of capital, because all and more than all the capital of the Associations was generally invested in land, and because it is difficult to distinguish, in most cases, between the cash capital that was actually paid in, and that which was only subscribed or talked about.
As to the reliability of these statistics, we can only say that we have patiently picked them out, one by one, like scattered bones, from Macdonald's heap. Though they may be faulty in some details, we are confident that the general idea they give of the attempts and experiences of American Socialists, will not be far from the truth.
Experiments of the Owen Epoch.
Blue Spring Community; Indiana; no particulars, except that it lasted "but a short time."
Co-operative Society; Pennsylvania; no particulars.
Coxsackie Community; New York; capital "small;" "very much in debt;" duration between 1 and 2 years.
Forrestville Community; Indiana; "over 60 members;" 325 acres of land; duration more than a year.
Franklin Community; New York; no particulars.
Haverstraw Community; New York; about 80 members; 120 acres; debt $12,000; duration 5 months.
Kendal Community; Ohio; 200 members; 200 acres; duration about 2 years.
Macluria; Indiana; 1200 acres; duration about 2 years.
New Harmony; Indiana; 900 members; 30,000 acres, worth $150,000; duration nearly 3 years.
Nashoba; Tennessee; 15 members; 2,000 acres; duration about 3 years.
Yellow Spring Community; Ohio; 75 to 100 families; duration 3 months.
Experiments of the Fourier Epoch.
Alphadelphia Phalanx; Michigan; 400 or 500 members; 2814 acres; duration 2 years and 9 months.
Brook Farm; Massachusetts; 115 members; 200 acres; duration 5 years.
Brooke's experiment; Ohio; few members; no further particulars.
Bureau Co. Phalanx; Illinois; small; no particulars.
Clarkson Industrial Association; New York; 420 members; 2000 acres; duration from 6 to 9 months.
Clermont Phalanx; Ohio; 120 members; 900 acres; debt $19,000; duration 2 years or more.
Columbian Phalanx; Ohio; no particulars.
Garden Grove; Iowa; no particulars.
Goose Pond Community; Pennsylvania; 60 members; duration a few months.
Grand Prairie Community; Ohio; no particulars.
Hopedale; Massachusetts; 200 members; 500 acres; duration not stated, but commonly reported to be 17 or 18 years.
Integral Phalanx; Illinois; 30 families; 508 acres; duration 17 months.
Jefferson Co. Industrial Association; New York; 400 members; 1200 acres of land; duration a few months.
Lagrange Phalanx; Indiana; 1000 acres; no further particulars.
Leraysville Phalanx; Pennsylvania; 40 members; 300 acres; duration 8 months.
Marlboro Association; Ohio; 24 members; had "a load of debt;" duration nearly 4 years.
McKean Co. Association; Pennsylvania; 30,000 acres; no further particulars.
Moorhouse Union; New York; 120 acres; duration "a few months."
North American Phalanx; New Jersey; 112 members; 673 acres; debt $17,000; duration 12 years.
Northampton Association; Massachusetts; 130 members; 500 acres of land; debt $40,000; duration 4 years.
Ohio Phalanx; 100 members; 2,200 acres; deeply in debt; duration 10 months.
One-mentian (meaning probably one-mind) Community; Pennsylvania; 800 acres; duration one year.
Ontario Phalanx; New York; brief duration.
Prairie Home Community; Ohio; 500 acres; debt broke it up; duration one year.
Raritan Bay Union; New Jersey; few members; 268 acres.
Sangamon Phalanx; Illinois; no particulars.
Skaneateles Community; New York; 150 members; 354 acres; debt $10,000; duration 2-1/2 years.
Social Reform Unity; Pennsylvania; 20 members; 2,000 acres; debt $2,400; duration about 10 months.
Sodus Bay Phalanx; New York; 300 members; 1,400 acres; duration a "short time."
Spring Farm Association; Wisconsin; 10 families; duration 3 years.
Sylvania Association; Pennsylvania; 145 members; 2394 acres; debt $7,900; duration nearly 2 years.
Trumbull Phalanx; Ohio; 1500 acres; duration 2-1/2 years.
Washtenaw Phalanx; Michigan; no particulars.
Wisconsin Phalanx; 32 families; 1,800 acres; duration 6 years.
Recapitulation and Comments.
1. Localities. The Owen group were distributed among the States as follows: in Indiana, 4; in New York, 3; in Ohio, 2; in Pennsylvania, 1; in Tennessee, 1.
The Fourier group were located as follows: in Ohio, 8; in New York, 6; in Pennsylvania, 6; in Massachusetts, 3; in Illinois, 3; in New Jersey, 2; in Michigan, 2; in Wisconsin, 2; in Indiana, 1; in Iowa, 1.
Indiana had the greatest number in the first group, and the least in the second.
New England was not represented in the Owen group; and only by three Associations in the Fourier group; and those three were all in Massachusetts.
The southern states were represented by only one Association—that of Nashoba, in the Owen group—and that was little more than an eleemosynary attempt of Frances Wright to civilize the negroes.
The two groups combined were distributed as follows: in Ohio, 10; in New York, 9; in Pennsylvania, 7; in Indiana, 5; in Massachusetts, 3; in Illinois, 3; in New Jersey, 2; in Michigan, 2; in Wisconsin, 2; in Tennessee, 1; in Iowa, 1.
2. Number of members. The figures in our epitome (reckoning five persons to a family when families are mentioned), give an aggregate of 4,801 members: but these belong to only twenty-five Associations. The numbers of the remaining twenty are not definitely reported. The average of those reported is about 192 to an Association. Extending this average to the rest, we have a total of 8,641.
The numbers belonging to single Associations vary from 15 to 900; but in a majority of cases they were between 100 and 200.
3. The amount of land reported is enormous. Averaging it as we did in the case of the number of members, we make a grand total of 136,586 acres, or about 3,000 acres to each Association! This is too much for any probable average. We will leave out as exceptional, the 60,000 acres reported as belonging to New Harmony and the McKean Co. Association. Then averaging as before, we have a grand total of 44,624 acres, or about 1,000 acres to each Association.
Judging by our own experience we incline to think that this fondness for land, which has been the habit of Socialists, had much to do with their failures. Farming is about the hardest and longest of all roads to fortune: and it is the kind of labor in which there is the most uncertainty as to modes and theories, and of course the largest chance for disputes and discords in such complex bodies as Associations. Moreover the lust for land leads off into the wilderness, "out west," or into by-places, far away from railroads and markets; whereas Socialism, if it is really ahead of civilization, ought to keep near the centers of business, and at the front of the general march of improvement. We should have advised the Phalanxes to limit their land-investments to a minimum, and put their strength as soon as possible into some form of manufacture. Almost any kind of a factory would be better than a farm for a Community nursery. We find hardly a vestige of this policy in Macdonald's collections. The saw-mill is the only form of mechanism that figures much in his reports. It is really ludicrous to see how uniformly an old saw-mill turns up in connection with each Association, and how zealously the brethren made much of it; but that is about all they attempted in the line of manufacturing. Land, land, land, was evidently regarded by them as the mother of all gain and comfort. Considering how much they must have run in debt for land, and how little profit they got from it, we may say of them almost literally, that they were "wrecked by running aground."
4. Amount of debt. Macdonald's reports on this point are few and indefinite. The sums owed are stated for only seven of the Associations. They vary from $1,000 to $40,000. Five other Associations are reported as "very much in debt," "deeply in debt," &c. The exact indebtedness of these and of the remaining thirty-three, is probably beyond the reach of history. But we have reason to think that nearly all of them bought, to begin with, a great deal more land than they paid for. This was the fashion of the socialistic schools and of the times.
5. The duration of fourteen Associations is not reported; twelve lasted less than 1 year; two 1 year; four between 1 and 2 years; three 2 years; four between 2 and 3 years; one between 3 and 4 years; one 4 years; one 5 years; one 6 years; one 12 years, and one (it is said) 17 years. All died young, and most of them before they were two years old.
CHAPTER III.
THEORY OF NATIONAL EXPERIENCE.ToC
Now that our phenomena are fairly before us, a little speculation may be appropriate. One wants to know what position these experiments, which started so gaily and failed so soon, occupy in the history of this country and of the world; what relation they have to Christianity; what their meaning is in the great scheme of Providence. Students of Socialism and history must have some theory about their place and significance in the great whole of things. We have studied them somewhat in the circumspective way, and will devote a few pages to our theory about them. It will at least correct any impression that we intend to treat them disrespectfully.
And first we keep in mind a clear and wide distinction between the Associations and the movements from which they sprung. The word movement is very convenient, though very indefinite. We use it to designate the wide-spread excitements and discussions about Socialism which led to the experiments we have epitomized. In our last chapter we incidentally compared the socialistic movements of the Owen and Fourier epochs to religious revivals. We might now complete the idea, by comparing the Associations that issued from those movements, to churches that were organized in consequence of the revivals. A vast spiritual and intellectual excitement is one thing; and the institutions that rise out of it are another. We must not judge the excitement by the institutions.
We get but a very imperfect idea of the Owen and Fourier movements from the short-lived experiments whose remains are before us in Macdonald's collections. In the first place Macdonald, faithful as he was, did not discover all the experiments that were made during those movements. We remember some that are not named in his manuscripts. And in the next place the numbers engaged in the practical attempts were very small, in comparison with the masses that entered into the enthusiasm of the general movements and abandoned themselves to the idea of an impending social revolution. The eight thousand and six hundred that we found by averaging Macdonald's list, might probably be doubled to represent the census of the obscure unknown attempts, and then multiplied by ten to cover the outside multitudes that were converted to Socialism in the course of the Owen and Fourier revivals.
Owen in 1824 stirred the very life of the nation with his appeals to Kings and Congresses, and his vast experiments at New Harmony. Think of his family of nine hundred members on a farm of thirty thousand acres! A magnificent beginning, that thrilled the world! The general movement was proportionate to this beginning; and though this great Community and all the little ones that followed it failed and disappeared in a few years, the movement did not cease. Owen and his followers—especially his son Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright—continued to agitate the country with newspapers, public lectures, and "Fanny Wright societies," till their ideas actually got foot-hold and influence in the great Democratic party. The special enthusiasm for practical attempts at Association culminated in 1826, and afterwards subsided; but the excitement about Owen's ideas, which was really the Owen movement, reached its height after 1830; and the embers of it are in the heart of the nation to this day.
On the other hand, Fourier (by proxy) started another national excitement in 1842. With young Brisbane for its cosmopolitan apostle, and a national newspaper, such as the New York Tribune was, for its organ, this movement, like Owen's, could not be otherwise than national in its dimensions. We shall have occasion hereafter to show how vast and deep it was, and how poorly it is represented by the Phalanxes that figure in Macdonald's memoirs. Meanwhile let the reader consider that several of the men who were leaders in this excitement, were also leaders then and afterwards in the old Whig party; and he will have reason to conclude that Socialism, in its duplex form of Owenism and Fourierism, has touched and modified both of the party-sections and all departments of the national life.
We must not think of the two great socialistic revivals as altogether heterogeneous and separate. Their partizans maintained theoretical opposition to each other; but after all the main idea of both was the enlargement of home—the extension of family union beyond the little man-and-wife circle to large corporations. In this idea the two movements were one; and this was the charming idea that caught the attention and stirred the enthusiasm of the American people. Owenism prepared the way for Fourierism. The same men, or at least the same sort of men that took part in the Owen movement, were afterward carried away by the Fourier enthusiasm. The two movements may, therefore, be regarded as one; and in that view, the period of the great American socialistic revival extends from 1824, through the final and overwhelming excitement of 1843, to the collapse of Fourierism after 1846.
As a man who has passed through a series of passional excitements, is never the same being afterward, so we insist that these socialistic paroxysms have changed the heart of the nation; and that a yearning toward social reconstruction has become a part of the continuous, permanent, inner experience of the American people. The Communities and Phalanxes died almost as soon as they were born, and are now almost forgotten. But the spirit of Socialism remains in the life of the nation. It was discouraged and cast down by the failures of 1828 and 1846, and thus it learned salutary caution and self-control. But it lives still, as a hope watching for the morning, in thousands and perhaps millions who never took part in any of the experiments, and who are neither Owenites nor Fourierites, but simply Socialists without theory—believers in the possibility of a scientific and heavenly reconstruction of society.
Thus our theory harmonizes Owenism with Fourierism, and regards them both as working toward the same end in American history. Now we will go a step further and attempt the reconciling of still greater repugnances.
Since the war of 1812-15, the line of socialistic excitements lies parallel with the line of religious Revivals. Each had its two great leaders, and its two epochs of enthusiasm. Nettleton and Finney were to Revivals, what Owen and Fourier were to Socialism. Nettleton prepared the way for Finney, though he was opposed to him, as Owen prepared the way for Fourier. The enthusiasm in both movements had the same progression. Nettleton's agitation, like Owen's, was moderate and somewhat local. Finney, like Fourier, swept the nation as with a tempest. The Revival periods were a little in advance of those of Socialism. Nettleton commenced his labors in 1817, while Owen entered the field in 1824. Finney was at the height of his power in 1831-3, while Fourier was carrying all before him in 1842-3. Thus the movements were to a certain extent alternate. Opposed as they were to each other theologically—one being a movement of Bible men, and the other of infidels and liberals—they could not be expected to hold public attention simultaneously. But looking at the whole period from the end of the war in 1815 to the end of Fourierism after 1846, and allowing Revivals a little precedence over Socialism, we find the two lines of excitement parallel, and their phenomena wonderfully similar.
As we have shown that the socialistic movement was national, so, if it were necessary, we might here show that the Revival movement was national. There was a time between 1831 and 1834 when the American people came as near to a surrender of all to the Kingdom of Heaven, as they came in 1843 to a socialistic revolution. The Millennium seemed as near in 1831, as Fourier's Age of Harmony seemed in 1843. And the final effect of Revivals was a hope watching for the morning, which remains in the life of the nation, side by side, nay identical with, the great hope of Socialism.
And these movements—Revivalism and Socialism—opposed to each other as they may seem, and as they have been in the creeds of their partizans, are closely related in their essential nature and objects, and manifestly belong together in the scheme of Providence, as they do in the history of this nation. They are to each other as inner to outer—as soul to body—as life to its surroundings. The Revivalists had for their great idea the regeneration of the soul. The great idea of the Socialists was the regeneration of society, which is the soul's environment. These ideas belong together, and are the complements of each other. Neither can be successfully embodied by men whose minds are not wide enough to accept them both.
In fact these two ideas, which in modern times are so wide apart, were present together in original Christianity. When the Spirit of truth pricked three thousand men to the heart and converted them on the day of Pentecost, its next effect was to resolve them into one family and introduce Communism of property. Thus the greatest of all Revivals was also the great inauguration of Socialism.
Undoubtedly the Socialists will think we make too much of the Revival movement; and the Revivalists will think we make too much of the Socialistic movement; and the politicians will think we make too much of both, in assigning them important places in American history. But we hold that a man's deepest experiences are those of religion and love; and these are just the experiences in respect to which he is most apt to be ashamed, and most inclined to be silent. So the nation says but little, and tries to think that it thinks but little, about its Revivals and its Socialisms; but they are nevertheless the deepest and most interesting passages of its history, and worth more study as determinatives of character and destiny, than all its politics and diplomacies, its money matters and its wars.
Doubtless the Revivalists and Socialists despise each other, and perhaps both will despise us for imagining that they can be reconciled. But we will say what we believe; and that is, that they have both failed in their attempts to bring heaven on earth, because they despised each other, and would not put their two great ideas together. The Revivalists failed for want of regeneration of society, and the Socialists failed for want of regeneration of the heart.
On the one hand the Revivalists needed daily meetings and continuous criticism to save and perfect their converts; and these things they could not have without a thorough reconstruction of domestic life. They tried the expedient of "protracted meetings," which was really a half-way attack on the fashion of the world; but society was too strong for them, and their half-measures broke down, as all half-measures must. What they needed was to convert their churches into unitary families, and put them into unitary homes, where daily meetings and continuous criticism are possible;—and behold, this is Socialism!
On the other hand the Socialists, as often as they came together in actual attempts to realize their ideals, found that they were too selfish for close organization. The moan of Macdonald was, that after seeing the stern reality of the experiments, he lost hope, and was obliged to confess that he had "imagined mankind better than they are." This was the final confession of the leaders in the Associative experiments generally, from Owen to the last of the Fourierites; and this confession means, that Socialism needed for its complement, regeneration of the heart;—and behold, this is Revivalism!
These discords and failures of the past surely have not been in vain. Perhaps Providence has carried forward its regenerative designs in two lines thus far, for the sake of the advantage of a "division of labor." While the Bible men have worked for the regeneration of the soul, the infidels and liberals have been busy on the problem of the reconstruction of society. Working apart and in enmity, perhaps they have accomplished more for final harmony than they could have done together. Even their failures when rightly interpreted, may turn to good account. They have both helped to plant in the heart of the nation an unfailing hope of the "good time coming." Their lines of labor, though we have called them parallel, must really be convergent; and we may hope that the next phase of national history will be that of Revivalism and Socialism harmonized, and working together for the Kingdom of Heaven.
To complete our historical theory, we must mention in conclusion, one point of contrast between the Socialisms and the Revivals.
The Socialisms were imported from Europe; while the Revivals were American productions.
Owen was an Englishman, and Fourier was a Frenchman; but Nettleton and Finney were both Americans—both natives of Connecticut.
In the comparison we confine ourselves to the period since the war of 1812, because the history of the general socialistic excitements in this country is limited to that period. But the Revivals have an anterior history, extending back into the earliest times of New England. The great American system of Revivals, of which the Nettleton and Finney excitements were the continuation, was born in the first half of the last century, in central Massachusetts. Jonathan Edwards, whose life extended from 1703 to 1758, was the father of it. So that not only since the war of 1812, but before the Revolution of 1776, we find Revivalism, as a system, strictly an American production.
We call the Owen and Fourier movements, American Socialisms, because they were national in their dimensions, and American life chiefly was the subject of them. But looking at what may be called the male element in the production of them, they were really European movements, propagated in this country. Nevertheless, if we take the view that Socialism and Revivalism are a unit in the design of Providence, one looking to the regeneration of externals and the other to the regeneration of internals, we may still call the entire movement American, as having Revivalism, which is American, for its inner life, though Socialism, the outer element, was imported from England and France.
CHAPTER IV.
NEW HARMONY.ToC
American Socialisms, as we have defined them and grouped their experiments, may be called non-religious
