Communal Utopias and the American Experience: Secular Communities, 1824-2000 : Secular Communities, 1824-2000 9780313039133, 9780275975531

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Communal Utopias and the American Experience

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Communal Utopias and the American Experience SECULAR COMMUNITIES,

1824-2000

Robert P. Sutton

PRAEGER W

Westport, Connecticut London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sutton, Robert P. Communal Utopias and the American experience : secular communities, 1824-2000 / Robert P. Sutton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-275-97553-3 (alk. paper) 1. Utopias—United States—History. I. Title. HX653.S88 2004 307.77'0973'09034—dc22 2003023425 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2004 by Robert P. Sutton All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2003023425 ISBN: 0-275-97553-3 First published in 2004 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, C T 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America

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When it can be demonstrated that the means abundantly exist to fertilize and beautify the earth, so as to make it a highly pleasurable scene, and to saturate the world with the most useful, valuable, and desirable wealth . . . then it may be predicted that the existing system of society is worn out, and that a great change in the affairs of men is urgently demanded. Robert Owen, The Book of the New Moral World, Seventh Part, p. 5

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Contents

ix

Introduction Chapter 1

New Harmony and Owenite Communities

1

Chapter 2

Utopian Socialist Communities

23

Chapter 3

Icaria

53

Chapter 4

Gilded Age Socialist Cooperatives

77

Chapter 5

Great Depression Secular Communities

111

Chapter 6

Modern Communal Utopias

131

Selecte

159

I

165

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Introduction

Communal Utopias and the American Experience: Secular Communities, 18242000 continues the same format as the previous volume on the religious communities {Communal Utopias and the American Experience: Religious Communities, 1132-2000). Like its predecessor, this study of the secular communes is chronological. It begins with the first Utopian experiment started by Robert Owen in 1824 at the Rappite colony of Harmony, Indiana. This chapter deals with New Harmony and the satellite Owenite colonies created after the collapse of the mother community in 1826. Utopian socialist communities are examined in the next chapter, many of which were influenced by the ideas of communal living seen at New Harmony. The nine communal Utopias investigated are seven Fourierist colonies, the Transcendentalist experiment at Brook Farm, and the French venture at Reunion, Texas. The five Icarian colonies, also grounded in Utopian socialism, are covered in chapter 3. After the Civil War, American communalism continued in the socialist tradition, but the emphasis of the seven communities treated in chapter 4 was on building cooperative commonwealths. The last two chapters are on twentiethcentury communal Utopias. During the Great Depression the federal government, for the first time, became active sponsors of rural resettlement communes and greenbelt towns as alternatives to the seemingly failed laissezfaire capitalism. During the 1930s, anarchists constructed their unique alternative model of communal living at the Sunrise Colony in rural Michigan. Since existing monographs on American utopianism end in the 1930s—for example, Yaacov Oved's Two Hundred Years of American Communes (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1988) and Donald E. Pitzer, ed. America's Communal Utopias (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997)—

x Introduction the last chapter moves into new territory in covering communal Utopias of the last half of the twentieth century. It deals with seven communities that were either counterculture hippie colonies or the more structured, longerlived intentional communities. These latter Utopian ventures are defined and explained on pages 131-34. The secular communities, from New Harmony to the modern intentional communities, had special features that set them apart from their religious counterparts. Initially, they were communal responses to the exploitive freeenterprise capitalism that reshaped American society during the nineteenth century. They offered a fellowship of compassionate coworkers where, in Horace Greeley's words, there would be "no paupers and no surplus labor . . . [no] inefficiency in production and waste in consumption. . . . " They promised to alleviate the dehumanizing conditions of the factories and unite an individual with other communards so that together everyone would have abundance, security, fraternity, education, and above all develop moral character. Greeley wrote that "in association the future may be assured" because humans so living would become perfect—and society, by imitating them, would be reformed. Secular communities, in contrast to the religious ones, often lacked a charismatic leader and stayed together because of a commitment to certain doctrines. Indeed, they often survived the leader's incompetence or abrasive personality and continued without serious changes after he left the colony or died. Secular Utopias adopted unconventional practices and values in regard to sex, marriage, education of children, and the roles of women. Despite the differences between the religious and secular Utopias, however, both volumes demonstrate that the American communal experience, when examined in its historic totality from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, cannot be seen as Paul S. Bayer maintained in his foreword to Pitzer's America's Communal Utopia, as "a confusing and disjointed fashion, as freefloating bits of cultural ephemera." Rather, Utopian communalism developed as an unbroken motif in American history. It was a persistent, unbroken expression of what some Americans, and some Europeans, thought the United States ought to be.

CHAPTER 1

New Harmony and Owenite Communities

America's earliest secular Utopias were European in origin; or, as Arthur Bestor Jr. so aptly phrased it: "The communitarian idea came to fullest flower in the New World, but its seeds were brought from the old."1 Robert Owen worked out his plan for cooperative villages in England and Scotland more than a decade before he started New Harmony, the first of nineteen additional Utopian communities that were based upon Owen's communalism.2 In 1824, when Owen looked to the United States with high optimism as the place where he could establish a successful cooperative village, he had what Bestor called "the communitarian faith." To him, as James Madison told an English visitor in the 1820s, America was "useful in proving things before held impossible."3 Owen felt that here men could remake social institutions through

reason because American principles of liberty and toleration seemed to invite

Utopian ventures. Owen expected to build a "model village" that would show others how to eliminate pernicious individualism, economic exploitation of workers, tensions between rich and poor, and political corruption. Organized religions, which he called a "formidable prejudice," would be prohibited. Communal love would achieve social reform through a nonviolent, noncoercive process. He insisted that "change must be made on principles the reverse of those on which society has hitherto been formed and governed." Through immediate action "indigence, idleness, and the dislike for labor," as Fourierist disciple Albert Brisbane wrote, would be erased and the "universal transformation of the voluntary community replace it."4 Owen was born on May 14, 1771, in Newtown (Y Drenewydd), Wales, the sixth of seven children of a saddler, blacksmith, and local postmaster. He left

2 Communal Utopias and the American Experience home at the age of ten and lived in London with an elder brother, a drapery maker. Six weeks later he apprenticed himself to James McGuffog, a wealthy linen-draper in Stamford, Lincolnshire. For three years he worked as a shop assistant for room, board, and clothing and, in his spare time, read most of the books in McGuffog's well-stocked library. By the end of his stay, Owen later remembered, "my religious feelings were immediately replaced by the spirit of universal charity—not for a sect or a party, or for a country or a colour—but for the human race, and with a real and ardent desire to do them good."5 In 1786, on McGuffog's recommendation, he obtained a position in a retail business located on London Bridge at a salary of £2 5 a year, including board and lodging. The following summer he switched jobs to work for a Mr. Satterfield, a wholesale dealer in Manchester, at £40 a year. There he came into contact with the dehumanizing effects of mechanized, steam-powered, cottonspinning factories. However, the fifteen-year-old Owen was a dutiful assistant, found conditions pleasant enough, ate moderately, and did not drink alcohol. Three year's later, at the urging of a wire manufacturer named Jones, he started his own business, making wire frames used to form ladies' hats. This venture failed. In 1791 he rented a factory building in Ancoats Lane, sublet most of it to cover the rent, and organized a five-machine operation to spin cotton.6 He was so successful in manufacturing a high-quality yarn that Peter Drinkwater, a prosperous cotton factory owner who knew little about the details of spinning the cloth, hired him as a superintendent of the factory at £300 a year. He also offered Owen the prospect of a full partnership in the business. Then a cotton broker named Robert Spear convinced Owen to experiment with spinning American Sea Island cotton, and he became the first entrepreneur in England to make this fine thread for muslin weavers. Soon he was purchasing raw cotton through Spear at 5s. a pound and selling the spun thread for £9 18s. In 1799 Owen met Caroline Dale, eldest daughter of David Dale, a mill owner from New Lanark in southern-central Scotland. He visited Dale and offered to buy the mills for £60,000, payable over twenty years, and to marry his daughter. Dale accepted both propositions. That summer Owen formed the New Lanark Twist Company and on September 30 he married Caroline in her father's house on Glasgow Green. In 1816, at New Lanark, Owen began construction of a model factory town by announcing "the building of planned communities . . . on behalf of the poor and working classes."7 New Lanark became Owen's social laboratory, the center of his life. "It was there," Bestor wrote, "that he initiated the experiments in factory reform that gradually evolved into experiments in comprehensive social planning." "It was there," Bestor continued, "that he finally made his decision against programs that looked to a gradual amelioration of existing society and in favor of those that proposed a Communitarian trans-

New Harmony and Owenite Communities 3 formation of it." "It was from New Lanark," Bestor concluded, "that he first projected his ideas to the world at large."8 Owen stopped employing pauper children, most of whom at that time were commonly hired at the age of six or seven as full-time employees. He improved housing for adult workers by adding another story to their homes and built new homes for the larger families. He provided cheap coal during winter. He had the villagers elect a committee that inspected the residences every week and reported on their cleanliness. He paved the streets and had them swept regularly. He opened a company store where the workers purchased food, clothes, and whiskey. He imposed a curfew and set up a night-police to arrest anyone found drunk in the streets. He imposed fines on women for having bastard children. He established a "Sick Fund" to cover medical costs for those who fell ill. He had factory foremen keep detailed production records for each worker and listed who was "bad," "indifferent," "good," and "excellent" on a colored monitor at every work station.9 As profits increased at the New Lanark mills Owen financed a new system of education called the Institute for the Formation of Character. It had a nursery school, a day school, an evening school for adults, community rooms, and a public hall. He allowed a Bible Society at New Lanark but permitted no religious instruction in the Institute. Its nursery school was open to any child in the village, from the age of one to five, for a small fee. From the age of six to twelve they attended the day school, for three pence a month, after which they worked a 10 hour 45 minute day in the factory. The Institute had an evening school for adults, free of charge, in the evening. At the Institute every child was trained to live as a happy adult in a society where there would be no privileged classes. Owen believed in the "play principle," meaning that no child would be forced to do anything. Teachers could not use discipline and had to follow the principle of "steady kindness." Textbooks were to be used rarely. Indeed, Owen felt that no child should have to use a book until he or she was ten years of age. Before that time the teachers instructed them in history, geography, chemistry, and "economic facts" by lectures and illustrations. They used wall maps and pictures of animals and plants painted on rolled-up canvases. Children were taught to dance from the age of two. Singing instruction started when they were four and they sang in choirs of over 200 members. Dressed in loose-fitting kilts, boys and girls marched in closeorder drill in the Institute's playground.10 Owen described his reforms in a four-part essay called A New View ofSociety, the first of which appeared in 1813. His main point was that human vices were determined by the environment, and it, not individual free will and initiative, formed character. He argued that it was wrong to allow an aristocratic minority to live on the labor of a working majority. Lastly, he advocated a program of public works and compulsory education for children.11 In 1817, he elaborated on these ideas in a series of letters published in the Times, the Morning Post, and other newspapers. He described a reordering of society into

4 Communal Utopias and the American Experience cooperative communities of 2,500 people, from paupers to aristocrats, where mechanization lessened the drudgery of labor. In these "Villages of Unity and Cooperation" four classes amicably would live together: hired laborers, skilled artisans, supervisors, and the wealthy. Members with money would invest in the community. Those without capital would work extra time—months or years—until they contributed, in terms of their labor, something of the same value. In Owen's Utopia everyone lived in a large building called a "parallelogram" that had apartments on four sides, a school, a church, and a central dining hall. Workshops were placed in the fields far away from the parallelogram. Villagers would have "accommodations of all kinds [that] will be in proportion to the capital they can at first advance or may acquire." A large surplus would allow everyone to receive whatever they needed from "the general store of the community." Existing social distinctions were retained, however. There was no intermingling of the social order since, as a practical matter, he expected to get financial backing from the British upper classes. Owen rationalized that because his reforms would bring unlimited prosperity to their residents such social distinctions would soon be irrelevant. He wrote in his 1821 Report to the County of Lanark that "individual accumulation of wealth will appear as irrational as to bottle up or store water in situations where there is more of this invaluable fluid than all can consume."12 Or, as one of his contemporaries, William Thompson, summarized it: in the village "every adult person shall possess every thing, that is to say, all the lands, houses, machinery, implements and other stock of the Community, in as am-

ple manner as they are possessed by any other member whatever."13 Later in life Owen revised this plan when he became convinced that the working classes could not change fast enough to adapt to the new conditions. They would have to be led, he proclaimed in 1841, by "a sufficient number of the wealthy and influential members of old society . . . to assist the former in carrying the measures into execution to create this very superior state of society."14 He speculated about having two villages, one for the workers and one for the wealthy, highly educated class. If a single village were retained only the latter class and the foremen would be fall members. They would live in the village, pay rent and board as a "Family Club," and be asked to do only what they felt was "most beneficial and agreeable to themselves."15 "Mechanics and artisans," though, might eventually earn their way to full membership. However, these were not the views he brought with him to America. Indeed, he arrived in the United States with just a vague Utopian plan, "more gospel than theory," that he had sketched briefly in his essays.16 Owen's ideas circulated in the United States as early as 1817, when the Philadelphia Aurora printed excerpts from his writings. In 1822, New Yorker Cornelius Camden Blatchly, head of the Society for Promoting Communities, published a pamphlet entitled Essay on Commonwealths that included selections from Owen's essays. The following year William Maclure, president of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, formed an Owenite Club in that

New Harmony and Owenite Communities 5 city. But until 1824, Owen himself "showed no curiosity about American institutions in general, and made only one or two desultory inquiries concerning the communitarian societies in that country."17 The chance to purchase the flourishing Rappite community at New Harmony changed all this. In August 1824, Richard Flower, the father of George, as agent for the Rappites, visited Owen at New Lanark and offered him the land and buildings. The timing was auspicious. Owen had failed to raise the money in England for his cooperative villages and his personal fortune of $250,000 could cover about half of the cost for only one experiment. Flower quoted him a price for a prosperous, fully built community that was one-fourth the estimated cost for an English village: $135,000 due in annual installments in 1827 and 1828. Owen accepted at once because, in Bestor's words, "he succumbed so readily to the lure of cheap western land without considering the difficulty of assembling upon it a population appropriate to his purpose."18 There were other considerations behind his decision to buy New Harmony. His business partners at New Lanark resented his position against teaching religion in the Institute. His employees were angry with him raiding the Sick Fund for personal expenses and for being away from the town so much. A recent epidemic of typhoid fever caused many residents to question the effectiveness of his obsession with hygiene. Clearly, Owen could not resist the chance to try something that, in the British Isles, was fast appearing impossible. In October 1824, he, his son William, and Donald Macdonald, a friend, sailed from Liverpool. They carried with them an elaborate model of a cooperative village that Owen would use to sell the Utopian idea to American audiences.19 They landed in New York City and went by steamboat to Albany, stopping en route at the Shaker village at Watervliet, to visit newly reelected governor De Witt Clinton. Back in Manhattan, Owen met with businessmen and educators who enthusiastically welcomed him but offered no financial support. The city's newspapers, though, gave his journey and his ideas full coverage. In November, at Philadelphia, he met with William Maclure, James Rush (son of Dr. Benjamin Rush), and lectured at the Franklin Institute and the Athenaeum. He traveled to Washington, D.C., visited President James Monroe at the White House, and was introduced to John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. On November 28 he headed for New Harmony, going by stage to Hagerstown and then on the National Road to Pittsburgh where he met with Father Rapp. By Christmas the three men, with Rapp as a traveling companion, reached Prairie Albion, Illinois, George Flower's and Morris Birkbeck's agricultural community. From there they went to New Harmony to sign the final purchase agreement with Father Rapp's adopted son, Frederick, who was in charge of the community's business affairs.20 On January 3, 1825, Owen took title to New Harmony's 180 buildings and 20,000 acres of land. The town included homes, dormitories, two churches, a lecture hall, four mills, a textile factory, tanning yard, mechanics' shops, and a distillery and brewery. That same afternoon he left on a three-month pro-

6 Communal Utopias and the American Experience motion tour to recruit colonists and enlist financial backing. He went to Washington, D.C., and lectured to capacity audiences in the House of Representatives. He traveled to Virginia to visit Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and then moved on to Philadelphia. By April 13 he was back at New Harmony where over 800 newly arrived, enthusiastic colonists, most of them from the immediate area, welcomed him.21 If the farmers, drifters, and adventurers who gathered on the banks of the Wabash that spring expected Owen to lead them in building a New World Utopia they were soon disillusioned. He was a promoter, not an organizer. At Albion during the Christmas visit he wrote his most recent, and opaque, plan for New Harmony called the "Thirty-Nine Rules and Regulations." The community would then provide all work facilities, tools, and the "necessities of life." But Owen said nothing about how individual work would be counted toward consumption of goods. Rule number six promised that those persons who invested £100 would be "non-laboring" members of the community, whatever that meant. If a person left the village they would receive a "gratuity" decided upon by a committee. Every year surplus profits were to be set aside for the creation of a second community.22 On April 27, 1825, Owen presented New Harmony with its first of many constitutions, filled with contradictions and ambiguities, for a "Preliminary Society." He predicted that it would take three years to evolve from a competitive way of life into a collective society. During this transition, as a "halfway house," he as a "trustee" aided by a committee would run everything. Financial inequalities would have to continue because people joining New Harmony could keep their personal possessions. Members would have free, temporary living quarters in brick, frame, and log buildings but they had to purchase tools and household furniture. Everyone would receive food and clothing from a community store. After a year the profits would be divided proportionally: whoever worked more received more. But what a person had taken from the store would be recorded as a debit entry on the books and would be subtracted from that amount. To start with, every adult was given a credit of $80 a year or $1.54 a week in the community account books for "future work." Ledgers would record the value of their daily labor. Owen allowed cash purchases at the store but thought that they would be "infrequent." Health care and education were free. There were no admissions requirements and anyone could become a member of New Harmony just by moving there to live.23 Plainly, Owen had given little thought as to what kind of a Utopia he wanted to construct, probably because he did not much care about building one himself. He stayed at New Harmony only till June 5 when he left on another propaganda tour, leaving William, assisted by Macdonald, in charge. He traveled to Pittsburgh and then to Niagara Falls. He crossed New York on the Erie Canal and arrived at Manhattan on July 4. After stops at Philadelphia and Boston he departed for Liverpool and docked there on August 6. He then

New Harmony and Owenite Communities 7 went to New Lanark to arrange for the rest of his family to move to Indiana. In November 1825, he was back in Philadelphia where he advertised in the newspapers that 39 "Artificers and Mechanics" were needed immediately. He also began recruiting a contingent of intellectuals. Led by Maclure, this group of scientists, teachers, artists, and philosophers boarded the keelboat Philanthropist at Pittsburgh, later in New Harmony informally called the "Boatload of Knowledge," and floated down the Ohio River with $15,000 worth of supplies.24 By this time, unfortunately, public opinion had turned against Owen as newspapers published his controversial views on religion, especially an "Open Letter" composed at sea on his return to Philadelphia. In this essay he denounced all religions as wrong because they indoctrinated bigotry, hypocrisy, and hatred. American readers were shocked to learn that Owen even denied original sin and human depravity and believed that the environment, not moral responsibility, determined conduct. Then, in a lecture at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia on November 14, he had declared that he did not accept the Bible as the word of God.25 By the time Owen was back in New Harmony (he gave a speech there on January 12, 1826) and his intellectuals were coming down the Ohio River, most editors in the East were denouncing him as an infidel charlatan. The New-York Advertiser, for example, stated sarcastically that any man "who can invent anything more absurd, more extravagant, more irreligious in its principles, or more mischievous in its tendency . . . must be possessed of no ordinary capacity."26 But when Owen landed at New Harmony that January he was living in a fool's paradise, convinced that America was about to follow his lead in the transformation of its society. During his six-month's absence twenty-three-year-old William Owen had tried to govern the community. According to the constitution, he was supposed to rule in cooperation with a committee appointed by his father. Although it met regularly, and the entire community convened in a general assembly every week, William still made all the decisions. His most serious error was to follow the constitution in admitting anyone who came to New Harmony, without question.27 By early autumn of 1825 the village had become a hodgepodge of increasingly hostile cliques. Its economy began to falter. Out of a total population of about 800 just 140 adults worked in various crafts and industry, and its most important activities (textile manufacturing, a distillery, and candle making) were barely operating. Only the soap and glue shops and a shoe factory were fully functional. A small group of 36 men worked in the fields and the once bountiful Rappite farms had deteriorated to the point where William had to purchase food from nearby towns. In fact, only the steady income from a hotel that housed the many curious tourists enabled New Harmony to survive. As soon as Robert Owen arrived, he pledged his own money to sustain the community and over the following months his subvention kept the colony economically solvent.28

8 Communal Utopias and the American Experience Despite these difficulties, many residents thought that Owen's presence augured a new era of cooperation and productivity. Many were euphoric and believed that now, with the senior Owen in command, the community would become a model for the world. For example, a man from Ohio tried to recruit his son by telling him that the place was an "abode of peace and quietness." Its newspaper, the New Harmony Gazette, described a bucolic social environment and printed letters to the editor that told of enthusiasm and friendship. The Gazette clearly wanted to convince its readers that despite the diversity of backgrounds everyone cooperated with each other. It tried to minimize the rising criticism of Owen's unorthodox religious ideas by pointing out that New Harmony regularly invited Methodists to preach on Sundays and even encouraged Shakers to join. Intellectual and cultural life was vibrant, the paper claimed. Three times a week New Harmonites attended lectures on science and the arts. They sponsored community dances on Tuesdays and orchestra concerts on Thursdays. A Female Social Society and a Masonic Lodge met regularly. The Gazette discussed their special system of education that enrolled 200 pupils—all room, board, and clothing free—and was taught by the outstanding educators of the Boatload of Knowledge, especially William Maclure. Borrowing heavily on Fourier, Rousseau, and Pestalozzi, the school integrated academic training with a commitment to solving social problems. Maclure, who lamented that his own education in the classics had left him as "ignorant as a pig of anything useful," insisted that children be taught with things as well as words. He argued that intellectual pursuits must be supplemented with manual labor and that children should be trained to work both on the farm and in the factory. Education had to begin in early childhood and continue throughout adult life.29 Its objective, as Owen's son Robert Dale Owen had written in 1824 in his book Outline of the System of Education at New Lanark, was to increase the "happiness of the community . . . to raise all classes without lowering any one, and to re-form mankind from the least even to the greatest."30 But mounting problems undermined New Harmony's morale. Some members saw the annual credit of $80, doled out in weekly installments of $1.54, as an allowance that was not enough for families to live on. The accounting process at the store was incredibly complicated and used passbooks for all sorts of trivial transactions such as eggs, butter, tea, coffee and so forth. The amount credited to some individuals for their work seemed too low, and demands for an increased allowance immediately appeared. Besides, many professional men came to New Harmony for ideological reasons and had no desire to do hard labor.31 Housing was inadequate for the fast-growing population. The Rappites, when they left, numbered only about half of those living in New Harmony by the winter of 1826. Their buildings could be enlarged, but that took time. So William started to use the Rappites' old log cabins and the attics of frame

New Harmony and Owenite Communities

9

buildings for bedrooms. And he posted a warning in the Gazette: all new members would have to wait two years for accommodations and they should not come before having a guarantee that they would have a place to live. Then there was what Robert Owen called the "woman problem," over which many became deeply disillusioned. They had joined New Harmony expecting to see equality of the sexes. And, for a while, they were pleased, especially working-class women, to be able to go to school and enjoy dances and concerts. Single women were delighted to meet so many intelligent young men. But these feelings soured after the reality of life in Owen's Utopia set in. "Domestic chores became the exclusive and expected duty of women," Donald E. Pitzer wrote, "despite the guarantee of equal rights." Married women were designated "community wives" and they resented the fact that "their obligations to their own households stretched into tiresome cooking, sewing, and cleaning for the entire village."32 Religion became a source of contention. Religious freedom meant one thing to Owen and something else to many residents of New Harmony. They did not agree with him that it allowed antireligious opinions and open criticism of revealed doctrine. Others grumbled that there was too much religious diversity. They complained that in just one Sunday the church had a moral lecturer at the pulpit in the morning, a denominational preacher there defending the Bible as the word of God in the afternoon, and a Methodist circuit rider ranting about sin and damnation in the evening.33 On January 13, 1826, Owen addressed the general assembly about the need to transform the temporary "Preliminary Society" into a permanent "Community of Equality." On January 26 the assembly passed a resolution that such a community should be created "as soon as practicable." It declared itself a constitutional convention and chose a committee to draft the document— consisting of William and Robert Dale Owen, Donald Macdonald, and four members of the previous committee with which William had governed the Preliminary Society. On February 1, the Gazette printed a draft constitution and four days later the assembly unanimously accepted it.34 But it was more muddled than the constitution of the Preliminary Society. New Harmony now was called the Community of Equality, and was based on the principle of communal ownership of all property. Everyone was equal in political rights in the general meeting (where every adult could vote) and in what they could consume from the community store. The document eliminated the old, cumbersome accounting system at the store and replaced it with a confusing daily inquisition by supervisors who would record their opinions of each person's character. The constitution said nothing about financial compensation to members who left New Harmony and nothing about the relationship between Owen and the people who stayed in the colony. Everyone knew that he, as the legal owner of New Harmony, hoped to recoup his

financial investment by selling or leasing property to the residents, but the

10 Communal Utopias and the American Experience constitution did not discuss this expected transaction. Nor did it say how future profits were to be distributed.35 As soon as the constitution was adopted, the Gazette published the balance sheet of the defunct Preliminary Society. The community was hopelessly in debt. In desperation, the assembly, on February 22, asked Owen to take charge of the whole operation for one year, assisted by a committee that he would appoint. Owen agreed, but he never used his authority to deal with the mounting problems. Most alarming, it was obvious that New Harmony could not produce, as promised, "an abundance for all" because there were too many loafers who would not work, described by one woman as "rough uncouth creatures." Religious disagreements intensified. A group of staunch Methodists rejected what they saw as Owen's atheism and formed what Owen called Community No. II, or "Macluria" (named in honor of William Maclure— whose negative views of organized religion, however, were unknown to them). Owen leased them about 1,300 acres of uncleared land, valued at about $5,000, as a spot where they could erect their own log cabin village. Because of dissension among its leadership, it lasted only a year.36 English farmers from Prairie Albion who had moved to New Harmony became so frustrated with its lackadaisical support for agriculture that they declared themselves Community No. Ill, or "Feiba-Peveli." They moved to a nearby 1,400 acres, valued at $7,000, in order to till the land scientifically.37 The most serious defection came in the formation of Community No. IV. "This was the most unexpected development of all," according to Bestor, "for its source was not dissent but hyperenthusiasm and its leaders included Owen's own sons."38 In early March 1826, Robert Dale, William, and a former Universalist minister named Robert L. Jennings met with some intellectuals. Completely convinced that only educated idealists could save the community, they agreed to dress in bloomers as a "badge of aristocracy," call themselves the "Literati," and organize a coup. They planned to take over the administration of New Harmony and get rid of the hundreds of illiterate, crude, and lazy "backwoodsmen." But when the senior Owen found out what was going on, he squelched the idea. He had permitted Communities No. II and III to be established as helpful to the village, as a sort of salutary pruning operation. But Community No. IV, he realized, would permanently split the society in half between intellectuals and ordinary residents. He convinced his sons to accept an alternative solution. He assigned them some forestland where they went, cut down trees, built log cabins, and forgot about saving the Utopia.39 On March 18, 1826, Owen came up with a third proposition. He would give the remaining members, now identified by him as Community No. I, a portion of his property for which they would pay him $126,520 over a twelveyear period with 5 percent interest. If the payments were not met, he would regain title to the property. All but 24 members flatly rejected the offer. Thomas Pears, an intellectual from Pittsburgh, haughtily wrote: "Whatever may be the terms I have no intention of making myself responsible, for I can

New Harmony and Owenite Communities 11 see no prospect of producing enough to maintain us."40 The agreeing 24, whom Owen designated as the "Nucleus," accepted Owen's offer and assumed full authority over New Harmony. For the next couple of months a vestige of optimism prevailed. The Nucleus began to keep store accounts as had been done during the Preliminary Society. Social and cultural activities revived. Maclure saw to it that 400 schoolchildren helped in the shops and in the farms. The Nucleus kept detailed records of who worked and who were idle. But when these efforts failed to revive the economy, Maclure, in May, suggested a fourth reorganization. In a letter published in the Gazette he advocated creating a federated community divided into different groups according to occupation. Each unit could exchange their products with the other units and pay Owen only for the property that it used.41 On May 25, Owen endorsed the plan and shortly afterwards New Harmony reorganized into a School Society, an Agricultural Society, and a Mechanic Society. A Board of Union would administer the three units and they would trade back and forth by labor notes.42 This scheme only complicated matters because Maclure, as director of the School Society, had no intention of having his students work almost full-time to solve the economic problems. So, as before, New Harmony consumed more than it produced. By now time was running out: the first mortgage installment of $90,000 was due in the spring of 1827. Owen further antagonized some people by keeping personal control of the tavern and the store. The complaint, as Bestor explained, was that he "was shifting into the characters of a retailer and tavern keeper, to save by nine-penny and four-pencehalf-penny gains, after the manner of peddlers, the money which he had lost."43 Owen back-pedaled. He gave the Mechanic Society half interest in the store and transferred control of the tavern to the Agricultural Society. But within a week these two Societies claimed that the School Society was filled with snobs and ciphers. Maclure retorted that they were "good for nothings."44 Enter Paul Brown and still more venom. A devoted communist, he had published some thirty articles in the Gazette demanding complete equality of property. He assailed Owen as a "lord proprietor" and a "speculator in land, power, influence, riches, and the glories of this world." He said that Owen had originally promised to surrender his property and divide it equally among the members of the community, and then reneged. He insisted that Owen stick by his word and, in addition, give New Harmony all his money. Brown pointed out that no true philanthropist could, as Owen was doing, ask payment for the use of his land and houses, and this just proved that he really wanted to keep the property secure for himself and his heirs. Nobody could trust such a man. Brown had other charges, these against the residents themselves. He condemned the gambling and frivolous dancing that went on. He complained that "boys and brutes" had knocked large holes in the fences around the gardens and fields so that swine and cows "ranged at pleasure throughout." 45 The editor of the Gazette, he maintained, had succumbed to pressure from Owen and had stopped printing his articles. So, imitating Mar-

12 Communal Utopias and the American Experience tin Luther, Brown tacked up his accusations on doorways. Although he attracted only a small following, his presence was bitterly divisive. By September 1826, New Harmony was in shambles. All the reorganizations had failed and they had no money to meet the mortgage installment.46 Then Maclure started to make trouble. He became convinced that Owen was wrong to subsidize the community with his own money because this policy enabled the idlers to stay on without becoming productive members. This subvention, Maclure wrote, produced "nothing but waste and destruction of property" and had encouraged members "to consume not to produce, money having been substituted for industry, negligence for care, wastefulness for economy."47 When Maclure realized how hopeless the situation had become he decided not to honor an earlier offer to give Owen $10,000 to help pay the mortgage. Owen, understandably, deeply resented the broken commitment. Maclure then tried to make the School Society, which had been receiving financial support as well as books and laboratory equipment from friends in Philadelphia, free of Owen's control. He gave Owen $24,500 and assumed an obligation for another $24,500 to lease several buildings and 900 acres of land. By December 1826 he paid Owen another $11,000. At that time Maclure declared financial independence from Owen except to reaffirm, as a matter of personal honor, the earlier pledge of $10,000. To meet these financial commitments Maclure told the members of the Agricultural and Mechanic Societies that they would have to pay the School a tuition for the education of their children. However, he would accept goods and services in place of money. Both Societies refused.48 Actually, Owen was glad to have Maclure separated from New Harmony so that he, Owen, could direct an educational unit better suited to train children for community life. So, he started his system of "social education" where the whole community, including children, would meet in the town hall three evenings each week. There the teachers, whose only qualification would be practical experience, would use visual aids such as maps and globes to lecture on trades, occupations, or other "useful things." Owen said that no intellectual effort would be necessary; everyone would just attend the meetings, sit quietly, and listen to the teacher. "By this simple process," he declared, "you will acquire a better education, and more valuable knowledge than has been given by any system of instruction heretofore put into practice."49 Maclure called the whole idea "the parrot method" of instruction. The meetings went on for three weeks, until Owen canceled them. When Maclure petitioned the Indiana legislature for a charter of incorporation, Owen demanded that he give back some of the land that the School Society had been using because of a "misconception" about the boundary of the property. At that point Maclure left New Harmony for New Orleans to improve his health. While he was gone, Owen acted as if nothing had changed and that the School Society was still part of a community that he was running.

New Harmony and Owenite Communities 13 When he returned on April 20, 1827, Maclure decided to end the whole imbroglio once and for all, in court.50 When Frederick Rapp came to New Harmony on May 1, 1827, to collect the first mortgage payment, Owen had no money. Maclure then offered to help cover the obligation and Rapp turned the deed over to him. Maclure, now Owen's creditor, filed a suit in the Posey County court against him for half of the installment, or $45,000. Owen filed a countersuit against Maclure for the $90,000, according to Bestor, because of "a claim founded on the alleged existence of a partnership."51 After court-appointed arbitrators made a complex decision on May 3, 1827, to give Maclure some land and Owen some money, both men withdrew their complaints. Maclure, now thinking himself free from Owen's eccentricities, reorganized his school and opened it to orphans and outsiders. His ideas on education were published in 26 articles in the Gazette. He believed in the Pestalozzi theory that children should learn by experience, in a learning process that developed their critical intelligence.52 There was to be a "higher school" for children aged six to twelve where teachers would use machines, skeletons, and flowers to illustrate the subjects and the children themselves would print their own textbooks. He planned classes in mathematics, science, writing, art, music, languages, mechanics, and gymnastics. Teachers would lecture adults on chemistry, zoology, mineralogy, and natural history. Maclure's close friend Marie Fretageot directed a "junior school" of 100 children in the Harmonist Community House No. 2. Phiquepal d'Arusmont ran the "vocational school." Maclure reported that 200 pupils were already enrolled in the higher school and 80 in the vocational unit.53 Before leaving for Mexico to recruit more students, Maclure organized a "School of Industry." He announced his plans in the New Harmony Disseminator, a newspaper he had started. The school would improve education "by separating the useful from the ornamental, and thereby reducing the labor and fatigue of instructing youth." "We will endeavor to prove," he continued, "that children can educate, clothe and feed themselves by their own labor when judiciously applied to produce articles of real value."54 This venture, Pitzer believed, "introduced the trade school to the United States."55 By the time Maclure left for Mexico in the spring of 1827 he was sixtythree, "decidedly marked by age and infirmity," and stooped and suffering from an ulcer on his leg. He put Madame Duclos Fretageot, who had directed his school in Philadelphia and had joined the colony in 1823, in charge of everything as his lieutenant until her death in 183 3. Maclure himself remained in Mexico until 1835 when he returned to Philadelphia. He died there in 1841. However, during the last years of his life, Bestor concluded, he "continued to support generously the educational enterprise he had founded at New Harmony."56 Owen called for still another reorganization. He suggested that the Agricultural and Mechanic Societies be dissolved and that a new government (a

14 Communal Utopias and the American Experience committee of himself, William, and three others) take charge of what he now called the "New Harmony Community No. I." But by now reorganization had been done so often that it seemed almost meaningless. This one lasted five months when Owen again subdivided the village by occupations. In this system each unit would support itself and pay a small weekly amount toward "the general expenses of the town." Each unit would govern itself and decide how to distribute its goods. He planned to start more outlying communities "to encourage such of the members as could not be usefully employed in the Town, to settle in . . . according to their respective predilections."57 He hoped New Harmony residents who were unable to get along would take the opportunity to move there. Even the editor of the Gazette was skeptical. He wrote that "New Harmony, therefore, is not now a community; but, as was originally intended, a central village, out of, and around which, communities have formed."58 Paul Brown was livid. He predicted a "doomsday." "Not a single group went out from New Harmony as a community," Bestor noted, "and Owen was in reality entering into arrangements with unknown persons at a distance who proposed to come as colonists."59 Nevertheless, contrary to all the facts, Owen declared in the Gazette on May 9 that "eight independent Communities of common property and quality, have been formed upon the New-Harmony estate, exclusive of Mr. Maclure's or the Education Society, and the town of NewHarmony."60 Brown attacked Owen as delusionary. These communities were phantoms, he said, and "no trace of an inhabitant, let alone a community" could be seen out there.61 To make matters worse, on July 4, 1826, Owen had delivered a speech entitled "A Declaration of Mental Independence" and eastern newspapers in early 1827 began to print excerpts of it. In this talk he had promised to free mankind from the three "monstrous evils that could be combined to inflict mental and physical evil": private property, the "absurd and irrational" systems of religion, and marriage based on private property. Traditional marriage was wrong, he said, because it "obligates the contracting parties to do what they may not be able to perform and because it marks a disposition to enslave onehalf of our fellow creatures." In the present society a "natural marriage" was impossible. This preferred but unattainable union was where husband and wife have an equal opportunity for education and to acquire "an accurate knowledge of themselves and of human nature"; and where only "intimate sympathy and unaffected congeniality, founded on a real knowledge of each other," existed.62 Suddenly, in May 1827, Owen decided to quit. He finally recognized that the people who had come to New Harmony were quite different from the compliant Scottish workers he had known back home, and that they would never adjust to his view of community life. As a businessman he realized that he was about to lose his entire personal fortune in a colossal financial disaster. It had shrunk from $250,000 to $50,000 in less than two years. On Sunday,

New Harmony and Owenite Communities 15 May 6, he delivered his "Farewell Address." He traced the history of the Utopia since the first days of the Preliminary Society and acknowledged that his constant reorganization had, perhaps, been a mistake. He offered as an excuse his lack of any understanding of how to build a model village and confessed he had no real plan except one of trial and error. However, he hoped that in the future other communities both in Britain and America would benefit from his experience. He said that "too many opposing habits and feelings" had appeared in the town to permit "a community of common property and equality" to develop. Moreover, it had been impossible to get rid of the undesirable elements because of "the expense of their removal." Blaming Maclure, he asserted that if the "schools had been in operation upon the very superior plan upon which I had been led to expect they would be," then perhaps they might "have succeeded in amalgamating the whole into a community." As a last, desperate measure he said it had been necessary to demand that "those persons who would not, or could not, so connect themselves" leave New Harmony. Although many families departed "with their feelings more or less hurt," he said, those families who stayed were "doing well." He described the town as "greatly improved lately" and lands had been "put into a good state of cultivation, and . . . [were] well fenced." There was "every appearance of abundance of fruit, all kinds of food and materials for clothing, and no want of industry to preserve the former and to manufacture the latter." He planned to dispose of New Harmony and the subsidiary communities by selling lands to individuals at bargain prices or by long-term leases.63 The next day Owen spoke for the last time. He counseled them to have "honesty of purpose" and "devotion to the success of each and all communities." He warned them to submit to majority rule and to pay attention to the schools. He expressed his complete confidence that New Harmony would eventually succeed, and to help them along he was leaving $3,000 behind to cover expenses. He promised to return again someday.64 On May 27, 1827, he departed and returned to Britain to continue his life as a reformer and philanthropist until his death at his hometown of Newtown on November 17, 1858. He turned over all of his holdings on the Wabash to his two sons. By then New Harmony as a communal experiment was dead. Most of its residents accepted Owen's terms to acquire property and stayed in the area as artisans and farmers. New Harmony failed as the first secular experiment in communal utopianism because, Rosabeth Moss Kanter contended, it floundered on the very diversity of its population. Members of the village had no prior experience with each other or with communal living and, hence, had "no basis for knowing whether they could live together in community, and no necessary commitment to a set of unifying ideals." Moreover, with Owen supplying all the money, "they did not even need to be committed to building a community."65 Owen himself later admitted that New Harmony had been a "premature" attempt "to unite a number of strangers not previously educated for that

16 Communal Utopias and the American Experience purpose, who should carry on extensive operations for their common interest, and live together as a common family."66 Contemporary visitors thought that the communal idea worked only when Owen was there and told the residents what to do. In his absence New Harmony crumbled into factions based on social distinctions and stubborn self-interest. Brown, in his 1827 book Twelve Months in New Harmony, was convinced that Owen, on one hand, had no generosity, integrity, or magnanimity. On the other hand, he allowed too much dancing and frivolity and did nothing about the constant "clamor, disaffections, and calumny." Brown, too, felt that the people were veritable strangers to one another even with all their meetings and various means of recreation.67 Most historians agree that the central flaw was Owen's total lack of a communal blueprint, as he himself confessed. In addition, he never screened the people who came there or put any restrictions on their number. Robert Dale Owen, in his last essay in the Gazette, put it this way. "Our opinion," he wrote, "is that Robert Owen ascribed too little influence to the early anti-social circumstances that had surrounded many of the quickly collected inhabitants of New Harmony before their arrival there, and too much to those circumstances which his experience might enable them to create around themselves in the future."68 Also, he was naive and did not recognize that New Harmony could never be economically self-sufficient. Later, Robert Dale Owen reflected that New Harmony was undermined as a Utopian community because in America wages were too high and land too cheap to allow the feeling of cooperative action to last.69 OWENITE COLONIES Owen remained the unbridled optimist, his Utopian dream untarnished. This perception was in part based on his knowledge of other Owenite communities that were springing up in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and Tennessee. In 1825, the Friendly Association for Mutual Interests was organized in Philadelphia when 15 members planned a communal village at Washington's headquarters at Valley Forge. On January 19, 1826, they published a constitution and moved there that spring. But they soon became involved in a religious controversy with their neighbors and disbanded in September.70 In July 1825, Benjamin Bakewell, owner of a Pittsburgh flint-glass factory, organized the Cooperating Society of Allegheny County and looked for land to purchase. By September, though, he gave up on the idea because of the lack of financial support.71 An Owenite satellite named the Franklin Community was formed in New York in March 1826 when a group of Manhattan Owenites purchased a 130-acre farm near Haverstaw, about 35 miles north of the city. They were led by George Houston, an English immigrant, who attracted a group of professionals, mostly journalists and lawyers, and their families. But a schism developed between those who leaned toward the atheistic convictions of Houston and those who did not. The community lasted five months.72

New Harmony and Owenite Communities 17 Another Hudson valley colony was formed on a 325-acre farm near Coxsackie in December 1825. Called the Forestville Community, its organizers were local men who had been in contact with the New York City Owenites. It held together until October 1827.73 In Ohio, the Friendly Association for Mutual Interests was established in May 1826 when 29 families agreed to a "Bond of Social Compact." They pledged to pool their assets to purchase 2,000 acres in Kendal, a town in Perry Township, Stark County, near the town of Massillon. Unlike the New Harmony population or the city-raised colonists of the Franklin Community, the Friendly Association was made up of people from the area who knew and trusted one another and who had willingly turned over their own farms for the down payment on the land. Such a stake in the success of the community helped the participants to avoid dissension, and for a while it worked. They put up buildings, planned craft industries, and reported weekly income from emerging businesses. Two years later, in May 1828, they drew up a revised constitution. But individualism eventually surfaced. Without acrimony, on January 3, 1829, the colonists voted to dissolve.74 Near Cincinnati, an Owenite colony was founded at Yellow Springs at a site occupied later by Antioch College. Formed by a Swedenborgian minister, Daniel Roe, and visited by both Brown and Maclure, it was advertised in July 1825 with an announcement in the Cincinnati Literary Gazette. The small group had paid $4,000, half the purchase price, for 720 acres. By July 1826 it had nine working-class members and an equally small number of "original purchasers" who operated a hotel at the Springs. When Maclure came there that month, he tried unsuccessfully to bring the two groups together but went away convinced that the situation was hopeless. He was right. On January 3, 1827, the community dissolved.75 Owen's ideas inspired a daring communal experiment in racial equality at Nashoba, Tennessee by Frances Wright. A young daughter of a wealthy Scottish merchant, she had been connected with reform movements in the United States during the first two decades of the nineteenth century.76 When Owen was in Washington, D.C., in 1824, she met him and proposed a Western Utopia as the solution to the problem of slavery. She envisioned a scheme of gradual emancipation where the slaves would settle in cooperative villages and be trained for freedom. Miss Wright went to New Harmony twice, in September 1825 and June 1826, and during the second visit she worked closely with Owen and Maclure and saw Utopian communalism in operation. She completely accepted Owen's radical views on community property, religion, and sexual equality. She next contacted George Flower at nearby Prairie Albion and together they designed a community where slaves would work toward being able to earn a living as free citizens. In the summer of 1825, she published^ Plan for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in the United States without Danger ofLoss to the Citizens of the South. She asked for direct federal support through a Congres-

18 Communal Utopias and the American Experience sional grant of public lands throughout the South where identical experimental villages such as the one she was about to start could be built. Each community, she calculated, could operate with an investment of $41,000 and the annual profits would be $10,000 after expenses. They would house 100 slaves who would be trained for an emancipation that could be achieved in five to ten years. The freed slaves, though, eventually were to be shipped back to Africa. In November 1825, she started to erect her village at a 300-acre plantation in Shelby County, Tennessee, 14 miles from Memphis. Within months she had purchased an additional 2,000 acres. By early 1826 other supporters had moved there, including her sister and George Flower and his family. In the spring of 1827, Robert Dale Owen came down from New Harmony. In the beginning there were about a dozen slaves at Nashoba, either purchased or donated. Soon, however, Miss Wright, calling herself the "Priestess of Beelzebub," abandoned her African colonization scheme altogether. She predicted that although the present generation of whites and freed slaves might not live together, the children of the community, both black and white, through education could learn to accept racial equality. Nashoba had no religious principles and, instead, stressed "the liberty of the mind" which, among other things, allowed white men to have sexual intercourse with slave women. To justify the miscegenation and to respond to outsiders (mainly Southerners who wanted no scheme of black emancipation to take root in their region) who criticized the whole purpose of the colony, Wright, in December 1827, wrote a series of letters in which she defended what she called the "moral liberty" and the "free exercise of the liberty of speech and of action." But by the winter of 1828 she realized that most Americans were horrified at what was going on at Nashoba, some denouncing it as "one great brothel." So she and Robert Dale Owen published the "Communication from the Trustees of Nashoba." They said that they were attempting to "form a community of equality and of common property" that, they confessed, faced "many difficulties." As a result of these difficulties, they were abandoning communitarianism and "claim for the association only the title of a preliminary SOCIAL COMMUNITY." 77 In the 1830s, Robert Dale Owen, as editor of The Free Enquirer, proposed a "state guardianship" of education, or the establishment of a public school for children of workers where they would be freed from the nefarious influences of the factory. Living in a free boarding school, they would be trained both intellectually and manually in an environment of equality. Hopefully, as graduates, these new citizens could then start remaking the institutions of the world. But his father's vision of a communal Utopia, a model for immediate social reform, had evaporated; and the son had completely discarded his father's communitarian faith.78 Even though Robert Owen's vision of an immediate secular Utopia was in tatters by the time he returned to England, his ideas about communalism

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revived in America after the financial panic of 1837. Pitzer claims that Owen's influence accounted for 19 communities in the United States by the end of the 1840s. 79 Regardless of the subsequent impact of N e w Harmony, there is n o doubt that Owen had introduced Americans to the basic tenets of communal utopianism. T h e concepts he experimented with on the banks of the Wabash—that institutions foster the individual personality, that communal labor was the only way to have social harmony, that common property was essential to the elimination of selfishness and competition, that the community itself was a paradigm of universal reform where society would be radically altered without violence—all laid the foundation for the growth of Utopian socialism throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century.

NOTES 1. Arthur Bestor Jr., Backwoods Utopias: The Sectarian and Owenite Phases of Communitarian Socialism in America, 1663-1829 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950; 2nd enlarged edition, 1970), p. 20. In addition to Bestor's pioneering work, the most recent treatment of Owen's communal experiment is found in Donald E. Pitzer, "The New Moral World of Robert Owen and New Harmony," in Donald E. Pitzer, ed., Americas Communal Utopias (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), pp. 88-134. A fuller history of Owenite socialism in Great Britain and the United States is John E C. Harrison, Quest for the New Moral World: Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America (New York: Scribner, and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969). Of special value to scholars is Harrison's 106-page bibliography that covers other bibliographies, manuscript collections, Owen's publications, and secondary works on Owen, such as books, pamphlets, articles, and works by Owenites and contemporaries. Bestor's Backwoods Utopias contains an Appendix (pp. 235-43) that is a checklist of communitarian experiments in America up to 1858. Scholars of Owen and New Harmony should be aware that the University Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has microfilm copy of the complete collection of the "Robert Owen Correspondence" that is housed in the Manchester Co-operative Union Library, Manchester, England. Useful articles are Lucyjayne Botscharow, "Disharmony in Utopia: Social Categories in Robert Owen's New Harmony," Communal Societies: Journal of the National Historic Communal Societies Association 9 (1989): pp. 7690 and Lucy Jane Kamau, "The Anthropology of Space in Harmonist and Owenite New Harmony," Communal Societies 12 (1992): pp. 68-89. In 1984 Communal Societies had published three articles on Owenism. These are Josephine Mirabella Elliott, "Madame Marie Fretageot: Communitarian Educator," pp. 167-82; Celia Morris Eckhardt, "Fanny Wright: Rebel & Communitarian Reformer," pp. 182-93; and John E C. Harrison, "Owenite Communitarianism in Britain and America," pp. 243-48. 2. Pitzer, "New Moral World," p. 122; Brian J. L. Berry, Americas Utopian Experiments: Communal Havens from Long-Wave Crises (Hanover, N H : University Press of New England, 1992), pp. 56-57. 3. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 1. 4. Ibid., p. 9; Harrison, Quest, pp. 47-52. For a useful analysis of Owen's ideas, see

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Harrison, "Owenite Communitarianism in Britain and America," Communal Societies 4 (1984): pp. 243-48. 5. Robert Owen, The Life of Robert Owen, Written by Himself, With Selections From His Writings and Correspondence, two vols. (London: Effmgham Wilson, 1857-58; reprinted New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1967), p. 22. 6. Rowland Hill Harvey, Robert Owen: Social Idealist (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949), pp. 1-7; Seymour R. Kesten, Utopian Episodes: Daily Life in Experimental Colonies Dedicated to Changing the World (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1993), pp. 11-12; Pitzer, "New Moral World," p. 89; Berry, Utopian Experiments, pp. 56-57. 7. Pitzer, "New Moral World," pp. 92-95. 8. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 62; Harrison, Quest, pp. 151-54; Harvey, Robert Owen, pp. 12-19. 9. Pitzer, "New Moral World," pp. 92-95. 10. Harrison, Quest, pp. 154-63; Pitzer, "New Moral World," pp. 99-100; Harvey, Robert Owen, pp. 36-49. 11. Harrison, Quest, pp. 12, 22-23, 28, 33, 48, 79; Berry, Utopian Experiments, p. 57. 12. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 82; Harvey, Owen, pp. 85-89; Pitzer, "New Moral World," p. 103. 13. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 84. 14. Ibid., p. 91. 15. Ibid., p. 92. 16. Pitzer, "New Moral World," pp. 103-5. 17. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 101; Berry, Utopian Experiments, pp. 58-59; Yaacov Oved, Two Hundred Years of American Communes (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1988), pp. 109-10. 18. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 102; Pitzer, "New Moral World," p. 105; Harrison, Quest, p. 163; Anne Taylor, Visions of Harmony: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Millenarianism (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 74-75. 19. Pitzer, "New Moral World," p. 105; Harvey, Robert Owen, pp. 92-93; Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 102-17; Harrison, Quest, p. 163. 20. Harvey, Robert Owen, pp. 93-97; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 110-11; George B. Lockwood, The New Harmony Movement (New York: Appleton, 1905; reprinted, New York: Dover, 1971), pp. 69-81. 21. Pitzer, "New Moral World," p. 113. 22. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 118-19, points out that these regulations were a restatement of the ones he had published in Dublin in 1823, a complete copy of which is in the University of Illinois Library, Urbana-Champaign. 23. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 119-20; Pitzer, "New Moral World," pp. 113-14; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 111-12; Lockwood, New Harmony Movement, pp. 8 3 91; Harvey, Robert Owen, pp. 105-7. 24. Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 112-13; Harvey, Robert Owen, pp. 134—44; Berry, Utopian Experiments, pp. 62-63. 25. Quoted in Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 131; Harvey, Robert Owen, pp. 134-44; Berry, Utopian Experiments, pp. 62-63. 26. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 132. 27. Ibid., pp. 110, 114—16, 121-22, 129-30, 160-64, 185-86; Kesten, Utopian Epi-

New Harmony and Owenite Communities

21

sodes, pp. 61, 150; Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 111; Harvey, Robert Owen, p. 112; Taylor, Visions of Harmony, pp. 108, 110, 123. 28. Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 113-16; Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 161-70. 29. Pitzer, "New Moral World," pp. 114-17; Lockwood, New Harmony Movement, pp. 209-93; Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 113-59. 30. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 142. 31. Ibid., pp. 118-21, 164-76, 173-74, 182-83. 32. Pitzer, "New Moral World,' pp. 119-20; Lockwood, New Harmony Movement, pp. 186-208. 33. Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 117; Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 168-70. 34. New-Harmony Gazette, February 1, 1826; Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 171-72. 35. New-Harmony Gazette, February 15, 1826; Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 172-74. 36. New-Harmony Gazette, March 29, 1826; Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 176. 37. New-Harmony Gazette, April 12, 1826; March 19, 1828; April 16, 1828; Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 176-78. 38. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 178. 39. Ibid., pp. 178-79. 40. Ibid., p. 182. Bestor notes that Pears and his family departed from New Harmony that spring. 41. New-Harmony Gazette, May 17, 1826; Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 184. 42. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 185. 43. New-Harmony Gazette, June 7, 1826; Paul Brown, Twelve Months in New Harmony (Cincinnati, 1827; Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1972), pp. 18-19, 23-25. See Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 187, n. 95 on the provenance of Brown's diary, the main historical source for New Harmony between April 2, 1826, and June 2, 1827. 44. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 186-87. 45. Ibid., p. 187; Lockwood, New Harmony Movement, p. 149; Brown, Twelve Months, pp. 10, 17, 27. 46. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 188; Brown, Twelve Months, pp. 1-18, 67-70, 8594, 119-28. 47. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 190. 48. Ibid, p. 191. 49. Brown, Twelve Months, pp. 140-41; New-Harmony Gazette, August 9-30, 1826; Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 193. 50. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 193, 196-97; Pitzer, "New Moral World," p 121. 51. New-Harmony Gazette, August 15, 1827; Brown, Twelve Months, pp. 97-98; Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 197. 52. Pitzer, "New Moral World," pp. 115-16. 53. Harrison, Quest, pp. 139-47; Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 155-58, 192-93; Elliott, "Madame Marie Fretageot," pp. 176-77. 54. W. H. G. Armytage, Heavens Below: Utopian Experiments in England, 1560-1960 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961), p. 125; Elliott, "Madame Marie Fretageot," pp. 177-78. For an explanation of Maclure's, and Owen's, interest in starting a community in Mexico, see Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 216. 55. Pitzer, "New Moral World," p. 115. 56. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 198. 57. Ibid, p. 194.

22

Communal Utopias and the American Experience

58. Brown, Twelve Months, p. 88. 59. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 195. 60. New-Harmony Gazette, May 9, 1827. 61. Brown, Twelve Months, p. 122. 62. New-Harmony Gazette, July 12, 1826; Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 222; Lockwood, New Harmony Movement, pp. 190-91. 63. The address was printed in the New Harmony Gazette, May 9, 1827; Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 196-201. 64. New-Harmony Gazette, May 27 and May 30, 1827. 65. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in Sociological Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 123. 66. Alice Felt Tyler, Freedoms Ferment: Phases of American Social History from the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), p. 204. 67. Brown, Twelve Months, pp. 98-128. 68. Quoted in Tyler, Freedoms Ferment, p. 206. 69. Ibid, p. 206. For a thoughtful appraisal of the reasons for the failure of New Harmony, see Pitzer, "New Moral Order," pp. 107-12. 70. It was also called the Kendal Community. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 202-3. 71. Ibid, pp. 213-14. 72. Ibid, pp. 203-4. 73. Ibid, pp. 204-5. 74. Ibid, pp. 205-7. 75. Ibid, pp. 210-13. 76. The early life of this fascinating six-foot woman with a booming voice is covered in Morris Eckhardt, "Fanny Wright," pp. 182-85 and in Morris Eckhardt's booklength treatment of the reformer, Fanny Wright: Rebel in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984; reprinted Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992). See also Richard Stiller, Commune on the Frontier: The Story of Frances Wright (New York: Crowell, 1972). 77. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 221, 223-26; Pitzer, "New Moral World," pp. 11819; Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 125; Tyler, Freedoms Ferment, pp. 206-11. 78. Pitzer, "New Moral World," pp. 117-18. 79. Ibid, p. 122. Bestor has a thoughtful analysis of Owen's influence on American communalism in Backwoods Utopias, chapter 8: "The Owenite Legacy."

CHAPTER 2

Utopian Socialist Communities Albert Brisbane, a disciple of Fourier, replaced Robert Owen as the apostle of Utopian socialism in the United States in the 1830s. Reacting to the dislocations of the financial panic of 1837, the first industrial depression in America, he helped organize thirty communities from Massachusetts through Illinois to eastern Iowa. Supported by Horace Greeley and the New York Tribune, according to Carl J. Guarneri, he "created a burst of Fourierist activity . . . almost overnight."1 Charles Fourier, Brisbane's inspiration, was born in 1772 in Besancon, France, the only son of a wealthy cloth merchant, and was raised in a comfortable bourgeois lifestyle. At the age of twenty-seven, though, Napoleon's government confiscated the family estate and he had to make a living as a salesman. In his spare time young Fourier developed an interest in city planning and its social consequences, especially the elimination of overcrowding and the control of fire and disease. In 1808, he published a massive book containing his theory of political and social institutions entitled Theorie des quatre mouvements et des destinies generales (Theory of Four Movements and of General Destinies). Eight years later he composed Le nouveau monde amoureux (The Loving New World) followed in 1829 by Le nouveau monde industriel et societaire (The Industrial Associations of the New World).2 In these books he critiqued modern industrial "civilization" from top to bottom, condemning it as totally corrupt and based upon fraud and exploitation. It had evolved, he proposed, through stages of Edenism, Savagery, Patriarchy, and Barbarism, before reaching its present state of "Civilization." This last, "perverse" stage was an amalgam of avarice, the "isolated household," and the cupidity of "commercial capitalism." Even the Catholic Church was decrepit and morally perverted. Civilization could be saved, however, by

24

Communal Utopias and the American Experience

totally replacing corruption with cooperation. Only then could mankind, starting with the seed of cooperative "Associations," move through 32 new phases over a span of 80,000 years to perfection. These future stages included Guarantism, Sociantism, and the final epoch, Harmony. In the meantime, before the arrival of Harmony—which he predicted would endure 60,000 years and bring about "mature happiness"—humans should live in "phalanxes," a term borrowed from military history. Fourier's phalanx was a 4,000-acre community where 1,600 people dwelled in a single building, the center of which was linked by corridors to "galleries of association" or places for meetings and children's residences. Here men and women enjoyed the delights of promiscuous sex. Adults worked at a variety of constantly changing jobs in the shops, fields, and orchards and developed talents unique to their personalities and abilities. Fourier foresaw the construction of two million phalanxes that eventually would eliminate national boundaries. The world would then be a Utopia. Humans, having developed "long and useful tails," would live in an "Italian climate" surrounded by cuddly animals. All conflicts between rich and poor would be eliminated.3 Fourier's followers, led by Victor Considerant, published a weekly newspaper, the Phalanstere, and in 1832 built an experimental phalanx called the colonie societaire (societary colony) near Paris. But constant quarrels between the "cosmopolitan theorists" and the "pragmatic provincials," as both groups in the colony called themselves, forced it to close down within months. Fourier was furious at the squabbling and died a disillusioned man in October 1837. Before then, however, he had met the eager young Brisbane, who four years earlier had come to Paris to study the ideas of Utopian socialism.4 Brisbane was born in Batavia, New York, in 1809, the son of a well-to-do land agent and storekeeper. His mother, an imaginative reader of history, captivated her young son with vivid tales of ancient cultures. Brisbane grew up with "a habit of independence from worldly cares, a passion for speculation . . . and indifference to organized religion."5 At the age of seventeen his father sent him to New York for an education, then to Europe for a tour that took him to the University of Berlin, and then to the Middle East. Seeking an intellectual system that would solve the world's problems, he went through a "metaphysical windmill." He ended up in early 1833 at Paris where, after a flirtation with Saint-Simonian socialism, he "decided that Fourierism had given him his life's work."6 In 1834, he returned to New York to translate Fourier's books and start a Fourierist newspaper. For a while, however, he was distracted by land speculation and invested heavily in western lands, expecting to make a fortune that would finance the phalanxes. He wrote to Fourier and Considerant that the money would also allow him to underwrite socialist journals. Unfortunately, the Panic of 1837 "burst Brisbane's speculative bubble, as it did many others."7 Living modestly on family money, he finished translating Fourier's works and

Utopian Socialist Communities 25 in 1840 published his version of them in The Social Destiny of Man, or Association and Reorganization of Industry.9, This 480-page tract was one-half excerpts from Fourier's writings and onehalf Brisbane's ideas. In the first part of the book he simplified and clarified the Frenchman's complicated theories and adapted them to his audience. For example, Americans never were exposed to Fourier's radical ideas on free love or that humans would have tails. Rather, Brisbane told his readers that Fourier wanted every person to have the right to a fair share of the products of his or her labor. Concentration of wealth in the hands of the capitalists must be eliminated to allow the majority to escape poverty. Brisbane stressed that Fourier only hoped to reform capitalism, not to destroy it, and to eliminate its destructive impact on health, literature, and the arts.9 The book was an instant success and became, in Guarneri's judgment, "the most complete and authoritative account of Fourierism to appear in English during the 1840s."10 It received favorable reviews in journals and newspapers. Brisbane sent copies to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nicholas Biddle, the exdirector of the Bank of the United States. He convinced Orestes Bronson to print articles on Fourierism in the Boston Quarterly Review and the Dial. Most significantly, in the fall of 1840 he allied with Horace Greeley, editor of the New Yorker magazine, and with Greeley's financial support, published the Future, a periodical committed to the "cause of Association and a Reorganization of Society." It advertised weekly meetings and lectures and helped create the Fourier Association of the City of New York. The Future, however, was discontinued after two years because of the lack of subscription revenue. Greeley then let Brisbane write a front-page column for his new daily newspaper, the New York Tribune. This column, entitled "Association; or, principles of a True Organization of Society," reached "thousands of reform-minded Americans throughout the northern states frequently and inexpensively."11 In 1843, he collected some of the columns into a pamphlet, Association, or a Concise Exposition of the Practical Part of Fourier's Social Science, that sold 10,000 copies. Also in that year, Brisbane went on a lecture tour in upstate New York and attracted enthusiastic audiences of workers, businessmen, and farmers.12 By the time the pamphlet appeared, Brisbane had organized a national Fourier Association that soon included Charles Dana, Parker Goodwin, Osborne Macdaniel, George Ripley, William Henry Channing, John Dwight, and labor leader Lewis Ryckman. These men, and Greeley's newspaper, "kept Fourierism in the reform spotlight; their decisions shaped movement policy, and their endorsement lent intellectual prestige to the cause."13 In the fall of 1842, Brisbane announced in the Tribune his plans for the first American phalanx; and the following spring he published a detailed description of the project in A Concise Exposition of the Doctrine ofAssociation, or Plan for the Re-organization of Society. He wanted the "establishment of one Association, which will serve as a model for, and induce the rapid establishment of others." The community would have 400 resident members, although some shareholders, called exter-

26 Communal Utopias and the American Experience nal members, would not necessarily have to live there. He estimated the cost would be between $400,000 and $500,000 with the capital raised by selling shares of stock at $1,000 each.14 Brisbane soon met opposition. Protestant clergy attacked Fourier's ideas against monogamy. Catharine Beecher said that the phalanx was more like a Catholic convent than the "Protestant system" of family life. But many Americans saw Brisbane's Fourierism as the solution to the growing evils of capitalism. Unskilled laborers expected that it would make them partners in owning factories and that they themselves would become entrepreneurs. Farmers saw it as a way to eliminate the need for hired hands. Middle-class Americans believed that it was a "deliverance from the salaried bondage."15 Intellectual idealists embraced it as the answer, overnight, to America's social ills. For a fortuitous combination of reasons, therefore, so many people became interested in Utopian socialism that in May 1843 Greeley could state that 12 phalanxes were already being built. He reported that thousands of other reformers were meeting to plan new ones in 10 states. In October, Brisbane started a semi-monthly journal called the Phalanx, which, for the next six years, was the journal of a burgeoning movement. It printed articles by Brisbane and Greeley, of course, but also by Channing, Elijah P. Grant, and Henry James Sr. (father of the novelist). It promoted the organization of a national confederation of phalanxes to coordinate doctrine and sponsor local clubs. It called for a General Convention to meet in Manhattan in April 1844 to adopt Fourier's doctrines and to discuss rules for organizing communities. The convention, Brisbane claimed, would also develop better ways to finance the phalanxes to avoid premature collapses that might damage the reputation of Fourierism in the public eye. It would promote trade and commerce among existing communities through a "union of Associations."16 But by that spring difficulties appeared. First of all, Brisbane, confident that American Fourierism was moving on its own momentum, left for an eightmonth visit to France. His absence was unfortunate because no full-time leader came forward to replace him, and without his presence the movement faltered. More upsetting, information received by the Phalanx showed that the Associations were dismal failures. Of 25 phalanxes begun in 1843, only 10 were barely functioning a year later. The idea of a national confederation was dropped. Donations and subscriptions to the Phalanx dwindled and Charles Dana predicted that the "sickly" journal would have to be shut down. Disenchantment set in across the country and only four communities lasted long enough to leave a viable historical record: the Wisconsin Phalanx, the North American Phalanx, Brook Farm, and La Reunion.17 SHORT-LIVED FOURIERIST UTOPIAS A survey of the other short-lived Fourierist settlements in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa illustrates the precarious nature

Utopian Socialist Communities 21 of Brisbane's communal crusade. Brian J. L. Berry thought that these communities shared a number of fatal defects. Most were unable to raise enough money to acquire sufficient land and property on which to build a community; they were led by urban idealists who had no experience either in running a farm or in operating workshops and mills; and none had a charismatic leader with any sense of planning and direction.18 Dolores Hayden has described the promoters of these phalanxes—as opposed to the people who actually lived in them—as a "cast of a stock political melodrama"; an odd assortment of eccentric geniuses and well-to-do-intellectuals who naively accepted Fourier's scheme for a phalanx without any realization that such a grandiose plan might be impractical.19 All the phalanxes accepted a heterogeneous group of settlers who were unable to develop any sense of community and, as in New Harmony, fought constantly among themselves. Finally, when economic good times started to return in the late 1840s, many people who had initially been attracted to Fourierism began to look again for opportunities in American capitalism. Moreover, they tended to reject Brisbane's assessment of free enterprise as "industrial feudalism" and saw their country once again as a "political and economic miracle."20 Pennsylvania Phalanxes In May 1843, a group of 150 factory workers from New York City and Albany, financed by Greeley, announced the creation of the "Sylvania Association" in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. They described it as the first step in dealing with "the present defective, vice engendering" social system. They hated the ruinous competition of the factory that led to constant unemployment and hunger. They lamented the lack of education of children who grew up in "ignorance and vice." By August, 40 men had put up two buildings on the site and that month a total of 13 7 men, women, and children moved there. But overcrowding and lack of food immediately caused tension. The real problem, however, was that they were temperamentally unsuited for communal life and had no leader. In the spring of 1845 they returned to their jobs and homes.21 In a remote area of Monroe County, 40 workers and their families had also started a phalanx in 1843, on 800 acres of forestland. They planted crops and grew enough corn to pay off their financial obligations. But they could not attract new settlers, and the harshness of the living conditions caused them to abandon the colony the next spring. Also in 1843, six other tiny phalanxes appeared, and then ceased operating, in the Keystone State. Sparse information survives on just two of them, in Pike and Warren counties. Twenty Brooklyn workers planned the community in Pike County and printed a constitution to attract members, but when no one signed up they disbanded. German colonists led by Andreas Bernhardus Smolnikar, an Austrian professor of Biblical studies, purchased

10,000 acres in Warren County. Smolnikar preached the coming of universal

28 Communal Utopias and the American Experience peace and traveled throughout the commonwealth trying to enlist recruits. But no further record survives of this phalanx.22 New York Phalanxes At Rochester in August 1843, a convention of Fourierists discussed the creation of phalanxes. Their first project, Ontario Union, was only ever discussed and never became a reality. The Clarkson Association, another project of the Rochester meeting, was organized in February 1844. It was to be a series of phalanxes on the outskirts of the city. A pamphlet advertised it as a heaven on earth on 2,000 acres of land on the shore of Lake Ontario. An anticipated capital investment of $95,000 would finance the construction of housing, barns, a mill, and other structures that members would use in common. There would be religious toleration. Men and women above the age of eighteen could vote. Members could keep their personal property but the land would be worked communally. A board of elected trustees would run the Association and keep track of money the members might want to contribute. By May, 420 colonists had arrived. But their religious diversity caused immediate dissension and the Association dissolved early in 1845.23 In April 1844, at Sodus Bay, also located on the eastern shore of Lake Ontario, some 300 settlers, mainly farmers, agreed to purchase for $35,000 a former Shaker village, with orchards and fertile land as well as barns, sheds, a flour-saw mill, and buildings for 30 families. Although morale was high, they failed to develop any sense of community and began to bicker. Because of wide unemployment along the Erie Canal due to the Panic of 1837, some 260 indolent and desperate vagrants soon crowded into the compound. A dispute broke out over housing. Some complained that the work assignments were never rotated. They disagreed about when to celebrate the Sabbath and how to teach their children. Members secretly sold off communal property and in November seven individuals were expelled for the infraction. Others were charged with stealing tools and other items. The colony was unable to sell enough stock subscriptions to meet the first mortgage payment of $9,500, due in 1846. Forty-nine residents contracted typhoid, probably brought on by the overcrowding. On April 17, 1846, the 13 members who remained signed a document that dissolved the community and divided the assets. "By 1847," Bestor concluded, "the Sodus Bay Phalanx was a bitter memory, which even its friends tried hard to forget."24 Ohio Phalanxes In 1841 a group of socialists met at the Brooke family farm near the Ohio River to discuss the problems facing American workers; they concluded that communal living presented the only hope of improvement. The family donated its property for the creation of the Marlborough Association. Most

Utopian Socialist Communities 29 members were poor laborers and hoped that the community would provide them with a better living. The Association acquired other nearby farms as donations and for a while things seemed stable. In 1843, they adopted a Fourierist constitution. But their leader, Dr. Brooke, demanded true communism, resented Fourier's compromise with capitalism, and left the community. The others stayed until 1845 and lived a simple communal life without money.25 Fourierists from Pittsburgh planned the Ohio Phalanx on 20,000 acres of land on the Ohio River for $69,000. Led by Elijah P. Grant and H. H. Van Amringe, they announced the association in the December 1843 issue of the Phalanx in which they emphasized the excellent location of the community, close to large urban markets and the National Road. It would have a central phalanstery for living accommodations and cultural activities. They promised religious toleration and the combining of industry and agriculture. They predicted that between 400 and 1,600 people would join the community, but only 120 individuals, all without capital to invest, responded to the announcement. The phalanx was soon in desperate straits and the residents realized they had tried too much with too little. In May 1845 it dissolved.26 The Trumbull Phalanx appeared in northeastern Ohio in 1844. Also advertised in the Phalanx, it too was to be a community of between 400 and 1,600 people living in harmony with religious toleration and cooperative labor in industry and agriculture. But it recruited only 200 colonists who, as in the Ohio Phalanx, had no money to invest and were barely able to meet the single admission requirement of buying a share of stock at $25. With the arrival in 1845 of a few wealthy recruits from Pittsburgh, it seemed to get off the ground. But by 1847 it was obvious that the capital advanced by the affluent Pittsburgh members could not sustain the community. In December it disbanded.27 In 1843, New Yorkers began a phalanx in Logan County, called the Prairie Home Community, as a colony of 130 farmers settled in forested hilly land. German socialists who lived nearby joined them. Nevertheless, it dissolved within a year. The last Ohio phalanx was started as a communal farm in May 1844 on 900 acres, 30 miles from Cincinnati. Without a name, it ceased operating in 1846.28 Indiana and Illinois Phalanxes Inspired by Fourierist settlements in Ohio, a few socialists in Indiana and Illinois tried to form associations, with much the same disappointments. In the fall of 1843, the Phalanx advertised an Indiana community of 30 families living in a two-story building near La Grange. Visitors described an amiable group of diligent farmers who raised good crops. But no further information about the settlement ever surfaced, and by the fall of 1846 it had ceased operating.29 The Bureau County Phalanx, the first experiment in the Prairie State, was started in 1843 and died the same year. The Bond County Fourier Association, pledged to improve "the physical, intellectual, social and moral

30 Communal Utopias and the American Experience condition of society," appeared in 1844. These idealists from the town of Greenville subscribed to a $15,000 investment in land and livestock but never actually started a community. In 1845, the Canton Phalanx appeared in Fulton County but dissolved within months, as did the Sangamon County Phalanx, also started that year near Springfield. Its members then joined the nearby Integral Phalanx, an association led by abolitionist John S. Williams of Cincinnati. But it lasted for only a year and a half, and ceased operating for reasons unknown.30 Iowa Phalanxes Iowa, being more sparsely settled and with cheaper land, attracted Fourierists throughout the 1840s. Communia (Kommunia) was built in 1847 by German- and Swiss-American reformers who planned a phalanx in Clayton County next to some German farms. It practiced a communalism based upon the teachings of Andreas Dietsch. He believed that in the perfect society everyone should be a farmer, work according to their own talents, and follow the Bible as a guide to personal conduct. Property, he said, must be held in common to avoid selfishness. When Wilhelm Weitling, a Prussian tailor, came to Communia in 1851, important changes took place. Unlike his friend Dietsch, Weitling hoped that organized, skilled workers could form communal societies as a haven from the evils of capitalism. Weitling convinced Communia to support his "labor league plan" and accept artisans. That year they developed a new set of rules for the "Communia Working Men's League." They discarded the religious emphasis and adopted an association, in the words of the document, "to carry on . . . every kind of agricultural, industrial, commercial, and other business and to conform and distribute it amongst themselves, according to the proportionate equal interest of all the Members and Shareholders."31 In 1853, it numbered 61 people who lived on a 1,240-acre site. By that time, though, the usual problems appeared: inadequate capital and quarrels among the residents, both exacerbated by Weitling's continued absences. Over the next decade members departed and the Clayton County court dissolved the community in 1864. Other experiments in Utopian Fourierism dotted Iowa. In 1844, Fourierists from Cold Water, New York, started the Iowa Pioneer Phalanx in Scott Township, Mahaska County, by putting up crude log structures along the Des Moines River about nine miles from the town of Oskaloosa. In September, Benjamin Spaulding, a member of the "Iowa Band" of missionaries from Andover Theological Seminary, visited the colony and wrote about a community with a mill with which they expected to start a "splendid manufacturing establishment." Their adjoining cabins created "a little city in the wilderness." They had a farm and livestock and shared all property communally. "They believe," Spaulding wrote, "in common with the founder of their system, that most of the evils which we suffer, social and moral, spring solely from the

Utopian Socialist Communities 31 jarring of individual interests, and would at once disappear under a proper organization of society." Their motto was: "Love thy neighbor as thyself."32 Not enough love appeared to sustain the effort, though, and it was gone in a matter of months. A tiny phalanx called the Hopewell Colony formed when a dozen families from the town of Farmington bought cheap prairie land nearby. Led by Hiram Lamb, they reached the site in the winter of 1851 and built a log cabin. It lasted only a year because "every man wants to boss his own work and do as he pleased." The families then moved back to town. "Individualism," commented H. Roger Grant, "not altruism, filled the true soul of the Hopewellians."33

LONGER-LIVED FOURIERIST UTOPIAS The Wisconsin Phalanx In December 1843, Warren Chase, a spiritualist turned social reformer, invited working men and women and some professionals from Kenosha to form an association on 2,000 acres of land in Fond du Lac County in central Wisconsin. By the spring of 1844 they had adopted a constitution for the "Wisconsin Phalanx," chosen officers, and raised over $1,000. In May, eight men traveled the 125 miles to the sparsely settled part of the state, and in the fall 80 people, most of them religious liberals like Chase, moved from Kenosha to the colony and formed a community based on agriculture and industry. Only adult men could vote and no woman was ever elected an officer, although some did serve on committees dealing with kitchen and housekeeping duties. Admission requirements were modest. One had to know something about Fourier's ideas, be of good character, have a skill useful to the colony, and invest $100 in cash or property in the association. Every new member went through a four-month probation period. Still, 60 percent of all applicants were accepted. By the following summer 180 colonists, many from the revivalist areas of New York and Vermont, joined the Phalanx. These staunch fundamentalists, Methodists and Baptists, started weekly church services and a Sunday school. They also wanted to prohibit alcohol. Chase and the liberals, though, wanted to replace the church services with weekly fellowships on Swedenborg's ideas, and to organize seances. By 1846, Guarneri wrote, the two sides "settled down to an uneasy truce, but religious tensions underlay continuing disputes."34 Despite these disruptions, the Wisconsin Phalanx prospered. Membership was static: a total of 259 people lived in the community and the average population was about 150 members with an annual turnover of about 12 percent. They had a dining hall and a Long House, a 200-foot, two-story apartment building with galleries off each unit. They raised wheat, the colony's most important source of income, as well as corn, potatoes, beans, peas, and hay

32 Communal Utopias and the American Experience for livestock. Every year they gave one-fourth of the community's profits to shareholders as dividends. Each family could decide either to prepare their own meals or use the dining hall. They also could choose to live in the Long House or in separate cottages that were built for them during the first year. Most families decided on private dwellings rather than "unitary living." And those who stayed in the Long House usually prepared their own meals and ate in their rooms. The Phalanx classified all work into groups of "Necessity" (stoneworking and digging), "Usefulness" (farm, shop work, and bookkeeping), and "Attractiveness" (domestic chores and the work of the officers). Tasks were rotated and labor credited at a rate of 75 cents for a 10-hour day. Membership in a work group was voluntary, but if not enough people joined a group Chase assigned the necessary help. The group elected its foreman who each evening gave out the next day's assignments. However, these foremen met resistance when they tried to evaluate workers in terms of skill and efficiency, and ran into trouble with artisans who wanted a higher rate of pay than farmers. On the positive side, the community was a refuge for single parents, widows, and widowers. As Isabella Town, a Milwaukee widow, put it, the phalanx was "an ideal place for bringing up fatherless boys."35 Its prohibition of alcohol attracted young parents who wanted to raise their offspring in a moral environment. Education was free for all children, as was medical treatment for the sick and aged, though no physician ever joined the colony. Women taught children under the age of ten. Men instructed the older ones, and their academic training was supplemented by "industrial education," where they were organized into manual work groups and were given credit for jobs completed. After 1845, a number of issues led to the Wisconsin Phalanx's demise. Some members felt that private homes violated the true spirit of the Phalanx and they adopted a rule that everyone had to move into the Long House. Families began to leave immediately. Some individuals invested in other land and in organizing a party to go to California to join the gold rush. Such avarice caused one disgusted member to assert later that the Phalanx was destroyed by "the love of money." Chase himself put his frustration in poetic stanza: "Behold the struggle! the mad, selfish rush; For Shining baubles or a beggar's crust! . . .; Shut up the book; talk not of brotherhood; Man lives for self, not for the common good." Guarneri found that "the prospect of easy money proved far more enticing than the difficult process of establishing communal life."36 The 120 people left living there by 1849 were simple farmers and field hands whose limited intellectual interests left little time for discussions about, or interest in, Fourierism. In December, they elected a committee to dissolve the society without bothering to go to court to do it. By April 1850 it had sold the land and buildings and the men used the proceeds to set themselves up as businessmen and farmers. The Wisconsin community, according to

Utopian Socialist Communities 3 3 Yaacov Oved, became "the only one of the Fourier phalanxes that ended its life in profit for its members."37 North American Phalanx and Raritan Bay Union In 1843, a group of Fourierists from Albany and Troy, New York, started the longest-lived socialist Utopia, the North American Phalanx (NAP) in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Led by Charles Sears, a friend of Brisbane and Greeley, and supported by intelligent, practical, middle-class business people, it lasted until the winter of 1855. Brisbane first announced the NAP in the October 1842 issue of the New York Tribune when he asked individuals interested in a phalanx near New York City to contact him. Three months later he drew up the constitution, a document that allowed Brisbane and Greeley to raise a stock subscription of $200,000. In March 1843, Sears, with Brisbane's approval, formed the "Albany Branch of the North American Phalanx" and by late summer he had acquired a 67 3-acre farm at Red Bank, New Jersey, 40 miles south of New York City, for $14,000. Although Brisbane and

Greeley were annoyed at not being involved in the deal, they grudgingly

accepted what Sears had done.38 The NAP had much to recommend it. Its fertile acres were close to urban markets and near good roads and a river. One hundred slaves had worked the land it occupied until 1840 (New Jersey's gradual emancipation law allowed slavery in the state until then), and several former slaves were still there as tenants when Sears purchased it. Sears evicted them right away and forbade the use of black labor, slave or free. Guarneri, in explaining the decision to keep the phalanx racially "pure," claimed it was largely based on a fear of alienating investors. He admitted, however, that "though it was rarely primary . . . racial prejudice added its ugly weight to these forces."39 By September 1843 the first families arrived. Almost immediately a disagreement broke out between the elected president, Allen Warden, and the Executive Council over who should control work assignments. The dispute continued until the next spring when the Council prevailed and formed an "industrial organization in accordance as far as is practicable with the principles laid down by Fourier." Warden, fed up, moved back to Albany. By that time new houses had been constructed, workshops had been built, mills were in operation, and crops were ready for harvest. More families joined, many of them headed by experienced farmers and artisans, and they increased the population to 50 adults and 40 children.40 At Greeley's insistence the Council rigorously screened these recent arrivals. He wanted to be sure that people "destitute of means, of practical ability, or prudence, tact and common sense" did not contaminate the experiment. Every adult had to purchase stock and accept a probationary year during which time they were rotated through most of the assignments and judged by the existing members. After they proved their ability to work hard and get

34

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along, they could apply for formal membership. Such screening severely limited the NAP's growth. Some historians estimated that it could have supported a population of over 1,000 but never had more than 150 residents. Nevertheless, by selling most of their products—fruit, vegetables, and flour—in the New York City markets, by the end of 1843 they realized a $5,000 profit and used it to reduce the $14,000 mortgage. They started a horticultural operation with over 8,000 trees and vines and planted thousands of saplings in a nursery. They began raising livestock. By 1848 the NAP was a financial success, a model Fourierist association.41 Secure in their own minds of continued prosperity, they constructed a phalanstery: a three story, 150-foot long frame structure with rooms for 100 people. It was built according to Fourier's design. The ground floor contained a multipurpose parlor illuminated by a large picture window and wall paintings. It was used for meals for up to 200 people as well as for concerts and a theater. This floor had a reception room, offices, and a library. The second floor had family apartments and single rooms for unmarried members. To this central rectangle they added two wings connected to it by roofed corridors. In the ground floor of one wing they placed the laundry and dairy rooms and on the second floor a kitchen and dining room. Fourteen bedrooms were on the top floor. The second wing had eight family apartments and a sleeping loft. Life at the NAP was pleasant. It had a diverse membership of middle-class professionals, artisans, and farmers, and attracted a number of famous visitors. For example, Robert Owen came by during his last trip to the United States in 1844. A. J. Macdonald stayed there three times and boasted of its success. William Henry Channing, George Ripley, Charles Dana, and Henry James Sr. also visited. All described its pleasant, harmonious atmosphere. They depicted a spacious dining room where families sat at their own tables and selected well-prepared food from varied menus. Vegetarians were served special meals. Waitresses, all young women, took individual orders from a daily "bill of fare." They tallied the cost of the meal and at the end of the month gave an invoice to each individual or family. The expenses, including the food, laundry, and incidentals, ran monthly to about two dollars a person. Visitors were most curious about the "bloomers" worn by the women, essentially Turkish trousers under short skirts. The costume was advocated by Mrs. Amelia Jenks Bloomer, editor of the temperance magazine Lily, as a way of symbolizing the idea that women must emancipate themselves from maleimposed injustice, prejudice, and bigotry. One visitor in 1849 described NAP women as deeply involved in all aspects of community life. They discussed current events and attended lectures and debates on Fourierism. Unmarried females easily socialized with young men and felt that life was more fulfilling than anything they had known before joining the phalanx. Some married women, however, were less enthusiastic. They complained that the rooms were too small and that they spent too much time watching the children, cooking, and caring for the sick. They said that not enough was paid to

Utopian Socialist Communities

35

them or their husbands to cover the expense of raising their children since the community allocated only a partial subsidy for room and board. With large families and inadequate wages, they grumbled, "they could not hold their own." Sears's wife Gertrude conceded that women did "exhausting labor" and suffered "a long arrear of unfulfilled family and personal obligations."42 Obviously, the NAP, like other phalanxes, reflected the ambivalent male attitude toward gender roles in community. The men talked about female liberation and boasted that phalanx women were free to do productive work outside the home and participate in community decisions. Yet, they paternalistically hoped that their "natural female energy" would keep them focused on domestic chores, raising children, and religion. They saw the phalanx, Guarneri concluded, as "the communal 'home' of the future and women its guardians."43 In 1848, the NAP was organized into six work "series": agriculture, husbandry, industry, domestic service, education, and culture. Each individual chose which series he or she wished to join. In the evening an elected foreman assigned duties and posted them on a bulletin board. Sears remembered that some people "belonged to a number of groups whose labors succeeded each other; as in cases of emergency the forces of several series could be concentrated upon one detail to save a crop or bring up an arrear of work."44 Most enrolled in just two series. Men did farm and shop work and women took care of domestic chores and education. Only a handful of men helped in cooking and washing clothes. Women received a lesser wage per day than men until a change late in 1848 "narrowed the pay differential between predominantly male and female work."45 Artisans, as in other phalanxes, felt they should get more credit for their work than farmers and shop workers and began to take jobs outside the phalanx at market wages. In 1850, the foremen began to reward special skills by giving wage bonuses of up to 25 percent. They also devised a complicated Fourierist rating scale of performance where some artisans could get a 40 percent bonus. Members of the education series combined academic instruction with manual training. Under the leadership of Emile Guillaudeu, a physician, they built a one-room schoolhouse where several teachers instructed about twenty pupils in different age classifications. Elderly women took care of infants. Younger women instructed the three-to-six-year olds in basic reading and writing in a kindergarten. The other women taught children between six and twelve in academic subjects, industry, bookkeeping, and household duties. Each student was assigned to one of the work series and had to put in several hours a week on that job. Men taught teenagers a curriculum of academics and manual training. Adults could attend evening classes in mathematics, music, and foreign languages, hear lectures by members and visitors, and, according to Charles Dana, read stimulating material contained in their excellent library.46 The cultural series supplemented the educational series by arranging a wide

36

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assortment of social events, festivals, theatrical productions, concerts, dances, and picnics. In 1849, it organized a costume ball where members dressed to represent Fourier's stages of civilization, from Barbarism to Harmony. They held impromptu singing parties around a piano located in the parlor, set up card games, and went on after-dinner outings. Alcander Longley described one such outing in the August 1856 issue of the magazine Social Record. He was amazed that "nearly the whole population of the place is out of doors." He described "happy papas and mamas" walking their children, boys and girls frolicking under walnut trees, adults canoeing on a pond, small groups chatting together or resting on the grass, and young ladies in bloomers "strolling down the road toward the shaded avenue which leads to the highway."47 They held corn-husking bees to which they invited outsiders. They celebrated Fourier's birthday (April 7) by draping a banner in the dining hall that proclaimed "Universal Unity." They displayed a bust of Fourier, listened to speeches and toasts to the Frenchman's ideas, and joined in celebrating the arrival of the predicted Harmonic society. A May 1851 bee commemorating the opening of a new meeting hall in the phalanx was a three-day event, of which the highlight was a lecture by William Henry Channing. After the lecture, community officers discussed the history and development of the NAP. On July 4, the members marched in a parade with the American flag while the band played martial songs. Longley wrote that they had "swinging, singing, speaking, dancing, and a plentiful and delicious supper of the substantiate and desserts." Later that day they came back to the phalanstery and "spent the evening with dancing in the hall, music and sociable intercourse."48 At the NAP, as at the Wisconsin Phalanx, Guarneri found that "utopians enjoyed for a few fleeting years an appealing alternative to the 'Civilized' selfishness of antebellum America."49 The year 1852 was a halcyon time for them. Prosperity seemed assured and they were confident that their example would spread throughout the United States and lead workers to a new era of better living. Then disintegration began. One problem had been festering all along—the inability to recruit permanent members and to expand. In 1852, there were just 48 men, 37 women, and 27 children living at the NAP and turnover was constant. Each year they would take in about 50 probationary applicants but only a handful made it to full membership. The Phalanx could not attract families because of constant complaints about inadequate food and clothing. Doctrinal fights began in the spring of 1853 when Marcus Spring—the Quaker president of the New England Antislavery Society, friend of Emerson and Margaret Fuller, and wealthy benefactor to the colony—complained that there was almost no religious discussion or worship. He felt that the NAP needed a theological leader and should have a religious test for members. He challenged communal living and work and said that they should live in a "half-way means" and allow more individual freedom.50 In November 1852, Spring and 30 members marched off to start another

Utopian Socialist Communities 37 phalanx on a 268-acre estate called Eagleswood near Perth, New Jersey, overlooking Raritan Bay. He called it the Raritan Bay Union and received financial support from Channing and businessmen in New York City and Philadelphia. Spring raised $40,000 in stock and recruited an additional 24 residents. It was to be "an intermediate position between the North American Phalanx and ordinary society."51 He rejected Fourier's economic system and paid for work done in the shops, mills, and fields, while members were charged rent for housing, meals, and laundry services. Families could reside in a huge brownstone mansion that was divided into family apartments, meeting and dining rooms, and a classroom. Or, if they wished, they could live in private cottages that they themselves would have to build. Spring tried to attract a select group, only the "best class of mechanics" and literary people. With the help of Theodore Dwight Weld, the famous abolitionist, his wife Angelina Grimke, and her sister Sarah, they opened a boarding school in 1853 that combined the teaching of farming and domestic skills with the classics. On Saturdays they had lectures and dramatic readings. On Sundays everyone went to a Quakertype worship service. But Raritan Bay Union did not last. Without any ideological commitment to Fourierism, it quickly divided into two factions. One was made up of middle-class, educated families; the other included the "people of small means," workers who were assigned all the manual labor. Spring,

discouraged, in 1856 began dissolving the community. Back at the NAP, the defection of members to the Raritan Bay Union robbed it of key people. Then in September 1854, a fire burned the gristmill, sawmill, and workshops, destroying 2,000 bushels of wheat and corn, and causing over $14,000 in damages. Greeley volunteered to lend them $12,000 to rebuild but they could not agree on what to do. One group, mostly artisans, wanted to construct a new community closer to the ocean. Sears and his followers disagreed. Debts mounted. In June 1855, the NAP was sold at public auction. John Bucklin, a former member, purchased most of the property, developed a prosperous farm, and kept the phalanstery intact. A few families stayed there, paying rent, but they were no longer Fourierists.52 Brook Farm Brook Farm was the most famous Fourierist community, not because of its economic success or longevity—the NAP surpassed it on both counts—but because of the people who were connected with it. Its founder, Unitarian minister George Ripley, a member of the Transcendental Club, wanted to create a communal Utopia where there would never be "one human being, within the sphere of my influence, held to unrequited labor at the will of another, destitute of the means of education, or doomed to penury, degradation and vice by the misfortune of his birth."53 In January 1840, he resigned from his Boston pulpit to pursue "the hope of a great social good" and "to redeem society as well as the individual from all sin." He predicted that he

38 Communal Utopias and the American Experience would build a community that would provide both economic comfort and a stimulating intellectual life. More importantly, it would "combine the thinker and the worker, as far as possible, in the same individual: to guarantee the highest mental freedom, by providing all with labor, adapted to their tastes and talents, and securing them the fruits of their industry."54 When he preached his farewell sermon in the Purchase Street church, the congregation included Emerson, Sophia Peabody, Elizabeth Peabody, Warren Burton, Margaret Fuller, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. But Emerson remained convinced that Ripley was overextending himself, that this normally cautious intellectual had become a reckless mystic. Only Burton and Hawthorne agreed to join Ripley's Utopia.55 Ripley came up with a small down payment on a 175-acre farm owned by the Ellis family, located nine miles from Boston at Roxbury. He estimated that it would take $15,000 to finance the community, and to raise the capital he offered stock shares at $500 each. He tried one more time to convince the Transcendental Club to back him but, with Emerson's persistent opposition, he failed. Still, by April 1841 he had persuaded 15 individuals to follow him on the road to Roxbury. The group included himself and his wife Sophia, his sister Marianne, the printer Minot Pratt, his wife and three children and, shortly afterwards, Warren Burton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and George Bradford. In October, with the sale of stock raising $105,000, he closed the deal on the farm.56 Brook Farm was in an idyllic location, approached by a winding road through rolling countryside and enclosed by a creek and a grove of pine trees. It had a large two-story farmhouse renamed the "Hive," a barn, and a small house called the "Nest." Under Ripley's direction the community soon developed the aura of a summer retreat for intellectuals enjoying a simple but comfortable life of work, relaxation, and culture. He preserved the principle of private property, believing it was the keystone of liberty and freedom, so membership was based solely on stock ownership. Brook Farm was a "united household" where every member did the job Ripley assigned on a daily basis, and where everyone was paid the same hourly rate at year's end in stock dividends. Yet the routine was not rigid. Members alternated farm chores with social and cultural activities, and they could come and go as they wished. During the first summer they drafted a more formal arrangement called the Articles of Association. It stipulated that members under the age of 10 or over 70, and the sick, would be given free room and board. Other residents, though, were charged for housing and food. But medical care was free for everyone. Soon, 70 people moved in: writers, teachers, bakers, carpenters, shoemakers, printers, and farmers.57 Life was bucolic and pleasant, at least in the beginning. They put up other buildings, all of different architectural styles: the "Eyrie," which had the library and a piano, and the "Pilgrim House" and the "Cottage," initially private residences but the second one later used as a school. Given the small number

Utopian Socialist Communities 39 of permanent residents, Brook Farm never suffered the overcrowding that caused so much trouble at the other associations. Even the skeptical Emerson had to concede in his Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England that it succeeded for a while in making "what all people try to make, an agreeable place to live." He commended them on their "freedom from household routine" and on the variety of tasks performed there. He was impressed with how they mixed work with art, poetry, and conversation—all of which, he said, "broke up routine." It was, he wrote, "a perpetual picnic, a French Revolution in small, an Age of Reason in a patty pan." Bronson remembered that it was just enjoyable to live there, a "half a charming adventure" he called it.58 Women wore bloomers and kept their hair in long curls down over their backs. Men dressed in plain trousers and a shirt made of brightly colored chintz covered by a blue coat bound by a black belt. But some of them, according to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, sported little caps with tassels "unfitted for the horny-handed tillers of the soil." Bancroft, when he came there to visit his son who was enrolled at the school, said they looked like bandits. George William Curtis wrote one of the best accounts of the farm, published in Harper's Monthly. He described a community made up of "the ripest scholars, men and women of the most aesthetic culture and accomplishment, young farmers, seamstresses, mechanics and preachers—the lazy, the conceited, and sentimental." A pervasive esprit de corps was everywhere. Curtis had never seen such "witty potato-patches and such sparkling cornfields." "The weeds were scratched out of the ground to the music of Tennyson and Browning," he wrote, "and the nooning was an hour as gay and bright as any brilliant midnight at Ambrose's."59 Nevertheless, some intellectuals never accepted the drudgery of farm work and chafed at the tasks of community building. Ripley might milk more cows than anyone and thoroughly enjoy himself, but others became tired and bored. Hawthorne, although penning idealistic sketches of the congenial life to his fiancee Sophia Peabody, complained that he "never suspected that farming was so hard." And, he confided, it was a waste of time. He hoped to be rescued from it "before "my soul is not utterly buried under a dungheap."60 He left shortly afterwards. Their educational system, the "Institute of Agriculture and Education," was the main source of income. Much of the school's success was due to the publicity given it by visitors, some of whom came just for a day while others remained for weeks. Margaret Fuller, Emerson, and Channing stopped by to see what was happening. Charles Dana and Horace Greeley went there twice. Its curriculum was sequential. From birth to the age of six, the years of "influences," was the time when a nursery created an environment to stimulate the mind. Next, the "pupilage" stage, from six to twelve, required "exercises." Morning exercises involved work groups, while in the afternoon came the arts and academics. The six-year "probation" stage involved teenagers in a college preparatory curriculum for admission to Harvard or Williams, focusing on

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Communal Utopias and the American Experience

the classics, modern languages, sciences, humanities, drawing, dancing, and music. For the students, "Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven," Alice Felt Tyler observed, "were a part of daily life."61 The school had a course in agriculture and time was set aside each day for farm work. Teachers used "friendly counsel and assistance . . . without the constraints of arbitrary discipline."62 They held classes spontaneously, whenever students wanted to meet. Georgiana Bruce, a student, remembered "what a royal time we had." "The very air seemed to hold more exhilarating qualities than any I had breathed before." "Democracy and culture made the animus of the association," she went on. "Here your highest needs should be satisfied."63 The school's reputation spread rapidly and by the end of 1843, 30 students were enrolled, most of them outsiders whose parents paid a hefty tuition fee. About forty adults, but only four couples, lived full-time in this agrarian Utopia. In May 1843, a crucial change occurred when Brisbane persuaded Ripley to apply some of Fourier's principles to the community. Ripley's Transcendentalist friends had always tried to prevent him from allowing socialism at Brook Farm, arguing that it would destroy the emphasis on the glorification of the human soul. But Brisbane wanted to convert Ripley because the colony was just too tempting an opportunity. It was a prosperous, well-capitalized community that had a growing educational institution to back it financially. He came to Brook Farm and gave Ripley copies of The Present to read. It contained polished essays on Fourierism written by Channing that convinced Ripley that socialism could broaden the economic base of his agricultural community and still allow it to stay committed to spiritual values. Ripley also recognized similarities between his rustic communitarianism and Fourierism: both combined education and manual labor and linked intellectual and physical activities. And Brook Farm members and socialists both believed that humans should share each other's life in communal cooperation. Both groups saw mankind as tied by indissoluble bonds that reflect "one heart, one brain, one purpose."64 Both groups thought that a joint-stock arrangement and shifting work teams would form interlocking interests and blend together in a sense of unity. Finally, the phalanx stressed responsibility for the sick and elderly and, like Brook Farm, gave them free medical help, food, and shelter.65 There was a problems to be solved, however: how to combine the Farm's idea of the "self-unfolding" with the discipline of phalanx work series. Channing provided the answer. He wrote in The Present that the phalanx funneled choice and spontaneity into constructive work. It equally distributed profits to ensure justice without destroying private property. Guarneri believed that Channing injected a sense of self-sacrifice and spiritual regeneration into Fourier's socialism. He "showed the way for Brook Farmers to Christianize Fourierism as they adopted it" and it formed a bridge for them to walk over to Utopian socialism.66 The journey had already begun by the end of 1843 because Brook Farm had opened a cooperative sash and blind business and had a shop that made women's caps and collars.

Utopian Socialist Communities 41 Given the obvious parallels between Brook Farm as Ripley had created it and Brisbane's principles, and given the fact that cooperative workshops had been established there, "the complete application of his system in 1843 and 1844," Charles Crowe wrote, "was a relatively simple task." And "most of the Brook Farmers followed Ripley into the Fourierist camp with enthusiasm."67 In January 1844, they adopted a Fourierist constitution. Ripley organized "workers' series" of between three to twenty individuals, with each series electing its foreman and defining its own rules. A craft series included shoemakers, tailors, cabinetmakers, carpenters, and printers. An agricultural series did the plowing, hoeing, and weeding, operated the greenhouse and nursery, and looked after the cattle. A domestic series took care of the dormitory, kitchen, washing and ironing room, and sewing. There was a series called the Sacred Legion that did unpleasant tasks such as cleaning the stables. Ripley left teachers out of the series and dealt directly with them himself. They revised the constitution in March 1845 to call the community the Brook Farm Phalanx dedicated to the "pursuit of Industry Commerce, and Education." Councils of Industry, Finance, and Science governed it. The chairs of these councils met as a General Council with Ripley as president, and they were assisted by an Advisory Council, mainly the foremen of the series, stockholders, and people over the age of 45 who had been at the Farm for at least 2 years. The General Council, when necessary, chose a Council of Arbitrators to sit as a court to deal with problems of conduct or morals. No scheme of profit sharing was adopted, however. The constitution had every person receive the same wage, with the exception of those in the most desirable jobs (who received less) and those doing the most noxious tasks (who received more). An individual could choose the assignments he or she wanted to perform. Now the community provided free food for everyone, free medical care for the sick, the young, and the old, and free education for community children.68 It assumed the responsibility of publishing Brisbane's Phalanx, renaming it the Harbinger. It sent people on lecture tours to organize Fourierist clubs in several cities, and supported the establishment in Boston of a propaganda center called the National Union of Socialists.69 At Brook Farm they celebrated the birthdays of Fourier and Brisbane and held regular debates on Utopian socialism. Elizabeth Peabody opened a bookstore where she sold painted screens and lampshades made by the residents. There were plays put on by a "dramatic circle" and musical concerts—works by Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn—led by John Sullivan Dwight, later editor of the most significant musical periodical in America, Dwighfs Journal ofMusic. In the summer they enjoyed picnics at Cow Island, boating parties on the Charles River, and hikes through the woods. Ripley scheduled "fancy party" dances in the spring and summer. In the winter he encouraged skating, sledding, and meetings of the library and reading clubs. He himself lectured on Spinoza and Kant and invited Emerson, Channing, Amos Bronson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller to visit as guest speakers. Under his leadership Brook

42 Communal Utopias and the American Experience Farm "displayed a generous diversity of opinion as well as a vivacious charm which impressed itself on all who had a chance to observe the community."70 But seeds of discord sprouted. There was testiness between older and newer members. The former were intellectual idealists while the latter were mostly workers, mechanics, and farmers with practical, if not pecuniary, values. The school became the focus of a growing controversy between these factions, with the second group complaining that too much attention was being given to it. Brisbane, who stayed there for a month in the summer of 1845, exacerbated the divisions. He lectured on the intricacies of Fourier's doctrines and gave lengthy expositions on Fourier's passions—intellectual, social, sensitive, and sensual. He explained how these conflicting impulses, now competing against each other, would be harmonized in the proper material circumstances where industry was organized to bring them into harmony. The lectures were a delight to the intellectuals but for the others they were almost incomprehensible. And worse, for them and for many outside the community, the ideas sounded radical if not licentious.71 As information about Brook Farm reached Boston thorough newspaper accounts, many devout New Englanders simply assumed that the bizarre practices Fourier had described were being practiced at Brook Farm. "Gradually," Katherine Burton has written, "the public began to feel that there was immorality at the base of Fourierism."72 One controversial idea was Fourier's concept of "love germination"—namely, that some people could never be monogamous. And Boston eyebrows rose even higher when they read that Fourier believed that when people died they were transformed into an "aromal body," and in this condition floated to an "aromal region" to live a spiritual life where they moved from planet to planet, eventually becoming "Citizens of the Universe" and passing from sun to sun. Fourier's economics seemed equally outlandish. He calculated that a phalanx would yield annual dividends of 60 percent from several yearly harvests. There would be five meals each day and all housing and clothing would be gratis. And his concepts of education seemed downright ludicrous. He wanted boys and girls organized into "Little Hordes" to rid them of their inherent penchant for playing in mud and filth. The Hordes would do the phalanx's dirty work—cleaning toilets and sinks, mopping floors, and hauling out manure. Having been given all the dirt their hearts could desire as children, they would easily change their habits as young adults. The Harbinger protested that Fourier's ideas were being misunderstood by the public and, anyhow, that there was no blind obedience to his theories at Brook Farm. But the protest did little to calm the "private whispering and public shouts of the opposition newspapers."73 Parents with children enrolled in the school pulled them out. No new replacements were recruited, even after the Harbinger advertised for new pupils at the attractive rate of only $4 a week. Then, in the winter of 1846, an epidemic of chicken pox broke out at the school and local health officials quarantined it, closing it down. At the same time a number of adults started

Utopian Socialist Communities 43 to leave the colony, including such important figures as Minot Pratt, the head farmer, and the always-helpful Peter Baldwin. The day he moved out, Baldwin declared that he could no longer "approve the attitude here to the outside world" and that "there's a lot going on here that a descendant of the old Puritans finds it hard to swallow."74 The dedicated Utopians, perhaps to raise morale, decided to build a visible symbol of their commitment to Fourierism, a large phalanstery. They began construction in the spring of 1845 and by the end of the year they had completed a large two-story frame building. It had 14 family apartments as well as single rooms. There was a large central hall and a reading/meeting room. In December, they boarded the windows and locked the doors to await a spring opening and occupation. The unboarding came on Saturday, February 28, 1846. Three days later they held a party in the Eyrie to celebrate. They arrived in groups, first the young people, then the folks living in the cottages. Finally, the older members showed up when they were finished with their work. Louise Kleinstrupp played the piano and people sat along the wall or conversed in small groups waiting for the dance to begin. Ripley was jubilant. At last the bickering had ceased and everyone was pulling together to make his community a success.75 At dusk, just as the dancing began, John Cheever, a literate, devout Irish Catholic who always dressed in green plaids, burst through the door yelling: "The Phalanstery's on fire!" This was a calamity. They had no fire-fighting equipment and the nearest water tank was two miles away. They spread wet blankets on the roof and hoped that the wind would not pick up. It did. They formed a bucket relay from the colony well, but it was hopeless. Soon the entire second floor was ablaze. A fire engine arrived from Dedham and other trucks came from Roxbury, Newton, Brookline, and Jamaica Plain, but they did little good. Within two hours the $7,000 uninsured building was a smoldering ruin of glowing cinders. (There was never a way to investigate the cause of the fire because the building was a mass of ashes.) Although a few members felt a sense of bonding because of this experience, most knew that this was the end.76 Nevertheless, the following morning they acted as though nothing had happened. Everyone went to his or her job as usual. Marianne Dwight rationalized: "Well, we have had every other experience and now we have been through a fire."77 Ripley put on a charade of confidence. With amazing optimism he wrote in the Harbinger that the loss was inconsequential because no one was living in the phalanstery at the time and hence everyone still had a home. "It puts us to no immediate inconvenience," he claimed. He reported that work still went on as before and the school was open and running.78 But by March a general depression had replaced denial. Charles Dana seriously doubted that Brook Farm could last much longer. Marianne Dwight confessed in a letter to her brother John that it would never recover from the loss. By July she admitted that there was "little reason to hope for any success

44 Communal Utopias and the American Experience here" and described a mood of "general discouragement, a want of hope."79 Brisbane was no help, bluntly telling Ripley that he should dissolve the community. Greeley was equivocal. He promised a $500 donation but said he was too committed financially to the NAP to be of much more assistance. In the New Yorker, he suggested that Ripley take his followers to the NAP. But Ripley was adamant; he would not abandon Brook Farm.80 Over the summer and fall more than half of the members left, some following Greeley's advice to join the NAP. By January 1847 just 60 people remained and factionalism appeared among these stalwarts. One group, led by Ripley, insisted that, while perhaps sometime in the future they could rebuild the workshops and recreate a phalanx, for now the community could survive by focusing on agriculture rather than industry. Another group, headed by John Orvis, argued that if they wanted to continue they would have to forget about Fourier altogether. A handful insisted that they had to keep cooperative industry, saying that they would stay and run the shops even if no one else was willing to help.81 By the spring of 1847 only Ripley and a handful of friends remained. They stopped all work on the farm and in the workshops and concentrated on the school and the Harbinger. But there were just a few students at the school and no money to run the periodical, which, that May, was taken over by Greeley in New York City. Ripley and his wife departed in August and moved to a small room in Flatbush to work at the Tribune for five dollars a week.82 When Brook Farm was sold at public auction in 1849, some members came back, stood in a grove of trees, and read passages from Paracelsus—just as in happier days. By evening it was all over. What Alice Felt Tyler called "the brightest and happiest of American Utopias" was finished.83 Cheever sent Ripley a letter informing him of the sale. John Dwight simply commented that the music had stopped. Reunion In 1855, Victor Considerant organized the last antebellum American phalanx, in Texas. Fourier, just before he died, had appointed Considerant, as head of the Ecole Societaire, his heir and leader of French Utopian socialism. During the next 10 years Considerant published 20 books and a stream of pamphlets on Fourierism, edited a socialist journal, and established Fourier clubs throughout Europe. But in 1848 he opposed Louis Napoleon's rise to power in France, and in 1851 the monarch closed the Ecole Societaire and exiled him to Belgium. Considerant soon began to doubt the he could ever build what he called a "communal asylum" on the continent. In the spring of 1852, Brisbane, who had come to Paris, went to Brussels and met with Considerant. The American argued that the United States was the last hope for Fourier's ideas, especially since phalanxes such as the NAP had already built successful communities there. Considerant was agreeable but cautious, saying

Utopian Socialist Communities 45 that an American inspection "could do no harm." But he probably was more enticed with the optimistic accounts of the Icarian communal Utopia at Nauvoo, Illinois, that had been appearing in the Parisian newspaper La Populaire.84 In any event, he came to New York City in December 1852 and went to the NAP for a six-week visit. He left convinced that Americans and Europeans together could create a successful phalanx. In April 1853, he and Brisbane traveled by coach and steamboat to the Mississippi River and then, by horseback, to the Red River Valley in Texas. He was impressed with the rich prairie soil and bountiful timberland and decided on a site that today is within the city limits of Dallas. He euphorically called it "the garden of the world." He wrote to his wife about a "wild Eden" where his asylum for oppressed workers could be realized. Considerant returned to Brussels, arriving in September, and started to write a book about his America Utopia. It appeared in 1854 in Paris as Au Texas and in New York City as The Great West: A New Society and Industrial Life in Its Fertile Regions.85 It was both a propaganda piece and a prospectus. Considerant described Texas as the Promised Land, a God-given opportunity harmoniously to combine "social man" with "primitive land" that opened a "horizon of new ideas, of new sentiments and hopes." He discussed "a theater of maneuvers for a great colonization operating in the combined and collective mode!" He predicted that if they would "only unite in purpose" the "new social era will be founded."86 He would raise a stock subscription of a million dollars and buy land in Texas. He suggested that the community could develop an investment partnership with Texans themselves if more money were needed, and anticipated full support from the state legislature in terms of land grants. He invited all types of interested parties to join, even capitalists whom he enticed with a promise of money to be made in profit sharing. He would allow into the community "pensioners" and nonmember residents. He would be the president with full authority to represent the colony to the state government and direct the actual settlement.87 As a first step, he would dispatch an advance guard of 150 Americans to clear the land and put up buildings. Europeans soon would join them and everyone would create a prosperous communal Utopia based on agriculture. Then the colonists would start industries and move to a full-blown Fourierist association modeled on the NAP.88 In September 1854, Considerant founded the "European Society for the Colonization of Texas." This group, which he viewed as the successor to the dissolved Ecole Societaire, was supposed to raise the stock subscription and send immigrants to America. The European Society officially elected him to oversee the Texas colony as its president and chose three directors who would stay in Paris to supervise recruitment. The response was beyond all expectations. By early 1855 the Society had accumulated $250,000 and had enlisted 2,500 settlers. Meanwhile, at the Trinity River site that they called La Reunion, work began. The advance guard of both Frenchmen and Americans planted the spring crops and soon 113 men, women, and children were living

46 Communal Utopias and the American Experience there. In Austin the Society's designated representative, Francois Cantagrel, and an American, John Allen, petitioned the Texas government to grant them 2,400 acres. But, unknown to Considerant, the venture stirred up a hornet's nest of local opposition. By 1855, the rabid nativism of the Know-No thing Party had spread its hatred of Catholics and foreigners throughout the state. Newspapers such as the Dallas Herald, the Galveston News, and the Austin Texas State Gazette and Texas State Times attacked La Reunion as a colony of foreign atheists and Communists. Slavery was another sore point. Everyone knew that Greeley, whom the papers called the voice of "fanatics and abolitionism," supported the community. The Texas State Gazette, in February 1855, charged that the "socialist is an abolitionist everywhere" and that socialism was determined to abolish "the Slave Institution of Texas."89 In August, it printed a column that called for organized opposition to any concession to the Fourierists and warned that they were a front for "northern aggression." In fact, some supporters of La Reunion were well-known abolitionists. Thomas Durant was head of a New Orleans group that had drafted, in conjunction with Brisbane, an emancipation program for Louisiana. Boston Fourierist James Fisher was the chief abolitionist fundraiser for the Texas Emigration Union, an anti-slavery society. And Fredrick Law Olmsted, the famous New York architect, had favored colonizing western Texas by European immigrants in the hope that they would become a barrier of free workers who would stop the expansion of slavery. More damagingly, the Texas editors freely quoted Considerant's pamphlet European Colonization in Texas, published in New York in 1855, in which he had written that La Reunion would demonstrate the superiority of voluntary associations over the system of slavery. He condemned slavery as the "greatest misfortune" and the "suffering point" of American society. Although he had conceded that immediate abolition was out of the question, Considerant had stated that a gradual plan of emancipation according to a "scientific formula" would help both master and slave. The local newspapers reported dangerous talk among the Americans at the colony about an emancipation crusade. They called attention to the fact that abolitionist John Allen had claimed that La Reunion would be a sanctuary: "A large number of slaves would be brought there, educated, and would be able by their work to obtain their liberty."90 Despite these obstacles, the colony successfully applied to the legislature for a charter under the state's general laws of incorporation, where they merely filled out an application, as the "American-European Colonization Society in Texas." However, the charter stipulated that the Society could never prohibit slavery on its property.91 Not surprising, Considerant's efforts to get the legislature to issue free land grants proved futile and his attempt to pressure the body by contacting Texas members of Congress was likewise a waste of time. In a move not directly related to the savage opposition to La Reunion, the legislature had decided to rescind its homestead law and to sell its land. By the spring of 1855 it was

Utopian Socialist Communities 47 priced at $7 an acre, a figure way beyond the subscription fund to buy enough land for a community of three square miles. Then Considerant discovered that even if they had the money they could only acquire parcels in alternate sections, with the other contingent sections retained by land speculation companies and the state. American Fourierists were of little assistance. They did try to recruit new members for La Reunion but only a handful of people from NAP went to Texas. Brisbane thought the location disastrous and eventually offered less than half of the $20,000 he had originally promised Considerant.92 At the same time that these external difficulties appeared, the colonists had to face serious internal troubles. They had been able to acquire 430 acres of land, 500 head of cattle, and some farm equipment, but the arid, sandy soil made agriculture impossible and they quickly exhausted the water supply. The summers were unbearable to Europeans unaccustomed to such humidity and soaring temperatures. Overcrowding caused problems. Some 350 colonists, only about 25 of them Americans, were crammed into makeshift frame shacks. Worse yet, most of them were professionals, artists, musicians, and skilled artisans with no idea about what they had to do to survive on the prairie. When Considerant and his wife arrived in May 1856 he was shocked. There were no crops planted and rattlesnakes were everywhere. The colonists were fighting about whether to live as a community or to abandon the idea and settle in family homesteads. Communitarian practices such as a central kitchen and dining room had failed and everybody just cooked their own meals. They had never adopted a Fourierist series of work assignments and every person just did what he or she pleased. The diary of Amedee Simonin, one of the French colonists who left the community in July, described the confusion. "The disorder in the work is at its height." "Each one does what he wants and as he intends," he wrote, "and there is absolutely no direction, no organization, no foremen, no responsibility." "Those who go to the woods, to the fields, to tend the cattle, do as they please."93 Considerant, instead of taking charge and trying to rebuild some sort of coherent community life, equivocated. Although he said that he wanted a "phalansterian society," he now would settle for an agricultural colony. He refused to support the Fourierist faction and they quickly denounced him as a turncoat. Considerant fell into a serious depression. Virtually incapacitated, he stayed in bed and pondered suicide. Things continued to deteriorate. In July 1856, Augustine Savard, the 62-two-year old colony physician and a member of its administrative council, went to Considerant's lodgings to talk about dissolving the community. Considerant's response was to tender his resignation as president.94 Despairing of salvaging anything from La Reunion, he concocted another scheme for a colony west of San Antonio in Uvalde County. He wrote a pamphlet that exonerated his role in the failure of La Reunion and asked for support for the Uvalde plan. He returned to Paris, published the tract as Du Texas: Premiere rapport a mes amis (From Texas: First Report to My Friends),

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and tried to get the European Society to back Uvalde. T h e main obstacles to the success of La Reunion, he argued, were the lack of adequate reconnaissance before the colonists arrived and the climate. T h e new location, though, would be thoroughly inspected. But even his staunch supporters were now discouraged. T h e y knew that La Reunion's rapid collapse had resulted from the chronic disorganization at the colony. Consequently, the Society, which had already voted to dissolve Reunion, had no time for another fiasco and no confidence in Considerant. In 1859, it proceeded with the selling of its land to Americans. Later that year Considerant brought his family back to Texas and purchased a farm west of San Antonio where he spent the last 10 years of his life.95 Guarneri concluded that the "shipwreck in Texas" symbolized the central defects of American Fourierism. Like the other Associations, it had been founded on "grandiose and unrealistic visions of community prospects." And like the others, it was racked with "damaging tension between capitalist venture and communal e x p e r i m e n t . . . the practical incompetence of Fourierist leaders and their inability to stick with a single experiment." 96 W i t h the dissolution of La Reunion the Fourierist stage of American communalism had ended. But another French Utopian, Etienne Cabet, had better luck, for a while.

NOTES 1. CarlJ. Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 2. Guarneri's bibliography contains the most relevant titles: in primary sources, newspapers and periodicals, books and pamphlets, published letters and documents, and secondary works. See also Guarneri's article, "Who Were the Utopian Socialists?: Patterns of Membership in American Fourierist Communities," Communal Studies 5 (Fall 1985): pp. 65-81 and his chapter on "Brook Farm and the Fourierist Phalanxes: Immediatism, Gradualism, and American Utopian Socialism," in Pitzer, ed., Americas Communal Utopias, pp. 159-80. 2. The best biography of Fourier in English is Jonathan F. Beecher, Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). An abridged English-language edition of Fourier's works, which in their original form number more than twelve volumes, is Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu, eds., The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier: Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971). 3. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, pp. 15-20. 4. Beecher, Charles Fourier, pp. 161-75, 355-495. On Considerant, see Rondel Van Davidson, Did We Think Victory Great? The Life and Ideas of Victor Considerant (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988). On Saint-Simon, the most authentic treatments are Frank E. Manuel, The New World of Henri Saint-Simon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956) and (with Fritzie P. Manuel) Utopian Thought in the Western World (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1979). For an analysis of the divisions among the Fourierists, see Hubert Bourgin, Contribution a Vetude du socialisme francais

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49

(Paris: Societe Nouvelle de Librairie et d'Editions, 1905), pp. 468-70, 477-78 and Davidson, Did We Think Victory Great?, pp. 51-55. 5. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 26. 6. Ibid, pp. 29-30. 7. Ibid., p. 31. 8. Arthur Bestor Jr., "Albert Brisbane—Propagandist for Socialism in the 1840s," New York History (April 1947): pp. 128-40. 9. Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 130. 10. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 32. 11. Ibid, p. 33. 12. Bestor, "Albert Brisbane," pp. 128-40; Guarneri, "Fourierist Phalanxes," pp. 164— 65 and Utopian Alternative, pp. 36-39. 13. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 35; Albert Brisbane, A Concise Exposition of the Doctrine ofAssociation (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1843). 14. Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 131-32; Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, pp. 32-34; Bestor, "Albert Brisbane," pp. 128-40. 15. Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 131. 16. Ibid, p. 132; Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 57. 17. Ralph Albertson, A Survey of Mutualistic Communities in America, (1936; reprinted, New York: AMS Press, 1973), pp. 390-400; Guarneri, "The Fourierist Movement in America," Communities: Journal of Cooperation 68 (Winter 1985): pp. 51-52. 18. Berry, Utopian Experiments, pp. 82-86. 19. Dolores Hayden, Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1190-1975 (Cambridge, MA: M. I. T. Press, 1976), p. 149. 20. Berry, Utopian Experiments, p. 92; Guarneri, Utopian Alternatives, pp. 274-78. 21. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, pp. 171-72, 188-89; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 132-33. 22. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 71; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 133-34. 23. Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 134-35; Bestor, "American Phalanxes: A Study of Fourierist Socialism in the United States" (Ph.D. diss, Yale University, 1938), pp. 63-70. 24. Bestor, "American Phalanxes," p. 263; Herbert A. Wisbey, The Sodus Shaker Community (Lyons, New York: Wayne County Historical Society, 1982), pp. 23-24. 25. Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 137-38. 26. Ibid, p. 138; Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, pp. 156-57, 159-60. 27. Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 138-39; Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, pp. 154, 157, 161-62, 183-85, 188-89, 246-47. 28. Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 139-40. 29. Ibid, p. 140. 30. H. Roger Grant, "Utopias That Failed: The Antebellum Years," Western Illinois Regional Studies 2/\ (Spring 1979): pp. 38-51. 31. Ibid, p. 47. 32. Ibid, p. 43. 33. Ibid, p. 45. 34. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 169; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 141-42; Joseph Schafer, "The Wisconsin Phalanx," The Wisconsin Magazine ofHistory 9 (1930): pp. 466-70. 35. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 199 and "Fourierist Phalanxes," pp. 167-68.

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36. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 343. 37. Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 142. 38. Herman J. Belz, "The North American Phalanx: Experiment in Socialism," Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society 81 (October, 1963): pp. 215-46; George Kirchmann, "Unsettled Utopias: The North American Phalanx and the Raritan Bay Union," New Jersey History 97 (Spring 1979): pp. 25-36; Hayden, Seven American Utopias, pp. 148-85. 39. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 258. 40. Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 153. 41. Guarneri, "Fourierist Phalanxes," p. 168. 42. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 208; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 155-56. 43. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 206. 44. Ibid, p. 196 and "Who Were the Utopian Socialists?," pp. 65-81. 45. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 210. 46. Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 154-55, 157-58; Norma Lippincott Swan, "The North American Phalanx: Expose of the Condition and Progress of the North American Phalanx in Reply to the Enquiries of Horace Greeley (1853)," Monmouth County Historical Association Bulletin 1 (May 1935; reprinted, Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1975), p. 57; Harold F. Wilson, "The North American Phalanx," Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society 70 Quly 1952): pp. 200-201. 47. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, pp. 47, 215. 48. Ibid, p. 216. 49. Ibid, p. 218. 50. Ibid, p. 323; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 158-59. 51. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 321. 52. Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 159-60; Eric R. Schriber, "The End of an Experiment: The Decline and Final Dissolution of the Phalanx," The Monmouth Historian (Spring 1974): pp. 32-34. 53. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 47. 54. Ibid, p. 47 and "Brook Farm," pp. 164-65. 55. Richard Francis, Transcendental Utopias: Individual and Community at Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and Walden (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 35-37; Katherine Burton, Paradise Planters: The Story of Brook Farm (London and New York: Longmans, Green, 1939), pp. 24-35; Charles Crowe, George Ripley: Transcendentalist and Utopian Socialist (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1967), pp. 134-42. 56. Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 143; Francis, Brook Farm, pp. 35-37, 42. 57. Guarneri, "Patterns of Membership," pp. 70-76. 58. Quoted in Tyler, Freedoms Ferment, p. 181; Francis, Brook Farm, pp. 37-38. 59. Quoted in Tyler, Freedoms Ferment, p. 182; Francis, Brook Farm, pp. 49-51, 68. 60. Quoted in Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 144; Francis, Brook Farm, pp. 43-44, 49-50, 178. 61. Tyler, Freedoms Ferment, p. 180; Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 212. 62. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 212. 63. Quoted in Tyler, Freedoms Ferment, p. 181; Oved, Two Hundred Years, 145. 64. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 56. 65. Francis, Brook Farm, pp. 68-70; Crowe, George Ripley, pp. 167-68, 172, 176-78; Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, pp. 51-59, 116.

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66. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 57. 67. Crowe, George Ripley, pp. 172, 175; Michael Fellman, The Unbounded Frame: Freedom and Community in Nineteenth Century American Utopianism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973), pp. 92-93. 68. Francis, Brook Farm, p. 90n. 69. Ibid, pp. 38, 52, 86, 92, 100-101, 103-4; Sterling F. Delano, The Harbinger and New England Transcendentalism: A Portrait of Associationism in America (Canbury, NJ: Associated University Press, 1983), pp. 15-83. 70. Crowe, George Ripley, p. 158. 71. Burton, Paradise Planters, pp. 248-63. 72. Ibid, p. 254. 73. Ibid, p. 258. 74. Ibid, p. 260. 75. Francis, Transcendental Utopias, pp. 93-95, 99, 100, 134. 76. Crowe, George Ripley, pp. 184—85; Burton, Paradise Planters, pp. 278-79. A vivid description of the fire is in a letter by Marianne (Dwight) Orvis to "Dearest Anna," dated March 4, 1846, in Lettersfrom Brook Farm 1844-1841, Amy L. Reed, ed. (Poughkeepsie, NY: Vassar College, 1928; reprinted, Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1972), pp. 145-49 and in George Ripley's article "Fire at Brook Farm," the Harbinger III (December 13, 1845-June 6, 1846), pp. 220-222, reprinted in Henry W. Sams, ed. Autobiography of Brook Farm (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1958; reprinted, Gloucester, MA: Prentice-Hall, 1974), pp. 170-74. 77. Quoted in Burton, Paradise Planters, p. 280. 78. Quoted in Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 150. 79. Marianne Dwight, Letters from Brook Farm, pp. 169-70. 80. Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 151. 81. Burton, Paradise Planters, pp. 290-99; John Sullivan Dwight, "How Stands the Cause?," the Harbinger III (June 13, 1846-December 5, 1846), pp. 348-352. 82. Crowe, George Ripley, pp. 227-29. 83. Tyler, Freedoms Ferment, p. 184. 84. Jonathan Beecher, "Une Utopie Manquee au Texas: Victor Considerant et Reunion," Cahiers Charles Fourier 4 (1993): pp. 40-52; Robert P. Sutton, Leslcariens: The Utopian Dream in Europe and America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), p. 10. 85. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, pp. 328-29; Victor Considerant, The Great West: A New Social and Industrial Life in Its Fertile Regions (New York: Dewitt & Davenport, 1854), pp. 4-5, 9-10. 86. Quoted in Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 329. 87. Ibid, pp. 330-31. 88. A map of Reunion entitled "Plans of Lands belonging to the Europeo-American Colonization Society in the County of Dallas, Texas," is in Hayden, Seven American Utopias, p. 182. 89. Beecher, "Une Utopie Manquee au Texas," pp. 53-55; Guarneri, "Reunion, Texas: Post Scriptum Ironique Au Fourierisme American," in Cahiers Charles Fourier 4 (1993): pp. 223-34. 90. Guarneri, "Post Scriptum Ironique," p. 22. 91. Ibid, p. 24.

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92. Beecher, "Une Utopie Manquee au Texas," pp. 70-73. 93. Bruno Verlet, "Les Fourieristes Au Texas: du reve a la realite," in Cahiers Charles Fourier^ (1993): p. 93; Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, pp. 331-32. 94. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, 94. 95. Rondel Van Davidson, Did We Think Victory Great?, pp. 292-93. 96. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 332.

CHAPTER 3

Icaria

Like the Fourierist phalanxes, the Icarian communal experiment in America had its roots in French Utopian socialism, specifically the ideas of the politician and journalist, Etienne Cabet. Cabet, like Fourier, saw the world around him as riddled with political corruption, merciless exploitation of workers, rampant crime and immorality, and a Catholic Church intolerant of dissent. As an alternative he offered "Icaria," named after the fictional country of his novel, Voyage en Icarie (Travels in Icaria), published in Paris in 1839.1 Cabet, born on January 1, 1788, in Dijon of an artisan family, did not start out his adult life as a Utopian thinker and planner. Rather, it was to begin a career in politics that he moved to Paris soon after receiving his law degree from the University of Dijon. He joined the Society of the Chabonnerie, a group of radical, left-wing Republicans determined to replace the postBonaparte restored monarchy with a republic; in other words, to restore the French Revolution. In 1830, Cabet and his associates thought they had succeeded when Louis Philippe, the "Citizen King," inaugurated the "July Monarchy" and promised sweeping democratic reforms. But when Louis failed to support these changes, Cabet, in his newspaper Le Populaire, led the attack against what he called the king's "perversions." He also wrote a best-selling history of the Revolution of 1830, intended to show that Louis Philippe's ascension had signified a commitment by the French people once again to embrace Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. It was an obvious indictment of an apostate king who had not embraced the ideals of the Revolution but instead had returned to the repressive measures of his Bourbon predecessors—police surveillance, press censorship, and arrest of anyone who disagreed with the government. Cabet's turn came in 1834 when, in Le Populaire, he charged that

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Louis wanted to have men "shot, gunned down in the streets" in order to remain in power. H e was arrested, tried, found guilty of sedition, and sentenced to five years in exile. In October he moved to London. 2 Supported mainly by donations from his colleagues in the Chabonnerie, Cabet was able to spend most of his time in the British M u s e u m where he read T h o m a s More's Utopia and, as he later admitted, was overwhelmed. H e decided to write his own version of a Utopia. By the time he returned to Paris in 1839 he had in hand the manuscript of the Voyage en Icarie. H o w he was able to have it published remains a mystery, probably through connections and financial help from some of his old Republican friends. F r o m whatever sources, he paid publisher Hippolyte Souverain to print it and it appeared under the title of Voyage et aventures de Lord William Carisdall en Icarie (Travels and Adventures of Lord William Carisdall in Icaria). Subsequent editions would be shortened to Voyage en Icarie? Cabet took more than 800 pages to describe in minute detail a fictional nation that was the antithesis of his own country. His imagination conjured up an urban and rural paradise, where all the evils corroding France had been eliminated. T h e country took its name after its founder, the "good Icar," who had established it after he overthrew an evil dictatorship. As described by the central character of the book, a young English aristocrat named William Carisdall, Icaria was a totally egalitarian nation that had abolished all private property and money. T h e capital, "Icara," was a model of urban planning with symmetrical shaded streets and walkways. A national assembly elected by all the adult men, but not the women, governed the country. T h i s body, through committees, took care of the needs of every citizen: food, housing, medical care, education, even amusements. An efficient state-run factory system was the basis of the economy. Machines did all of the hard tasks and music was piped in to keep spirits uplifted. Icarians worked only in the mornings, however. D u r i n g the afternoons and evenings they went to free "spectacles" held in huge amphitheaters, and to plays and concerts. T h e government sent daily free packages of food and clothing to every h o m e . Icarians insisted u p o n marriage and viewed celibacy with suspicion. Adultery, or any sex outside of wedlock, was inexcusable. Divorce was legal but remarriage was expected immediately. Education was free for both sexes from childhood through the age of twenty-three, and adults went to free evening courses on a variety of subjects. Male and female physicians tended the sick in hygienic hospitals, also filled with piped-in music. Icarians had no organized religion and just practiced the Christian Golden Rule. T h e y had no saloons or gambling houses. Tobacco was allowed only as a medicine. Crime and vice had disappeared and, consequently, there were n o secret police or courts. W h e n the astonished Carisdall asked for an explanation for the absence of crime and immorality, he was informed that it was because of an instinctive Icarian rectitude. Valmor,

one of the fictional citizens, declared that there was no longer any reason to commit a crime. "What crimes do you imagine we could have today," he asked

Icaria

55

Carisdall, "when we have n o money, and when everyone has everything he or she could desire?" Valmor added that an Icarian would have to be crazy to want to steal. And, "how could there even be suicides when everybody is happy?" 4 T h e enormous success of the book—it was a runaway best-seller and went through five editions—caused Cabet to revive Le Populaire and to organize an Icarian political party. For a time it seemed to him that he might be able to rebuild the country along the lines of his Utopia. However, the rise of militant, class-conscious Marxism in the mid-1840s frightened the middle class and they branded the Icarians, with their abolition of property, as dangerous C o m munists. Cabet's continued criticism of Louis Philippe in his newspaper only exacerbated a growing public hostility to him and his followers. In 1846, Cabet began printing the same charges against the king that had had him arrested in 1834. H e claimed that the government was about to use force to crush its opponents and silence the press. T h e monarch had allowed his beloved France to degenerate into, as Cabet put it, "egotism and political indifference." T h e economy was going to ruin because it was in the hands of the "lords of wealth" and they controlled the Chamber of Deputies where they passed laws to allow monopolies, to outlaw labor unions, and to enact brutal press statutes to put men like himself in jail. H e tried to rally the country to action. "Communists and reformists," he wrote, "unite for our c o m m o n defense." T h e authorities arrested and interrogated him. T h a t was enough. Suddenly, he called for an exodus to the United States. O n M a y 9, 1847, Le Populaire's front page announced: "Let's go to Icaria!" 5 Cabet next contacted Robert Owen, w h o m he had met in L o n d o n during the exile. T h r o u g h him Cabet arranged to take title to some 3,000 acres in Texas. T h e land, along the Trinity River just north of the present city of Dallas, would be transferred to him on a homestead agreement. T h e Icarians would have it in fee simple provided they had farmsteads on all of the 320acre sections by July 1, 1848. 6 Events moved quickly. O n February 3, 1848 Cabet dispatched the "First Advance Guard" to Texas. Early that morning at the docks of Le Havre 69 "Soldiers of Fraternity," all dressed in black velour tunics and gray felt caps and sporting full beards, boarded the steamship Rome, bound for N e w Orleans. As the ship pushed out to sea they gathered on the stern deck to sing their new anthem to Cabet and a small crowd standing on shore. To the tune of La Marseillaise they bellowed: Arise, workers stooped in the dust, The hour of awakening has sounded. To American shores the banner is going to wave, The banner of the holy community. No more vices, no more suffering, No more crimes, no more pain. The august Equality advances itself:

56 Communal Utopias and the American Experience Proletariat, dry your tears, Let us found our Icaria, Soldiers of Fraternity, Let us go to found in Icaria, The happiness of Humanity!7 Over the summer and fall seven more departures totaling almost 500 men, women, and children left for New Orleans, bound for Texas. On the last of these Cabet himself was on board. And on January 19, 1849, now sixty-one years old, he landed in the Crescent City.8 He found the Icarians crammed into two brick apartment houses in the business section at St. Ferdinand Street. They told him a shocking tale of an unmitigated calamity. Not long after the First Advance Guard docked in New Orleans on March 27, 1848, things had begun to sour. The Guard received a disturbing letter from Charles Sully, a young man Cabet had sent in December 1847 to the Trinity River to arrange for transportation of the Guard and the rest of the Icarians. Sully told them that their original plan to reach the Trinity River by steamboat from New Orleans was impossible. They could take a boat to Shreveport, but beyond there the Red River was not navigable. They would have to hike 250 miles from Shreveport to their Utopia on a footpath the Texans called the Bonham Road, through a wilderness inhabited mostly by Comanches.9 But Adolphe Gouhenant, a Toulouse sign painter and leader of the Guard, was undaunted. He decided that they would go immediately to Texas. On April 8 they reached Shreveport and started constructing a warehouse to store their supplies. Twenty-five of the men promptly set off for the Trinity River. Within days their wagons broke down. They slept without tents and were devoured by mosquitoes. They had to plod through swamps and trudge across deserted prairie. Finally, on April 21 they arrived at their destination and by June the rest of the First Advance Guard, plus 21 men from a Second Guard, were there. Then disaster hit. The temperature rose to over 100° F and the place became an inferno. Malaria swept through the encampment, then cholera. Four men died. Everyone was dehydrated from dysentery and vomiting. Their physician went insane and wandered off. They discovered that Gouhenant was a spy for the French secret police, shaved off his hair and beard, and expelled him.10 Exhausted by the end of the summer, they broke up into groups of four, distributed what food they had, and headed back to Shreveport. The trek was a nightmare. Four more men died. By mid October the motley refugees, half starved and shaking with fever, trickled into the town. By the end of the month they found passage back to New Orleans. Some Icarians on St. Ferdinand Street, when they realized what had happened, wanted to return to France right away. But most felt they should at least wait for Cabet and then decide

Icaria 57 what to do. They elected Jules Prudent, a thirty year old jeweler, as provisional president with instructions to preserve order until Cabet arrived.11 New Orleans newspapers printed accounts of their life on St. Ferdinand Street. It must have been a frustrating, divisive experience. By December they were complaining to reporters that they were "poor sheep" barely surviving in "miserable accommodations." The apartments were "too confined to be airy or healthy," the editor of the Daily Orleanian stated, and they were without proper sanitation facilities. He warned that if the Icarians were still there by summer the situation "will assuredly generate disease." Other editors described pathetic Icarian men "carrying their ailing and disabled members through the streets to their domicile or hospital on elevated litters." It was a dangerous practice, he warned, because it exposed Americans to their "disabled and dying persons."12 By early January 1849, Pierre Bourg, a thirty-four year old native of Lyon, wrote in his diary: "It seems to me that he [Cabet] alone is capable of mending this tattered garment and of extracting the thistles from it." "We have among us some people who, with evil intentions, sow discord." "They are small in number it is true," Bourg conceded, "but they are causing a lot of trouble."13 The troublemakers were led by Dubuisson, a Bordeaux jeweler, and a Spanish physician named Roveira. These men were disgusted with the whole enterprise, wanted to disband, and to have Cabet arrested for fraud. Dubuisson said that as soon as he got back to Paris he intended to file charges against him in the Commercial Courts. 14 When Cabet reached New Orleans on January 25,1849, Bourg was ecstatic. "For us it was heaven," he wrote, and everyone "embraced him and shed tears of joy and tears of shock that bathed the face of our venerable Messiah."15 Cabet convened a general meeting. He said that if they wanted to return home he would accept that decision. Two days of discussions followed and then he put the question: "Do you want to persevere?" According to Cabet's account, published later in the New Orleans newspaper UAbeille, a "feeble minority" responded "no" but a "great majority" responded "yes."16 The next day this group signed a pledge of total confidence in Cabet as their leader. He then dispatched a three-man reconnaissance committee to find a new location for Icaria. On February 5, the committee reported to Cabet that they had located an excellent one at Nauvoo, Illinois. It was a fully built but largely deserted city abandoned by the Mormons two years earlier. On the morning of February 28, Cabet and his "large family" of 142 men, 74 women, and 64 children boarded the steamship American Eagle to go north and make another sacrifice, he wrote, "in order to reestablish harmony, union, and unity."17 The weeklong journey up the Mississippi River was exhilarating. They sang songs and absorbed the delightful scenes of the panoramic river. At Nauvoo on March 15, at nine in the morning, the Icarians came down the ship's bowramp and walked to the Temple Square located high on the bluffs north of the city. Here Cabet arranged for lodging in some vacant Mormon homes. After meeting with agents that the Mormons had left behind, he purchased

58 Communal Utopias and the American Experience the entire Temple Square, including the Temple itself, and leased 2,000 acres of farmland. Then, from some of the 1,000 non-Mormon residents still living in Nauvoo, he rented houses and shops.18 On the Temple Square site, the building of Icaria was completed over the next two years. Cabet was a hard taskmaster; he pushed everyone to work hard as "Soldiers of Humanity," and they did. They built a refectory that became a communal dining hall, theater, library, tailor shop, and living quarters. They constructed two infirmaries, a pharmacy, a library, and an office/ print shop. On the south side of the Square they lined up shops to make clothes, candles, shoes, linen, soap, and mattresses, and opened a sales building to retail Icarian products to outsiders. The west side of the Square had the bakery, butcher shop, pork shop, and a large blacksmith and harness garage. When the Mormon Temple was all but destroyed by a tornado on the afternoon of May 27, 1850, they used its limestone blocks to construct a two-story boarding school where the children would both learn and live during the week. They placed four two-story frame apartment buildings on the northeast corner of the Square and Cabet assigned each family two rooms. Single people and visitors lived in a rented brick home just off the Square. Down on the riverbank they operated a distillery and a flour and lumber mill, and sold the whiskey and flour in nearby Keokuk, Iowa, and in St. Louis. By the spring of 1851, the Nauvoo Icaria had 365 inhabitants.19 Politically, they thought they were going to create "a new experiment of the purest form of philosophical Communism the world has ever seen."20 On February 21, 1850 they unanimously adopted a constitution of 183 articles that designated Icaria as a "Democratic Republic." About one-third of the charter was a statement of their "General Principles": Fraternity, Equality, Liberty, Unity, Solidarity, Respect for the Law, and Community. This last, perhaps most important, principle was "contrary to individualism." The Utopia was to be governed by a president, a five-man Gerance or Board of Directors, and a General Assembly. The Gerance included a secretary who managed the print shop, and four directors whose remit covered respectively finance and food, education and health, industry and agriculture, and lodging and clothing. In the Assembly, which met every Saturday, women could not vote. They exercised only a "consultative voice" and sat apart from the men. They were permitted, though, to "give their advice" on questions that particularly concerned them. The Assembly admitted new members, enacted bylaws, and could revise the constitution. It was also a court that judged any violation of the constitution or bylaws. Punishments included censure or expulsion. The constitution required new members to pay a 600-franc (about $120) admission fee and serve a four-month probation. If they passed an interrogation by the Gerance and the Assembly, they were admitted by a three-quarters majority vote. They could leave Icaria at any time provided they sent a written notice

Icaria 59 to the Assembly three months in advance. When they left they would receive a reimbursement of one-half of the admission fee.21 A typical Icarian day began with a six o'clock bugle call that summoned the adults to breakfast in the refectory where soup, bread, and cafe au hit were brought up on a conveyer belt from the basement kitchen. Then each man drank a shot of whiskey and all the adults went off to their assignments. An adult's routine was disrupted only for a hearty noon meal in the refectory of meat or fish, potatoes, beans, vegetables, and beer, wine, or coffee. Supper was at six o'clock, usually beef or onion stew and water. Cabet placed a foreman in each workshop to ensure everyone followed the rules—written into the constitution—that work must be done with continuity, order, direction, and discipline. These foremen sent the Gerance a weekly report on the work done, accidents, and any infractions of the rules. Each month Cabet, on behalf of the Gerance, presented the Assembly with a summary of all production.22 Cabet made all work assignments with apparent capriciousness, although he claimed his decisions were based on what he saw as an individual's abilities. He constantly shifted the men from one job to another. For example, in less than ninety days Cabet had one man wash dishes, work in the garden, help in the saw mill, clean the streets, lay bricks, repair the gutters on the apartments, plant corn, and pitch hay.23 He gave women steadier assignments because there were fewer female community functions. Most of them worked in the refectory preparing and serving meals. Some went to the laundry and washrooms, located next to the apartments. Some did the mending and ironing, a few were seamstresses, and a couple of women taught in the school.24 Icarian family life, according to the constitution, was "based on marriage and the family, purified of everything that perverts or alters them." Voluntary celibacy was forbidden. Nevertheless, the document permitted divorce when authorized by the Assembly. However, each divorced spouse had to remarry as soon as possible. Philandering was viciously punished: on three occasions couples were accused of fornication, hauled before the Assembly, and excommunicated without the severance allowance reimbursement. Husband and wife lived in a two-room apartment with simple furniture: a pine bed, table, and chair, a shelf, a stove, and a chandelier for light. The trunk they brought with them was their clothes closet.25 Children over the age of three stayed with their parents only on weekends; the rest of the time they lived at the school. Cabet thought that equal education for both sexes was essential to the success of Icaria, and in the Voyage en Icarie he wrote that it was the "foundation of society." In the two-story limestone school the boys and girls slept in segregated rooms on the second floor. Downstairs adults taught four-year-olds how to read and write. From the age of five to fifteen they were instructed in a comprehensive academic curriculum of grammar, mathematics, history, geography, natural history, drawing, music, and English. Part of the school day was vocational. The boys helped in the shops or in the fields and the girls worked in the refectory,

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laundry, or tailor's shop. Teachers imposed a strict code of discipline and followed Cabet's orders to make children do "unto others as we wish to be done by." They taught them to "protect, live and work for the feeble, the sick; to forgive; to hold the other cheek and when smitten on the one; to be kind, one to another; to love and respect their parents and everybody in general."26 By 1855, Icaria had 469 residents and a rich intellectual and cultural life. In the office and print shop they housed the largest library in Illinois, over 4,000 volumes. The collection, mostly in French, included biography, history, philosophy, religion, science, and the fine arts. Icarians read in the building's reading room or loaned books out for an unlimited period of time. Every Sunday afternoon they met in a discussion session called the Cours Icarien (Icarian Lessons). In the refectory, on the lawn in the center of the Square, or along the Mississippi River, they explored the meaning of their Icarian principles. Often Cabet led them in an analysis of morality and ethics. They published a biweekly newspaper called the Colonie Icarienne until 1854, and then the Revue Icarienne. Its pages contained letters from friends in France, essays on fraternity and equality, lists of new arrivals, reports from the workshops, and accounts of daily life.27 They had orchestral concerts, theatrical productions, and communal picnics. Thirty-six musicians performed each Sunday after the Cours Icarien and played popular French tunes or Icarian songs written by some of the musicians. So many Americans came to these events that Cabet moved them inside the refectory and started selling tickets. The orchestra played at their theatrical productions, to which Cabet also sold tickets. The stage was at the end of the refectory dining room where, on Saturday nights, they performed dramas, comedies, and vaudeville acts. One Icarian, Francois Marie Lacour, a milliner from Vienne who stayed there for six months in 1855, recalled seeing The Salamander, The Hundred Stakes, The Miser's Daughter, and The Fisherman's Daughter. Some members of the orchestra formed a small band that marched along with the Icarians on their excursions. A special spot for such picnics was in a glen by the river they called the Woods of the Young Ladies. Lacour described a pastoral event there where everyone sat on quilts and enjoyed a meal of ham, radishes, and beans along with fresh water from a nearby stream. While the band played they danced.28 But underneath the festive tone a darker strain appeared in Icaria—disharmony, dissension, and division. Part of the difficulty was the strenuous daily schedule. Even as early as 1850 infirmary records showed a steadily rising rate of sickness. By 1855, an extraordinary number of adults were absent from work because of illness and the infirmary was half-full most of the time. The military discipline of the shops took its toll. Some started to complain about the "formalities" and the monotony of the work. The growing dissatisfaction was visible. One visitor saw signs of depression and melancholy and wrote that the Icarians were just worn out from the regimentation. An American

Icaria 61 correspondent from the New York Tribune thought them exhausted with "nothing to eat but bread soup."29 Cabet contributed to the difficulties. He was dictatorial, impatient, and conceited. He seemed to regard himself as the savior of humanity at large, and especially of the disciples who followed him to America. In 1851, he had to return to France to defend himself in court against Dubuisson's charges of fraud (he was successful). Apparently, while he was away and Prudent was in charge, discipline waned. After Cabet's return in the summer of 1852, he wrote to Jean Pierre Beluze in Paris, his son-in-law, that he had "found a great relaxation in the execution of our rules and a great deal of small disorders resulting from allowances and concessions that my absence had made almost inevitable."30 He told Beluze that vanity had replaced a commitment to equality and that jealously threatened harmony. The men no longer used tobacco exclusively for health reasons but openly smoked pipes and cigars. Others, not content with the morning dram, had taken to drinking whiskey during the day, and some in huge amounts—as much as four gallons a week. They hid whiskey bottles under the floorboards of their apartments and feigned sickness so they could go there to drink. Some became obnoxious and abusive. One man was drunk continuously. Icarian women were misbehaving, too. Cabet faced rising discontent from mothers (whom he described as "ignorant and obstinate") who resented the fact that, except for brief Sunday afternoon visits, they were separated from their children. They were even more incensed that, while Cabet had ordered the children to stop calling their fathers "daddy" and mothers "mommy" (they were to address them only as "my parent"), he had decreed that they should call him "Papa" instead. Indeed, as Diana Garno's 1998 study of women's roles in the Nauvoo Icaria has shown, even before Cabet's return the separation of mothers and children was the main reason why couples left as "angry dissidents."31 Another gender problem stemmed from the denial of the franchise to women and their lack of access to office in the community. Some women argued that such practices were a violation of the Icarian principle of equality. Cabet denounced such ideas as inciting "anarchy." Still other women objected to his instructions to standardize the women's wardrobes. He required all new female members to sell their clothes to Americans and to wear the dresses, blouses, and aprons made by colony seamstresses. There also was anger at his assertion that a man's "reason" was superior to a woman's "sentiment." Cabet had complained on numerous occasions that too many women were poorly educated and had "imported" the egregious feminine faults of vanity and coquetry; that they were "demanding, critical, destructive, etc." Lastly, there was the shocking fact that, despite his injunction against tobacco and alcohol, "some women smoked and drank whiskey." "It was time to stop it," he concluded. Such "venomous poisons" had to be purged from Icaria.32 In January 1853 Cabet announced the "great reform" in his "Forty-Eight Articles," accepted by the General Assembly the next month. It was a Dra-

62 Communal Utopias and the American Experience conian code of conduct for every Icarian, new or already in the community. He forbade all whiskey and tobacco. There must be no jealousy or envy. Everyone must be "temperate, frugal, simple." There must be a full commitment to "the Icarian system" and complete conformity to its rules about equality, fraternity, liberty, and unity. There would be no talking in the workshops and no complaining about food in the refectory. There would be no more idle pleasures such as fishing or hunting. Every Icarian had to submit to the discipline of the Gerance and obey him as president.33 Cabet's "Articles" eventually provoked an insurrection. In the fall of 1854, two of the directors, Jean Baptiste Gerard and Alexis Armel Marchand, organized an opposition. They said that Cabet had mishandled the community's finances and had installed secret informants to report to him daily on everyone's activities. Icarians who had begun to resent Cabet, regardless of the new rules, supported the Gerard-Marchand faction. They had already concluded that Cabet was an incompetent administrator given to broad generalizations, but inattentive of the details of running a community of 500 people. They saw him as aloof and haughty, an intolerant egomaniac. Other Icarians rallied to "Papa's" defense. They took the name "Cabetists" and declared that he was a self-sacrificing idealist whose only concern was their salvation and that of humanity. In the midst of all this disruption Cabet, in December 1854, suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on one side and with a weakened sense of touch and a partial loss of vision. He remained in his home for months.34 Not until the fall of 1855 was he strong enough to renew the fight. By then Icaria had split into two contending factions: the opposition, now calling itself the "Majority," and the Cabetists (the Majority did indeed hold the majority of the members, with 219 men, women, and children; compared to the 179 Cabetist followers). The crucial stage of the confrontation began in December when Cabet stood before the Assembly. He lectured it. He said that the community could not survive without his leadership. He said that he alone was responsible for the defense of "our women and children, our old folks, and our sick, our widows and orphans." He said that he was getting fed up, and was half-convinced to abandon Icaria. He would remain, though, if certain conditions were met. First, the opposition must shut up or leave. Everyone had to obey the "Articles" and stop wasting time discussing them. He wanted absolute control of Icaria's finances, since no one else knew how to manage them. He must be given full power to punish any violation of the constitution and the new rules. He must have full control over education and housing. Lastly, he needed a presidential term of four years, instead of the existing annual one, and the power to dismiss all directors and foremen. His tirade stunned even the Cabetists. The Assembly adjourned in shocked silence.35 Over the following months, Icaria became a community of two warring camps. In the refectory at mealtime they sat on opposite sides of the hall and never spoke to each other. The Majority sealed off as their space the central garden area of the Square. The Cabetists took over a smaller grassy field next

Icaria 63 to the old Temple site. Cabet, in control of the office/print shop, put out flyer after flyer portraying himself as a martyr to equality and fraternity who was bombarded with insults and outrages. He formed a personal bodyguard of seven young men to watch over him constantly. The Majority nailed flyers on the refectory door denouncing "Papa" as a blockhead and an incompetent. Cabet placed a guard at the office/print shop to protect it from attack by members of the Majority, who in their turn locked the refectory and proclaimed that the Cabetists would no longer be entitled to communal food and laundry services, and paraded around the building singing La Marseillaise. Soon afterwards, the Cabetists marched around the refectory waving poles topped by pieces of bread. On August 6, Cabet had his men storm the building. The next day they attacked Gerard and tried unsuccessfully to strangle him, while Cabet stood by and watched.36 After this episode Cabet moved out of his house and took the printing press to a place two blocks away from the Square, from which he continued to produce the community's newspaper, now renamed the Nouvelle Revue Icarienne. Two weeks later there was another outburst when the Majority took over the school and told the women teachers who would not support them to leave. Cabet was incensed. He ordered one Cabetist woman, Madame Raynaud, to lead an attack on the school. She galloped into the Square on a wagon yelling "Help! Help! Rise up!" The ruckus startled the children and they began screaming. The Majority rushed to the school to save them. Later, they burned Cabet in effigy.37 By this time their American neighbors had had enough. They called the Hancock county sheriff. He arrived, restored ordered, and went to see the Nauvoo mayor. The mayor paid Cabet a visit and told him to leave. He complied, complaining that he was only too ready to get out of Icaria. Besides, he had no choice. His followers had to sell to the Americans the bottles of whiskey they had hoarded in order to raise enough money to buy food. When Gerard and Marchand heard of the mayor's eviction order, they called a meeting for the afternoon of September 27 in the refectory. There 84 men and 49 women adopted a position paper called the Fourth Address of the Faithful Icarians ofNauvoo to Icarians of All Nations. It accused Cabet of trying to ruin Icaria by lies and incessant maneuvers. He had squandered the community's finances. He had destroyed its economy by prohibiting his followers from working in the shops and farms. The Address pointed out that Cabet had already deserted Icaria because he was "living in exile" and was using "all the resources of trickery, hypocrisy, and lies to achieve his goal: the annihilation of the community."38 A week later Cabet published Grounds for which the Minority Demands the Dissolution of the Icarian Community. He claimed that he had pleaded with the Majority to settle the disputes peacefully and to dissolve the community by mutual consent. But they had insisted that the Cabetists leave and forfeit the one-half of their reimbursement fees. On October 13, Cabet announced that

64 Communal Utopias and the American Experience Icaria was "annulled and dissolved" and that he had sent Theophile Heggi to St. Louis to find another place "to begin anew the community under the name of Icaria." He said they were getting ready to depart with the "necessities of life."39 That same day he printed the Declaration of Rights of the Icarians, the new rules of the St. Louis community. It contained 13 provisions, all of which gave him unrestricted control. He would be president for a four-year term and could appoint all officers without the approval of the Assembly. He could call and adjourn that body at will, issue edicts as law, and control all financial matters. He would run the school and supervise the education of the children, and would decide all work assignments. Every Icarian had to adhere faithfully to the "sacred principles" of the community. Of course, whiskey and tobacco were proscribed. Finally, anyone who joined the St. Louis Icaria had to pledge to remain in the community until 1859.40 The Declaration was signed by 71 men and 44 women. But they went beyond a mere endorsement of Cabet. They praised him as the true "Founder of Icaria" who had never deviated "from his democratic and Icarian principles." He was an inspiration who gave them "confidence without limits." On the morning of October 15, 1856, Cabet led a procession of 34 Icarians to the Nauvoo wharf and sent them on a steamboat to St. Louis. A week later a second contingent of 95 pilgrims left. On October 30 the last group, including Cabet himself, abandoned the Utopia.41 A few days before his departure Cabet had published a valedictory address. He conceded that his "oppressors" had triumphed in the recent "civil war" by a "violent oppression" of his devoted followers. He described how they had been denied food, clothing, even medicine. They were left to "die from hunger and the cold" while the Majority wallowed in "abundance and profusion, in drunkenness and vice." He called Gerard and Marchand "abominable ingrates" motivated by demagogy, sensualism, materialism, and egotism. He pledged a new recruitment drive in France to fill the St. Louis Icaria with new, devoted Soldiers of Humanity. "Hope, therefore," he concluded, for a future of "trust and fraternal dedication."42 On October 25 the Majority issued A Resolution of the General Assembly of the Icarian Community for the Expulsion of Cabet. It was a vicious indictment of the man. He had violated Icaria's constitution and bylaws. He had incited riots and violent demonstrations. He had "authorized and favored the stealing by his partisans of tools, books, musical instruments, drugs, account books, registers . . . belonging to the Icarian Community." He had "either by his speeches and incendiary hand bills nearly succeeded in stirring up a kind of civil war in the Community." As a result of these offenses the Majority of 219 adults voted to expel him.43 By November 6 all of the Cabetists had arrived in St. Louis—78 men, 46 women and 54 children—and were living in three buildings that Heggi had rented in the New Bremen section of the city. Cabet seemed relieved, almost

Icaria 65 joyful, that the fight was over and that another, purer Icaria could start anew. The next morning, after breakfast, he suffered a second, and this time fatal stroke; he was sixty-eight years old.44 The Cabetists buried him in the Old Picker Cemetery in South St. Louis. His successor was Benjamin Mercadier, a thirty-five year old lawyer who had been a leading Cabetist at Nauvoo and had assisted Cabet during his final hours. His first decision was to start publishing again the Nouvelle Revue Icarienne that Cabet had begun at Nauvoo. He then organized an election of a Gerance and started drafting a constitution. Good news arrived from Paris. Beluze's letter informed them that he had raised a new subscription of $10,000 for the American Icaria and that the money was at their disposal. But the first months in St. Louis were difficult. Mercadier gave a full account of these days in his first Report to the Gerance in February 1857. The three buildings were located a mile from each other and were totally unsuitable for community life. They were inadequately heated and had no furniture or eating utensils. Besides, many of the Cabetists "were sick, others infirm, all were exposed to the many inconveniences of a large city [that] they knew nothing about and whose language was foreign to them."45 They improvised. They purchased some tables, chairs, dishes, and silverware and made their largest building into a makeshift refectory. They enrolled the children in the local public school. Adults found jobs in the city as tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, and seamstresses. They started a modest series of cultural activities. Charles Mesnier, a fifty-seven year old musician, put together a small orchestra with the instruments they had brought from Nauvoo. On January 1, they gave a concert to commemorate Cabet's birthday. On February 3, a second concert celebrated the departure of the First Advance Guard from Le Havre a decade earlier. Every evening after supper they gathered on the porch of the main building, or in the dining room after the weather turned too cold, for a soiree. They conversed about the day's happenings and about news from Europe contained in the St. Louis newspapers. On Sunday afternoons Mercadier led the Cours Icarien?6 By spring they had largely recovered from the sicknesses that had afflicted them in November and were in good health. But their financial situation remained precarious. Mercadier's Report admitted that by February they earned only about $2,450 in wages and had received just $1,600 from Beluze. To that sum he added the $526 that Cabet had in the treasury when they left Nauvoo. The total figure came to $4,576. But their expenses were $4,548. Nevertheless, Mercadier proclaimed that "we have won out thanks to [our] activity and good organization, escaping the misery [of] the retreat from Nauvoo and the sudden death of [our] leader."47 From the day of their arrival in St. Louis, Mercadier had been looking for a better location. He found one in the summer of 1857 at Cheltenham, a former resort spa of 39 acres, six miles west of the city along the Pacific Railroad. It was, he said, a "charming parcel of prairie and woods, of white

66 Communal Utopias and the American Experience and green buildings, and a small river traversed by a fine bridge." It cost $25,000. Thomas Allen, a St. Louis banker, gave him a mortgage with the following terms: $500 down and the balance due in ten annual payments at 6 percent interest. In the event of one default the Deed of Trust allowed Allen to foreclose. Mercadier wrote Beluze a long letter glorifying the acquisition and reminded him of the promised $10,000 subscription. On May 8, the Icarians moved to Cheltenham.48 For a while the Cabetists at the Cheltenham Icaria replicated the communal life they had known in Illinois. They had workshops where tailors, cobblers, and coopers made items that were sold in St. Louis. Carpenters, cartwrights, and blacksmiths contracted jobs with outsiders. Women worked as seamstresses and domestic servants. They had a cow and some pigs but planted no crops. They ate together in a large, central stone house and used its upstairs rooms as apartments. Three other frame houses were used as living quarters where, unlike at Nauvoo, parents stayed with their children. Every February 3 they held a banquet commemorating the birthday of the "Icarian Nation." During the meal their band played their old familiar songs, after which they gathered for a soiree. On Sunday afternoons the musicians gave concerts in the dining room. Monthly plays were put on in the same room. There, in 1859, they had a formal ball in which they danced waltzes and quadrilles. They expanded the Cours Icarien to include more group participation. Mercadier urged enthusiasm; everyone had to participate with "heart and spirit." He organized it in stages. First, the adults discussed an appropriate topic of communal unity. Anyone who had not spoken read from Cabet's writings and commented on the passages. Then the children recited stories that their parents had taught them. The Cours ended with the band playing several selections. At one of these Cours Mercadier confidently predicted that "we have only to continue in the path which we followed [and] the Icarian cause will realize all the benefits which we expect of it."49 But confidence was not enough. Financially, the Cheltenham Icaria was in a mess. Part of their difficulty was the fact that so many became sick from a mosquito-infected river that bisected the colony, causing hundreds of working days to be lost to dysentery and fever. Worse still, the anticipated financial help from Beluze never arrived. And their own income barely met expenses, with almost nothing left over for banker Thomas Allen. Mercadier, like Cabet, had no bookkeeping system, so neither he nor any one else knew what money was coming in and going out. In January 1860, Mercadier made some drastic changes that he hoped would save Icaria. He started a system of double-entry accounting and began to keep detailed records of every workshop. He said that they must forget about communism, become capitalists, and sell at a maximum profit anything they could in St. Louis. They had to learn how to "make contracts, learn to buy at the lowest price and sell at the highest."50 Mercadier's changes, like Cabet's at Nauvoo, caused a confrontation. Vogel, a young, volatile cap maker

Icaria 67 from Colmar, led the dissidents. He said that Mercadier had overstepped his authority. He argued that they should replace the presidency and the Gerance with a weaker executive body. One of Vogel's supporters, Salarnier, argued that "the People lay down the law, they alone [have] the executive power to enforce it."51 Mercadier, however, had the support of the majority of the Assembly and they reenacted Cabet's October Declaration. Everyone must toe the line. The dissidents refused. In March, Vogel and 43 other Icarians left Cheltenham; Mercadier was glad to be rid of them.52 The split was fatal. Vogel's group took with them $1,800 worth of tools and clothing and $744 in cash and IOUs. They left behind a community of 93 adults—not enough artisans, male or female, to earn income to pay the bills. During the Civil War some of the men enlisted in the Union army. Some people simply went to St. Louis to live. By the summer of 1863 Cheltenham had shrunk to just 21 men, 29 women, and 32 children. Mercadier himself had moved to a rented house in the city. By January 1864, only eight men, seven women, and a few children were at the stone house. Thomas Allen foreclosed. In March 1864, Mercadier's successor as president, Arsene Sauva, called everyone together and told them Icaria was finished and that he was going to St. Louis to turn the keys over to Allen. The next day Sauva and four families headed north by train to join their former enemies, the Nauvoo Majority, who in 1860 had sold their interests there and relocated to southwest Iowa, near the town of Corning.53 The Majority went to Iowa that year because they, too, ran into financial difficulties. Soon after the Cabetists departed in the fall of 1856, the community, like much of what was then called the "West," was hit by the Panic of 1857. Without the Cabetists, it was woefully undermanned. For example, the distillery, with just one person to run it, shut down. The school went without repairs. Cabet had taken 1,000 books from the library as well as a sizable quantity of tools and clothing. And the Majority knew that Beluze, furious at what they had done to his father-in-law, would never send money to help out. Within a year creditors were threatening to sue.54 They elected Marchand as president with instructions to organize a relocation to Adams County in southwest Iowa, where new federal lands had opened for sale at $1.25 an acre. Here the Icarians secured a homestead of 3,100 acres for which they assumed a mortgage of $3,875. They told Gerard to remain at Nauvoo and dispose of the property at a public auction. In January 1858, the first group left for Iowa. Within two years all of the Majority who wished to continue as Icarians had made the 225-mile, 6-day trip on wagons, horseback, or on foot. But of the 219 adult Icarians of the Majority at Nauvoo in 1856 only 61 were in Iowa to sign the Articles of Incorporation on September 8, 1860, that created a community to engage in "all kinds of agriculture and horticulture."55 That part of the state was then still largely unsettled prairie. The town of Corning, the seat of Adams County, had just been planted in 1857 and had

68 Communal Utopias and the American Experience only a few dozen homes. The nearest supply town—St. Joseph, Missouri— was 70 miles away. Icarian families lived in seven small log cabins with dirt floors. A slightly larger cabin housed the single men. They had a log refectory that served as a kitchen and dining room, a washhouse, bakery, grocery store, drugstore, and library. Log workshops were for sewing, making sabots (wooden shoes), and blacksmi thing. The Nodaway River crossed the property and they built a flour and saw mill on its south bank. By the river they constructed a barn, pigpen, and chicken house.56 The Civil War, which all but destroyed the Cheltenham Icaria, saved the Iowa community because they sold their produce and hides to Union army agents at enormously inflated prices. By the end of the war they were able to redeem the mortgage and settle into a comfortable routine of a prosperous agricultural commune. By 1870, they had 400 acres in corn and wheat and 400 acres in pasture and timber. Their livestock included 40 horses, 140 cattle, and 600 sheep. They shipped their products directly to Omaha by a new railroad, the C.B. & Q., that ran through the northern edge of their property. All of the log structures had been torn down and replaced with attractive frame buildings.57 The Corning Icaria tried to replicate the Nauvoo Utopia. The shops were all placed together in one section of the colony. The frame homes were located in a 90° angle west and north of a large refectory, the communal center, just as before. The 60 by 30 foot structure had two stories. On the first floor was a dining room and a kitchen, and in the basement a storage area. The second floor had the library, a tailor shop, and a seamstress's room. They met weekly in the building as a General Assembly to discuss community matters where, as before, only the men voted. As before, women could vote only on special questions such as admission of new members and on issues of housing and clothing. At the refectory, once a year, they elected their president and a fourperson Gerance in charge of industry, agriculture, lodging, and clothing. They chose Marchand as president for 13 consecutive years.58 Marchand's daughter, Marie, grew to adulthood in the community and in her last years, living in New York City, she wrote a detailed memoir of the life she had known there. She published it under her married name of Ross in 1938 as Child of Icaria. From this and other sources—letters and visitors' accounts—one can sense what it must have been like to live in this rural communal Utopia. The unifying force of the community, according to Marie Ross, was their commitment to "all for each and each for all." Everyone sat down three times each day to meals prepared in the central kitchen in huge iron kettles. Breakfast was soup, bread, and cafe au lait. At noon, they had meat, vegetables, milk, and desert. Supper was onion or beef stew and bread. The community's newspaper, the Revue Icarienne, admitted that "on holidays we have been indulging ourselves with wine." Most men farmed and wore sabots while in the fields. Women did the cooking, laundry, and sewing. As before, marriage was expected of women by the age of 18 and of men by the

Icaria 69 age of 20. They allowed divorce, obtained in the Adams County Court at Corning but, as at Nauvoo, expected both parties to remarry quickly. They still maintained that celibacy was against the laws of nature.59 As before, recreation was important. On Saturday evening in the refectory they put on musical plays or held dances to which they invited their American neighbors. The orchestra included violins, horns, clarinets, flutes, and drums. On Sunday evenings they gave choir concerts, also open to the public, of Icarian songs (such as Song of Departure, Hymn of Harmony, and Let's Go to Icaria) and popular tunes of the day. On some weekends during the summer they went on outings to the Nodaway River, replicating their excursions to the Woods of the Young Ladies by the Mississippi. As before, they celebrated the February 3 departure of the First Advance Guard. It was their main winter event, and included an elaborate banquet with toasts, singing, and the election of next year's officers. After the meal they cleared the tables and placed long benches in front of a stage at the west end of the refectory. On stage, lit by rows of candles, Icarians performed the plays they had at Nauvoo, such as The Salamander, Death to the Rats, Six Heads in a Hat, and The Fisherman's Daughter. After the performance everyone danced to the music of the orchestra. The summer holiday was an American one, July 4. On that day they decorated the refectory entrance with garlands of vines and green boughs and covered the fireplace mantel with wild flowers. They hung cardboard banners on the walls that read "Equality," "Fraternity," and "Unity" or contained quotes from the Voyage en Icarie. They raised the American flag in front of the building while the orchestra played the "Star Spangled Banner." Then they loaded everyone into wagons and went to Corning to watch the town parade and enjoy a picnic. Late in the afternoon they returned to the colony for a banquet, topped off with a theatrical presentation.60 They set Sunday afternoons aside for the Cours icarien. Adults read from the Voyage en Icarie or from another of Cabet's works, Le vrai Christianisme suivant Jesus-Christ (1846; The True Christianity According to Jesus Christ). Oneidian William A. Hinds lived in Icaria as a guest in 1876 and wrote to the editor of the journal the American Socialist that at the Cours he heard "selections from the writings of their great apostle . . . recitals by the young, or songs, perchance, which would stir your Socialite enthusiasm."61 The Cours constantly stressed that they must be sober and temperate, work with diligence, stay healthy, and that the women must renounce primping and coquetry.62 There were some aspects of life in the Corning Icaria, however, that were much different from the Nauvoo community. Gone were the regimented workshops that Cabet had supervised. Now a spirit of cooperation was all that Marchand and the Gerance wanted. There were no communal apartments. Nuclear families lived together in homes and the children attended the nearby one-room public school. The Iowa Icarians were friendlier to their neighbors than were the Nauvoo Utopians. The Nauvoo community, dominated by Cabet, was insular because "Papa" insisted that only he or members of the Ger-

70 Communal Utopias and the American Experience ance deal with outsiders. Marchand, always described as kindly and serene, was no Cabet. He urged Americans to attend the Icarian festivities and permitted the young people to socialize. Marie Ross remembered that "there was much visiting back and forth and even staying with friends over weekends without troubling [for] . . . permission." Outsiders frequently stopped by on weekends where, in the refectory, Marie wrote, "they sang, played games, or danced."63 Unfortunately, in 1876 after some younger men had joined the colony, serious disagreements appeared. These new Icarians had fought in the Paris Commune uprising of 1870 and arrived at the colony fired with the idealism of militant Communism. They did not like what they found there. Far from a beacon of light for the reformation of humanity, they saw instead a group of complacent, dull farmers. So, they set about to bring Icaria back in line with Cabet's high principles and goals. They demanded specific changes. They wanted to give women fall voting rights. They wanted an open admission policy that would allow anyone of good character to become an Icarian. They condemned the family home as a dangerous source of selfishness and individualism and wanted to put up communal apartments. They wanted to upgrade the Cours icarien to discuss serious issues and not just rehash the same old Icarian ideas which, they said, no one paid much attention to anyhow.64 Things came to a head in the fall of 1877. At a meeting of the General Assembly the community split in half. On one side were Marchand and the older Icarians, the "Conservatives." On the other side were the young "Progressives," led by a thirty-year old mechanic Emile Peron, a veteran of the Paris Commune. Since neither side would compromise, the Progressives suggested that Icaria might just as well divide into separate branches. Marchand would have no part of the destruction of his Utopia. He tried the old Nauvoo trick of locking the community warehouse, expecting that the young zealots would either go along with the traditional ways or leave. Instead, Peron went to court. He asked the Circuit Court of Adams County to order the warehouse unlocked because the Progressives had a legal right to community goods. Meanwhile, the warehouse remained closed. At mealtimes, the Conservatives and Progressives took turns using the kitchen and dining room. But they never spoke to each other.65 Exasperated, Peron tried again. On January 14, 1878 he stood before the Circuit Court judge with a lawyer. The Conservative's lawyer was there, too, and he spoke first. The Conservatives were prepared to give each Progressive a severance fee of $100 plus the separation allowance of $75. The Progressives asked for a continuance. Then they had the local newspaper, the Corning Union, print a statement of their position. They wanted nothing to do with the Conservative's unfair offer and insisted that a jury decide the matter. The judge, on petition from the Progressives, set a trial for the August session of the Circuit Court. At the trial the Conservative's lawyer told the jury that dividing the com-

Icaria 71 munity in half was a dangerous idea because that would allow the Progressives to remain in Adams County. But they were radicals, he said, who would use Icaria as a base to distribute dangerous Communist propaganda. He further warned that if the Progressives stayed in the area they would open stores in Corning and begin to compete with local businessmen. The Progressive's lawyer contended that Icaria had to be dissolved and the property divided because the Conservatives had violated their own charter. The document specifically restricted the community to agricultural and horticultural activities, but the Conservatives had been running a profitable saw and lumber mill. On August 16, the jury decided in favor of the Progressives. The judge ordered the charter vacated and appointed trustees to divide Icaria's assets.66 The final outcome of the schism was the creation of two Icarias on the 3,100-acre property. The Conservatives, now calling themselves "NewIcaria," stayed on the original site and had title to the western half of the land. The Progressives dragged some of the buildings on logs to their new location, about a mile away from the Conservatives. They called the place "Young Icaria." The legacy of the fight was bitter. Hinds concluded that "one of the saddest phases of the Icarian strife is that it has made enemies of the same household, setting wife against husband and children against parents, and widely sundered ties that should have grown stronger with each succeeding year."67 Four years later the Young Icarians sold their land and moved to Cloverdale, California, some 80 miles north of San Francisco. They bought an 885-acre ranch just south of the town for $15,000, built a sawmill, and planted a vineyard. They also put in 100 acres of wheat and some peach trees. They tried to construct a socialist version of Icaria at the ranch, which they named "Icaria Speranza" or "Icaria of Hope." Using Fourier as well as Cabet as a model, they ran the community on a profit-sharing plan. The community held all assets and income and annually distributed the profits equally among the adults. Each person received "premiums" that ranged from 50 cents to $1.50 as a monthly incentive if they did their jobs well. They allowed private property such as furniture, household implements, clothes, and cash under $50. But with only 10 families living in Icaria Speranza, they lacked the labor and the capital to run a self-contained community. And they compounded this problem by making it all but impossible to recruit new members. They raised the admission standard to insist that the applicant be fluent in French and familiar with all of Cabet's writings. After five years they gave up and dissolved the community.68 Back at Corning, New Icaria atrophied. By 1886, only 34 people—12 men, 10 women, and 12 teenagers—lived there. The place looked more like a large family farm. The men, in bib overalls and straw hats, tended the livestock and grew corn. The women, in calico dresses, aprons, and white caps, cooked the meals, mended the clothes, did the laundry, and prepared the meals. The only things that marked them out from other Iowans were their French accents

72

Communal Utopias and the American Experience

and sabots. By 1890, N e w Icaria consisted of just nine men, six of whom were between sixty and seventy-four years of age, and eight elderly women. W h e n Marie Marchand Ross visited that year, she was devastated. " T h e community really did n o t exist any more," she wrote, "since there were only a few people left and most of them very old and not able to do the heavy work of the farm." 69 O n February 3, 1895 they decided to disband. O n October 22 the judge of the Adams County C o u r t signed the order dissolving the last Icaria.

NOTES 1. Cabet published the first edition of the book under the pseudonym of Francis Adams because he feared being arrested for violating French press laws. Its title page read: Voyage et Aventures de lord William Carisdall en Icarie, traduit de Panglais de Francis Adams (Travels and Adventures of Lord William Carisdall in Icaria, Translated from the English by Francis Adams, Paris: Hippolyte Souverain, 1840). The second edition appeared in 1842 as Voyage en Icarie (Travels in Icaria) under Cabet's own name. See the English translation of the complete book by Robert P. Sutton, Travels in Icaria (Macomb: Western Illinois University, 1985) and the most recent partial translation by Leslie J. Roberts, with an introduction by Sutton, by Syracuse University Press in 2004. The fullest treatment of the Icarian movement in Europe is Christopher H. Johnson, Utopian Communism in France: Cabet and the Icarians, 1839-1851 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974). The most recent comprehensive study of Icarianism is Sutton, Les Icariens: the Utopian Dream in Europe and America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994). Its bibliography, pp. 180-93, is the most inclusive listing of manuscript and printed sources on Cabet and the Icarians. Other secondary sources in English on the Icarians include Robert V. Hine, California's Utopian Colonies, revised edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); William Alfred Hinds, "The Icarians," in American Communities and Co-operative Colonies (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1908; reprinted, Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1975), pp. 361-96; Dale R. Larsen, ed., Soldiers ofHumanity: A History and Census of the Icarian Communities (The National Icarian Heritage Society, 1998); Sylvester A. Piotrowski, Etienne Cabet and the Voyage en Icarie: A Study in the History of Social Thought (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1935; reprinted, Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1975); Marie Marchand Ross, Child of Icaria (New York: City Printing, 1938; reprinted, Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1976); Albert Shaw, Icaria: A Chapter in the History of Communism (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1884; reprinted, New York: AMS Press, 1973). Non-English works on the Icarian movement include Michel Cordillot, La Sociale en Amerique: dictionnaire biographique du mouvement socialfrancophoneaux Etats-Unis 1848-1922 (Paris: Atelier, 2002); Henri Deroches, preface to Voyage en Icarie by Etienne Cabet, 1848 edition (reprinted, Paris: Athropas, 1970); Joachim Hoppner and Waltraud Seidel-Hoppner, Etienne Cabet und seine Ikarische Kolonie (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002); Jean Maitron, ed., Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrierfrancaise, Part 1: 1789-1864, 3 vols. (Paris; Ouvrieres, 1964—66); Jules Prudhommezux, Icarie et son fondateur Etienne Cabet (Paris: Edouard Cornely, 1907); Fernand Rude, ed., uVoyage en Icariev: deux ouvriers viennois aux Etats-Unis en 1855 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1952). Valuable dissertations and theses are Clark Fotion, "Cabet and Icar-

ian Communism," Ph.D. diss., Iowa City: University of Iowa, 1966; Diana M. Garno,

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"Gendered Utopia: Women in the Icarian Experience, 1840-1898," Ph.D. diss., Detroit: Wayne State University, 1998; Kenneth O. Luke, "Nauvoo, Illinois, Since the Exodus of the Mormons, 1846-1873," Ph.D. diss., St. Louis: St. Louis University, 1973; Elizabeth Ann Roberts, "Housing and Family Life of the Icarian Colonies," M.A. thesis, Iowa City: University of Iowa, 1973. 2. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 5-15. He was accompanied by his mistress, Delphine Lesage, and their daughter, Celine. In London, Cabet married Delphine. 3. Ibid., pp. 16-22,30-32. 4. Sutton, Travels in Icaria, pp. 278-79, 301-4 and Les Icariens, pp. 22-30. 5. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 45-46. 6. Ibid., p. 157 n. 9; Cabet, Prospectus: Grande emigration au Texas, en Amerique, pour realiser la communaute dlcarie (Paris: Bureau du Populaire, 1848), p. 2. 7. Cabet, "Addresse de la l re avant-garde" in Opinions et sentiments publiquement exprimes, concernant le fondateur dlcarie (Paris: privately published, 1856), pp. 13-14. 8. Sutton, Les Icariens, p. 50 and "An American Elysium: The Icarian Communities," in Pitzer, ed. Communal Utopias, p. 281. 9. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 57-58, 445-47. 10. Ibid., pp. 57-58; Seymour Connor, The Peters Colony of Texas: A History and Biographical Sketches of the Early Settlers (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1959), pp. 47-48, 86-89, 120-21, 135; Jane Dupree Begos, "'Icaria,' A Footnote to the Peters Colony," Communal Societies 6 (1986): pp. 84-91. 11. Prudhommeaux, Icarie, p. 243 n. 2; "Lettre de la Nouvelle Orleans," November 13, 1848 in Le Populaire, December 17, 1848; Le Courier (New Orleans), November 23, 1848. 12. Daily Orleanian, January 26,29, and February 9,1849, Le Courier (New Orleans), January 26, 27, 1849; Paul S. Gauthier, Quest for Utopia: The Icarians ofAdams County: With Colonies in Denton County, Texas, Nauvoo, Illinois, Cheltenham, Missouri, and Cloverdale, California (Corning, Iowa: Gauthier Publishing, 1992), p. 23. 13. Prudhommeaux, Icarie, p. 240. 14. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 58-59, 161 n. 12; Prudhommeaux, Icarie, pp. 219-35. 15. Prudhommeaux, Icarie, p. 240. 16. Ibid., p. 242. 17. Ibid., p. 242; "Choix de Nauvoo," Le Populaire, July 1, 1848. 18. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 62-65; Frederic Olinet (as "Job"), Socialisme: Voyage dun Autunois en Icarie a la suite de Cabet (Autun: Dejussieu, 1898), p. 109. 19. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 65-66; Cabet, Colonie icarienne aux Etats-Unis dAmerique: sa constitution, ses his, sa situation materielle et sociale apres le premier semestre 1855 (Paris: privately published, 1856), pp. 144—62. 20. Luke, "Nauvoo, Illinois," p. 56. 21. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 66-67. 22. Ibid., pp. 72, 74; Rude, Voyage en Icarie, pp. 150-51, 257-66. 23. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 74—75; Rude, Voyage en Icarie, p. 152. 24. Cabet, Colonie icarienne aux Etats-Unis, pp. 142-62; I. G. Miller, "The Icarian Community of Nauvoo, Illinois," Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society (1906): p. 106. 25. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 81-82; Prudhommeaux, Icarie, pp. 340-42. 26. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 80-81; Rude, Voyage en Icarie, pp. 44—45, 158; Cabet,

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Colonie icarienne, pp. 59-60, 92-99; Emile Vallet, Communism: History of the Experiment at Nauvoo of the Icarian Settlement, (Nauvoo, IL: Nauvoo Rustler, 1917), pp. 18-19. 27. Sutton, Les Icariens, p. 80; Cabet, Colonie icarienne, pp. 150-61; Rude, Voyage en Icarie, p. 46; Vallet, Communism, p. 19. 28. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 77-79 and "Utopian Fraternity: Ideal and Reality in Icarian Recreation," Western Illinois Regional Studies 6 (Spring 1983): pp. 23-30; Rude, Voyage en Icarie, pp. 46, 154-55. 29. New York Tribune, July 2, 1853; Cabet, Colonie icarienne, pp. 181-82. 30. Sutton, Les Icariens, p. 81. 31. Garno, "Gendered Utopia," pp. 500, 513; "Cabet's Recruitment of Women," Communal Studies 23, 2003; 63-74. 32. Ibid., pp. 535, 584; Sutton, Les Icariens, p. 81. 33. Prudhommeaux, Icarie, pp. 348-61. 34. Ibid., p. 368 n. 1. 35. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 85-88; Rude, Voyage en Icarie, pp. 50-62; Cabet, Colonie icarienne, pp. 123, 208-12, 226-33 and Guerre de Vopposition contre le citoyen Cabet, fondateur dlcarie (Paris: privately published, 1856). 36. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 88-95; Prudhommeaux, Icarie, p. 402; Cabet, Guerre de Vopposition, pp. 14-56. 37. Sutton, Les Icariens, p. 95; Prudhommeaux, Icarie, pp. 404-7; Vallet, Communism, pp. 223-25. 38. Sutton, Les Icariens, p. 95; Cabet, Guerre de Vopposition, pp. 33-64; Jean Pierre Beluze, Lettre sur la colonie icarienne, par un Icarien (Paris: privately published, 1856), pp. 30-34; Sutton, Les Icariens, p. 95. 39. Sutton, Les Icariens, p. 96. 40. Cabet, Depart de Nauvoo du fondateur dlcarie avec les vrais Icariens (Paris: privately published, 1856), pp. 6-9. 41. Ibid, p. 18. 42. Ibid, pp. 20-21. 43. "A Resolution of the General Assembly of the Icarian Community for the Expulsion of E. Cabet," Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield. 44. Missouri Historical Society Collection. The Center for Icarian Studies, Western Illinois University, Folder 3. 45. Sutton, Les Icariens, p. 103. 46. Mercadier's report was published under Beluze's name as Compte-rendu de la Gerance de la communaute icarienne a Saint-Louis sur la situation morale et materielle de la communaute pendant les mois de novembre et decembre 1856 et les mois de Janvier etfevrier 1857, (Paris: privately published, 1857), p. 7; Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 104-5. 47. Beluze, Notre situation a Saint-Louis, (Paris: privately published, 1857), pp. 5, 10. 48. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 106-7. 49. Ibid, p. 111. 50. Ibid, p. 112. 51. Beluze, Lettres icariennes: A mon ami Eugene, 2 vols. (Paris: Malteste, 1859-62), vol. 2, pp. 81-88. 52. Sutton, Les Icariens, p. 109. 53. Ibid, pp. 109-15. 54. Ibid, pp. 116-17.

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55. Gauthier, Quest for Utopia, pp. 43-44; Shaw, Icaria, pp. 58-60; Prudhommeaux, Icarie, pp. 480-81. 56. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 117-19. 57. Ibid, p. 119; Gauthier, Quest, pp. 50-52; Ross, Child of Icaria, p. 7; Roberts, "Housing and Family Life," p. 62. 58. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 120-23. 59. Ross, Child of Icaria, pp. 108, 125-27; Roberts, "Housing and Family Life," pp. 72-78, 151-53, 155-59. 60. Sutton, Les Icariens, pp. 123-37. 61. Ibid, p. 124. 62.Ibid. 63. Ibid, p. 126. 64. Ibid, pp. 127-28. 65. Ibid, pp. 129-31. 66. Ibid, pp. 13 2-3 3. 67. Ibid, p. 134. 68. Ibid, pp. 135-39. 69. Ibid, p. 142; Ross, Child of Icaria, pp. 105-9, 114, 130-33, 142.

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CHAPTER 4

Gilded Age Socialist Cooperatives

Events and forces that would eventually lead to the Civil War destroyed the surge of communal Fourierism in the 1840s. Leading Fourierists such as Greeley and Channing diverted their energies away from community building and into the crusade to stop the spread of slavery. And the new Republican Party, founded in 1854, was a staunch defender of exploitive industrial capitalism. However, following the Panic of 1873, socialist communal experiments reappeared, hoping to replace the "wage system" with cooperative colonies of workers and managers.1 Brisbane's two successors as apostles of Utopian socialism during the Gilded Age were Henry George and Edward Bellamy. George, born in 1839 to a deeply religious Philadelphia family, left home as a teenager to work as a cabin boy at sea. While ashore in Calcutta, he was overwhelmed with the dreadful contrast between enormous wealth and dreadful poverty. He returned to San Francisco in 1857 and took a number of jobs, but mostly worked as a newspaperman. Over the next 20 years he continued to ponder the causes of the enormous gap between rich and poor that he found not just in India but in industrialized America. In 1879, he published Progress and Poverty.2 The book sold more than two million copies and became a classic in the history of American reform literature. "No single figure in the last two decades of the nineteenth century," Daniel T. Rodgers observed, "was more successful than Henry George in arousing public opinion to an awareness of the social origins of wealth and poverty."3 George persuaded thousands of Americans, until then largely indifferent to the harmful impact of industrialization, to eradicate monopoly and exploitation. In one of his most quoted passages, he argued that the "association of poverty with progress is the great

78 Communal Utopias and the American Experience enigma of our times." "It is," he wrote, "the riddle which the Sphinx of Fate puts to our civilization and which not to answer is to be destroyed." Common sense dictated that as prosperity improved so should the conditions of the lowest classes; but, instead, material progress had made life miserable for millions. He warned that the ever-increasing chasm between wealth and poverty had brought down previous civilizations and, if not remedied, would destroy America. This unequal distribution of wealth and power, he claimed, was "observable in our civilization today, showing itself in every progressive community and with greater intensity the more progressive the community." In America, wages constantly declined while rent increased and, "the rich . . . become very much richer, the poor . . . become more helpless and hopeless, and the middle class [is] swept away."4 A single tax, he proposed, would change everything, and would be the mechanism for social reorganization. In this reform, the government would eliminate, with one tax, all income from land— as distinct from capital—thus ending land speculation and guaranteeing every citizen equal access to the land and its natural resources. It would produce economic equality, stabilize society, and make educational opportunities available for everyone. Edward Bellamy was born in 1850 in Massachusetts and published his remedy for the evils of industrial capitalism—national ownership of production and distribution—in 1888 as Looking Backward, 2000-1887. Although trained as a lawyer, he was a journalist for the Springfield, Massachusetts, Union and then for the New York Evening Post. While at the Evening Post he met Albert Brisbane, with whom he discussed Fourierism in a number of long sessions with the elder socialist. According to Guarneri, Bellamy saw himself as "the heir of the Brook Farm Colony and a score of phalansteries" that "were Looking Backward's 'precursors' in spirit if not in exact form."5 The book, which made him a national celebrity, is a romantic novel depicting a brave new urban world. The hero, Julian West, wakes up in Boston in the year 2000 and finds the city transformed into a center of equality, abundance, and harmony. Private enterprise has gone, replaced by a collective organization of the economy that provided opportunity and abundance for everyone. Bellamy, like Fourier, pictured an "industrial army" into which all citizens were drafted that was engaged in constant parades and military ceremonies. In Bellamy's world, as in Fourier's, the right job was available for everyone's abilities and "attractions." He borrowed from Fourier in a number of other places. In the Boston Utopia, as in the phalanx, rivalry with one's peers, called "emulation," was a work incentive. In his own time Bellamy saw in America a "servitude" to trusts and monopolies. Individualism was the root of its problems, to which the solution was "solidarity" and fraternal love. And like Brisbane, Bellamy made socialism respectable by emphasizing Victorian domesticity—most activities in his Utopia were carried on in the privacy of family homes. The following year he founded a journal, the Nationalist, and two years later the New Nation. His followers established "Nationalist Clubs" in 27 states.6

Gilded Age Socialist Cooperatives 79 Inspired by George and Bellamy, Gilded Age Utopian socialists urged Americans to build model cooperative communities dedicated to collective ownership of industry. Since they saw the colonies as sparking a moral revival against the sins of industrialism, they received the approval of Protestant clergy who, in the antebellum period, had condemned Fourierists for their immorality. Unfortunately, these Utopians ran up against resistance from an American culture that was materialistic, secular, and devoted to unfettered industrial capitalism. Most cooperative communities were aware of this hostility and tried to conciliate public opinion, and in the process found themselves internally divided between members who pushed for more compromise and those who decried the surrendering of Utopian ideals. As a result, most communities became trapped in a dualism of wanting radical reform and keeping traditional values, of wanting communal property and allowing some vestiges of capitalism, of wanting communal discipline and insisting upon personal independence. They became infected with the virus of what W. Fitzhugh Brundage called "ideological latitudinarianism" that first debilitated and then destroyed them.7 THE KAWEAH COOPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH Bellamy's followers supported the pioneering Gilded Age cooperative experiment, the Kaweah colony at Visalia, California, founded by Burnette G. Haskell, a chain-smoking, hard-drinking San Francisco labor leader. Born in 1857, he attended Oberlin College, the University of California, and the University of Illinois without receiving degrees from any of them. In 1879, he was admitted to the San Francisco bar but soon changed careers to edit his uncle's newspaper, the Truth. By 1882 he had turned the Truth into a journal for city workers and trade unions by printing selections from the writings of George, Bellamy, and others and publicizing ideas about cooperative settlements and the perfection of mankind.8 The publication of Laurence Gronlund's Cooperative Commonwealth in 1884 convinced Haskell that the only alternative to the exploitation of labor was a separate society of workers. The book showed him how to organize a cooperative community and described in detail its departments and sections. At the same time he discovered that cheap public timberland was for sale in the San Joaquin Valley. In October 1885, he set up a "Co-operative Land Purchase and Colonization Association." He and 53 men then went to Visalia to file a collective application for 160 acres. The land registry official, somewhat overwhelmed by this assortment of urban radicals, union organizers, and farmers accepted the application, although some of the men had no capital to invest and lived in a San Francisco boardinghouse. However, the federal land officers in Washington, D.C., suspected that they might be a front for the Southern Pacific Railroad's plans to build a connecting line between San Francisco and the federal forests. The

80 Communal Utopias and the American Experience officials blocked the sale and gave them land only on lease until their application could be fully investigated. Haskell accepted the lease, believing that it was only a temporary delay until he could acquire a warranty deed. He started surveying the land and advertised for colonists to live in Kaweah, as he named the colony, for the river that traversed the site. Nonresident supporters from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, New York City, and Boston responded to Haskell's advertisements by sending in a membership fee of $500 that gave them voting rights in the community. With the membership fee and donations Haskell was able to collect $53,545.9 Kaweah residents were a colorful bunch, portrayed by a contemporary as "dress-reform cranks and phonetic spelling fanatics, word purists and vegetarians." One man described his colleagues as "a motley lot, assorted cranks of many creeds and none, erratic ranges from uncooked food believers to spiritualists, Swedenborgians . . . atheists, of course, [and] a sprinkling of the orthodox."10 Actually, they were mostly skilled artisans with trade union backgrounds, some were businessmen, others artists and musicians. At one point about 300 individuals lived at Kaweah, although its average size was somewhere between 50 and 75 persons. Most residents were followers of Bellamy, even though when Bellamy read about the colony in a Boston newspaper, he had said that a cooperative could never work on a local level but must be tried on a national scale. Others apparently joined Kaweah not because of ideological reasons but just to get away from the city. "A co-operative Eden," Robert Hine wrote, "offered refuge from a cold, competitive world." And "dusty city existence would be exchanged for clear mountain air and scenery."11 Or, as described in the November 1889 issue of the San Francisco Commonwealth: at Kaweah "the Man shall be sunk in the State and yet shall be given such freedom for growth and development that he, like some golden pinnacle of a perfect palace, shall tower far above the foundation walls." "Here," the Commonwealth continued, "shall be Joy, Music, and Laughter, Art, Science, and Beauty, and all things else for which Poets have sung and Martyrs died, and of which in the outer world we see but the palest phantoms."12 The colony's main project was cutting an 18-mile logging road from the valley into the mountains. After four years they had finished the road at a cost of $50,000 in construction expenses and an estimated $250,000 in work hours. It was an enduring achievement and served as the only way into the Sequoia forests until the 1930s. A monthly Saturday General Meeting that received reports from the superintendents of eight departments governed the colony. Between these meetings an elected Board of Trustees enforced the rule: "no work meant no food." Everyone received the same wage certificate of thirty cents an hour. Dr. S. Guy, a physician who lived close by, took care of medical problems and was paid by the Trustees. A midwife helped at childbirth. Haskell prohibited religious services but allowed anyone to conduct private worship as they pleased. Kaweah had a band that played in the evening during summer. Saturday night dances were frequent. They went on overnight camp-

Gilded Age Socialist Cooperatives 81 ing trips into the forest and swam in the Kaweah River. They had a casual system of education where children called the teachers by their first names. If the pupils disliked something a teacher said or did they could report it to their parents, who would then bring the teacher before the General Meeting for discipline. "Such a possibility," Hine observed, "often placed the whip in the hand of the pupil."13 Factional disputes appeared early—perhaps an inevitable result of the diverse backgrounds of the members. Haskell himself was erratic, argumentative, and stubborn, but things were generally peaceful until nasty rumors began to spread about Kaweah. The San Francisco Chronicle charged Haskell with fraud and embezzlement and described the "miserable people" there as "deluded beings" exploited by "unscrupulous men." In April 1890, the San Francisco Star labeled it a "villainous gang" that practiced despotism. The Visalia Times-Delta alleged that the members were "unwitting tools of the lumber barons." The editor of the Fresno Daily-Republican claimed that it was a "bunco game" of "scheming plotters." Some local residents filed criminal charges against the colony in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles for illegally cutting trees on federal land. In the winter of 1890, the government confiscated its property, citing eminent domain, to form the Sequoia National Park.14 By then Kaweah was already declining. Its resident members were down to 50 and non-residents had stopped sending money. The wage certificate payment for work had been abandoned. Haskell spent most of his time prospecting for gold in mountain streams. In January 1892, he legally dissolved the community and allowed a couple of families to remain there. But by April, they too had left. Haskell returned to San Francisco, gave up on building a Utopia, and published an account of his experience for the magazine Out West. It appeared in September 1902. He wrote that Kaweah had been "one of the hopes of my life" but "we were not fit to survive, and we died." "Is there no remedy, then for the evils that oppress the poor?" he lamented, and "is there no surety that the day is coming when justice and right shall reign on earth?"15 PUGET SOUND COMMUNITIES The Puget Sound Cooperative Colony The first cooperative community in the state of Washington was founded in 1887 at Port Angeles. Its leader, George Smith, was a forty-four year old lawyer from California who came to Seattle in 1883 and, like Haskell in San Francisco, organized workingmen and started a newspaper, the Model Commonwealth. It promoted the building of "a separate community of collective industry, means, utilities, public and private, and of persons under a single management and responsibility for heath, usefulness, individuality and security of each and all."16 Smith offered stock worth $150,000 at $10 a share.

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Lots in his "separate community" would sell for between $20 and $200 on a first-come, first-served basis. Each member could pick his or her occupation. He promised cradle-to-grave welfare that guaranteed free housing, food, and special protection for widows, orphans, and senior citizens. Anyone injured on the job would receive free medical treatment and collect wages until they could return to work. Individuals who lived in the colony for 2 5 years would receive a retirement pension. There would be communal kitchens. He planned a hotel, schools, music halls, libraries, and retail stores to sell products to outsiders. He prohibited alcohol, churches, and "any private societies." Nonresident supporters could join by sending in the annual dues and fees. Smith left Seattle that spring on a recruiting tour to the Midwest. At Chicago he opened a headquarters in the Commercial Hotel and later advertised his colony in the Sunday Telegram.11 In April 1886, he purchased a town site plus 2,000 acres of timberland next to the town of Port Angeles. By January 1887, 22 members had moved there and by April 34 more arrived, some from as far away as Ohio. In June the "Puget Sound Cooperative Colony" incorporated with a resident population of over 400 people, some of whom lived temporarily in a hotel in Port Angeles. Working with a sliding wage of between $2.75 and $4.25 for an eight-hour day, men and women cleared the land, erected a brick kiln near the wharf, and set up a logging camp to cut trees for a sawmill. By the end of the summer they had homes, barns, stables, and shops for blacksmiths, wagon makers, tinkers, shoemakers, and butchers. They had a vegetable garden and a greenhouse. Men caught fish in the Strait and built a propeller-driven steamship, the Angeles. In Port Angeles, they constructed a school, two churches, an office building, an opera house, and more homes for incoming new members. At the Colony a teacher, lone Tomllinson, ran a kindergarten for 25 children, aged three to eight. They also had evening classes for adults in natural history, mathematics, singing, and elocution. A dozen books were collected to start a library. By the end of the year they had a 2 2-piece band and a theater company. Almost every night some social event, usually dancing, took place in the dining hall. Other activities included acting classes and campfire gatherings. The largest celebration of all was an all-day July 4 festival of music, games, boat races, and readings that ended with a banquet and a concert-dance.18 With winter came trouble. There were not enough homes. About a third of the stock subscription money had not arrived and they could barely cover expenses that ran to almost $200 per day. Their first president, a printer and labor union leader named John Knott, became discouraged, went back to Seattle, and denounced Smith as a scheming land speculator.19 A dispute broke out over the bylaws between Smith and his followers and those who criticized the concentration of power in the hands of the president and the board of trustees. In 1888, the realists took control and tried to move the colony away from cooperative principles. They instituted a new wage system. Gone was the sliding scale of pay; in its place, wages were determined by the rule that

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"the toiler is entitled to a just proportion of his toil." They called it the "according-to-merit" plan that gave each worker fair compensation for the job done. Every three months the colony's profits were to be distributed to workers "in proportion to the time of service." They adopted a "Declaration of Principles" that put forth a goal to "foster and secure ethical culture, correct and progressive life in all grades of society, without class distinctions of special privileges or advantages to any one."20 They all but eliminated any qualifications for membership, insisting only that the person be "devoted to the principles of Integral or Entire Co-operation and the plans and principles set forth." They did, however, issue a statement warning new members to wait until they were called before coming to the Colony because it already had too many non-productive individuals, mainly women and children. To counter accusations in the Seattle newspapers that they were practicing free love, the Declaration stated that marriage was "the moral and physical foundation of the home, and the anchor of stable upright conduct."21 But factionalism, constant arguments, and the failure of the brickyard and sawmill—both of which had to be leased out to private owners—augured the Colony's collapse. Their last meeting took place on July 4, 1889 (it was disrupted by a snow blizzard!). By then even their newspaper, the Model Commonwealth, had been taken over by outsiders, and many families had moved away to Port Angeles. Charles P. LeWarne described the community by then as just "lingering on," resembling "a dying business struggling to extricate itself from financial muddles."22 The lingering lasted five years while dissatisfied stockholders took the directors to court to try to rescue their investment. Finally, in the winter of 1894 a judge declared the Colony in debt for $40,000 and began auctioning its real estate to settle 336 claims against it. The final assets were sold in November 1900. The Colony failed for a number of obvious reasons. It never attracted working men and women who might have been able to make the venture profitable. It lacked effective leaders with a commitment to persevere through difficulties. Finally, because Smith's propaganda held out unrealistic promises, the hope of a Utopia based upon cooperation "quickly gave way to a wholesome but conservative town of homeowners, industry, and culture."23 Equality The second "Puget Sound" colony was organized by Ed Pelton and Norman Wallace Lermond, both of whom were Populists in the state of Maine who had become disenchanted with the party's inability to attract the working class. In May 1895, Pelton wrote to a friend that the way to change was to "colonize some state or states, so as to have a majority therein of Socialists, then inaugurate Pubic Ownership of all means of production and distribution as far as can be done within State lines."24 Lermond likewise envisaged a cooperative Utopia. As an officer in the Brotherhood of the Cooperative Com-

84 Communal Utopias and the American Experience monwealth (BCC), he pushed the idea. The BCC, a reform organization, wanted to build a prototype socialist cooperative in the West that would be the parent of other colonies. Its strategy was to construct enough of these cooperatives in a given state to be able to control the legislature and enact a socialist agenda. In 1897, Lermond circulated a prospectus that secured pledges of over $32,000 from members of the BCC. That August he picked a site 30 miles north of the entrance to Puget Sound as the location for his colony, largely because BCC chapters in the area promised to support it.25 In September 1897, Pelton, representing the BCC's national board, left for Seattle and purchased 280 acres of timberland located a mile from Samish Bay (some 75 miles north of Seattle). Accessible from the sea at high tide, it contained a farmhouse and several cultivated acres. He called it the "Hatchery" and set about getting it ready for the first arrivals. He then bought other adjacent tracts and soon had title to 600 acres. In November, 15 settlers— machinists, carpenters, blacksmiths, tailors, schoolteachers, engineers, and preachers—arrived and renamed the colony "Equality" after Bellamy's 1897 novel. They constructed a three-story apartment house, christened "Fort Bellamy," a barn, workshops, and a couple of small log cabins. The men put in crops and purchased horses, cattle, and hogs. In March 1898, Lermond and his family, along with some other members of the BCC board, arrived by train. Equality's residents, about 300 by then, were optimistic that they would soon succeed in converting Washington into a socialist state. One of them wrote about the end of the "passing stage" of talking about socialism and the beginning of action. Another commented on the sense "of movement, of stirring about, rather than the leisurely going that used to characterize for me the common country life."26 Routine settled in and was described in some detail in their newspaper, the Industrial Freedom, which was started in the spring of 1898. They had two types of colonists: those who resided in Equality, and members of the BCC who paid a $160 admission fee and promised to move there later. Local officers of the BCC, who lived in the nearby town of Edison, served as Equality's financial directors and transferred sizeable BCC contributions to it during the first year. At Equality the members elected standing committees, a president, and a secretary, although Pelton was their de facto leader, described by one historian as "not a charismatic [man] . . . but very well liked . . . a practical person . . . [whose] word carried weight."27 Over the spring and summer of 1898 they cleared 50 more acres for farming and planted 3,500 grape vines and some fruit trees. They sold their produce— vegetables, oats, and barley—in Seattle and Tacoma markets. By the fall, with borrowed and leased equipment and money from the BCC, they built a sawmill that had a daily capacity of turning out 35,000 feet of lumber. Yet, because of competition from larger lumbering companies in the Northwest, the expected profits never appeared. They developed a fishing industry in Rosario Strait and the Strait of Juan de Fuca and purchased a sloop called Progress. It

Gilded Age Socialist Cooperatives 85 and a couple of smaller boats were anchored at a slough, about two miles from the colony. Fishing parties daily caught about 1,500 pounds of herring, which they salted or cured at a colony smokehouse. In July they traveled to Birch Bay and Point Roberts to catch salmon. They opened other industries: coopering, blacksmithing, and manufacturing furniture with colony lumber. The women made clothing for Equality and for outside customers, which they sold in a store that also contained the colony's post office. Cobblers made shoes, also for members and outsiders, especially boots for men in the logging camps, but without a resident tanner this enterprise never developed. They manufactured "cereal coffee," a combination of roasted grains described in the Industrial Freedom as "a pure, wholesome, healthful, invigorating beverage" and cheaper than real coffee, for which it substituted. Men and women daily worked eight hours at jobs assigned by foremen, and they all received the same weekly pay.28 Equality was like a western frontier town where isolation tended to stimulate cooperation. In the beginning they lived in the buildings put up in the winter of 1898, with Fort Bellamy being the largest. It served as a communal dining room and kitchen. They built two more apartments in the spring and summer of that year, called House No. 1 and House No. 2.With two stories, House No. 1 had 12 rooms and a dormitory in the attic. House No. 2 was larger, with 30 rooms, eight windows on each of the two floors, and an outside stairway going up to a small porch. Inside the rooms they placed modest furniture—beds, tables, chairs, and chests—made at the colony. Although they had planned to allot each family two rooms, overcrowding required that they be satisfied with one. These cramped conditions caused short tempers, worry about disease, and threat of fire. One woman complained: "I, with my son had one room (had there been ten of us we would have had the same) in an apartment that is not [as] well lighted, heated or ventilated as a stable would be."29 Some of the difficulties were ameliorated by communal living. All the laundry was done in a shop located away from the Houses by a team of men and women who did the washing, ironing, sewing, and mending. At the sound of a bell they sat down three times a day in the dining hall for meals paid for by tickets, twenty-one of which were issued weekly to each individual. Usually eight women, working in shifts, prepared the meals, mostly simple fare of sauerkraut and beans, bread, corn, and oatmeal mush. Twice a week they served desserts of pie or coffee cake. The members ate in shifts, first the men, then the women, and finally the children. The apartments were thought to be only temporary until private homes could be built. So, in the spring of 1899, they laid the foundations of these structures and assigned them to families according to their time of arrival. But construction of the houses went slowly, and by 1900 half of the families were still in the apartments.30 In the summer of 1898, they built a two-story schoolhouse and formed a department of education to teach the younger children "subjects rather than books and dead authors." Grades one through eight had an enrollment of

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between fifty and seventy students, depending on how many of them had to work for the colony. Boys did farm chores and cleared stumps and girls helped with cleaning and kitchen tasks. T h e teachers were short on books, however, and advertised in the Industrial Freedom for readers, arithmetics, grammars, geographies, and histories. T h o s e too young for school were taken care of by a M r s . Ida Jolly. W h e n not in school or doing their communal jobs, youngsters of all ages apparently enjoyed themselves. O n e woman later recalled that her "childhood up there was about the happiest childhood that any child could ever want." "You knew everybody and everybody knew you." She enjoyed "the entertainments . . . masquerade balls and basket parties." 31 Adults enjoyed themselves, too. T h e main social event of the year was the N o v e m b e r 1 commemoration of Equality's founding. T h e y spent the day preparing for an evening celebration that began at seven when the orchestra opened with a march and then played dance music until ten o'clock. T h e n they heard addresses by colony leaders and some vocal presentations by individual singers. At midnight they served a supper topped off with a pie dessert. T h r o u g h o u t the year, in the evenings, they held amateur plays and discussion lyceums, or sang choral works. Almost every Saturday night they held a dance in the schoolhouse, invited outside guests, and did the quadrille, waltz, schottische, and two-step. T h e i r orchestra was made up of two men who played the concertina and the clarinet and a family that included a fiddler, a piccolo player, and mouth-organ player. Thursday evenings were reserved for group singing and performances by a mixed quartet. T h e y sang Populist songs and socialist hymns such as "We Are All M e r r y Socialists" and the quartet held forth with "Simon the Collarer" and "We All Have a Very Bad Cold." Sometimes they put on plays directed by Ida Jolly. T h e day after Christmas, 1898, the Equality Dramatic Company performed two plays and a one-act farce. And two months later the same group presented a drama in the town of Edison. Less organized forms of recreation were digging clams, boating on Samish Bay, going on hikes and picnics, and fishing and hunting. 3 2 Part of Equality's sense of freedom was due to its liberal ideas about religion. T h e Industrial Freedom stated that the "colony has no religion" and allowed everyone to express their beliefs in any way they wanted. " T h e fullest freedom in matters of dogma and creed [are] left to every individual," the paper p r o claimed. " T h e y are at liberty . . . to follow their own private convictions in their own private affairs." Members could use a colony building for services. For example, C. E. Walker, a Presbyterian minister before he joined, opened a Sunday school in the schoolhouse. Some people held nondenominational prayer meetings there twice a week. Others formed a Theosophical Society and a Spiritualist Fellowship. Most colonists, however, as one of them said, "might be described by the term of agnostic." 33 Equality's social life might have been, as LeWarne claimed, "the most fully developed communitarian experiment in the Pacific Northwest." 3 4 Nevertheless, after 1900 it declined rapidly. T h e causes of its unexpected demise are

Gilded Age Socialist Cooperatives 87 threefold. The lack of leadership was one. Pelton died from injuries received when he was struck by a falling tree in February 1901, and no one could replace him.35 Then there was the "drifter" problem. As described by Harry Ault, editor of Industrial Freedom, there were too many "incompetents who could not make as good a living anywhere else, and a few self-seekers who hoped to profit in the final breakup by getting control of the colony property."36 Finally, their abandonment of the original goal to spread socialism throughout the state caused a steady departure of disenchanted idealists. The 38 people still there in 1902 concentrated only on trying to make a living. That year the colony stopped publication of Industrial Freedom. A couple of efforts were made to revive Equality, both without success. In 1903, Alonzo A. Wardall, a Civil War veteran, visited Equality and decided that he would try to attract new settlers. In a piece published in the newspaper the Co-operator in December 1903 he asserted that everything was in "fine shape." He boasted of a prosperous community with 620 acres of land and completely free of debt. He described the "fine crops" and the numerous livestock. He praised the "thirty houses" and the flourishing businesses in lumbering, flour milling, cheese making, and the manufacturing of shingles, cereal coffee, and canned fruits. But there was no response.37 Two years later, a small group of settlers came to Equality led by a New York anarchist named Alexander Horr. He wanted to change it into an anarchist community organized on the ideas of the novelist Theodor Hertzka. In the book Freiland, published in 1890 (translated as Freeland, 1891), Hertzka blamed capitalism for the workers' perpetual poverty and for the juxtaposition of enormous wealth alongside appalling indigence. In his fictional community, located in Africa, people had created a society where production was based on freedom and justice, where profits were divided equally, and where people who could not work were provided free food, shelter, and clothing.38 When Horr arrived he had 160 copies of Hertzka's book with him. A spry, little redheaded man, he converted mostly older people to his plan for rebuilding and they chose him the colony secretary. By Christmas he had renamed it the "Freeland Colony." He claimed in an article in the Mount Vernon Argus that the community had been rejuvenated. He described regular meetings to discuss politics and economic theory and told how members in voluntary work groups increased production in the dairy, cereal coffee plant, and a beekeeping operation. Wages were paid for the number of hours each person chose to work. And, in marked contrast to the earlier years, each group competed to outdo the others in its assignment.39 Inside Equality, though, Horr encountered bitter opposition. Some called him an extremist who allowed anyone into the community. They said he permitted his followers to live "in lewd, open, and notorious adultery, to such an extent that the decent element. . . are unable to relieve themselves of such obnoxious and unlawful practices."40 During a general assembly meeting in August 1905 an effort to oust Horr developed and a fistfight melee broke

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out. One man, Charles F. Hart, physically beat Horr, was arrested for assault and battery, and fined.41 On February 6, 1906, their barn caught fire and the loss of the building with all its crops and 20 cattle, 5 calves, 2 horses, and all the harnesses and tools was a disaster.42 Instead of trying to recover, the two factions blamed one another for starting the conflagration. The whole event, according to LeWarne, "was a death knell to whatever willingness lingered among colonists to cooperate or live together peaceably."43 Two weeks later the assembly decided that because of "irreconcilable differences" they would find a receiver "to wind up the affairs of the colony and dispose of the remaining property."44 On June 1, 1907, a court ordered the community dissolved and the property sold at auction. The Mount Vernon Argus declared: "Socialism as it is sometimes practiced came to an inglorious end."45

Burley Burley was the other major effort by eastern socialists to construct a cooperative Utopia in the Puget Sound area. Its founder, Cyrus Field Willard, a scion of a wealthy Boston family, was a personal friend of Bellamy and had helped to organize a Nationalist Club in that city. In the spring of 1898, he discovered that land was for sale near the southern end of Puget Sound where a creek named Burley flowed into the bay. In October, at Seattle he purchased 260 acres there for $5,917.40 with funds from Eugene V. Debs's Social Democracy of America (SDA). Two days later the first settlers arrived, a group of unemployed miners led by Jerome C. DeArmond. They built houses and started a logging operation. In December, Willard and his wife moved there and started a newspaper, The Co-operator, to promote the colony and to attract progressive intellectuals from middle-class backgrounds.46 Burley was a phenomenal success for a while. Within a year more than 120 permanent residents had arrived, many of them connected with the BCC. Other members included Populists, Christian Socialists, Bellamy Nationalists, and Theosophists. Some one thousand nonresident members, called "reserves," came from similarly diverse backgrounds and represented people from 26 states, the Canadian provinces, as well as Britain, Germany, Australia, the Philippines, and South Africa. A 12-man board of directors and a board of trustees governed the "Burley Colony." They controlled the capital stock, invested community funds, and reported at regular monthly meetings of the members. In 1901, this general assembly decided to abandon communal sharing of profits in order to allow families to keep the profits of their own work. Every family had its own home and garden. Single members lived in a large building called the "hotel." That year they organized departments for each area of production: lumbering—the main enterprise—running a sawmill, manufac-

turing cigars, and growing potatoes, asparagus, onions, and cauliflower. Sub-

Gilded Age Socialist Cooperatives 89 scriptions to The Co-operator were another important revenue source, and it attracted a regular stream of visitors to Burley in its turn.47 One such visitor in 1903 described it as a picturesque rural community with a blacksmith shop, and a two-story frame building that held the print shop, carpenter's shop, and general offices. A cluster of private homes was called "Circle City" and next to it was the post office, store, dining hall and kitchen, and the hotel. Close to the hotel was the cigar factory, a milk house, laundry, shoe shop, and other smaller homes.48 Everyone ate together in a communal dining room where, as one member put it, "we live on good, wholesome food" that included soup and vegetables, beans, potatoes, and occasionally a meat dish and fish.49 As at Equality, fruit pies were the main desserts. Unlike at Equality, however, there was no alcohol, but they did enjoy Saturday night dances with music provided by an orchestra made up of young men and women. On Tuesday and Wednesday evenings they had discussions on reform topics and sometimes invited outside lecturers to participate. Willard started a school in spite of opposition by some colonists who thought education unnecessary and "high-falutin' nonsense." He hired a teacher from Seattle who taught 58 children from 16 families, most of them not members of the colony. The Co-operator boasted that they would "have better educational facilities than any village of the same size in the state."50 Some Burley residents were deeply moralistic. One of their pamphlets described Christ as the "Master" who "is thus our teacher also." It stated how much they were "imbued with His Spirit and go about doing good as we have means and opportunity."51 On Sunday evenings they held religious services under two Unitarian ministers, Harvard-educated William E. Copeland (who took over the editorship of the Co-operator after Willard left in 1900) and Arthur B. Ellis. They preached that members had a moral duty to build a New Jerusalem, an example to the world of brotherhood and cooperation. In 1905, Alonzo Wardall, the union organizer who had tried to revive Equality, came to Burley. He proposed that it return to the system used before 1901 and have landholding, production, trade, and industry run as a jointstock company. All the property would be divided into shares owned by the members. But opposition appeared from a number of families who by then were making a living in home industries. Still others, led by S. H. Bohlman and M. E Bruce, argued that the reorganization would change "the entire character and objects and purposes [of the community] . . . to a corporation organized for profit." They said that Wardall's goals were "visionary, impractical, and impossible of being carried out."52 Wardall's supporters called the charges outrageous lies and said that Bohlman and his crowd were just troublemakers. The arguments continued. Finally, in December 1912, Bohlman and Bruce went to court and asked that Burley be dissolved. In January 1913, Judge John B. Young agreed and appointed a receiver to liquidate its assets. By then only 17 people were actually living at the colony. Little remained to be sold: a printing press, some

90 Communal Utopias and the American Experience tools, a boiler, some small engines, and furniture. Yet it took 11 more years to settle accounts. Not until October 1924 did the receiver file his final report with the court. A Tacoma newspaperman admitted that by 1925 no record of Burley remained except the school, then used as a library, the hotel, and a few vine-covered homes. The people of Burley, however, had "found a wilderness and left homes and fertile fields."53 RUSKIN More than any other Gilded Age socialist Utopia, Ruskin was the product of one man, Julius A. Wayland. As W. Fitzhugh Brundage claimed in his 1996 study of the community, his "eclectic political and economic ideology . . . was the formative influence on the colony and shaped its evolution throughout its tumultuous existence."54 Born in 1854 to a middle class family in southeastern Indiana, and thrown on hard times by the unexpected death of his father, Wayland had only an elementary education. At the age of 17 he wandered throughout the Midwest doing part-time work. He finally ended up as a publisher of a newspaper, the Ripley Index, in Versailles, Indiana. After his marriage in 1877 he moved to his bride's home at Harrisonville, Missouri, where he took over another paper, the Cass County Courier, and shortly afterwards the Cass County News. Afflicted by wanderlust, he left Missouri in 1882 for Pueblo, Colorado, where he was involved in successful real estate speculation and wrote articles for the Pueblo Evening Star.55 Sometime around 1891 he became convinced that evil eastern monied interests were stifling the growth of his adopted city, called the "Pittsburgh of the West," and he converted to Populism. He edited a newspaper called the Coming Crisis and tried to get votes for the Populist Party in that part of Colorado. After the party's impressive showing in the 1892 election, for reasons unknown, he moved back to Indiana with his family. At Greensburg he published the paper that would make him a nationally known socialist propagandist, the Coming Nation. Within two years it had over 14,000 subscribers in the United States, Britain, and Australia.56 In the newspaper Wayland spun out his "one Hoss philosophy," a compendium of socialist doctrines, moral essays, and homilies. He hoped to convince his readers that socialism was an American tradition, in contrast to the brutal, imported, and "foreign" values of monopoly capitalism. The Founding Fathers, he said, had committed the nation to equality and perfectionism, a commitment that was continued in the antislavery crusade. But the Civil War had changed everything. In his analysis, it had unleashed the "usurpation" of industrial capitalism that would concentrate all the nation's wealth into the hands of a few individuals. This development, Lincoln had warned just before his death, would destroy the country. Fortunately, the true spirit of the Republic remained committed to perfectionism and Americans should now build a "cooperative commonwealth" that would destroy the "wage masters" and

Gilded Age Socialist Cooperatives 91 their "despotic power." He urged his readers to "preach, plead, print" the new gospel and arouse the nation from its apathy and complacency. In religious metaphors he urged redemption through a social rebirth against materialism.57 Wayland borrowed heavily from John Ruskin's books of social criticism, Unto This Last (1862) and Fors Clavigera (9 vols., 1871-87), especially his ideas about the evils of "avaricious commerce" and the benefits of a cooperative society. Like the British socialist, Wayland felt that the wealth of his nation was so great that everyone could share in it. He, too, believed that laissezfaire economics was wrong in asserting that man was motivated by avarice and the accumulation of property. Rather, he claimed, we were moved by humanitarian concerns, honesty, and fellowship. Like Ruskin, he predicted that when cooperation replaced competition the brutal exploitation of the worker would end. There were parts of Ruskin's theory that he rejected, such as the plan for creating a hierarchical, stratified, paternalistic social order. Like Haskell, Wayland relied heavily on Gronlund's Cooperative Commonwealth with its picture of a new social order of cooperation created not by violence and class struggle but by evolution, where citizens would relate as members of a "good family." He adopted Bellamy's vision of a new epoch in the development of mankind, a new order where work was done collectively by an "industrial army." There would be no monopoly, no wage slavery, and no waste.58 Wayland used Gronlund and Bellamy to plan his cooperative Utopia, and during the first year of publishing the Coming Nation he filled in the details. He called it a "cooperative village," with membership by stock subscription at $500 a share. The stockholders would hold monthly meetings to take care of community affairs and review the decisions of an annually elected governing board. Workers themselves would choose their foremen. He thought that other cooperative communities had failed because of poor financing, so he decided that his would be based on the profits of the Coming Nation. When its annual subscription rose to 100,000 readers, he predicted, its $23,000 yearly profit would fully underwrite the village. Moreover, its economy would expand as members sold products to outsiders and reinvested the profits in the community. Every member would share equally the benefits of production, its goods, and the "luxuries of life." It would combine culture and work and have a library where residents could enrich their minds. There would be leisure time so they could enjoy "democratic culture," and everyone would imbibe the "elevating influences of association." The setting would be pastoral, made up of "pretty shaded parks, the well-cared for picnic grounds, mountain streams with rustic bridges and sets, boiling springs and shady nooks." All of these changes could happen immediately because his Utopia, called "Ruskin," would "in one great leap . . . transcend the seemingly intractable economic, social, and political divisions that had thwarted previous campaigns for social justice."59 In the July 21,1894, issue of the Coming Nation he announced that he had selected a site in a rural area of Tennessee about fifty miles west of Nashville.

92 Communal Utopias and the American Experience The land was cheap—only $2.50 an acre—as were building materials, and it was close to a railroad and a post office. He invited "founding members" (anyone buying stock or recruiting 200 new subscribers to the newspaper) to join and said that eventually it would be the home for anyone committed to the idea of cooperation. By August, when Wayland and his family arrived, 40 socialists were already there. Within a year about 120 people were living at Ruskin and by early 1896 its population peaked at 250, where it stayed until it dissolved three years later. The annual turnover of residents was high, however—about 25 percent.60 All members of Ruskin were white because, as Wayland put it, "there will be no colored members of our colony," though the irony of the fact that they put on blackface comedies almost every week may have passed them by.61 Although the first contingent of colonists had come from cities, most residents were born in the Northeast or Midwest where they had lived in small towns or on farms. As Wayland would have it, there were no Catholics or Jews but all varieties of Protestant denominations were represented, from Unitarians to Evangelists, and there was complete religious toleration within these limits. Like Wayland, many of them had moved from place to place before coming to Ruskin and for them "the journey to the colony was just one stop in their ongoing search for opportunities and a congenial environment."62 Two doctors and two ministers joined but there were no bankers, lawyers, merchants, or professors. Most Ruskinites were skilled artisans—carpenters, shoemakers, tanners, tailors, printers—and 30 percent were farmers. Only 15 percent were unskilled urban laborers, the small proportion probably being due to the high cost of admission—$500—and to an emphasis on the need to have some usable skill. In 1896 further hurdles to entry were added: applicants had to pass a test on socialism, be able to list "works on social problems," and indicate how long they had "entertained these views on the co-operative mode of life."63 These rules were never strictly enforced, however, and a kind of chronic indifference allowed almost anyone to become a member. This laxity, in turn, created a "radical community open to seemingly incompatible beliefs."64 Families, rather than single people, moved in, and more than half of the members were married couples who anticipated a pleasant, sheltered, homelike life. The charter of the "Cooperative Society of Ruskin" was drawn up in August 1894 with a capital investment of $17,050 secured in stock. Shareholders, both men and women, could vote in the general assembly, adopt bylaws, and elect officers. They chose Wayland as the first president and gave him the authority to own and run a print shop and publish the Coming Nation, thereby injecting an element of capitalism into the socialist community at the start. All other aspects of life were communal. Everyone pitched in to clear timberland, construct buildings, and share in the assigned work. They ate in a communal kitchen and the colony provided free housing and medical treatment. They purchased clothing in the colony store with work vouchers.65

Gilded Age Socialist Cooperatives 93 Ruskin's location, about fifty miles west of Nashville, was on 1,000 acres of hilly, timbered land which, they soon found out, had no safe drinking water except a few shallow wells dug on hillsides. After a year they relocated five miles away to a 3 83-acre farm in the Yellow Creek valley known as Cave Mills (about 10 miles northwest of the city of Dickson). A much better location, it had 75 acres of rich, tillable land bordering a creek. By the winter of 1896, when they purchased two more adjacent farms, they owned 800 acres. In addition to farm homes, corrals, and barns, they had a mill, blacksmith shop, cotton gin, store, and post office. An ample supply of cool water was found in two large caves that were used as fruit cellars to store produce. They built a boardinghouse and a brick community building called Commonwealth Hall that served as the print shop and offices for the Coming Nation.66 By 1898, residents were housed in 70 small houses and they had planted flowerbeds and shade trees, and had placed wooden benches on the banks of Yellow Creek. Dotted around the village were a steam laundry, machine and tin shop, bakery, a henhouse, stable, coffee house, and school. Farmers planted tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbages, and eggplants. They had an orchard that grew fruit for a cannery that was located in one of the caves. They kept a herd of 20 dairy cows, a few hundred pigs, and 800 chickens. Industries augmented the income from the newspaper. They produced finished lumber for railroad ties for the North Carolina and St. Louis Railroad. They made leather suspenders and belts, cereal coffee, bath cabinets, and chewing gum, all of which were advertised in the newspaper and sold by mail order. At the print shop, in addition to putting out the newspaper, they published, on contract, a union journal called the Telegraphers' Advocate, and 26 other union publications as well as reform pamphlets and books. The newspaper itself was a colossal success and increased its annual subscription to over 60,000 and produced a profit of $500 a month.67 Cultural and social life was comprehensive, almost frenzied, and involved dances, picnics, concerts, lectures, and theatrical performances. A librarian who published a catalog of its holdings organized Ruskin's library, with books, journals, and newspapers. On the third floor of the Commonwealth Hall they installed a theater with an elevated stage and seating for 700 people. They had a small orchestra and a brass band. Saturdays—apart from those where they put on light plays or viewed magic-lantern slide shows—were set aside for dances similar to those in Equality, including the two-step, polka, waltz, and schottische. Both colonists and invited guests gave lectures during the week, and members went to evening reading groups and classes. Other diversions included sack races, mule pullings, fiddlers' contests, and sing-along events with patriotic songs and pieces written to celebrate the colony such as "Salute de Ruskin" or "Ruskin: The Village Where Labor Is King." They commemorated the colony's anniversary with special addresses and paeans to its development and ended the day with a dance, a concert, and singing.68 Wayland was committed to a fuller life for women and advertised that Rus-

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kin "will do much for men, but all that and more will it do for women in the freer, fuller, richer life it will bring to them." 6 9 H e believed that cooperative efforts in domestic labor would "lighten female labors" in a kind of socialized domesticity. C o m m i t m e n t to gender liberation was one thing, but making it a reality in rural Tennessee was another matter. T h e 143 women who lived there between 1894 and 1899 in practice performed only the traditional domestic tasks of child care, housekeeping, sewing, laundry, cooking, and education—and they complained about it. O n e of them, Lydia Kingsmill Commander, called a life of housework draining and monotonous. She was annoyed that while the men had a variety of tasks to do the women just did the same dreary jobs every day without any reward. " T h e immolation of woman upon the altar of housework," as she phrased it, remained unchanged. 70 But most women acquiesced. Many felt that they had only domestic skills and saw their work as necessary for the colony's survival; they also felt that, n o matter how bad it seemed, they were better off than other American women. T h e y received the same hourly pay as men, called "labor notes," and worked the same eight hours each day. Mothers with small children worked only five hours and pregnant women had no work responsibilities during their last trimester and the first year of their baby's life. Some women felt a new sense of personal worth and dignity in communal living. T h e y had some political power because if they purchased a share of stock for $500 they could vote in community meetings. Since the colony guaranteed them a living from the work they did, and not their husband's, they felt less dependent and more autonomous than women on the outside. O n e young woman reported "that in considering marriage she is [not] contemplating the extinction of all her ambitions, the suppression of her individuality, the reduction of her life to a dead level of sameness." 71 T h e r e was some of the "socialized domesticity" that Wayland had p r o m ised, and it engendered a sense of association. Dining hall assignments were divided into cooking, waiting on tables, and cleaning the dishes. All the dirty clothes were washed in a community steam laundry each M o n d a y and were sent back "rough dry" to the owners. T h e women themselves organized 10 job "departments" that, in addition to the one for the dining hall, involved baking, sewing, ironing, managing a hotel, nursery, library, and running the "Woman's Department" of the Coming Nation. Ruskin women had more leisure than their "slaves of the kitchen" counterparts. T h e y organized and participated in concerts, plays, reading clubs, and Sunday lyceums. O n M o n d a y nights they met in a "Progress League." O n Tuesday it was band practice. Wednesday was for the open meeting of the Board of Directors. O n Thursday the Woman's Club met. O n Friday there was more band practice. And they held a dance or evening party on Saturday. 72 W o m e n took great pride in their role as educators. In the spring of 1896 they opened a kindergarten headed by an experienced teacher, L. C. Brown. She immediately trained two more women to help in the preschool program.

Gilded Age Socialist Cooperatives 95 The grade school had 7 teachers who divided 50 students into 8 grades and taught them a varied curriculum of academics combined with drawing, painting, oratory, and hygiene. They gave instruction on the piano, cornet, and violin. They took the children outside to teach farm chores and to the shops to give lessons in manual labor. They eliminated recitation and memorization and used the Socratic method of question-and-answer, to instill enthusiasm in the learning process. The women were so encouraged by the success of their school that they persuaded the colony to plan a college. The Coming Nation advertised the creation of the first socialist university as the "Ruskin College of New Economy" that would be "free from the blight of commercialism and the influence of the arrogant wealthy."73 They raised about $1,000 in donations and had a groundbreaking ceremony. But the college never materialized, largely because of growing opposition. Some members said that it would be too expensive, while others objected that it would bring in college students and faculty from outside, who might have little appreciation for Ruskin's commitment to cooperation. Opposition to the college was just the first in a series of disruptions that divided the community. Another dispute was over the newspaper. The problem stemmed from the original provision of the charter that allowed Wayland to own it as his personal property. In some ways the confrontation was symbolic of a rift between members who wanted to increase private property rights and the "cooperativists" who insisted on a communal framework. The latter group, although they initially went along with Wayland's ownership of the press, condemned any other private ownership. Wayland—whom many found to be haughty, arrogant, and aloof—aggravated the situation. In July 1895, he insisted that he be allowed to buy a new $5,000 printing press that, of course, he would own. The cooperativists revolted, and Wayland, rather than compromise, decided to leave Ruskin—on his terms. If it would give him several thousand dollars (the specific amount was never made public), he would turn over the Coming Nation to the colony. The bargain was struck and on July 27, 1897, he and his family departed for Kansas, where he started a newspaper called The Appeal to Reason. It soon became a leading socialist publication in America.74 The community chose Alfred S. Edwards as the next editor of the Coming Nation and he tried to improve its attractiveness. He placed drawings on the front page where he printed his own sophisticated column on cooperative colonies and socialism under the name of "Seven Oaks." He published articles by nationally known reformers. Edwards left in April 1898 and Herbert N. Casson, a new member from Ontario, Canada, took his place. Under Casson, circulation increased with the addition of more contributors and a special women's section under associate editor Lydia Kingsmill Commander. But in March 1899 he married one of Ruskin's young women and moved to Toledo, Ohio. By that time the future of the Coming Nation was only a minor concern

96 Communal Utopias and the American Experience because, as Brundage observed, "long-simmering conflicts in Ruskin had erupted, and the wrenching dissolution of the colony had begun."75 One of the most wrenching fights was over the suffrage. The bylaws stipulated that anyone could vote if he or she was a shareholder. In the first year some wives of the charter members did not have the requisite $500 to purchase their own share, but the assembly gave them a dispensation and made them full voting members anyway. No such exception was made for later women, however, and most women who came to Ruskin after 1895 were not shareholders and thus could not vote. Consequently, there were two classes— a minority, managerial circle and a majority, largely female, that did not enjoy full power in the assembly.76 The same division between old and new members was reflected in their backgrounds. The first Ruskinites were reformers committed to cooperative living. They were the members of the council and shop supervisors and they ran the newspaper and print shop. The new residents were people with few skills and meager education and they did all of the hard labor.77 The charter members were able to keep control until January 1898, when a referendum of all the colonists gave full membership, and the vote, to all Ruskin women, irrespective of whether or not they had stock. That spring the charter members lost control of the colony. They went to court and asked a judge to allow them to withdraw from Ruskin and be awarded the value of their stock, $500 each. The majority objected because, they said, the shares were membership fees and not returnable. The charter members then asked the court to appoint a receiver to dissolve Ruskin and distribute all of its assets.78 The legal battle continued until the summer of 1899 when a judge appointed a court receiver, W. Blake Leech, to settle everything. He shut down all colony operations, even the use of the dining hall, and stopped payment of the weekly wages. On July 29 he sold the property at public auction. A local storekeeper bought the first colony site for $1,458. Others purchased its non-real-estate property and livestock. The next day Leech sold the printing presses. In October, a farmer bought Cave Mills for $1,505. When the receiver filed his report in the chancery court in 1901 he listed a total sale figure of $17,000. The value of the stock came to just $36 each for the remaining 138 shareholders. Most of the charter members had already gone back to their homes.79 About 40 families of the majority, however, decided to try cooperative living elsewhere. Their agent located a place six miles west of Waycross, Georgia, a colony that had been started by a small cooperative group from Dayton, Ohio, the previous year. The "Duke Colony," as it was called, had tried unsuccessfully to start a lumber mill on 768 acres with 70 buildings and was looking for help to keep the mill going. The Duke colonists offered to join with the Ruskin people if the Ruskinites would take over their debt. They

Gilded Age Socialist Cooperatives 97 then would dissolve the Duke Colony and everyone would live together in the new "Ruskin Commonwealth." Both sides agreed to the merger.80 In September 1901, with their personal property, tools, and livestock, they took the 613-mile train trip from Tennessee to south Georgia. But they were disappointed at what they found. Instead of pleasant rolling land and creeks they found what one of them called "a clearing in the wilderness . . . flat as a floor, . . . no scenery . . . no views . . . no streams . . . no running water."81 Alligators, snakes, and rats roamed the colony and swarms of mosquitoes descended on it from the nearby Okefenokee Swamp. The houses were just shacks built on mud flats, and only two of them were painted on the outside and had wallpaper in the rooms. Then there was the race problem. The Ruskinites resented the presence of so many blacks in the area and complained that they were encircled "by swamps and frogs and niggers and mosquitoes and alligators." Another lamented that they could not "go out by themselfs [sic] because the negro is a terror there and no girl is safe to go anywhere by themselves [sic]." They also resented being surrounded by illiterate whites who were openly hostile to their (otherwise) liberal views. One woman, Lizzie McCoy, put it simply: it was "a HELL of a place."82 They had been able in the auction to buy the older printing press from the Tennessee colony, so they continued publishing the Coming Nation. It brought in money for a while but subscriptions soon dwindled to fewer than 10,000. The new editor, A. R. Read, had little qualification for the job and did not attract the famous contributors who had added so much to earlier issues. To compensate for declining income they tried making brooms, but it failed, as did a mail-order business in cereal coffee and suspenders. By early 1902, only 140 people remained at the Ruskin Commonwealth. In September, the sheriff of Ware County auctioned the property to satisfy creditors. The land and buildings raised $2,050 and the press and machinery brought in $6,000.83 FAIRHOPE In the fall of 1894, just months after Wayland started the Ruskin colony in Tennessee, Ernest B. Gaston, an associate editor of the Des Moines Tribune, took his small following to the shores of Mobile Bay in Alabama. For the preceding five years Gaston and a group of friends called the "Investigating Club" had been meeting each week to discuss the latest reform literature, especially Bellamy's Looking Backward, Gronlund's Cooperative Commonwealth, and George's Progress and Poverty. They were especially impressed with George's vision of a cooperative community of free land, open parks, community-owned buildings, industries, crafts, and utilities that would be a model for the nation. The need to start such a community became urgent after they saw suffering spread across the country because of the Panic of 1893, which, Gaston thought, had turned laborers into paupers and reduced thousands to starvation.84 In his pamphlet, True Co-operative Individualism, he wrote that the "present social

98 Communal Utopias and the American Experience and economic order is doomed." It must be abolished immediately because of its "enormous waste of human energy and natural resources and its hideous injustice and cruelty." Its replacement, the "Fairhope Industrial Association," would recognize the "two great laws of human nature and human rights." These were that everyone wanted "to satisfy their desires with the least exertion," and that an individual must have the "freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man." Fairhope was to be a pure democracy where every adult had an equal voice in its affairs. "PERSONS will rule," he wrote, "instead of PROPERTY." They would have the initiative and referendum. Anyone 18 years of age or over could join by paying a $200 admission fee. The colony would own the land and convey it to members on long-term leases, payable by a small annual rent. "Land speculation and monopolization," he claimed, "will be effectually destroyed by removing all incentive to the holding of land except for use." The community would provide electricity, water, heat, health care, schools, libraries, and parks. Production was competitive, however, because it fostered creativeness and initiative. "Under competition," he declared, "production is immensely stimulated, processes cheapened and there is a constant tendency for prices to reach the lowest possible cost of production." But there would be communal distribution or "co-operative merchandising" because it "involves the interest of more than one individual" and thus "logically [calls] for co-operation to secure mutual benefits." For example, the colony would have a communal store but any member could start one of his own to compete with it. Gaston referred to Kaweah and promised that his colony, unlike the Sequoia cooperative, would not be a poorly planned pipe dream. Rather, it would be "a practical business proposition to practical men and women" who "agreed on fundamental economic principles, to apply them in harmony with the known and constant springs of human action."85 He was careful to point out that "some things the Association will not do." It would not "control ALL the activities of its members; to say what each shall do and what compensation he shall receive for doing it." It would not interfere in religious beliefs and practices. It would never "dictate what kinds of houses they shall build or what style of clothes they shall wear; to whom they shall sell or of whom they shall buy." He predicted that it would be a "community wherein he who labors will reap the fruits of his labor" without "robber barons . . . to exact toll from labor caravans . . . where there will be every incentive to industry and none to idleness." It would avoid the isolation of the farm and the congestion of the city and be a community where "the farmer and the worker in store or factory will enjoy advantages now denied to both." He closed with an enthusiastic description of the great potential of the enterprise to which he invited "the co-operation of all of kindred aims."86 On January 4, 1894, he called a meeting of supporters and read the pamphlet. Inspired, they unanimously decided to build the Utopia. Gaston and four members of the group wrote a constitution that they presented to the

Gilded Age Socialist Cooperatives 99 reassembled circle on January 31. They called the project the "Fairhope Industrial Association," after the organization proposed in the pamphlet, and designated themselves as its Executive Council. Their purpose, the document declared, was "to establish and conduct a model community or colony, free from all forms of private monopoly, and to secure its members therein, equality of opportunity, the full reward of individual efforts, and the benefits of cooperation in matters of general concern." The constitution incorporated the ideas Gaston had presented in True Co-operative Individualism. Single-tax land ownership was the heart of Fairhope. The Association owned all land as a trustee for its members who received long-term leases that guaranteed "absolute right to the use and control" of the land and to own and dispose of "all improvements made or products produced thereon."87 Members paid the association a yearly rent based on the value of the land at the time it was leased. The community took care of local and state property taxes as well as any future assessments on buildings or improvements. The only tax on the members, consistent with George's single-tax formula, was a rent-tax based on the original value of their land. Since no new rents would ever occur, even with improvements, everyone would have an incentive to maximize the full use of the property, since doing so would not increase their taxes. In this sense the land was "free" and, to Gaston, free land meant free individuals. Other key provisions of the constitution were the minimum age of 18 for members and, in case of expulsion, the return of all money contributed in either stock purchases or improvements. The officers were a president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, three trustees, and six superintendents of departments of lands, highways, services, merchandising, industry, and health. All were elected for terms varying from one to three years. Fairhope controlled the water, light, heat, power, transportation, and irrigation, and provided free parks, libraries, schools, public halls, and fire insurance. It would have a store that sold all merchandise "for which there shall be sufficient demand" at prices the same as those in the local market. A special department would purchase all surplus production and store it at community expense. Since "free competition of free men in productive industry" was natural and beneficial, "it is the declared general policy of this association to leave production free to individual enterprise." Its article on "Individual Freedom" affirmed that Fairhope would never abrogate or impair the "natural rights of its members to absolute freedom in production, exchange, association, beliefs, and worship" so long as the individual respected the rights of all other members. 88 The next task was to get support for the plan beyond the narrow group of Des Moines reformers by recruiting new members and raising money. Spreading the idea of Fairhope was relatively easy since Gaston had a number of friends who were Populist newspaper editors. More importantly, Alfred Wooster, the secretary of the Iowa Reform Press Association, a national distributing center for Populist publications, agreed to use his newspaper, the Liberty

100 Communal Utopias and the American Experience Bell, as the main vehicle for the project. On April 28, 1894, he published Gaston's essay "True Cooperative Individualism: An Argument of the Plan of Fairhope Industrial Association," and the paper began reporting on the development of the Utopia. It stressed the need to have a high number of "interested persons" willing to advance the membership fee, reduced to $175 for anyone joining before May 15, and payable in five-dollar monthly installments.89 On May 11, the Executive Council sent two men, James Bellangee and T. E. Mann, to find a location for the colony. Although little information survives as to why, they chose the South, a number of explanations seem likely. One was climate. They had experienced the long, difficult Iowa winters and wanted a more comfortable environment. Southern land was considerably cheaper than elsewhere in the country, except the West. Lastly, some Iowa Populists had close ties with leaders of the Southern Farmers' Alliance, and they expected it to back the idea. The men traveled from Texas to Georgia looking for a place and sent letters to Gaston that described what they saw, all discouraging. But when they arrived at the eastern shore of Mobile Bay they reported that the view was "magnificent." The bay, with a "gently sloping beach," was "a lovely place." Land was available for as little as 50 cents an acre and was covered by "fine timber" with "fine streams for waterpower." The only drawback was the lack of a railroad connection to Mobile, some 25 miles to the north. They told Gaston that Henry George had visited the place, "was delighted with it," and would probably endorse building a "big single tax enterprise" there.90 Back in Des Moines, Gaston persuaded the Executive Council on August 10 to publish a newspaper, the Fairhope Courier, and appoint him its editor. Five days later, on the front page of the first issue, he printed a glowing account of Mobile Bay under the heading: "The Fairhope Locating Committee Renders its Final Report." On September 1, he listed a "roll of honor" of 21 charter members (out of a total of 34) who had paid the entire admission fee. He scheduled a vote to choose a permanent location for Fairhope by asking all members to mail him their ballots. The results were announced in the paper in October: 26 votes were for Mobile Bay and 8 for a site in western Tennessee.91 But on Monday evening, November 12, 1894, the time set to leave Des Moines for Alabama, only Gaston, his wife and four children, and an elderly man and woman showed up at the railroad station. The train stopped at St. Louis where a Nebraska farmer, George Boeck, a Swedish carpenter named Gilbert Anderson, and two Swedish families, the Dellgrens and Tuvesons, joined the pioneers. At dawn on November 15 they arrived in Mobile and were met by George Pollay, a single-taxer from Los Angeles who joined the colony because, he said, of its commitment to individualism. At three in the afternoon they boarded a side-wheeler steamboat for a journey down the bay to a temporary site between the towns of Battle's Wharf and Montrose. By

Gilded Age Socialist Cooperatives 101 the time they settled down for the evening, with only a crude log cabin for shelter, "Camp Fairhope" included seven couples, nine children, and five bachelors, from places like Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Dunbar (Pennsylvania), and Findlay (Ohio).92 (It is presumed that the rest of the 21 charter members never came to Fairhope.) The early days were devoted to finding a permanent location, electing officers, and exploring Baldwin County, a place rooted in post-Civil War poverty and inhabited by poor truck farmers and lumbermen. Only the Gastons and one other couple stayed at Camp Fairhope, while the others rented rooms in homes at Battle's Wharf and Montrose. By December, when Gaston found and purchased a 132-acre, bay-front property for which he agreed to pay $6 an acre, four of the initial group had left. But five new arrivals—a carpenter, machinist, shoemaker, physician, and an unemployed young Californian— replaced them.93 Gaston sent the Executive Council an article for the Courier that was published under the headline: "The Site Secured." He described the place as a paradise. He raved about the variety of trees and shrubs, about having "arrowly pines stand like sentinels looking out to sea." "Our first settlement of Fairhopers" was 600 feet back from imposing 40-foot-high bluffs where "a beautiful knoll rises a few feet above the general slope." His appeal for money was direct. He warned that "those who had stayed away or withheld support should now reconsider" because the colony "was going to be a success." He asked for donations to a $10,000 "Single Tax Fund" that could enable him to buy enough land to have a four-square-mile community for 10,000 people. He calculated that "it would take only one hundred men with $100 each, or one thousand men with $10 each. What an opportunity!"94 However, he concealed the reality of the place. The land had never been cultivated and had only been used as a pasture for beef cattle. It was cluttered with scrub pine, "the wildest spot along the eastern Shore from Battles to Daphne," he later admitted. It was isolated from commercial markets, and they were almost broke. By January 22, 1895, when he printed a financial report in the Courier, the bottom line was astonishing. They had only eight "members in good standing" i.e., individuals who had made their monthly admissions payments, and after expenses they had only $178.38.95 Fairhope survived by issuing scrip, as authorized in the constitution. It was printed in Des Moines in various denominations from five cents to ten dollars and these "shinplasters" were used for purchases in the nearby towns. Gaston, realizing that some moneymaking business had to be quickly developed, built a wharf in the hope of making the colony a commercial shipping port on the bay. It cost $1,300 and was financed by sale of stock or "wharf certificates" in Des Moines. When it finally went into operation in the fall of 1898, it brought in $765.40 in three months. And, with help from single-tax contributors from Philadelphia, they operated a steamboat daily from the wharf to Mobile.96 Beginning in the spring of 1896 they paid a teacher $10 a month in scrip, with help later from the Alabama public school fund, to teach children in the

102 Communal Utopias and the American Experience store. Later they hired Mrs. Marietta Johnson, a graduate of normal schools in Minnesota, to start an "organic school." She believed that a school should develop the whole child, not train them in adult-set standards. Education was a preparation for life, she said, that developed the person both spiritually and mentally. Reading, writing, and arithmetic must be postponed until the student was nine or ten years old because before then they were not mature enough. Instead, they would be trained in an "activity" or "occupation." There would be no examinations, the child was just expected to do his or her best, and the reward was the teacher's approval. Consequently, no student would suffer the "stigma of failure." Joseph Fels, a single-tax disciple and wealthy manufacturer from Philadelphia, donated $5,000 for a school building and $200 annually for its maintenance. There, Mrs. Johnson established a department for training teachers, and over the next 20 years attracted women with backgrounds in folk dancing, drama, and other arts to teach for modest salaries. Educator and philosopher John Dewey of Columbia University visited the Fairhope school and praised its accomplishments.97 The community expanded at a steady pace during its first decade, in part due to the reduction of the membership fee to $100, and by 1905 it had 500 residents. Gaston purchased more than 4,000 acres of additional land along the bay. By then they had a general store, a drugstore, notions store, ladies clothing store, bakeries, a restaurant, three hotels, and a meat market. Industries included a blacksmith shop, lumber mill, a corn and rice mill, brickyard, and a print shop. They drilled a well that became the county's central water system with two miles of water mains that reached 40 outside properties. They operated a telephone service. In order to get the endorsement and financial support of the Chicago Single Tax Club they followed the Club's recommendation to reorganize the colony into the "Fairhope Industrial Association." It allowed any person who owned land in or next to the community to be a member.98 Neighbors thought that Fairhope was an "art community" and the residents "intellectuals." And so they were. One visitor, ajudgej. Smith of BayMinette, said that it seemed to have a greater proportion of intellectuals in its population than anywhere else in the world. By January 1903, the Courier boasted that everything "seems to be given to societies, clubs, leagues, sociables, concerts, dances, endeavor meetings, commemoration services, anniversaries, surprise and other parties."99 In 1898, Marie Howland, a widow and radical author who had lived in other communities, joined Fairhope and donated her husband's 12,000 volume library. She served as the colony librarian and as associate editor of the Courier until her death in 1921. Fairhope held regular meetings of the Progressive League each Sunday afternoon where members spoke on political and social topics and participated in a question-and-answer session. It had a variety of clubs and societies, such as a Henry George Club, Socialist Club, Dancing Assembly, Woman's Suffrage Association, Fairhope

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Chautauqua, Fairhope Society of Arts and Crafts, Fairhope Dramatic Club, Academy of Science and Art, Athletic Club, and the Fairhope Band.100 But the same pattern of rise and fall hit Fairhope as it did the other cooperative Utopias. The winter of 1905 marked its high-water mark of expansion, cooperation, and prosperity. It also saw the beginning of the "Fairhope Controversy," as it was called, over rents. Some tenants complained that Gaston and the officers unfairly assessed the initial land values when they fixed the rents; and that when land values increased because of community expansion they raised the rent. Gaston and his supporters argued that the rent appraisals were perfectly legal. The dissatisfied tenant group disagreed. They signed a petition "to protect our interest against what we believe to be the unjust and unwarranted rents you have made [and] ask that these rentals be reduced to a more equitable basis that would represent the actual value of these lands without any subjective value attached thereto."101 Gaston would not budge. He said that the policy was "for the common benefit, in lieu of taxes levied in the usual way, the first purpose being to prevent land speculation and to preserve for all who might ever desire to locate in Fairhope equal opportunity to enjoy its advantages."102 On January 31, the disgruntled members, calling themselves the "tenants league," capitulated and accepted Gaston's policies, but not without stating that "we protest against the action of the Executive Council... on the ground that the action . . . was taken without sufficient notice to all concerned." The league then turned from rent to politics. It drew up its own slate of candidates for officers and trustees and the vote was so close that a runoff election had to be scheduled between Gaston's followers and the league candidates. Gaston's group won.103 Thereafter, Fairhope became almost evenly split. Gaston and his backers wanted rent to be collected to meet community expenses, and wanted to increase it to avoid other taxes. The others, many of them living in Fairhope but not full members, argued that only the single tax formula should be used and that no additional rent was permitted. They contended that Gaston and his followers were a self-perpetuating oligarchy that maintained control by requiring an "unheard price to qualify for voting," the $100 membership fee. Alfred Q. Wooster, one of the original Des Moines reformers and a dedicated backer of Gaston, published a letter in the Courier in September 1905 in which he insisted that the constitution was "strictly democratic." He said that nonmembers—he called them aliens—"although they may abide within its borders, have no moral right and should never be given a legal right to either control or influence any of the corporation's affairs."104 To do so, he argued, would bring chaos to Fairhope. The irresolvable differences continued until the spring of 1908 when the "town" of Fairhope was created. It was governed by a mayor and five aldermen and became the home of the disgruntled residents of the colony. Ironically, the single tax basis of this community, for which its residents had lobbied, then disappeared because the town was governed by Alabama municipal law.

104 Communal Utopias and the American Experience Gaston turned over important responsibilities to the town, such as financing the school building and running the water works and telephone system. Over the next twenty years, however, Gaston continued to lead the Fairhope colony as a single tax corporation and handled the remaining services. He operated the wharf, maintained the public parks, the cemetery, and the public library. He spent money for road and street maintenance. And, of course, rents were raised without even a public discussion. More problems appeared after Gaston's death in 1937. The children of the pioneers tried to keep the colony running, but without the enthusiasm and commitment of their parents. A trustee complained in the Courier in January 1945 that it was doing "materially well" but was losing its sense of community participation.105 It was less democratic than ever and decisions were left in fewer and fewer hands. By the 1950s, the colony was absorbed into the town. Its residents, like everyone else around Mobile Bay, were only concerned with making a living and, after 1954, with supporting George Wallace's battle against racial integration. In the 1970s, it advertised in a travel book as one of the "safe places" to live, with safe streets, safe harbors, and no "social problems," meaning racial controversies. Calvin Trillin, writing in the New Yorker magazine in June 1979, found that Fairhope residents were little different from any other Americans. In 1993, Paul Gaston, Ernest's grandson, was more sympathetic about the place in his book about the colony. The "colony people," he wrote, still continue to adhere to "the virtues of George's philosophy; with only minor alterations [such as the paying of income taxes], the constitution the founders brought with them in 1894 remains in effect."106 As it approached its centenary Gaston, with understandable bias, argued that as a community dedicated to socialist reform it has surpassed all other associations in its record of longevity.107 LLANO DEL RIO AND NEWLLANO Job Harriman, an Indiana minister and lawyer who moved to San Francisco in 1886 at the age of 25, founded the last of the socialist communal Utopias in 1914 near Los Angeles. Harriman had converted to socialism immediately after his arrival in California and became a Bellamy Nationalist and an official in the state's Socialist Party. In 1900, he ran as that party's candidate for vicepresident on a ticket headed by Eugene V. Debs. Bad health caused him to withdraw from national politics, however, and he moved to Los Angeles where he practiced law and was involved in local elections and in labor unions.108 In 1911, Harriman ran for mayor and was opposed by Harrison Gray Otis, the owner of the Los Angeles Times. Otis feared that if Harriman won the mayoralty Los Angeles industries, including his paper, would be unionized. Such a development, Otis believed, would scare off business investors in the city. His anxiety was no doubt intensified when the Times typographers went

Gilded Age Socialist Cooperatives 105 on strike and someone threw a bomb into the offices of the newspaper that killed 20 people. Unionists claimed that Otis had staged the bombing so he could blame the strikers and arouse the same kind of public hysteria that occurred in Chicago after the killings in the Haymarket Square Riot in 1886. The police believed Otis's version of events and arrested three union men. Three days before the election they confessed. The event not only destroyed Harriman's political future, it convinced him that it was futile to use politics to challenge the entrenched elite. He turned instead to the alternative that other Utopian socialists, from Burnette Haskell to Ernest Gaston, had chosen, a model cooperative community.109 He persuaded the architect Alice Constance Austin and a group of idealists that included labor leaders, a banker, and a journalist to help him develop a plan for such a community. In 1914, they chose a site in the desert near Palmdale, in Antelope County, that had been settled 20 years before by a small group of communal farmers. Known as the "Sunset Colony," it had lasted only three years. Harriman either purchased or leased about 1,000 scattered acres of desert, some foothill acreage, and 30 acres along Jackson Lake. Promotional advertisement in their newspapers, Western Comrade and, later, Llano Colonist, described the colony as inspirationally situated with snowcovered mountain peaks and radiant desert sunsets. Harriman predicted that the cooperative would become the "metropolis of Antelope Valley . . . a spot of destiny." The place actually was, in Dolores Hayden's opinion, "cold in winter, hot in summer, arid, and flat."110 Nevertheless, within months 100 colonists moved there to live in tents and adobe huts. They named it the

"Llano Co-operative Colony" from the Spanish name for a creek on the property.111 They built a few small frame family houses and started construction of a stone dormitory for bachelors and temporary residents. They began work on a hotel. Within weeks they put up barns and workshops. The newspapers inventoried "19 wagons, 16 plows, 3 buggies . . . 3 trucks, 4 autos . . . 5 barber chairs . . . 2 pianos . . . 3 bath tubs, 12 lavatories, [and] 5 sinks."112 They cleared the land of creosote bushes and Joshua trees, cleared stones from the fields and used them to build the dormitory, and planted alfalfa, corn, and grain. Within a year they had a cattle ranch and a dairy, an apiary, and craft shops for leatherwork, shoemaking, and woodworking. There was a community laundry, a cannery and a print shop for the two journals. Alice Austin had grandiose designs for Llano's future. Writing in the Western Comrade, she described in great detail a "Socialist City." It would be a circular city with six sections of living quarters and workshops all linked and intersected by a "Grand Avenue." They would be located around a hub she called the "Civic Center" that would include an assembly hall, administration offices, a library, post office, women's and men's clubs, a theater, and a bank. Arranged in another circle close to the Center were the restaurant, market, a

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church and a temple, schools, garages, and a department store. The fanciful design was never implemented.113 Llano del Rio held together for four years, and included a variety of colonists who paid between $500 and $1,500 for their stock shares. The amount of stock purchased determined one's accommodations and work assignment. The wages were the same for everyone, though—$4 a day. In 1916, a register of members showed that 83 percent of the adults, half of whom were married, were socialists, the rest were either Republicans, Democrats, or Prohibitionists. Men outnumbered women two to one. Their occupations were: 35 percent housewives, 25 percent laborers, 22 percent ranchers, 10 percent farmers, 5 percent professionals, 2 percent clerics, and 1 percent teachers. They adhered to the rule of "equal ownership, equal wages, and equal social opportunity," and equal voice in a general assembly that determined colony rules. There were the usual arguments between the people running Llano del Rio and those who felt they were not being treated fairly. But a visitor described a community that "possessed a charm which held its members when the hardships of subjugating the desert nearly overwhelmed them."114 Their real problem, however, was not enough water. They tried to get more water from Big Rock Creek by excavating irrigation ditches, but they were inadequate. Because of the water shortage, they decided in 1918 to relocate to Stables, Louisiana. Named "Newllano," it began with 40 members and within three years 167 people lived there; by 1930, it had about 500 residents. They built residential areas, called "Pine Court," "Rose Court," and "Oak Grove," that comprised single-family dwellings. For single members they constructed separate quarters with a store and a workshop. They used a concrete shed as a communal hall for dances and as a place for the general assembly to meet. There was a communal home for the children as well as a common dining hall. Yet the search for oil—which was their real hope of making Newllano economically viable—proved frustrating; all the wells were dry.115 As a result, Hayden concluded, it "was never a coherent environment" and little attention was ever given to trying to create one. One of the members described the place as a jumble of "unpaved streets and sidewalks . . . [with] unpainted houses" and wrote that "our patched clothes and plain food" discouraged new membership.116 The prospect of finding oil in Louisiana—and moving beyond dependency on farming—proved illusory. However, the colony managed to hold together until the financial impact of the Great Depression eventually forced it to dissolve in 1938.117 .

NOTES 1. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, pp. 385-87, 392-95, 400-403. 2. Paul E. and Blanche R. Alyea, Fairhope, 1894-1954: The Story of a Single Tax Colony (University, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1956), pp. 2, 4, 108; Henry

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107

George, Progress and Poverty (San Francisco: W. M. Hinton, 1879; reprinted, New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1979). 3. Daniel T. Rodgers, The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 380. 4. George, Progress and Poverty, pp. 8-10, 528. 5. Guarneri, Utopian Alternative, p. 401. 6. Ibid., pp. 402-5; Robert V. Hine, Californias Utopian Colonies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 85-86. Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 20001887 (Boston: Ticknor, 1888; reprinted, Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2003). 7. W. Fitzhugh Brundage, A Socialist Utopia in the New South: The Ruskin Colonies in Tennessee and Georgia, 1894-1901 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), pp. 1-19. 8. Hine, Utopian Colonies, pp. 80-81, 93, 99-100. 9. Robert V. Hine, "California's Socialists Utopias" in Pitzer, ed., Communal Utopias, pp. 420-21, and Utopian Colonies, pp. 81-84; Ruth R. Lewis, "Kaweah: An Experiment in Cooperative Colonization," Pacific Historical Review 17 (November 1948): p. 49; William Carey Jones, "The Kaweah Experiment in Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics 6 (October 1891): p. 53. 10. Hine, Utopian Colonies, p. 10. 11. Ibid., p. 85. 12. Ibid., p. 86. 13. Ibid., p. 91; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 237-40. 14. Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 244—45. 15. Ibid., p. 245; Hine, Utopian Colonies, pp. 98-100; Berry, Utopian Experiments, p. 116. 16. Charles Pierce LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 1885-1915 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975), p. 18. 17. Ibid., pp. 18-20; Chicago Sunday Telegram, January 30, 1887. 18. Ibid., pp. 21-24. 19. Ibid., p. 25. 20. Ibid., p. 30. 21. Ibid, p. 35. 22. Ibid., p. 48. 23. Ibid, p. 53. 24. Ibid, p. 57 and "Equality Colony: The Plan to Socialize Washington," Pacific Northwest Quarterly 59 (July 1968): pp. 137-46. 25. H. W. Halladay, "Equality Colony: A Brief History Showing Our Objects and Present Condition—Cooperative Colonies Are Not All Failures," Industrial Freedom, November 1, 1901. 26. LeWarne, Utopias, p. 65; Ernest S. Wooster, Communities of the Past and Present (New York: AMS Press, 1974), pp. 47-49. 27. Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 263. 28. LeWarne, Utopias, pp. 80-87.

29. Ibid, p. 91. 30. Ibid, pp. 78-80, 90-94. 31. Ibid, p. 95. 32. Ibid, pp. 96-102. 33. Ibid, p. 101.

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34. Ibid, p. 101; Hinds, American Communities, p. 397. 35. LeWarne, Utopias, p. 73. 36. Ibid, p. 103. 37. The Co-operator (Burley), December 1903, p. 12. 38. LeWarne, Utopias, pp. 103-4; Theodor Hertzka, Freeland: A Social Anticipation, Arthur Ransom, trans. (London: Chatto and Windus, and New York: Appleton, 1891). 39. LeWarne, Utopias, pp. 105-6. 40. Ibid, p. 107; Reveille (Whatcom), April 26, 1907. 41. LeWarne, Utopias, p. 108. 42. Ibid, p. 109; Reveille, February 8, 1906; Argus (Mount Vernon), February 9, 1906. 43. LeWarne, Utopias, p. 109. 44. Ibid, pp. 109-10. 45. Argus, March 23, 1906; Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 267; Hinds, American Communities, pp. 534-35. 46. Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 267-69. 47. Ibid, pp. 269-71; Hinds, American Communities, pp. 538-40. 48. LeWarne, Utopias, p. 149. 49. "Burley Pen Pictures: Dinner at the Hotel," The Co-operator, May 1903. 50. Quoted in LeWarne, Utopias, pp. 160-61; The Co-operator, October 6, 1900. 51. LeWarne, Utopias, p. 158. 52. Ibid, p. 165. 53. Ibid, p. 167; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 271-72. 54. W. Fitzhugh Brundage, A Socialist Utopia in the New South: The Ruskin Colonies in Tennessee and Georgia, 1894-1901 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), p. 20. 55. Ibid, p. 21; Howard H. Quint, "Julius A. Wayland, Pioneer Socialist Propagandist," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 35 (March 1944): p. 589. 56. Brundage, Socialist Utopia, pp. 22-23. 57. Ibid., pp. 23-36. 58. Ibid, pp. 27-31. 59. Ibid, p. 33; The Coming Nation, January 12, 1894; Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 247. 60. The Coming Nation, July 21, 1894; Oved Two Hundred Years, p. 246; Hinds, Communities, pp. 488-89. 61. Brundage, Socialist Utopia, p. 44.

62. Ibid, p. 45. 63. Ibid, p. 50. 64. Ibid, p. 51. 65. Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 248-49. 66. Brundage, Socialist Utopia, pp. 98-101; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 248-49. 67. Brundage, Socialist Utopia, pp. 100-101, 107; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 250-51. 68. Brundage, Socialist Utopia, pp. 87-88, 124-26; Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 251. 69. Brundage, Socialist Utopia, p. 69. 70. Ibid, p. 77. 71. Ibid., p. 85.

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109

72. Ibid., pp. 83-90. 73. Ibid, p. 123; Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 253. 74. Brundage, Socialist Utopia, pp. 104-5, 198. 75. Ibid, p. 107. 76. Ibid, pp. 91, 133-34; Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 252. 77. Brundage, Socialist Utopia, pp. 136-39; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 250-51. 78. Brundage, Socialist Utopia, p. 139. 79. Isaac Broome, The Last Days of the Ruskin Co-operative Association (Chicago; Charles H. Kerr, 1902), pp. 131-37; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 254-55. 80. Brundage, Socialist Utopia, pp. 142, 126-47; Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 255. 81. Brundage, Socialist Utopia, p. 148. 82. Ibid, p. 149; Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 255. In contrast to the Tennessee colony, which had a small number of black neighbors, Ware County had a large black population typical of that part of the South. 83. Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 255. 84. Alyea, Fairhope, pp. 11-15; Paul M. Gaston, Man and Mission: E. B. Gaston and the Origins of the Fairhope Single Tax Colony (Montgomery, AL: Black Belt Press, 1993), pp. 13-15,22-34. 85. Gaston, Man and Mission, pp. 68-72, 77, 87. 86. Ibid., p. 72. 87. Ibid, p. 75. 88. Alyea, Fairhope, pp. 307-12; Gaston, Man and Mission, pp. 74-76. 89. Alyea, Fairhope, pp. 12, 19, 24; Gaston, Man and Mission, pp. 72, 74, 78, 93. 90. Alyea, Fairhope, pp. 242-45; Gaston, Man and Mission, pp. 83-87. 91. Alyea, Fairhope, pp. 27-28; Gaston, Man and Mission, pp. 97-98. 92. Alyea, Fairhope, pp. 9-30; Gaston, Man and Mission, pp. 99-105. 93. Alyea, Fairhope, p. 31; Gaston, Man and Mission, p. 109. 94. Gaston, Man and Mission, pp. 115-16. 95. Ibid, pp. 116-19. 96. Alyea, Fairhope, pp. 71-72, 75-76. 97. Ibid, pp. 15-57; Gaston, Man and Mission, p. 9. 98. Alyea, Fairhope, pp. 6-7, 84, 87-90. 99. Ibid., p. 83. 100. Ibid, pp. 82-84; Paul M. Gaston, Women of Fair Hope (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984). 101. Ibid., p. 98. 102. Ibid., p. 99. 103. Ibid, p. 100. 104. Ibid, p. 124. 105. Ibid, p. 234. 106. Gaston, Man and Mission, p. 7. 107. Ibid, pp. 4-12. 108. Hine, Utopian Colonies, pp. 114-16; Knox Mellon, "Job Harriman and Llano del Rio: The Chimerical Quest for a Secular Utopia," Communal Societies 5 (1985): pp. 195-96. 109. Hine, Utopian Colonies, pp. 116-17; Oved, Two Hundred Years, p. 285. 110. Dolores Hayden, Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790-1975 (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press), p. 293.

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111. Hine, Utopian Colonies, p. 118; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 286-87. 112. Hayden, Seven American Utopias, p. 293. 113. Ibid, pp. 302-8; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 288-89. 114. Hine, Utopian Colonies, p. 128. 115. Ibid, pp. 128-30; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 294-96. 116. Hayden, Seven American Utopias, p. 310. 117. For an assessment of Harriman's contribution to American communalism, see Mellon, "Job Harriman," pp. 205-6. For what happened to those who stayed in California, see Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 301-3.

CHAPTER 5

Great Depression Secular Communities

The string of socialist cooperatives that ended with Llano del Rio were communal responses to the perceived evils of the Industrial Revolution. However, the seemingly boundless prosperity of the 1920s dampened interest in model communities as alternatives to American capitalism, and Timothy Miller concluded that the decade "saw little communal organizing." For many Americans the Great Depression temporarily shattered their faith in laissez-faire capitalism and forced them to seek alternate lifestyles and, according to Miller, a "veritable wave of cooperative living washed over the country."1 Michael Barkun found that the depression prompted hundreds of experiments in community building and was a cyclical high point of American communalism.2 Three types of Utopian communities can be discerned during the depression. The first group was experimental, private, decentralized colonies, mostly short lived, that were started and financed by individuals. These included Ralph Borsodi's "School of the Living" at Suffern, New York, Henry McCowen's communist experiment at Elida, New Mexico, and Maury Maverick's Diga community at San Antonio, Texas. The most ambitious depression communities, however, were those connected with the federal government and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Anarchists—who abjured the government—promoted the third variety of communalism, the best example of which was the Sunrise Cooperative Farm Community at Alicia, Michigan.

112 Communal Utopias and the American Experience PRIVATE COMMUNITIES Suffern Ralph Borsodi conceived a Utopia of subsistence farms when he and his wife moved to a seven-acre farm near Suffern, New York in 1920 after they lost their rented home in Manhattan. When the Great Depression hit a decade later, he published the story of his relocation in Flight From the City, % book that extolled "creative living on the land." He claimed that "domestic production" would "not only annihilate the undesirable and nonessential factory . . . it would release men and women from their present thralldom to the factory."3 In the summer of 1933, officials from Dayton, Ohio, asked him to put his ideas into practice there in a dozen or more "Cooperative Productive Units" of buildings for 350 to 500 families. Residents would work cooperatively "to produce food, clothing, and other basics, bartering their excess with other units and exchanging their products for raw materials."4 However, Borsodi wanted to go beyond this plan, aiming instead to create "Liberty Homesteads" for more than 2,000 families who would live on three-acre leased farms. Dayton agreed and purchased a 160-acre farm with a farmhouse and outbuildings. The community encountered financial difficulties from the start because Borsodi failed to raise money through the sale of "Independence Bonds." The Dayton weekly newspaper criticized him for fraud, racial integration, and ineffective leadership. Finally, in May 1934 when Harold Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, federalized the project under the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, the dream of a self-sufficient community of Liberty Homesteads collapsed and the homesteading families departed. Not to be discouraged, in 1936 Borsodi planned another community. Called the "School of Living," it was to be located at Suffern as an independent colony of 16 two-acre homesteads around a community center named "Bayard Land." It offered courses in skills such as carpentry, food storage, and weaving. At the colony an "Independence Foundation" assisted homesteaders in buying property. This Foundation prompted Fortune magazine in October 1938 to promote Borsodi's project as a way to allow displaced "urban refugees" to acquire land at one-third the price of existing rates. But homesteaders resented Borsodi's domineering personality and in 1940 they revolted. The next year Borsodi resigned as head of the School and the community members abandoned cooperative living in favor of private ownership of their plots. Ultimately, in 1945 Borsodi sold all of his land to one of the homesteaders.5 Moneyless Government Community In 1932, Henry McCowen, a college-educated dairy farmer and newspaper editor in Elida, New Mexico, proposed "Moneyless Government," a community modeled on the Icarian colonies, totally without money. Condemned

Great Depression Secular Communities 113 as a communist and ridiculed as "Old Moneyless" by his neighbors, he rented a building in Elida and asked individuals to join his community by turning over all of their possessions. Only one family responded and they had to rely on McCowen's subvention in order to survive. Just a few local ranchers agreed to support the plan. Even McCowen refused to move into the building and within a year, due to rising hostility of the Elida residents to this "communist" experiment, McCowen abandoned the idea.6 Diga Community Another disciple of private Utopian communities as the remedy to the depression was Maury Maverick, a tax collector from Bexar County, Texas. A descendant of a wealthy Texas ranching family and later elected Mayor of San Antonio, Maverick personally investigated the plight of that city's unemployed, especially the growing number of transients. In 1932, he convinced the Humble Oil Company to give him 3 5 acres on the edge of San Antonio as a place for his community. He then purchased abandoned railroad boxcars and converted them into homes that he first offered to all World War I veterans and eventually to any unemployed head of a family. Named the "Agricultural and Industrial Democracy," and labeled by Maverick with the reverse acronym Diga, it was organized as a military community with "officers" ruling over "divisions" and reporting daily to Maverick.7 He insisted on bizarre rules of conduct, such as prohibiting any resident to talk with disfavor about the community to outsiders or forbidding them to leave the colony without his permission. He subscribed to left-wing magazines, which he placed in the colony library, and opened a medical clinic, a kindergarten, and some retail businesses. Maverick intended to buy livestock and begin self-sufficient agriculture. He advertised a lecture series on liberal politics, but the few colonists (who were at the time living at a nearby military camp) who arrived in November 1932 were not intellectuals and were only concerned about getting food and health care. According to Miller, the community "provided good food, medical care, and relatively good housing, but those benefits came at a social cost that most residents ultimately found unacceptable."8 In January 1933, Diga's population peaked at 171 residents, but when "relief began to flow from Roosevelt's New Deal in 1933 the Diga colony withered away."9 NEW DEAL COMMUNITIES Phoebe Cutler, in her analysis of public attitudes during the depression, found that, like the residents of Diga, an increasing number of people turned to the federal government for help. And Congress, under Roosevelt's leadership, immediately responded by trying "to introduce a socialist spirit to a land where every man still fiercely guarded his castle."10 Between 1933 and 1937, New Deal agencies, with a budget of over $100 million, planned over

114 Communal Utopias and the American Experience 100 Utopian communities. They were conceived as permanent settlements because it was assumed that full employment would never again be possible and the New Dealers looked to "a future that would bear no fundamental resemblance to the past." So, they "elevated economic tinkering to the position of master-lever in the construction of a virtuous society."11 No doubt they also were reacting against more radical schemes posed by demagogues such as Senator Huey Long, Dr. Francis Townsend, and Father Coughlin. These men offered immediate, and simplistic, cures for unemployment. Long started his Share-Our-Wealth Society, which advocated federal taxes to confiscate all incomes over $1 million and inheritances over $5 million. The government would then give every family a home mortgage allowance of $5,000 and a yearly salary of $2,000. By 1935, Long claimed that over seven million Americans had joined his Society. Its growth was unexpectedly stopped when, in September of that year, he was assassinated and Gerald L. K. Smith, his successor and a vicious anti-Semite, could not sustain its popularity. Townsend, a California physician, concocted the "Old Age Revolving Pensions Plan" where the government would send a monthly check for $200 to everyone over the age of sixty with the only stipulation that they spend it before the next check arrived. The Roman Catholic priest Father Charles Coughlin, in his weekly radio program, the Golden Hour of the Little Flower, demanded nationalization of basic industries and the banks. In 1934, he created the National Union for Social Justice and claimed that the depression had been caused by a conspiracy of Jewish bankers. The New Deal communal Utopias were planned by three federal agencies: the Division of Subsistence Homesteads (DSH), the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), and the Resettlement Administration (RA). There were two general types of communities: rural resettlement cooperatives (built by all three agencies) and the greenbelt cities (constructed only by the RA). In designing the rural resettlement projects Roosevelt's planners drew heavily upon the ideas of Elwood Mead, a University of California professor who advocated cooperative communities created by federal experts in land use and scientific agriculture. They would be agricultural subsistence homesteads for carefully screened residents and have small industries close to the living quarters.12 The inspiration for the greenbelt towns came from British city planner Ebenezer Howard. In To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Social Reform (1898), he developed a design for building "garden cities" of 32,000 residents. They would collectively own the land and control its use and own and operate all factories and shops. Families would live in leased homes; those unable to afford a lease could rent community housing. There would be open spaces preserved as parks and a spacious "green belt" of fields and trees would surround the city.13

Rural Resettlement Cooperatives The Division of Subsistence Homesteads was created in the spring of 1933, during the "Hundred Days" of Roosevelt's presidency, when the National

Great Depression Secular Communities 115 Industrial Recovery Act of June 16 provided $25 million to enable the president "through such agencies as he may establish . . . for making loans for and otherwise aiding in the purchase of subsistence homesteads." Roosevelt gave this assignment to Harold Ickes, who appointed Milburn L. Wilson as head of the new DSH to see it through. Wilson, an agricultural economist and head of the Wheat section of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration in the Department of Agriculture, "brought with him not only a wellformulated plan for subsistence homesteads but a conscious, defined social philosophy as well."14 He believed that they should not just provide employment but must change cultural patterns and values to create, in his words, "a kind of supergovernmental economic and social intelligence."15 Over the summer Wilson drafted plans for three prototypes, all built and managed by residents as local corporations. There would be industrial homesteads for city workers, agricultural colonies for farmers, and "strandedworker" communities for special groups such as coal miners. Government bureaucrats would screen and select applicants, all of whom had to be unemployed and on the relief rolls. Each community would have one- to fiveacre family homesteads for a maximum of 100 families. State agricultural colleges would survey the land and settlers themselves would construct the buildings and be paid a minimum wage by the federal government. Houses were to be assigned to families on a one-year lease, after which they would be offered for sale on a 20-year mortgage at 3 percent interest. When Ickes received Wilson's report in October 1933 he disagreed with it. He wanted much closer federal auditing of expenditures and insisted that control of the homesteads remain in Washington. Otherwise, he predicted unavoidable mismanagement. Wilson argued that such centralization was undemocratic and would discourage applications. They "had to be wanted, planned, and managed by the people within the locality where they were to be constructed," he maintained.16 To get things moving, Ickes conceded the point. But a January 1934 audit, as Ickes had predicted, revealed excessive waste. He was irate and charged that some of planners were "spending money like drunken sailors."17 When conservative newspapers found out what was happening they damned the homestead program as a prime example of New Deal extravagance. As a result of the scandal, the Comptroller General ordered all homesteads to use federal accounting and disbursing procedures. Wilson issued a directive called the "Federal Subsistence Homesteads Corporation Plan" that put all projects under federally appointed accountants and managers. He remained as head of the DSH until June 30, 1934, when he returned to his former job in the Department of Agriculture. When the DSH was dissolved in May 1935, it had spent $8 million of the initial appropriation in constructing 31 industrial, 3 agricultural, and 4 stranded-worker homesteads. One of the DSH's most highly publicized and notorious projects was at Arthurdale, West Virginia. Located near Reedsville, it had originally been started by Quakers in 1931 as a home for children of unemployed miners. In 1933, Wilson appointed Clarence Pickett, his assistant, to take it over and

116 Communal Utopias and the American Experience create a stranded workers' homestead. The Quakers—actually the American Friends Service Committee—fully cooperated with the conversion. Unfortunately, Eleanor Roosevelt preempted the direction of Arthurdale almost from the start. Hoping to construct a perfect model community that would serve as a flagship for the DSH's work, she had the interior walls of the prefabricated homes lavishly decorated and required that all the furniture be of solid maple. To be sure that only the right type of individual came to Arthurdale, she made every member pass a physical examination, have a conference with a social worker, and fill out a long written application form. The disbursements spiraled out of sight and the homes cost over three times the amount budgeted for them. Mrs. Roosevelt then borrowed money from her famous friends such as John Dewey and Bernard Baruch to construct six school buildings with facilities for prenatal care, a nursery, elementary classrooms, a vocational high school, and adult education at a cost exceeding $250,000. The anticipated small industries never appeared. Only a vacuum cleaner factory, a tractor factory, and a poultry farm were started. They failed to make a profit and were shut down within two years. In 1941, the government sold the homestead to outside buyers.18 An unsuccessful DSH homestead for the urban unemployed was begun at Hightstown, New Jersey. Benjamin Brown, a Ukrainian labor organizer, sent Wilson a proposal for a colony of Jewish workers that would be financed by income from a communal garment factory and from farming. Wilson advanced him a $500,000 loan to buy 2,300 acres of land. Brown advertised the project as the "Jersey Homestead" open to qualified garment workers who could pay a $500 entrance fee. They had to be skilled craftsmen, union members, and have a family. Over 100 workers applied, all devoutly religious and committed to cooperative living. Nevertheless, the colony failed economically. The cooperative factory was mismanaged and workers complained about low wages. Almost none of residents had an interest in agriculture. At the start of World War II, a hat manufacturer bought out the garment factory and kept members of the Hightstown community on the payroll until after the war.19 The FERA, headed by Harry Hopkins, was the second New Deal agency involved in rural resettlement cooperatives. Hopkins created a special section of the FERA called the Division of Rural Rehabilitation and Stranded Populations (DRRSP) to direct the projects. It built large farm homesteads at Woodlake (Texas), Dyess Colony (Arkansas), Pine Mountain Valley (Georgia), and Cherry Lake Farm (Florida). In the summer of 1933, he asked Lawrence Westbrook, a Texas state legislator, and David Williams, a Dallas architect, to build a community for unemployed farmers from the area around Houston. In January 1934, farmers on relief rolls moved to Woodlake, some 1,200 acres of pine woods 85 miles north of the city. By September they had constructed 100 two-story homes on plots of three acres, each costing about $1,500. Every family had a chicken house, a garage, and an orchard. The annual rent of $180 was paid in crops and poultry. There was to be a community park, school,

Great Depression Secular Communities 117 meeting hall, bathhouse, and store. Everyone would farm two 600-acre sections as well as work in handicraft shops. When completed in June 1935, it was the first fully finished New Deal resettlement colony. It lasted until 1943 after which the inhabitants returned to private life.20 In the summer of 1934, the state of Arkansas, with FERA money, constructed Dyess Colony, the largest New Deal farm cooperative. It was a 17,500-acre cotton farm divided into 500 twenty-acre homesteads, all arranged in groups of four houses placed at crossroads. The Colony had a community center, an administration building, barns, a seed house, cotton gin, store, hospital, and school that enrolled 1,600 students. But the farm units were not large enough to grow cotton profitably, and between 1936 and 1939 it lost $750,000.21 FERA started Pine Mountain Valley on 12,651 acres in Harris County, Georgia close to the president's health resort at Warm Springs. According to Paul K. Conkin, it used "a new idea in planning in which the farm and the city are so amalgamated as to be one inseparable whole."22 It was designed for 300 indigent farm families who were supposed to develop a hatchery, grape canneries, a saw mill, a dairy, and an egg freezing plant. They built a school, seven barracks buildings, a warehouse, barns, an auditorium, and a church. They had a community electric power plant and a telephone system. But internal dissension over leadership led to the eviction of 28 families during the first year. Moreover, none of the farm units was over 40 acres and thus "were not large enough to assure economic independence apart from the processing industries." Only the cannery kept the community afloat until 1943 when it dissolved.23 In northern Florida, a $2 million FERA subsidy created Cherry Lake Farms on 12,420 acres of sandy soil for 132 families on relief in Tampa, Miami, and Jacksonville. It had a central water system that supplied each home and a large administrative building that served as a community center. Cherry Lake Farms operated a poultry business and a gristmill and sold handicraft articles in a colony store. But by 1939 it, too, went into bankruptcy.24 Frustrated with the scandals of the DSH and the looming failures of the four FERA projects, Roosevelt, in the spring of 1935, formed the Resettlement Administration (RA). He named Rexford G. Tugwell, Under Secretary of Agriculture, as its head. Tugwell continued to build rural resettlement homesteads but turned the projects over to a subdivision of the RA, the Rural Rehabilitation and Land Utilization Division (RRLUD). He had in mind two types of homestead communities. They were to be either big, staple-crop collective farms like those begun by FERA, or modest rural colonies similar to those started by Wilson and the DSH. 25 Tugwell developed three collective farms: at Lake Dick (Arkansas), Casa Grande Farms (Arizona), and Terrebonne Parish (Louisiana). Lake Dick was a 4,529-acre cotton farm where families lived in 60 frame homes on two-acre plots of land. Tenants were paid minimum wages and at the end of the year participated in profit sharing. It had a central community building, a cotton gin, general store, and a waterworks. But Lake Dick was more like a day-

118

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labor plantation in which the government was the landlord and bank. It failed because only 26 families joined. And even among this small group the turnover rate was astonishing—400 percent during its five years of existence, explained in part by the changing attitude of its residents. In the beginning they accepted cooperation as the only source of economic security for their families. But as bad times receded most men wanted a farm of their own, to reclaim their earlier independence. In 1942, Lake Dick dissolved and the land was rented to black sharecroppers. 2 6 T h e Casa Grande Farms in Pinal County, Arizona, was similar to Lake Dick, except that adobe homes replaced the frame houses. T h e s e larger units were more expensive, however, each one costing the government $11,959. T h e tenants collectively ran a large irrigation system that enabled them to raise dairy and beef cattle. But like Lake Dick it was unable to earn a profit and in 1942 it too was disbanded. Terrebonne Parish in Louisiana came about in 1936 when the R R L U D purchased a 2,800-acre sugar plantation. It was to be a profitable collective sugar cane farm for 71 families, each living on six-acre units where they would raise vegetables and livestock. It continued, with the same difficulties that afflicted the other collective farms, until 1943 when the government terminated its operation. 27 M o s t of Tugwell's small resettlement homesteads, like those built by W i l son, conformed to a common pattern in terms of scale and clientele. T h e average community consisted of 100 farms of between 40 and 100 acres. O n each plot was a four-room frame house without plumbing that tenants would lease. T h e homestead had community buildings such as a warehouse, a school, and a meeting hall. Members had to have an annual income of under $1,600 and submit written letters of recommendation. T h e n they were interviewed by social workers and answered detailed questionnaires about their personal lives. Most applicants were adults in their early thirties with small children. T h e y usually had no more than an eighth grade education and had been living as sharecroppers or as slum tenants. Tugwell failed to anticipate the myriad adjustments these people had to make. O n e was financial—they had to come up with the annual rent and pay for heat, electricity, and telephone. Collective farming also meant unwelcome supervision by bureaucrats, such as home economists and farm advisors, who were often arrogant and overbearing. Parents were reluctant to send their children to a community school that was taught by a "field force of cooperative specialists." T h e y resented having to attend group study sessions three times a month. (Adults studied handicrafts, home economics, and other courses taught by a "home and farm supervisor, co-operative specialists," a local experienced vocational agricultural teacher, or specialists in handicrafts and skills.) 28 Lastly, collective living created an insidious anxiety that the whole thing was so over-managed as to be unworkable. M e r t o n L. Wright, a N e w Deal official in Michigan, wrote to a friend in Washington, D . C . in December 1936 that he saw "lurking behind the trees in these plans" for cooperative

Great Depression Secular Communities 119 homesteads "the always questionable management efficiency of some of our clients" and "future goblins waiting for their opportunity to save mankind with their Utopias . . . sociologists with the guinea pig complexes, the town planners and engineers with an earnest desire to build their monuments before death."29 The subsistence homestead program, whether under Wilson, Hopkins, or Tugwell, was an economic and social failure. It also had another serious flaw: it ignored blacks. From the start, in Wilson's DSH, the racial bias was explicit. One undated memorandum entitled "Colored Project" put it bluntly: "The fact remains that numerous protests on the part of white citizens against colored project locations have been one of the major contributing causes of failure."30 When Tugwell announced that he was planning a black homestead near Dayton, Ohio, some thousand citizens sent Congress a petition to stop it. The petitioners claimed that it would mean racial integration and black children playing with whites. Tugwell quickly perceived that cooperation and racial prejudice did not mix. Only one all-black community was started by 1935, named "Aberdeen Gardens" and located near Newport News, Virginia. Hampton Institute and black technicians and laborers completed construction of the colony in the fall of 1936. The federal government called it a "garden city for Negroes" and it had 159 family homesteads, each costing $8,515 to build. In 1942, it was opened for sale to individual homesteaders or was conveyed to "special leasing associations."31 Greenbelt Communities The suburban greenbelt towns, on the other hand, were the showcase communal Utopias of the New Deal. Tugwell told a Senate committee that they would be "demonstrations of the combined advantages of country and city life for low-income rural and industrial families," the only realistic escape from urban congestion and ugliness. Furthermore, the greenbelt communities would create new markets for nearby farmers, new social and cultural interaction among the residents, and more healthful surroundings for children. The RA built three of them—Greenbelt (Maryland), Greenhills (Ohio), and Greendale (Wisconsin)—all monumental examples of Utopian imagination, planning, and social engineering. In published articles, memoranda, and testimony before Congressional committees, Tugwell described his "garden cities." They would have 10,000 residents and have accommodations for 3,000 families. They were to be surrounded by trees and farms, the "green belt." There would be separation of automobile and foot traffic with pedestrian underpasses for all streets. The city would be laid out in a half-circle around a hub that would serve as a community center with a school, an inn, restaurant, movie theater, gas station, and firehouse. The center also contained a shopping center, playground, swimming pool, and athletic field. Homes and apartments were to be built on

120 Communal Utopias and the American Experience 20-acre blocks. Each block would have a park in the middle linked by pedestrian underpasses with all the other block parks.32 In 1935, Tugwell began construction of Greenbelt, Maryland, close to Washington, D.C., and the University of Maryland. The RA purchased land for $1,124,480 and divided it into an 8,659-acre research area and a 3,600acre town. No industry was planned. Only 885 housing units were ever finished: 574 were condominiums, 306 were apartment buildings, and five were single-family homes. All structures were of brick veneer with either pitched or flat roofs. They were unfurnished—apart from a refrigerator and stove— but the tenants could purchase furniture from designated manufacturers at low cost. As planned, the community building was used during the day for an elementary school and had a playground, swimming pool, and athletic field. The shopping center resembled a modern mall. In cooperation with Prince George County, Greenbelt had a high school. It also had a community sewage plant, water tank, and electrical power plant. Everything was constructed by unemployed men on relief rolls.33 In September 1937, the tenants moved in. They enjoyed social events planned by a citizens association. They participated in a long list of clubs: boy and girl scouts, cub scouts, garden hobbies, bridge parties, preschool mothers, school-age mothers, widows, swimmers, and camera buffs. They had a dance band, a choral group, a journalist club, and theater assembly called the Greenbelt Players. Adults took classes in art, political science, and accounting taught by faculty members from the University of Maryland.34 The RA started Greenhills, the second greenbelt town, in September 1935, eleven miles north of Cincinnati on 5,930 acres of land. Some 4,000 acres was kept as farmland or forest and the rest set aside for the town. Greenhills had a different layout than Greenbelt. The site was hilly and scissored by deep gorges, so buildings were placed along the tops of the ridges in circular drives or cul-de-sacs. The workers finished 676 family units: 500 condominiums, 152 apartments, and 24 single-family houses. In the middle of a main street that bisected Greenhills was the community center with an elementary and high school, a shopping center, a farmer's market, and a swimming pool. Close by was a park with athletic fields. They had water pumped in from Cincinnati and regional trunk lines took care of the sewage.35 Tugwell located Greendale just west of Milwaukee. Anticipating that the tenants would be industrial workers from that city, it had a 10-acre plot for light industry. The rest of the land, 1,830 acres, was for crops and dairy cattle. The residential area, situated in a valley and surrounded by hills, looked more like a typical American town with its single-family houses facing the streets. The 274 three-bedroom homes were made of cinder block and had tile roofs, as were the 208 condominiums and the 90 duplexes. The community center, built by outside contractors, had an elementary school, a fire and police station, movie theater, post office, gas station, and a tavern. To prevent being overrun by tenants (there were 12,000 applications), occupancy was restricted

Great Depression Secular Communities 121 to families who earned under $2,200 a year, with a preference given to young parents with children. Rent for the units was about the same as in the other greenbelts, ranging from $18 to $32.50 a month. Most of Greendale's 885 families were young workers or government employees in their early thirties with high school educations.36 The "Tugwell Towns" had many enthusiastic supporters. President Roosevelt visited Greenbelt in 1936 and called it "a real achievement." Tracy B. Augur, a nationally-known housing planner, said that they signaled "a new urban era in the United States" where, "through the process of democratic government, an urban environment worthy of the American ideal of life" would be established.37 But as time went on serious criticism came from the press, Congress, and the public. Newspaper editors complained that Tugwell's goals were impossibly idealistic, equivalent to trying "a rehabilitation of the Solar System."38 Congressmen attacked the high construction costs and Tugwell himself. They said that this "wild man from Moscow" had assumed too much power without legislative authorization.39 Tugwell for his part made enemies on Capitol Hill when he said that the legislators were pawns of special interests. Some of his opponents took him to court. A New Jersey group filed for an injunction to halt construction of any more greenbelts because, it charged, Roosevelt's executive order establishing the RA was unconstitutional. The injunction was denied. Another complaint was filed in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in May 1936. It alleged that the FERA had unconstitutionally authorized the funds for the greenbelts. This time the court agreed. Faced by mounting criticisms Tugwell, in November 1936, resigned.40 The next month Roosevelt transferred the RA to the Department of Agriculture under the direction of Will Alexander, Tugwell's successor as "Administrator of the Resettlement Administration." The following September it was renamed the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and took responsibility for the greenbelt cities and any surviving rural resettlement homesteads. By 1942 the FSA had placed the three greenbelt communities under the Public Housing Authority. In 1946, it started to sell the buildings in Greenhills and Greendale to private individuals or to the cities of Cincinnati and Milwaukee respectively; many were bought by war veterans. The sale of Greenbelt began in 1950 when a group of veterans purchased 1,580 properties. Public auctions and competitive bidding over the next four years disposed of the rest of the dwellings. The total amount from the sales was $8,973,767 for a project that had cost the government $13,701,817.41 In 1957, Tugwell himself bought a home in Greenbelt and moved there to live. The frenzied Utopian planning and building of the early New Deal was an over-reaction to the fear, anger, and uncertainty caused by the Great Depression. It made many Americans, prematurely it appears, condemn capitalism and individualism and turn instead to government-sponsored communalism. When the psychological shock, and unemployment, of the depression began to recede

122 Communal Utopias and the American Experience support for Utopian communities dwindled rapidly. Even by 1937 the enthusiasm was gone and the popularity of traditional American values revived.

SUNRISE At the nadir of the depression, a group of anarchists led by Joseph Cohen, a Russian-born Jewish immigrant, developed a Utopian community in rural Michigan. He called it "Sunrise," after the novel The Dwellers in Vale Sunrise (1904) by John William Lloyd, which described a small band of city dwellers living a communal existence close to nature. In 1925, Cohen began editing a Yiddish newspaper in New York City called the Freie Arbeiter Stimme (The Voice of the Free Worker). In addition to Lloyd's book, he had also read works on Brook Farm, New Harmony, Icaria, and Oneida, all of which convinced him that private ownership of land was the greatest evil in America. It had produced, he wrote, "waste of land and material, of effort and money; waste of seed and plants every spring . . . waste in many small families living separately, each one with a kitchen of its own, in each kitchen a woman wasting her time preparing three meals a day for three or four people."42 The depression focused his attention on the problem because of rampant unemployment and the eviction of families from their homes. He made up his mind to build a communal Utopia as a haven for the dispossessed. He calculated that, aided by modern technology, he could construct "a social unit that would be self-sufficient in all respects." It would contain farmers, millers, bakers, butchers, carpenters, masons, teachers, tailors, and doctors. They would "own the means of production in common" and in return "they should be provided by the community with all they needed."43 In the spring of 1933, a Detroit anarchist informed him that land 95 miles from that city was for sale at a bargain price. The two men went to Philadelphia to talk with the owners and discovered that they could acquire a 10,000-acre farm worth $100,000 if they could come up with the back taxes of $40,000. They needed only $3,000 for a down payment on a mortgage with 4 percent interest. Cohen returned to New York City and formed a committee to raise the money.44 In June 1933, in the Freie Arbeiter Stimme, he described his Utopia as a "Project for a Collectivist Co-operative Colony." The article stated that in Sunrise the land would be used in common and belong to the community. It would provide the "necessities of daily life." Members would have to pay a $500 admission fee, be under the age of 45 without large numbers of children, and not be "conservatives and religious people . . . [nor] professed Communists." Individuals could own personal objects such as clothes, furniture, and books, items a person could take with them if they left the community. The colony would emphasize "dairying, poultry-raising, apiary, truck gardening and fruit growing."45 Industry would include "all the necessary and practicable branches of production for home use, the erection of buildings, preparation

Great Depression Secular Communities 123 of clothes, repair of tools and machinery, education and recreation, hygienic and medical control and service, etc." After the annual meeting tallied the colony's income above expenditures, the money would be distributed "equally among the members for their personal use as each one sees fit."46 Hundreds of applications for membership came into Cohen's office and he began construction of Sunrise in July 1933. Cohen faced an immediate need to attract resident workers to prevent crops from being overrun by weeds, so he let anyone join as long as they had the money and met the restrictions stated in the promotional article. As a result, the community not only had anarchists but also radical labor union people and socialists. Even so, Sunrise colonist Morris Lippman told Timothy Miller in a March 1996 interview that "59 percent of the people were Jewish."47 Things started out well enough. Favorable coverage by newspapers, which described them as "millionaire workers," brought in a large number of visitors. The day began at six-thirty and continued until early evening. They had 1,000 acres planted in peppermint, hay, sweet corn, soybeans, sugar beets, and vegetables. The first harvest was a success, the grain alone bringing in $24,000. By the fall of 1933, 80 families—216 people—were living at Sunrise. Anxious to have shelter for everyone before the cold Michigan winter, Cohen hired more outside workers since, he confessed, "when we needed them most, we had hardly any among us."48 They had family homes, apartments for couples without children, and a dormitory for single members. They put up a communal kitchen and dining room where three times a day everyone ate meals prepared by a baker, a butcher, and a pantry man. Behind the kitchen, employing plumbers from Detroit, they erected a line of shower booths and toilets. They built a children's house, modeled on the one at Oneida. After some negotiation with county school authorities, they were permitted to operate a communal school with an annual county subsidy of $8,000 to hire teachers. Six teachers, all college graduates, were responsible for the instruction of 65 children. Cohen administered the farm as its "community secretary" in a small office with an attached bedroom. He worked 18 hours a day and dealt not only with individual members of the community but with salesmen, the hired workers, and a constant stream of visitors, journalists, and politicians.49 Euphoria developed among this diverse group of individuals joining together—successfully it seemed—to build a Utopia. Cohen remembered that during the first summer they were "blissfully inspired" by the prospect of creating a viable example of a new social order. Lippman nostalgically recalled Sunrise as "magnificent living" where "we all shared in the essence of democratic behavior." "We had equal work," he said, and "we had equal income." Even their relations with neighbors were amicable. Lippman told Miller that although "they looked at us kind of curious" they were "pleasant enough." The reason for this friendliness was perhaps connected to economic selfinterest: the neighbors were sharecropping on Sunrise land.50

124 Communal Utopias and the American Experience However, by the winter of 1934 serious trouble appeared. One of the difficulties was the absence of any rules. Cohen had tried to draw up a constitution the previous spring but could not get beyond a rough draft and never produced a final document. In any case, he said, during the first months they were so busy running the farm that "a prepared set of rules would have been of little use to us."51 But it was soon apparent that a temporary board of directors made up of anarchists represented only a minority of Sunrise's population and that changes would have to be made. A weekly assembly chose a committee of five to set up an election of new officers. The anarchists refused to serve on the committee and it ended up being staffed by labor union men and socialists. When the committee wrote a set of bylaws the anarchists protested the procedure and, because of their objections, the new rules were rejected. Sunrise quickly divided into quarrelling factions of anarchists, socialists, union activists, and a group called the "Yiddishists," who insisted that only Yiddish be taught and spoken in the community. Although no bylaws were ever adopted, they finally agreed that officers had to be elected. A list of 40 candidates for president, treasurer, secretary and a board of directors was printed and circulated.52 Cohen, devoted anarchist that he was, wanted no part of this or any election and went back to New York City to see his family. While he was away there began, in his words, "a systematic and slanderous whispering campaign, aimed at electing people who would oppose my influence [and] there was also a great deal of behavior whose vulgarity had little in common with the high ideals we professed."53 The anarchists' candidates were overwhelmingly defeated and the new leaders took office on January 1, 1934. Cohen's return later that month made the situation more vitriolic. The new officers called him a dictator because he refused to accept majority rule. Cohen warned that if the fighting did not stop the community would fall apart. He called a special session of the general assembly and convinced a majority to reappoint the old board of directors. But, understandably, his opposition refused to accept what they saw as a coup d'etat. Under worsening circumstances Cohen tried to run Sunrise himself. He divided the old board of directors into three committees: membership, agriculture, and finance. He offered the opposition an exit package of a $250 rebate on the membership fees. None of their leaders went along, although 20 rank-ajid-file members left and drained the colony's cash reserves. Cohen published a newspaper called the Sunrise News in order to get his side of the argument out to new recruits. The opposition tried to start one of their own, the Voice of Sunrise, in Yiddish, but the Board stopped its publication. Fortunately for Sunrise, the need to get back to farm work in the spring of 1934 pushed these disputes into the background. More new members arrived and by June its population was up to 79 families that provided 150 adult men for the farm and 13 teenagers who worked there part-time. They had 50 purebred

Great Depression Secular Communities 125 Belgian horses and 50 mixed breeds. Still, they remained shorthanded and had to hire transient labor to keep the farm going.54 The fall harvest, though, was a far cry from the bountiful yield of the first year. Hurt by the labor shortage and a severe drought, the crops were less than half of what was expected. They barely made enough money to cover expenses and had nothing left over for upkeep, improvements, or expansion. To add to their woes during the summer, field fires swept through soil that was, in Cohen's description, "a kind of pulverized peat."55 They were impossible to extinguish, burned for weeks, and ignited two large dairy barns and silos. Lightning started a blaze in another barn and destroyed 75 tons of hay and truckloads of stored furniture. Then, in December, a fire leveled a home. In order to survive, Cohen applied for a loan of $35,000 from the Rural Rehabilitation Corporation and another one of $20,000 from the local Production Credit Association. He reorganized the work system. Jobs had always been done voluntarily, where every evening members chose what he or she wanted to do the next day. But few men picked the hard physical work. Now Cohen put workers into groups of craftsmen (for maintenance and repair), household workers (women, who took care of the cleaning and preparing meals), and field hands. The third group included most of the adult males. Immediately they complained that they were being treated like "coolies" and were constantly moved around the farm. Cohen, to mollify them, divided the field workers into sections of 6 to 10 men who then were given permanent assignments.56 Nothing improved. By the spring of 1935 there were 70 families at Sunrise, and by the fall only 50 remained. Cohen tried to restore morale. At the celebration of the colony's second anniversary in the last week of June, he urged them to recommit to bettering their cultural and intellectual life. He proposed creating an Institute to study the history and principles of communal life. When the members ignored this idea he became demoralized. A downtrodden Cohen wrote: "I felt that it would be very hard to keep the remainder of the members together for any length of time, and particularly to retain the younger people, without whom the community could have no future."57 In the spring of 1936, he decided to sell Sunrise to the Federal government. Tugwell offered a plan whereby the RA would purchase the land and those who wanted to leave would receive compensation. Those who wanted to remain could apply for deeds to the land as individuals. In the new government farm, though, they would still have to work the fields collectively. Cohen signed the option to sell on April 15, 1936. The government bought the farm for $268,000, which was enough to cover all debts. The exiting colonists agreed to leave behind machinery, tools, and livestock in order to help those who stayed to keep going.58 The liquidation had barely begun when some members who had already left Sunrise took it to court. They charged that Cohen and the Board had committed fraud, misused funds, and had never given a full accounting of

126 Communal Utopias and the American Experience expenditures. At the hearing, which began on August 4, 1936, lawyers for the plaintiffs pointed out that Cohen was a Jewish anarchist as were most of the officers, and that "Communist subversives" had engaged in terrorism and intimidation. But during the five days of the hearing they presented no evidence or witnesses to prove their case. Cohen's attorneys brought in a certified public accountant who had audited the books in 1933. He testified that there were no irregularities. On Sunday evening, August 8, Judge Arthur J. Tuttle rendered his opinion. He dismissed the charges and went on to describe the anarchists as loyal Americans who had worked together "in the spirit of the law under which they are incorporated." He wished success to those who wanted to stay and make a living at Sunrise. He predicted that it would be "a better one than they have been making."59 Cohen and 19 families remained but Sunrise gradually ceased to exist as a communitarian experiment. One by one they shut down the children's house, the dining room, and the community store. They eventually realized that the situation was hopeless and that if communal life were to continue they had to find another location. They sent a delegation to Virginia to find a spot and it reported on a 640-acre farm for sale on the Rappahannock River. They assumed an option on the property for $15,000 with a down payment of $4,500. They calculated that they would need another $25,000 to construct homes and buildings. In December 1936, they abandoned Michigan for the Old Dominion.60 Cohen found the place "new, beautiful and promising."61 But they were short of funds, having been able to salvage from their interests in Sunrise only $27,000 instead of the $50,000 they had anticipated. Soon entire families, Cohen remembered, "were in a quarrelsome mood towards each other."62 "Scheming and whispering went on all the time," he complained, "and open hostility arose between the three or four younger men who composed the field unit and the older members, who nagged continually at them, criticizing everything they did and annoying them in every possible way."63 Roads from the farm to the main highway were in terrible shape, and were impassible in the spring mud. Finally, in November 1938, Cohen recognized that almost every adult felt that they would have a better chance to succeed if he were not there, and so, becoming discouraged, he left. Twelve families stayed until the following September when they, too, voted to sell the property. In his 1957 memoir, Cohen reflected on the cause of Sunrise's failure. The heart of their difficulties, reminiscent of New Harmony, was "the plain fact" that "when a number of people—strangers to each other—are thrown together in such a way that their interests are intertwined, there is bound to be trouble and misunderstanding." He compared Utopian community building to "taking a haphazard handful of threads of various thicknesses, colors and strengths, and trying to weave them together into one harmonious and symmetrical tapestry."64 They had been too casual about screening members and admitted people who had no commitment to anarchist thinking. Many had

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no farm experience and did not realize what they were getting themselves into. Others were "negligent in taking care of tools and machines, negligent in performing their assigned duties, negligent in preparation of food." Sunrise became too isolated and "lost all interest in what was going on in the world outside." T h e residents had naively accepted the unrealistically attractive picture painted for them in Cohen's promotional literature. " T h e y were carried away by the beautiful vision of the promised land and listened only to the words that pleased them." " T h e reality, when it turned out to be nothing like the dream," C o h e n wrote in the last page of his book, "irritated them to such an extent that they wished to kill the thing that had disappointed their expectations." 65 Ultimately, they lost confidence in Utopian communal life. Sunrise had been conceived, as had the other Great Depression Utopias, in a desperate effort to provide a haven from the unemployment and insecurity of economic bad times. But when the depression receded the reason for Sunrise's existence, like the rationale for the other cooperatives, seemed irrelevant. M o s t people began to realize that they could once again find economic opportunity and the good life in mainstream America. 66

NOTES 1. Timothy Miller, The Quest for Utopia in Twentieth-Century America, vol 1: 19001960 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998), p. 127. 2. Michael Barkun, "Communal Societies as Cyclical Phenomena," Communal Societies 4 (1984): pp. 37-38. 3. Quoted in Miller, Quest for Utopia, p. 129. 4. Ibid., p. 129. 5. Ibid., p. 130-33. 6. Donald W. Whisenhunt, "Utopians, Communalism and the Great Depression," Communal Societies 3 (1983): p. 105. 7. Miller., Quest for Utopia, pp. 38-39. 8. Ibid, p. 139. 9. Whisenhunt, "Utopians," p. 108. 10. Phoebe Cutler, The Public Landscape of the New Deal (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 116. 11. Barkun, "Communal Societies," pp. 37, 40. 12. Miller, Quest for Utopia, pp. 110-111. 13. Paul K. Conkin, Tomorrow a New World: The New Deal Community Program (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1959), pp. 61-65. 14. Ibid, p. 94. 15. Ibid, p. 96. 16. Ibid, p. 121. 17. Ibid, p. 122. 18. Ibid, pp. 237-55. 19. Ibid, pp. 256-76. 20. Ibid, pp. 131-33. 21. Ibid, pp. 137-38.

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22. Ibid, p. 139. 23. Ibid, pp. 140, 192,334. 24. Ibid, pp. 137, 140, 192,334. 25. Bernard Sternsher, Rexford Tugwell and the New Deal (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1964), 3-38, 251-78. 26. Conkin, Tomorrow a New World, pp. 169, 210-11, 336. 27. Ibid, pp. 169, 210-11, 277, 336. 28. Ibid, pp. 191,205. 29. Ibid, p. 191. 30. Ibid., p. 201. 31. Ibid., pp. 201-2, 217, 334. 32. Joseph L. Arnold, The New Deal in the Suburbs: A History of the Greenbelt Town Program 1935-1945 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1971), pp. 83-110. 33. Conkin, Tomorrow a New World, pp. 310-11, Figure 2; Arnold, New Deal, pp. 3640, 44-46, 55, 88-90. 34. Conkin, Tomorrow a New World, pp. 311-12, 336; Arnold, The New Deal, pp. 6280, 82-85. 35. Conkin, Tomorrow a New World, pp. 312-14; Arnold, The New Deal, pp. 38-40, 44, 56-60, 88-90, 112-19, 166-71, 181-82. 36. Conkin, Tomorrow a New World, pp. 310-12, 336; Arnold, The New Deal, pp. 44, 56-57, 59-60, 88-90, 93-103, 112-19, 166-67, 180-82. 37. Conkin, Tomorrow a New World, p. 321. 38. Ibid, p. 153. 39. Ibid, p. 176. 40. Ibid, pp. 172, 181, 305-7; Sternsher, Tugwell, pp. 321-27; Arnold, The New Deal, p. 309. 41. Conkin, Tomorrow a New World, pp. 324-25; Arnold, The New Deal, pp. 229—46. 42. Joseph J. Cohen, In Quest of Heaven: The Story of the Sunrise Co-operative Farm Community (New York: Sunrise History Publishing Committee, 1957), p. 26; Christina M. Lemieux, "The Sunrise Cooperative Farm Community: A Collectivist Utopian Experiment," Communal Societies 10 (1990): pp. 39-42; Francis Shor, "The Utopian Project in a Communal Experiment of the 1930s: The Sunrise Colony in Historical and Comparative Perspective," Communal Societies 7 (1987): pp. 84-86. 43. Cohen, In Quest of Heaven, p. 28. 44. Lemieux, "Sunrise Cooperative," pp. 40-42. 45. Cohen, In Quest of Heaven, p. 216; Lemieux, "Sunrise Cooperative," p. 42. 46. Cohen, In Quest of Heaven, p. 217. 47. Morris Lippman, "The 60s Communes Project interview, March 21, 1996," Archives, University of Kansas. 48. Cohen, In Quest of Heaven, p. 57. 49. Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 315-17; Lemieux, "Sunrise Cooperative," pp. 48-50. 50. Morris Lippman, "The 60s Communes Project interview, March 21, 1996"; Lemieux, "Sunrise Cooperative," pp. 50-51. 51. Cohen, In Quest of Heaven, p. 74. 52. Lemieux, "Sunrise Cooperative," pp. 59-60. 53. Cohen, In Quest of Heaven, p. 77. 54. Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 322-23.

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55. Cohen, In Quest of Heaven, p. 117. 56. Lemieux, "Sunrise Cooperative," pp. 61-62. 57. Cohen, In Quest of Heaven, p. 62; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 324-25, 327-29. 58. Lemieux, "Sunrise Cooperative," pp. 64-65. 59. Cohen, In Quest of Heaven, pp. 231-50. 60. Lemieux, "Sunrise Cooperative," p. 65; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 328-29. 61. Cohen, In Quest of Heaven, p. 191. 62. Ibid, p. 193. 63. Ibid, p. 193. 64. Ibid, p. 195. 65. Ibid, p. 214. 66. Ibid, p. 214; Miller, Quest for Utopia, pp. 140-42; Oved, Two Hundred Years, pp. 329-30; Shor, "Utopian Project," p. 94.

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CHAPTER 6

Modern Communal Utopias

During the last three decades of the twentieth century a new wave of communal experimentation emerged—a "New Age Paradigm" in Brian J. L. Berry's terminology—that unlike some earlier periods of Utopian community building coincided with no economic dislocation or social disorientation. As a matter of fact, Hugh Gardner, who visited thirty of these intentional communities, described them as being created by "the children of prosperity." Their growth has been astonishing. The 2000 edition of Communities Directory: A Guide to Intentional Communities and Cooperative Living lists about 700 such societies, some still in the process of formation.1 Many modern communal Utopias began as hippie colonies during the 1960s and were drug-tolerant protests of the counterculture. Young men and women, both single and married, "dropped out" to experience a communal psychology of self-actualization. Some communities followed the example of HaightAshbury and encouraged unrestricted sexual freedom, called "nonattachment," that meant frequent changing of partners and, even while temporarily "attached," promiscuity. Most communities had no formal ideology and no regular source of income. The variety of these colonies was bewildering. They included those dedicated to gay liberation, to opposing the war in Vietnam, to fortune-telling, to flying-saucer lore, and to occultism. Many lasted on average no more than two years. By the 1970s, according to Berry, those that survived "were of diminished scope, with fewer visions, hopes, people, or demands on members."2 The hippie colonies discussed in this chapter are some of the few on which enough information is available to allow a historical analysis: Drop City, Table Mountain Ranch, and High Ridge Farm. On the other hand, most intentional communities of the last quarter of the

132 Communal Utopias and the American Experience twentieth century were longer-lived, more structured manifestations of an alternative lifestyle. Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson, in Builders of the Dawn: Community Lifestyles in a Changing World (1985), concluded that individuals joined them for different reasons than those that motivated members of the hippie colonies. These more recent members of intentional communities joined as a way of self-liberation from the nine-to-five grind of conventional living. Communalism offered them a hope for a future purged of the compartmentalized life of daily commutes to work and trips to shopping centers, speckled with brief escapes to a friend's home on Saturday night for a small, boring party. It also promised a chance to "heal the environment" by living in closer contact with, and dependence on, the earth. It provided emotional security with caring companionship where there was "freedom from loneliness, safety from violence and theft." In a community they would have a "social laboratory" for new personal relationships and new rules by which to live. McLaughlin and Davidson discovered that intentional communities attracted an inordinate number of college-educated professionals in their late twenties to early forties who had been raised in nuclear families. Unfortunately, as in the secular Utopian experiments from New Harmony on, modern communities also admitted lazy freeloaders who went there only to be taken care of by empathetic colleagues.3 Timothy Miller has compiled a list of the essential characteristics of intentional communities regardless of goals, wealth, or location. They all had a clear sense of common purpose, some kind of self-discipline, and a willingness to suppress selfish desires for the benefit of the group. Members might live in dormitories, apartments, or in separate houses but always on the same community property and thereby gained a "geographic closeness and a clear spatial focus." These communities had intense personal interaction, different from the normal casual neighborliness of suburban life. They had some form of a communal ownership of goods, although many allowed a degree of private ownership of personal items. Miller saw each community as having a "critical mass" of at least six members, "some of whom must be unrelated by biology or exclusive intimate relationship." A group of three unrelated adults living together in a household, he maintained, did not constitute a community.4 McLaughlin and Davidson would add few more criteria to Miller's list. They noted that intentional communities were not cults, and never interfered with a member's free will or restricted his privacy. They never used indoctrination, nor demanded absolute obedience and conformity, nor appealed to fear, greed, and power. They did not attempt to control behavior by humiliation, intimidation, and threats. And to define in positive terms, intentional communities developed self-sufficiency in food consumption and energy use, practiced nonviolence and pacifism, and wanted racial and sexual equality. They also had a spiritual dimension, such as meditation or a commitment to developing a relationship to "The Common Good." Intentional communities sometimes served as places for outsiders to visit for rest and relaxation, or as

Modern Communal Utopias 133 a retreat to renew the spirit. Sometimes they were detoxification centers for individuals with alcohol and drug problems. Finally, for a community to endure, it had to focus on service, on projects to help society and aid future generations. These projects might include helping the emotionally disturbed and mentally retarded, feeding the urban poor, running a free medical service such as midwifery, or training Peace Corps members in alternative technologies. 5 Intentional communities were diverse. Many were cooperatives where all income and resources were held in common and all expenses paid from a community fund. Some, calling themselves villages rather than communities, had private homes, land, and businesses, and limited their communalism to sharing social activities and a mutual goal or project. The majority of them, however, had a mixture of communalism, voluntary sharing, and individualism. For example, most rotated chores such as cleaning, cooking, childcare, education, and working at crafts and cottage industries. They valued physical work as healthy, as a binding experience that everyone should share. They lived on minimal budgets in purchasing food and clothing. Frequently they had two types of members: young people without skills or resources who were taught crafts and other trades, and older adults with skills who wanted to share a new lifestyle. Most communities had a dominant authority figure and a system of group planning, both of which reinforced sharing and enabled it to function more efficiently.6 Despite all of these advantages, intentional communities had their conflicts. One of the most vexing and persistent was reconciling the needs of the group with individual needs. It was a precarious balance that sometimes tended toward either oppressive conformity and repression on the one hand, or competition and isolation on the other. Some communities maintained a balance between communalism and individualism through alternating cycles of "outbreath" and "inbreath." The former allowed a member to leave for a while, often up to six months, and then to return and share what they had learned. Inbreath involved group discussion sessions that reinforced the feeling that they were part of an organic whole.7 Another problem involved private space versus communal space. As a member of an Oregon communal farm put it: "When people are pressed together for a long time it homogenizes them, it breaks down that sense of space . . . we don't know what we are."8 Overcrowding caused pettiness and individuals became too concerned about what others did or how they felt. Young people were more comfortable in what they called the "big house approach" to living, while those over 40 tended to be more involved with their families or their work and resented sharing communal space. A balance between private space and communal space was often attained by having separate family homes for adults with children, and expecting only the "full" members to be committed totally to the community. A third problem was overdependency. All too often an individual's need for security and structure in his or her life made them "search for substitute

134 Communal Utopias and the American Experience mother/father figures to provide for one's material and emotional security."9 Some communities rotated responsibilities in order to give every person a chance at leadership. Others had group "examining sessions" to allow everyone to express his or her positive and negative feelings. A fourth difficulty was work assignment. This issue arose when some individuals did not do their jobs effectively, while others were "workaholics" who wanted to be busy all the time. Communities dealt with this issue by establishing membership requirements such as a monetary contribution and having a community-needed skill. Some had lists of minimum work responsibilities that new members could examine before they joined.10 Constant meetings and endless discussions, in themselves a solution to internal problems, sometimes became one of them. A tendency to insist upon consensus, that everyone has something to say about every issue, however minuscule, led to tedious rounds of discussion. The usual source of this endless wrangling was food. An Oregon communal resident commented that meal preparation and other duties in the kitchen and dining room "have been a major community discussion item for the last six years."11 It was talked about so much because in many communes food was not just sustenance but a symbol of communal nurturing and often, on the question of vegetarianism, a reflection of spiritual or ethical convictions. Most communities tried to deal with the food issue by having a weekly menu decided by majority vote or by allowing members to prepare additional food according to their own preference. Finally, there was the problem of cleanliness versus messiness. Particularly in urban communities, people fought about cleaning more than anything else, even food. Attitudes toward cleanliness were reflective of fundamental attitudes toward communal life. Those who pushed for tidiness tended to be the ones who were also strongly for order and communal responsibility, while those who were sloppy resisted collective accountability.12 It is manifestly impossible to deal with most of the communities listed in the Communities Directory here. Even to discuss the 30 societies covered by McLaughlin and Davidson would be out of the question in terms of available space in this history of communal utopianism. The decision about which communities to examine, as with the hippie colonies, was based largely on which ones had enough information available to make a historical investigation of them feasible. With those criteria in mind, the following examples of modern American intentional communalism have been chosen: Twin Oaks, the Farm, the Stelle Community, and the Renaissance Community. HIPPIE COLONIES Drop City Drop City, founded on May 3, 1965, in southern Colorado near the town of Trinidad, "more or less begins the 'hippie' era of modern communes,"

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according to Hugh Gardner.13 Founded by three young artists from New York and Texas, Gene and Jo Ann Bernofsky and Clark Richert, and by students from the universities of Colorado and Kansas, it was the first rural communal expression of the counterculture's determination to drop out and create a new lifestyle. It offered a definite alternative to mainstream America—a joyful fellowship based on mysticism, artistic expression, and the Native American sense of tribal unity. "Peter Rabbit," one of the colony's members, wrote an account of its development that was published in 1971 in which he confessed: "we dance the joydance, we listen to the eternal rhythm, our feet move to unity, a balanced step of beauty and strength." He described Drop City as "a sublime paradox" made up of the opposing forces of joy and force that offered personal liberation and harmony. It had spontaneity, egalitarianism, and cooperation, and condemned selfishness and materialism. Its members traveled to college campuses preaching the need to change society. They called their messages "droppings" and themselves "Droppers." "Every Dropper does his thing," Peter Rabbit wrote, "helps the other Droppers do their thing, all an energy center pulsing out, sucking everyone in." They used strobe lights, psychedelic music, and pieces of sculpture made out of junk car tops. They produced a film, The Drop City Document, that showed how communities like theirs would appear around the world on cheap land in deserts, swamps, and mountains. And they printed newsletters and brochures that advertised themselves as an innovative, creative community of artists.14 The publicity was so successful that in the summer of 1967 dozens of thrillseeking teenagers from Haight-Ashbury invaded the colony thinking that they had been invited to a "Drop City Joy Festival," and it became hopelessly overcrowded. The Droppers tried desperately to maintain some semblance of order. As Peter Rabbit remembered it, they "were going on the same trip over and over again: coolin' out runaways, speed freaks, and smack heads, cleaning up after them, scroungin' food for them, playing shrink and priest confessor— and round and round."15 It was too much. By the following spring most of the original members had left, and by the fall of 1968 the party was over. Drop City was taken over by "the very sort of people that the original Droppers had moved out to avoid."16 After the departure of the original members, this community of about 40 individuals and a stream of visitors survived by sporadic contributions from members and by food stamps. The typical new Dropper was about 21 years of age with a high school education. Many had already lived for a while in other communities and saw Drop City as just another temporary experience. Without admissions requirements, anyone could come and go as they pleased. Daily life began late in the morning because everyone was sleeping off the effects of a party the night before. The first ones up were expected to go to the main building, the Complex, and prepare breakfast. Others started playing music on a communal stereo that ran all day and into that evening's party.

136 Communal Utopias and the American Experience Some would just stand around to see what new visitors came through the gate, while others went to Trinidad for food. Some milked the goats or crafted antler-horn pipes and spoon rings that they sold in town.17 But Drop City degenerated into a communal slum. The garden started by the first Droppers became an arid patch of pigweed. There were no work assignments, so all tasks were done voluntarily, most not at all. There was no communal leadership, although two older men, Jack and Richard, and a 35 year old working-class mother (unnamed in Peter Rabbit's account) assumed sporadic roles as directors. The kitchen, ransacked during the 1967 invasion, was infested with transients. There was not even enough money to purchase soap, and everyone was filthy. Food stamps lasted only halfway through the month and then they went to Trinidad to scavenge food from outdoor trash containers. The single outhouse overflowed and there was no lime to clean it. Hepatitis spread through the colony. They stopped admitting visitors.18 By 1972 most residents had left. By then the end was near because the original Drop City founders held the deed to the property and this deed identified it as a corporation that had to remain "free forever." When they discovered that visitors had been excluded, they hired a lawyer and evicted the few people still living there. Gardner, who visited Drop City in 1970, conceded that it was a "total flop" as a serious community but pointed out that it did last eight years. "The population turned over continually," he wrote, "but the group entity and the spirit survived." It was a unique "kind of place where only change is permanent." It was, in the words of one member named "Crazy Jack," "a feast of change."19

Table Mountain Ranch Few modern intentional communities have received as much detailed attention and analysis as the Table Mountain Ranch. In 1981, Sociologist Bennett M. Berger, from the University of California at Berkeley, published his ethnographic study of the commune, The Survival of a Counterculture: Ideological Work and Everyday Life Among Rural Communards. It was based on his observations during an eight-year association with the community, a "record of research experience" he called it. He described intimate aspects of living there: daily routine, communal ideology, raising children, schooling, and sexual relations, to cite the most important ones. Berger called it "The Ranch," a pseudonym used to protect its anonymity.20 Table Mountain Ranch was a retreat commune made up of disillusioned, educated, middle-class, urban men and women in their thirties who went to the redwood forests of Mendocino County, California, to live as a pastoral family. It began in 1968 when two wealthy men from Haight-Ashbury purchased 120 acres of land there to escape the violent, apocalyptic environment of San Francisco's hippie culture. Its membership fluctuated between 12 and

Modern Communal Utopias 137 24 adults, plus children. Reclusive, they posted a "No Trespassing" sign at the entrance and welcomed visitors only if they knew one of the members. They had no constitution or leadership structure. They dealt with problems as they arose in ad hoc council meetings that any interested member could attend. Decisions of the council were by consensus.21 Its main building was an old farmhouse with a living room-cum-library, a large stone fireplace, and a rope swing that hung from the ceiling. The room contained a double mattress and box spring and some dilapidated stuffed chairs. It was also the place for meetings, ceremonial activities and, as Berger put it, "just hanging out."22 Its bookshelves contained over 2,000 volumes, mostly fiction, philosophy, and religion. Other rooms were a playroom for the children, a sewing room, and storage. Members slept in 12 small cabins built after they came there. Each cabin had two rooms and a loft for sleeping, some primitive handmade furniture, and homemade milk-can stoves. There was no electricity and no telephone. Kerosene and wood were their only fuel—for light at night and warmth in winter. There were no flush toilets and they used human feces to make compost. They kept goats for milk and chickens for eggs. They had workshops in a Quonset hut but, without electricity, they were used only for maintenance jobs such as blacksmi thing, upholstering car seats, and repairing vehicles. They were committed to peace, love, freedom, nature, drugs, yoga, and intimacy. They were against competition, technology, bureaucracy, materialism, capitalism, sexual possessiveness, and the traditional nuclear family. Their only rule was, as expressed by a member called Patricia: "wash your own dish."23 Children were treated much differently than in mainstream America. Born by natural childbirth with adults and other children present, they were given names such as Snowbird, Rainbow, Swallow, and Starlight to denote kinship to the commune rather than to their parents. Children were not seen as minors or as subordinate parts of the community but rather as full members of the Ranch. The community had classifications based on age, however. Infants to the age of two were raised exclusively by their mothers. Then, from two to four they spent more time with their biological fathers. After the age of five the influence of both parents weakened considerably and the children were largely without supervision. They moved around freely, ate whenever they wanted, and slept in any house they chose. When they quarreled or fought with each other, they settled the matter themselves without adult interference. Berger discovered that one of the most dramatic departures from mainstream families was the children's unrestricted use of drugs, except those under the age of two. Even small children smoked marijuana and, with adults present, used psychedelics such as LSD, peyote, and mescaline on ceremonial occasions such as birthdays. The children were exposed to sexual activity. Because of the close living quarters they observed sexual intercourse and Berger described two six-year-old boys accurately discussing and imitating the act of coitus. They used sexual language among themselves and adults used

138 Communal Utopias and the American Experience sexual language in front of them. Berger wrote that "both child-child and child-adult sexual behavior occurs, although it is not possible to say how common it is."24 But the children did have to attend the colony "alternative school" in a small building not far from the Quonset hut. Its one room contained desks, tables, maps, globes, a typewriter, mimeograph machine, and a wood stove. On average about 26 children attended classes there, 18 of them from outside the Ranch, from whose parents the community collected a $50 monthly tuition. Adults from the Ranch taught at the school but parents of the noncommunity children assisted them. The curriculum included basic academics, crafts, and mechanical arts such as bicycle repair and blacksmi thing. After class, which was about four hours a day, the children stayed with adults for individual instruction in such things as reupholstering automobile seats, repairing broken umbrellas, and using a forge. Their educational philosophy was summarized by Patricia, the "coordinator" of the school. "The importance of learning," she said, " . . . [is] giving children the tools . . . [to] keep touching in at that place where illumination happens." "I want an environment," she declared, "that gives you the freedom to question continually."25 Allen Cohen, who lived at Table Mountain, told Miller in March 1996 that the school "became the first [i.e., in the Albion area] alternative community school, right up to high school." "It was," he claimed, "a great school for the Albion area."26 The open, casual manner in which the community raised their children was a by-product of their sexual values. They discouraged permanent unions and even couples who were in a monogamous relationship were not considered in any way married. Consequently, there was open promiscuity. Berger summarized their rationale for this behavior. "It should n o t . . . be surprising," he wrote, "that people who eat together, drink together, work and play together, educate their children together, and depend upon each other not only for survival but also for their various spiritual searchings, should 'love' each other and find each other sexually attractive from time to time and therefore sleep together—particularly since their definition of 'family' includes no incest taboo."27 Cohen saw the "breaking point" of the community in 1982-83 when, for reasons left unexplained, about three-quarters of its members left. Even before that collapse, Cohen detected a serious disintegration and he himself quit in 1975, "before it got too bad." "It had certainly come to a halt in terms of growth, spiritual, economic, psychological," he said. By the 1980s it included only seven people. They "stayed for many years," Cohen remembered, but "they fought with each other, and they fought, and they finally had a formal divorce, they had to get divorced." Table Mountain Ranch, he concluded, "probably ended somewhere in the early nineties." But Cohen seems to have been mistaken: it was still a viable intentional community in 1999, when Miller

Modern Communal Utopias 139 observed that a new generation had joined the community and "has lifted the place from near-oblivion to pretty much what it had been years before."28 High Ridge Farm High Ridge Farm was another community that opened itself to investigation by an outside academic, Hugh Gardner. Like Berger with Table Mountain Ranch, he used a pseudonym, Saddle Ridge Farm, because one of the residents, Elaine Sundancer, insisted that he protect it from an invasion of curious visitors. And, like Table Mountain Ranch, it sprang from San Francisco's counterculture. In 1966, Richard Fairfield, a Boston seminary student and editor of a new journal on communal life, The Modern Utopian, moved to the University of California at Berkeley where he organized a "Wednesday Night Group." Its students, professional men and women in their midthirties, some with children, were eager to learn more about the counterculture. Their discussions lasted a year and focused on such books as Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, B. F. Skinner's Walden Two, Robert H. Rimmer's The Harrad Experiment, and Aldous Huxley's Island. Some members of the Wednesday Night Group, while hiking and camping in the Sierras in the summer of 1968, decided to build a communal Utopia far away from the congestion of urban life. In September, they located a 17-acre farm in southwestern Oregon. Accessible from a state highway by a mile-long dirt road, it was a secluded spot with three acres of meadows, a stream, and some buildings. They inspected it and agreed that it suited their needs. Two of the men,

Peter and Roland, put together the down payment.29

By the next spring they, two other single members of the Wednesday Night Group, and a new couple were living in a small farmhouse at High Ridge Farm. Some of the people who stayed there described it, it seems accurately, as more of a halfway house than a true community. Despite Peter's attempt to impose membership requirements, voting structure, and budget planning it remained a place where one could do what one wanted. As Gardner put it, the central value of the colony "was to explore the self and whatever else came along without restrictions, boundaries, rules, or coercion."30 During the first three years its permanent population included 15 adults and 5 children, although about 30 individuals lived there temporarily and hundreds of visitors arrived in an almost constant stream. Most permanent members were strongly committed to an unrestricted, casual lifestyle and simply wanted, as one of them put it, to "garden together in the country."31 They planted the garden, put up fruit trees, and built an A-frame cabin. They paid their bills from money that members gave to the farm, and purchased supplies through food stamps. Without admissions requirements, anyone could either visit or join this "collection of individuals," as Sundancer called it. With more people arriving in the summer of 1969, they constructed new buildings—a storeroom, goat shed, sauna, and outhouse. Some women wanted to build a

140 Communal Utopias and the American Experience communal residence house and a school, but neither project was started. The garden, rather than a central communal building, remained the focus of their life and here they grew and canned hundreds of pounds of vegetables.32 By 1969, the living arrangements had become more organized. Children slept in the farmhouse with an adult supervisor. The adults shared the Aframe, but were totally without privacy. By that time, in order to pay for food, car repairs, and utility bills, some adults found outside jobs such as cutting firewood, doing farm work, or thinning trees in nearby national forests. Daily life remained happy-go-lucky. Sundancer, when she joined, was somewhat taken aback at this openness. "The first thing I saw when I arrived at the farm," she wrote, "was two naked guys working in the garden, hoeing weeds, one with a red sweat band tied around his head."33 They permitted alcohol, drugs, sugar, and meat. They had no policy at all on sexual behavior. If individuals were promiscuous, it was accepted. If they paired off in monogamous relationships for a while, that was approved. If they were sexually abstinent, that was also fine. They lived a kind of voluntary primitivism where the adults heated water by hand, ate when they felt like it, and drank powdered milk. They had electricity in the farmhouse, wired by the previous owner, that they used for canning and for washing and drying clothes. But they had no television or telephone.34 No member was obliged to give money or property to High Ridge and, as Sundancer said, "everyone throws in what they have." Even so, most members apparently believed that the community "owned" the land, buildings, and most of the tools, furniture, and automobiles. They all shared the garden produce and the colony kept the income from the sale of the vegetables as a community fund. But their labor system was mostly unstructured. The cooking and housework were arranged by having a sign-up sheet in the kitchen where each person indicated when he or she wanted to work. But other jobs, such as cultivating the garden, tending the goats, repairing automobiles, and even the canning, were voluntary. They believed that if something did not get done it was really not that important. "It doesn't seem to matter very much," one member told Gardner, "it's as if we've all just decided not to worry about that stuff."35 In the beginning they had no community rituals, but in 1970 they started spontaneous encounter sessions that included hand-holding and hugging followed by confessional discussions and critical interaction. They did not see these meetings as problem-solving mechanisms because, according to Sundancer, they had a "patient trust that conflict and confusions would be resolved as time and destiny benignly unfold."36 High Ridge Farm had no hierarchy and no individual or group governed it. During the 1970s the community changed. Its population shrank to 10 adults, only 2 of whom had been there in 1969. They agreed upon a policy that no one could be a permanent member unless the others unanimously approved. They finally began constructing a communal hall that had facilities

Modern Communal Utopias 141 for washing, bathing, and storage on the first floor, a living room and kitchen on the second, and bedrooms for adults on the third floor. They developed a monthly budget of $400. But the nonchalant attitude continued. As Sundancer wrote: "We don't want to organize things." "We don't want one person to tell other people how to behave; we don't want to control things."37 It remained in the year 2000 a miniature version of what it had been at the start, a colony of urban strangers transplanted in the Oregon forest. INTENTIONAL COMMUNITIES Twin Oaks In June 1967, a group of eight adults who had attended a conference on the work of behaviorist psychologist B. E Skinner, held near Ann Arbor, Michigan, the previous summer, pooled their resources of about $2,000 and formed Twin Oaks, an intentional community on 123 acres of farm and forest land near Louisa, Virginia. The property had a small farmhouse they called "Llano" (all their buildings were named after earlier communes) that became the community dining hall and sleeping quarters. It was located a short distance from the main cluster of buildings called the "Courtyard" that eventually included a shop and two residence buildings called "Harmony" and "Oneida." In 1971, an architect from Richmond named Henry joined Twin Oaks. He designed three new residences, two craft shops, and a children's house called "Degania" (named for the first kibbutz in what is now Israel, founded in 1909), located about a quarter of a mile from the other buildings.38 In 1982, they erected a large kitchen and dining complex (KDC) because the Llano had been invaded by cockroaches and was too small for a community now numbering 70 members. By that time Henry had left for California and a man called Will assumed the position of "honcho" or leader of the KDC project. He, along with a committee called the Construction Managers, estimated that it would cost about $250,000 and would be situated a short distance away from the Courtyard. When completed in 1986, however, it exceeded the original estimate by $70,000, largely due to the high quality of materials Will purchased, including oak interior doors. Adults, single or married, had private rooms in one of the residential buildings clustered around the Courtyard. In each of these building about eight individuals shared a bathroom, living room, library, and a small kitchen. Other structures included an office and craft shops.39 By the spring of 1995 Twin Oaks had increased to 85 adults, ranging in age from 19 to 68, and 15 children. It was a self-sufficient community with a waiting list of potential members and an organized program for visitors. Decisions were made in a "Planner-Manager" system— modeled on Skinner's book Walden Two (1961)—by electing a three-member Planning Board. It met three times a week and enforced community bylaws and decided new policy.

142 Communal Utopias and the American Experience It determined the use of resources, expenditures, and any matter related to the "overall well-being of the Community." A long list of elected managers reported to the planning board. There were construction managers, a food manager, auto manager, garden manager, house manager, and so on. Any member could make suggestions on a bulletin board called the "O&I [Opinion and Idea] Board." This comprised 24 clipboards for posting proposals that eventually were discussed by the appropriate manager or managers and then by the planning board.40 Twin Oak's main income was from the sale of rope hammocks. In the early 1970s, they invented the "hanging chair," essentially a hammock with an oak frame, that they exhibited at handicraft furniture shows and craft fairs. It soon developed into a profitable business. Other sources of revenue came from indexing books, and manufacturing tofu out of organically grown soybeans. They produced over 60 percent of their food and raised a herd of dairy and beef cattle. Every person was expected to work 40-50 hours a week at jobs they chose to do, although they had to devote some time to domestic tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Twin Oaks operated on an apprentice system where individuals explained their skills to other members. They gave all work the same value. They said that one hour of picking corn or cleaning a bathroom was as important to the community as teaching math to its children—all of it an "act of love." This had not always been the case: during the first seven years they had a "variable credit" system, modeled on Walden Two, that used a sliding scale of credit for work done based on the onerous nature of the duty. For instance, one would receive 1.4 hourly credits for fixing a clogged sewer but only 0.2 for working in the flower garden. They believed that this system reversed "the traditional remunerative formula (that reward for work is determined by supply and demand, and therefore skilled work, however pleasant, pays better than unskilled, however wearing or demeaning)."41 But it proved too cumbersome when the population increased to more than 50 in 1974, and they decided to give all work just one credit per hour. Twin Oaks saw itself as the antithesis of capitalist, consumption-addicted America by providing a model of collective and equal land use, food production, and sharing. New members served a probation period after which they often donated all personal savings and property to the community except a few items for their rooms. They could, however, keep money in an outside bank account but could not use the funds while a member of the community. They lived "lightly on the earth" and budgeted an annual expenditure of only $3,000 for each adult. Their income, mostly from the sale of hammocks, paid for clothing, food supplies, and medical and dental care. Each adult received a $50 monthly allowance that was usually spent on a two-week vacation period allotted to everyone each year. Otherwise, it was kept in a community account and members drew from it to buy cigarettes, candy, gifts, or to pay for longdistance phone calls. All other personal expenses, such as a new pair of shoes or boots, had to be approved by the manager of clothing.42

Modern Communal Utopias 143 Children were a communal responsibility and were raised on Skinner's theories. They "belonged" not to their parents but to Twin Oaks, and the community was responsible for them. In practice, this theory ran into trouble with some parents who, in the words of resident Kat Kinkade, simply "found it necessary to brush the system aside for the sake of their children's needs and their own desires."43 Another sore spot developed over whether or not parents would be given full labor credits for taking care of their children. They compromised and decided to place them in age-defined peer groups under an experienced childcare worker named Amri and her helpers, called "metas" from the Hebrew word metapelet (nanny) used in the Israeli kibbutz. After she left in 1984, Caroline Estes, a key figure in the contemporary communities movement, visited Twin Oaks and recommended specific changes. She thought that children should stop living with their parents and, except for infants who stayed with their mother during the first year, be housed in the Degania. She suggested they create a child board with final authority over policy, discipline, and supervision of the childcare workers. Both men and women, she advised, should be metas.44 McLaughlin and Davidson found many advantages to this method of child rearing. It freed children from "exclusive dependency" on parents for love and it liberated parents from the "heavy responsibility" of child care. It allowed childless adults the chance to interact with the youngsters. Nevertheless, in 1994, Kinkade admitted that children were still a problem. "The Child Board is more effective than it used to be," she wrote, "but it has no more idea how to control child behavior than anybody else."45 Sex was another source of friction. Twin Oaks declared itself in favor of sexual freedom. "Legal marriage, lifelong monogamy, and celibacy are not dominant patterns of relationships at Twin Oaks," Kinkade observed, "though we have some of all of those." Most members "paired up" and "broke up." The "pairing" often included a form of dating such as walks in the woods, canoeing, and swimming. "A more serious date might take place out in the tipe [sic] or the retreat cabin, or possibly in the big double bathtub with its curtain drawn and candles lit."46 One type of behavior was considered unacceptable, however: that of a secret affair, which went against sharing and truthfulness—and was almost impossible to keep secret in any event. They also frowned on long-term monogamy, again because it encouraged selfishness and contradicted the commitment to community. Another cause of hostility to lengthy sexual attachments was what Kinkade blithely labeled the "candy store phenomenon." As she described it, as soon as a person moves to the community one or both of them "see themselves surrounded by people who appear to be both interesting and interested." "Who is going to walk out of the store," she asked, "without spending a penny?"47 Kinkade believed that sexual problems helped in part to explain the high turnover in membership.48 The overall pattern of departure was about 25 percent annually, most leaving within a few months of coming to the com-

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munity. A few left simply because, as they often put it, they just wanted to "move on"; they had changed and no longer "fit in." By 1994, though, the turnover rate among those who had been at Twin Oaks longer than five years significantly declined. One reason for the new stability was age. Most such members were in their forties and had difficulty in finding desirable and interesting jobs on the outside.49 The 1995 Communities Directory stated that Twin Oaks had reached a maximum population "of 100 people living on 450 acres of farm and forest land in rural Virginia."50 Individuals wanting to be accepted for provisional membership had to wait a year before they could move in. With the completion of new housing in 1996, however, this restriction was eliminated. They also have cut back on the visitors program. Now outsiders must arrange times by letter, not by telephone, and can arrive only during scheduled periods. Twin Oaks sponsored two sister communities. East Wind, near Tecumseh, Missouri, was started in the spring of 1974. Its 65 adults rely heavily on revenues from making and selling rope hammocks and sandals. The second, Acorn, located about seven miles from Twin Oaks, was begun in 1993. In 1995, it advertised itself as a community of 20 members who are "earning income from the established Twin Oaks industries of hammocks and tofu."51 At the time of writing, however, a recent economic setback had caused it to abandon its hammock business. Looking ahead in 1994, Kinkade speculated on the future of Twin Oaks. It "will grow somewhat larger, gradually liberalize its rules in small ways, hold on to its members a little longer," she believed, "but remain for the next ten years at least, basically unchanged."52 It still is, at the start of the twenty-first century. The Farm If Twin Oaks is one of the better-documented intentional communities, "The Farm" in rural Tennessee was probably one of the largest. In 1971, thirty-six year old Stephen Gaskin and his followers from Haight-Ashbury organized an intentional community that became a combination medical clinic, midwifery center, ambulance service station, publishing company, soyfood manufacturing operation, and children's school. Over 1,200 people once lived on the Farm's 1,750 acres and ten branch colonies housed another 1,400 members.53 Gaskin's message, and the cornerstone of the Farm's ideology, was "enlightenment," a smattering of ideas drawn from Christianity, mysticism, and humanistic psychology. Faced with the uncertainty of the 1960s, Gaskin found security and stability in family devotion and monogamous relationships. He explained his philosophy in detail in a number of pamphlets printed by the Farm's Book Publishing Company. Christ was not only a very good man, Gaskin believed, but a model of a true spirituality that, if imitated, would

Modern Communal Utopias 145 nullify America's stress on competitiveness and individualism. Sadly, American society ignored this spirituality and discouraged real communication and responsible relationships. Instead, Gaskin saw broken relationships and shattered families all around him. To change this pattern he argued that "people should repudiate the pleasure strategies of American culture and try to build a new kind of social system that destroys, instead of encourages, the walls separating people from one another."54 Gaskin's experiences with the drug counterculture while a graduate student and teaching assistant at San Francisco State University led him to conclude that a mystical telepathy existed among humans, even when they were not "high." This telepathy, like Christian spirituality, enabled people to communicate and to overcome the emotional void of daily living. Telepathy, he said, was achieved by a commitment to love one another and by sending out a telepathic message of this love. Moreover, if a large group of loving people got together this telepathy would create an enormous "energy force" of "positive vibrational fields."55 In February 1967, Gaskin began teaching an experimental course on Monday evenings at the University entitled "Group Experiments in Unified Field Theory." The lectures were not on high-energy physics, as the title implies, but rather on Tarot (the set of cards used in fortune-telling), the / Ching, yoga, Zen, and extrasensory perception. The class opened with a chant of a Hindu mantra. Then Gaskin led a question-and-answer session on the books the class had read. But he always placed his own interpretation on these works; namely, that they all supported his ideas on spirituality and telepathy. By 1969, the class had mushroomed into massive gatherings in a dance hall near the beach that drew crowds of more than 2,000 people. He posed as a "spiritual teacher" of eternal truths whose adherence would bring about "enlightenment" or "a permanent high"—a goal that was characterized not as a drug-induced euphoria but rather an exquisite sensitivity to the beauty of the universe and an outward appearance of joy and contentment. Gaskin put it this way: "You can tell who they are, because they look together and they're friendly and they're sane, and they're functional, and they're actually able to do things." He believed that humans can experience a sense of peace and communication with each other through this enlightenment, the commitment to seeking which would produce an "energy of the universe" that released a life force to create and accomplish.56 In the fall of 1970, Gaskin stated that enlightenment could be found in permanent, small families of loving friends where for the first time people could honestly express their feelings. He instructed those individuals who were without a family to "just go and do it right so you make friends—a circle of friends around you—you'll be all right." He condemned a traditional twoperson relationship because one partner always tried to dominate the other and both of them would lose their "energy." Instead, he recommended a "fourmarriage" model of two men and two women. This family would freely engage

146 Communal Utopias and the American Experience in mutual criticism since, with all the telepathic love communicated, there would be no wounding of egos. Gaskin promised enlightenment to everyone, no matter how selfish a life they had led.57 On October 12, 1970, he abruptly suspended the class and went on a nationwide speaking tour. He was accompanied by a caravan of followers riding in 63 school buses that they used as homes. While leading sessions of what he called the "Astral Continental Congress," however, he became disappointed by the poor response, and occasional open hostility, to his lectures. He returned to San Francisco in February 1971 and tried to renew his Monday night class, but few people attended, which led him to claim that the city had become corrupted by "astral conservatives." He therefore decided to leave and form a rural commune in central Tennessee where the land was cheap and the people were friendly. There, near Summertown, he built the Farm, a commune he labeled a "family monastery."58 By the time Gaskin established the Farm he had abandoned his earlier views on the four-marriage model because he saw that it caused too much jealousy. He now insisted on a two-partner relationship, but not a traditional marriage because those unions were based on selfishness and exploitation of the wife by the husband, focused on the sexual energy of the man, and emphasized his aggression and dominance of the woman. In such a relationship only his sexual pleasure mattered and the wife unconsciously encouraged sexual aggression because it made her feel wanted. Hence, there was only a one-way energy path, from the man to the woman. The result was frustration for both partners: the man wanted always to dominate and the woman was never fully aroused and satisfied. Ultimately, out of dissatisfaction with normal intercourse, the couple turned to sadism and masochism.59 Marriage at the Farm, however, would fully develop the beautiful, powerful female energy, and Gaskin gave lessons on how the man should let the woman be aggressive in order "to get things happening."60 The husband must always be sure that his wife reached orgasm first. He should not look upon her as a sex object, and she must abandon the submissive role. Gaskin outlawed promiscuity either before or during marriage. It was, he said, the worst form of male selfishness and was entirely lacking in the permanent commitment essential to a telepathic relationship.61 Gaskin assigned work at the Farm according to gender because he though that men and women had different kinds of energy—similar to polarity in electricity—and so were naturally suited to different types of jobs. The female energy released a healing vibration that was especially important in raising children. Consequently, the prime role of women at the Farm was to be a mother and the man's role was to be a husband-provider who assisted and protected her. Women viewed domestic tasks such as cooking and cleaning as a "holy duty." Still, there were difficulties. Occasionally, a husband who thought that his wife had to run a beautiful household would overreact if she made mistakes and become hypercritical and verbally abusive. At one point

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so many wives complained of mistreatment that Gaskin called a meeting to discuss the situation. H e told everyone that the abuse was a sign of their failure to live up to their goal of having a sexual relationship that offered comfort to both partners. But in some stubborn cases where the man's behavior persisted Gaskin imposed a punishment, sending him to live with single men to "knock off his rough edges." 62 Living quarters were usually complex households where couples and individuals resided. In these buildings only drapery separated the bedrooms, the toilets had no doors, and the showers were without curtains. M e n left the house to work in the shops and fields. W o m e n remained in the h o m e to clean, cook, and watch the children. Farm members believed that because a woman's ability to have children was holy she should have a large number of them. O n e ex-Farm member remembered that women always dressed in maternity clothes. Sexual differences also appeared in the Farm's power structure. W o m e n made decisions only in matters of domestic concern. A governing board of men ran the community's businesses (the Soy Dairy, Solar Electronics, the Book Publishing Company, and the Dye Works) and controlled its budget. 63 O n e of the Farm's most important and successful activities was the Midwife School. In 1978, Gaskin's wife, Ina May, published a book entitled Spiritual Midwifery in which she wrote that childbirth was "a spiritual experience" that many people neglected in today's "predominantly male and profit-oriented medical establishment." T h e book had instructions on the health of the pregnant woman, on how to deliver a baby at home, and on postnatal care. T h e midwife's function was to control the mother's natural energy flow. Contractions, called rushes, indicated the pattern of this energy flow and between them the mother had to relax in order to quicken the delivery. T h e father should be present during the birth. By the mid-1980s, twelve midwives were admitting outside women to have their babies at the Farm instead of at a hospital. And they started offering instruction to outsiders who might themselves want to become midwives and assist at home births. 64 Gaskin forbade the use of birth control by the pill or the diaphragm. Instead, women used the "cooperative method" based on the menstrual fertility cycle. Mothers shared responsibility for the care of the children so that if one had to be away from home, which was unusual, her children were always with a nearby mother. Fathers participated in nurturing by playing with them in the evenings and by bathing and dressing them for school. At the age of six the children went to the community school that, in 1984, became part of the National Coalition of Alternative C o m m u n i t y Schools. T h e y were taught that they must not misbehave and deflect energy from the adults. T h e school emphasized participation and feedback in academic subjects and in environmental awareness. D u r i n g the day, teachers set aside time for job training in the practical skills necessary to the community such as cooking, farming, and carpentry. 65 By the mid-1990s, Gaskin's absences from the Farm and declining enroll-

148 Communal Utopias and the American Experience ment had caused changes. Ina May Gaskin remembered that "while Stephen was away . . . an inner circle, sort of take over and take away some of the most successful businesses." She found this "very disorienting, very hard to deal with at the time." The result was a severe crisis in community morale. In October 1995, Mrs. Gaskin told Deborah Altus of the University of Kansas Communes Project that "it was like a mass divorce . . . some people wouldn't talk to you anymore . . . you didn't know who was leaving and who was staying." "There was just this huge, large uproar."66 Visitors to the Farm today would find that its 150 adults and 150 children are still vegetarians and pacifists, still believe in telepathic energy, and still volunteer to serve with Plenty, their international relief organization. But the earlier communal insistence on spirituality over material things has been modified. Economically, it is now a cooperative association of families and friends. Members have private property and a private income, some of which they are required to give to the Farm as a fixed rent to help pay taxes. Pamela Hunt, in October 1995, provided Altus with further details of the change. "We all live in nuclear families . . . we pay for everything . . . [and] have television and VCRs in the homes." A not-for-profit corporation owns the land and other corporations run the various businesses. Midwives charge outsiders a fee to deliver babies. In order to get and keep jobs in Summertown and other places some men cut their hair and shaved their beards. McLaughlin thought that the Farm is mostly concerned with financial stability and "is actually beginning to resemble a small town now."67 Gaskin's own view of the community's purpose can be summed up by his interview with Altus in October 1995, when he said that the Farm's members were still "a bunch of philosophical free thinkers and rebels . . . and we're working together, kind of like the / Ching says that, if you see the condition of the world and you know it has to be fixed, fix it." "If you're not strong enough to do it," Gaskin said, "find somebody who seems to be having some success at working on it and join up with them." "So, that's what we're doing here."68 Stelle Community In 1973, Richard Kieninger, a Chicago businessman, founded Stelle, a community of 44 houses and 216 people on 240 acres of fertile farmland 75 miles southwest of Chicago near Streator. Its purpose, as explained in the Communities Directory, was "to create a supportive environment where personal development would be made a foremost priority."69 Originally, though, Kieninger founded the community to get ready for a violent end to the world that he predicted would follow an apocalypse in the year 2000. Only about 10 percent of humanity, including the Stelle Community, would survive, and they then would be able to build a new, perfect society. In 1963, Kieninger had spelled out his cosmology in The Ultimate Frontier, published under the pen name of Eklal Kueshana. He described a mysterious

Modern Communal Utopias 149 "Dr. White" who had told him about "invisible Brotherhoods" of men and women whom Christ had designated to prepare for the millennium. Dr. White said that Eklal had been chosen for the Brotherhood. After the book appeared, Kieninger organized a small group in his Chicago home to be trained in the principles of the Brotherhood. By 1967, it had 30 members and by 1969, 70 members. With capital donated by some of them he built a factory, the Stelle Woodworking Corporation, with himself as director and his wife as supervisor. Then, in 1973, according to Susan Fisher's account of these early days given to Altus in April 1996, they "pooled money and resources to buy land to build the community." They named it Stelle after Robert Stelle, an author of books on communal living. Fisher noted coincidentally that the name means "the place" in German.70 They moved the woodworking business to the site and renamed it the Stellewood Company. It made cabinets, wood bumpers for pool tables, and rulers. They started a plastics company and a print shop. Within three years they constructed 30 homes, an office building, and a school. They had a sewage and water system, streets and sidewalks, a telephone company, and a credit union. In 1974, however, Kieninger had an adulterous affair, was exposed, and left Stelle. Shortly afterwards, his wife and her male companion departed with 42 members to start another community. Nothing further was ever heard from them.71 Without the two Kieningers, Stelle concentrated on personal development through responsibility and communal cooperation. It emphasized that the physical environment and personal appearance reflected inner thoughts and values. Fisher said that "when you stepped into Stelle in the seventies it was like almost being in the fifties." The men wore coats and neckties, the women dressed in skirts and blouses. They also kept the prohibitions of The Ultimate Frontier against smoking, alcohol, and drugs. From 1974 to 1981, Fisher believed, Stelle "was a closed community" and that "when you stepped into Stelle in the '70s, it was like almost being in the '50s."72 Apparently, it was too closed for its own good because of the approximately one thousand people who came there during those seven years, only 216 stayed to await the millennium. The values of family relationships in the community continued to reflect Kieninger's ideas. For example, couples lived together for at least three years before marriage, during which time they could have children. As in Kieninger's book, the woman's role was as mother and homemaker. No mother with a child under the age of six was allowed to work outside the home because it was there that she taught her children in the "Mother-school." It had five units: the birth program, the MISPAH program (Mother's Individual Staff Person at Home), mothers' classes, Montessori classes, and the resource center. The first part included exercise, fetal development, and nutrition. MISPAH provided mothers with regular visits from teachers to offer special advice on physical development and music, especially instruction in the Suzuki

150 Communal Utopias and the American Experience method of playing the violin or cello. In the mothers' classes women shared their experiences with each other. The Montessori classes tried to make the child see education as an adventure, to have them interact with other children, and to develop self-discipline.73 The second half of Stelle's educational program was at the Learning Center, which trained children from ages six to eighteen. It had a 12-month curriculum that adopted the "mastery concept" approach where a student had to master one concept before going on to the next one. This method allowed every child to progress at his or her own pace and eliminated traditional grading. At the age of nine, regardless of where they were in the mastery of skills, they began to participate in the "earth children" program of camping, hiking, boating, and survival skills.74 The community did not try to develop a self-sufficient economy but rather expanded the Stellewood Company to experiment with new ways of house construction, explore alternative fuel sources, and cultivate a prototype greenhouse. Since The Ultimate Frontier had predicted a 14-day cataclysm (erupting volcanoes, violent earthquakes, and enormous shifts in the earth's land masses) to occur in May 2000, they wanted Stelle's homes to be earthquake resistant. They used reinforced concrete and half-inch plywood supported by earthsunk beams. The buildings were energy self-sufficient with wood stoves for heat and solar collectors for electric power. They had solar-mass flooring that absorbed heat, and solar heating systems. Spaces were left between inner and exterior walls to promote warm air circulation in winter. With a grant from the Federal Department of Energy of $52,000, they constructed a plant to make ethanol from corn and to filter waste alcohol from a local cosmetic manufacturer. With another grant from the Illinois Department of Energy, they built a 1,200 square-foot greenhouse adjacent to the ethanol plant. It had growing beds supported on water drums for retention of heat, and had heat diverted directly into the greenhouse from the factory. It grew bedding plants for public sale and organic vegetables for the Stelle Cooperative Food Mart where members simply took what they needed and listed the items in a counter register. Stelle had a holistic health center with a physician, psychologist, and health practitioner. It used a psychological therapy called "Radix" that was supposed to release negative emotions and so-called energy blocks from the body. It also tested the food for harmful chemicals. Most of Stelle's income came from its Office of Publications. It sold The Ultimate Frontier, inspirational books and pamphlets, and published a newspaper, the Stelle Letter, and two newsletters.75 At its height in the early 1980s Stelle had three kinds of members: full member residents, resident associates, and nonresident associates. Full membership included adults who had read and understood The Ultimate Frontier and had proved that they were dedicated to its ideas. The resident associates were individuals who intended to become full members. The nonresidents had read the book, were willing to donate money to Stelle, had attended at

Modern Communal Utopias 151 least one "guest week" experience, and stayed with a resident family and participated in daily life. At first only the residents made all decisions by a majority vote in what was essentially a town meeting. They dealt with business matters, bylaws, and policies, and their decisions were implemented by an elected board of trustees. Disputes were settled in a Stelle court of three elected "mediators." But by 1982 the residents were in a minority, so the residents reorganized and concerned themselves only with issues dealing with the full members. Their main activities were running a communal study program, selling books through mail order on alternative energy sources, and publishing a quarterly journal.76 Community matters were now decided by a Stelle Community Association open to any property owner. Fisher described it as "a homeowners' association that takes care of water and streets." There was also Stelle Telephone, a separate corporation. Consequently, the Communities Directory stated: "Today no single organization oversees all aspects of community life."77 "But as time goes on," Oliver and Cris Popenoe predicted, the Stelle Community "will be less an intentional community and more a unique small town."78 Susan Fisher disagreed. In 1996, she admitted to Altus that the millenarian aspect of Stelle still existed. "To this day," she said, "there are people in Stelle who believe very strongly that there is going to be major earth changes at the end of the century." She identified two other factions: one that totally rejected these dire predictions, and another group who "are in the middle ground." But, she admitted, "I know we have food, we have stockpiled food, we have extra supplies." And, she added, "where we've come to right now is . . . [to] feel very strongly we do have validity . . . that the community does have a life of its own . . . with old values, with an emphasis on personal responsibility, that you create your world, and that there are no victims." Its future? "I think we will continue to grow, however slowly," Fisher speculated, and "I think there has been something of resurgence of people who live here with trying to get very clear and very much in touch with their root values of why they're here."79 Brotherhood of the Spirit/Renaissance Community In the summer of 1968, Michael Metelica, a seventeen-year old from Leyden, Massachusetts, went to Haight-Ashbury to share in the atmosphere generated by the previous year's "Summer of Love." "Turned on," he said, he came back, worked as a farm laborer, and gradually gathered around him young people disillusioned with the depressed factory conditions of that region and the total lack of enthusiasm for life on the part of the adults living there. In the fall of 1969, they rented a small bunkhouse in a summer camp near the town of Heath. Soon about a dozen people were crammed into a building without heat, toilets, or cooking facilities. Full of optimism, they earned money by doing farm work, cutting firewood, and picking apples.80 In 1970, Metelica invited a local trance medium, Ellwood Babbitt, to talk

152 Communal Utopias and the American Experience to the community. He told them about a book published in 1908 entitled The Aquarian Gospel ofJesus the Christ. This "esoteric treatment of Jesus' life and ministry," in Popenoe's words, became "a principal text for the spiritual beliefs and practices of the group."81 Babbitt lectured the group on the "Seven Immutable Laws of the Universe": order, balance, harmony, growth, Godperception, spiritual love, and compassion. That summer and fall was a time of enormous expansion. "People came from all over," Popenoe wrote, "many from big cities such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and even as far away as Los Angeles."82 They called themselves the "Brotherhood of the Spirit." From personal donations the Brotherhood, now with more than 200 members, raised $20,000 and purchased 25 acres with a hotel and a barn near the town of Warwick in northern Massachusetts. They dismantled the barn and used the wood to build a three-story dormitory. They went to Warwick and to nearby farms to find jobs. By 1973 the Brotherhood's membership had increased to 350 residents. They had formed a rock band called "Spirit Flesh" and gave concerts throughout New England. They made their own sound equipment, which they retailed under the name of the "Burstin' Sun 'n' Sound Company." They formed the "Renaissance Recording Studio." And they changed the name of their community to "Aquarian Concept."83 Their economic expansion was remarkable. They started a business called "Rockets" that converted old school buses into recreational vehicles complete with living quarters, bathrooms, and kitchens, which they rented to rock stars such as Elvis Costello and Linda Ronstadt for $4,000 a week, with a driver provided by the community. They printed a magazine called Free Spirit Press that they distributed around the country in their own renovated blue-painted bus. They opened the "Renaissance Builders" and "Renaissance Excavating Company" that brought in a sizeable income. They ran a "Top-Notch Cleaning Service." They leased nearby farms and grew potatoes. They purchased an entire block of buildings in the nearby town of Turners Falls and began a renovation. In a matter of months the street had an array of businesses: plumbing and refrigeration, a grocery store, a natural foods restaurant, a pizza parlor, and a youth center.84 In October 1975, near the town of Gill, they bought eight acres that, like the Warwick property, had an old hotel and barn. They started the "2001 Center" as a self-sufficient communal home and a school for their children. They fitted the barn with solar heating panels and used it for offices and a meeting room. They constructed two frame houses as apartments for couples with children in which families shared a common living room and kitchen. They built a solar greenhouse with an attached frame building, next to which was a fenced garden where they grew organic food with compost and manure. They opened a "Renaissance Greeting Card Company" that sold Christmas cards wholesale to other stores. In early 1976, they decided on their permanent name, the "Renaissance Community."85 One member called it a place where everyone "can unfold the creative

Modern Communal Utopias 153 energies within themselves in an atmosphere of love, joy, and wisdom."86 Everyone had to work—either bringing in money from outside jobs, helping in one of the community's businesses, or teaching and assisting in taking care of the 17 children. Most members were in their twenties and approved of the nuclear family, although only five couples were married. When joining, an individual surrendered all personal assets and signed a vow of poverty. If they left, the assets remained with the community. There were no rules about food and only a few people were vegetarians. Beer and wine were permitted but they banned drugs. They assigned credit for work within the community and applied it to a weekly fee for room and board and a monthly assessment for taxes and utilities. Housing accommodations varied according to individual preferences. Some members lived in comfortable communal structures, others in small cabins, and some in tepees.87 The Renaissance Community ran by consensus. They elected the managers of the businesses who, resident Robin Paris said, just "get together to guide the flow of profits into the various projects agreed upon by the community at large."88 They relied on individual initiative, not on rules and assignments. Or, as one member put it, "if you see it, you do it."89 Community meetings were held on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings and were usually chaired by Metelica. They started with a group meditation called "attunement" and then, by mutual agreement, they reached decisions. The meetings ended with meditation and casual conversation. Since Massachusetts law prohibited more than four unrelated adults to live together in one household, they legally designated the Renaissance Community as a church. But there was no religious worship other than a Sunday afternoon fellowship.90 Unlike many other intentional communities, the communards tried to get themselves accepted by their neighbors. Robin Paris served as the town clerk of Gill. Metelica ran for selectman in Turners Falls. They invited visitors to come to dances held at the 2001 Center. In fact, the Center's parking lot had a sign saying "All People and Visitors Welcome, 10-4." Said one member: "We've tried to persuade the townspeople that, if we are weirdos, at least we're nice ones."91 In 1995, the Renaissance Community described itself as located on a 90acre tract near Turners Falls "on a hill with beautiful views of the rolling farm country of the Connecticut River Valley."92 The site was divided into lots and a 30-acre common. It had a conference center, a cooperative garden, a food co-op, a large orchard and organic garden, swimming pond, offices and meeting rooms, a woodworking shop, a retreat cabin, and a sauna. But recent troubles have followed in quick succession. According to member Norman Toy, in an interview with Miller in the late summer of 1996, Metelica became a megalomaniac who believed he was "the reincarnation of Robert E. Lee, the Apostle Peter, and some Roman General who defeated Hannibal, Scipio." The Renaissance Community was plagued with "a lot of drop-ins, people traveling through and dropping in." Worse yet, Toy said,

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some of these transients "were really insane." T h e n , in August 1996, Metelica himself left permanently for upstate N e w York, where he died in February 2003. By the fall of 1996 only ten families remained at the Renaissance C o m munity, living "more or less individual lives." Toy stated that "it's what is called a land trust community, essentially." " T h e r e is not a communal economy," he admitted, "people actually own their own houses and live . . . [with] a sort of common outlook." "But really," he concluded, "there are just independent families living in there." 9 3 Toy summarized for Miller his reasons for leaving the Renaissance C o m munity. It is an epilogue on American communalism in general. "This is the thing I came out believing after I got out," he said. It is "that community was a microcosm of a greater society, we thought we were elite, we thought we were better than [everyone else]." " W h e n I came out of it I realized that society works a hell of a lot better." "I mean, if 300 cannot keep it together, and the degradation I saw occur there, then I thought, well, society works pretty well, considering you've got billions of people." 94 Toy's observation, coming at the end of the twentieth century, might well have captured the eventual disillusionment felt by so many other members of America's communal Utopias over the past three hundred years.

NOTES 1. Berry, Utopian Experiments; Hugh Gardner, The Children of Prosperity: Thirteen Modern American Communes (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978); Communities Directory: A Guide to Intentional Communities and Cooperative Living (3rd edition, Rutledge, MO: Fellowship for Intentional Community, 2000). 2. Berry, Utopian Experiments, p. 216. 3. Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson, Builders of the Dawn: Community Lifestyles in a Changing World (Walpole, NH: Stillpoint, 1985), pp. 9-24. 4. Timothy Miller, "Is It Communal or Not?: Changing Forms and Definitions of Intentional Community in the Twentieth Century," Communal Studies Association, 23rd Annual Conference, October 10-12, 1996, Amana, Iowa. The manuscript is in the possession of this author. 5. McLaughlin and Davidson, Builders of the Dawn, pp. 25-59. 6. Ibid., pp. 9-24. 7. Miller, The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999), pp. xxiv-xxv. 8. McLaughlin and Davidson, Builders of the Dawn, p. 66. 9. Ibid, p. 68. 10. Miller, 60s Communes, pp. 175-83. 11. McLaughlin and Davidson, Builders of the Dawn, p. 80. 12. Ibid., p. 81. 13. Gardner, Children of Prosperity, p. 35; Miller, 60s Communes, p. 32. 14. Gardner, Children of Prosperity, p. 36; Miller, 60s Communes, pp. 36-37. Peter Rabbit, a pseudonym for Peter Douthit, wrote Drop City (New York: Olympia, 1971). 15. Gardner, Children of Prosperity, p. 38; Miller, 60s Communes, p. 38.

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16. Gardner, Children of Prosperity, p. 36. 17. Miller, 60s Communes, pp. 36-39. 18. Gardner, Children of Prosperity, pp. 445-46. 19. Ibid, pp. 46-47; Miller, 60s Communes, p. 39-40. For the influence of Drop City on subsequent communities see Miller, pp. 63, 81-82. 20. Bennett M. Berger, The Survival ofa Counterculture: Ideological Work and Everyday Life Among Rural Communards (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 223. 21. Miller, 60s Communes, p. 74. 22. Berger, Countermlture, p. 25. 23. Ibid, p. 30. Miller states that the main source of income for the community in the beginning "came from welfare." Miller, 60s Communes, p. 163. On the consensus method of governance, see p. 168. 24. Berger, Counterculture, p. 24; Miller, 60s Communes, p. 75. 25. Berger, Counterculture, p. 86. 26. Allen Cohen, Commune Project interview, March 25, 1996. 27. Berger, Counterculture, p. 133. 28. Allen Cohen, Commune Project interview, March 25, 1996; Miller, 60s Communes, p. 75. 29. Elaine Sundancer, Celery Wine: The Story ofa Country Commune (Yellow Springs, OH: Community Publications Cooperative, 1973), pp. 9-13. 30. Gardner, Children of Prosperity, p. 202. 31. Ibid, p. 197. 32. Sundancer, Celery Wine, pp. 75, 104-5; Gardner, Children of Prosperity, pp. 198-99. 33. Sundancer, Celery Wine, p. 29. 34. Gardner, Children of Prosperity, p. 199. 35. Ibid., p. 209. 36. Sundancer, Celery Wine, pp. 92, 107. 37. Ibid, p. 123. 38. Kathleen Kinkade, Is It Utopia Yet?: An Insiders View of Twin Oaks Community in Its Twenty-Sixth Year (Louisa, VA: Twin Oaks Publishing, 1994), pp. 1-13 and A Walden Two Experiment: The First Five Years of the Twin Oaks Community (New York: William Morrow, 1973), p. 76. 39. Kinkade, Is It Utopia Yet? pp. 126-31, 136; Miller, 60s Communes, pp. 57-58. 40. Kinkade, Is It Utopia Yet?, pp. 17, 19-24, 26, 232-34, 238-39; Miller, 60s Communes, p. 58. 41. Kinkade, Is It Utopia Yet?, p. 31; Miller, 60s Communes, p. 58. 42. Miller, 60s Communes, p. 49; Vince Zager, "Twin Oaks," in A Guide to Cooperative Alternatives, Paul Freundlich, Chris Collins, and Mikki Wenig, eds. (New Haven, CT: Community Publications Cooperative, 1979), p. 160; Kinkade, Is It Utopia Yet?, pp. 3, 22, 30, 44, 55, 193-94. 43. Kinkade, Is It Utopia Yet?, p. 147.

44. Ibid, 45. Ibid, 46. Ibid, 47. Ibid, 48. Ibid,

pp. 91-92, 139, 143-44. p. 152. p. 179. pp. 174-75, 183-87. pp. 185-86.

49. Ibid, pp. 8, 354-55; Miller, 60s Communes, p. 59.

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50. Communities Directory, p. 316. 51. Ibid., p. 212. 52. Kinkade, Is It Utopia Yet?, p. 171. 53. Miller, 60s Communes, pp. 67-68, 118. 54. Jon Wagner, ed. Sex Roles in Contemporary American Communes (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), p. 179. 55. Stephen Gaskin and the Farm, Hey Beatnik! This Is The Farm Book (Summertown, T N : Book Publishing C o , 1974) (unpaginated) and "Om" (unpaginated). 56. Miller, 60s Communes, p. 119; Bryan Pfaffenberger, "A World of Husbands and Mothers: Sex Roles and Their Ideological Context in the Formation of the Farm" in Wagner, e d . Sex Roles, pp. 184-89. 57. Pfaffenberger, "Husbands and Mothers," p. 195. 58. Ibid, pp. 201-4. 59. Ibid, pp. 204-8. 60. Ibid, p. 203. 61. Ibid, pp. 203-4. 62. Ibid, pp. 205-6. 63. Miller, 60s Communes, pp. 121-24. 64. Ina May Gaskin, Spiritual Midwifery (Summertown, T N : Book Publishing C o , 1990); Oliver and Cris Popenoe, Seeds of Tomorrow: New Age Communities That Work (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), p. 93; Miller, 60s Communes, pp. 120-21; Pfaffenberger, "Husbands and Mothers," p. 207. 65. Popenoe, Seeds of Tomorrow, p. 93. 66. Ina May Gaskin, Commune Project interview, October 18, 1995. 67. McLaughlin and Davidson, Builders of the Dawn, p. 202. 68. Stephen Gaskin, Commune Project interview, October 18, 1995. 69. Communities Directory, p. 308; Charles Betterton and Linda Guinn, "Stelle: Dawn of a New Age City," Communities: Journal of Cooperation 63 (summer, 1984): pp. 9-13. 70. Susan Fisher, Commune Project interview, April 17, 1996. 71. Miller, 60s Communes, p. 183. 72. Susan Fisher, Commune Project interview, April 17, 1996; Miller, 60s Communes, p. 206; Benjamin Zablocki, Alienation and Charisma: A Study of Contemporary American Communes (New York: Free Press, 1980), pp. 116-19. 73. Popenoe, Seeds of Tomorrow, pp. 40-41. 74. Ibid, p. 42. 75. Ibid, pp. 42-44; Susan Fisher, Commune Project interview, April 17, 1996. 76. Popenoe, Seeds of Tomorrow, p. 45; Susan Fisher, Commune Project interview, April 17, 1996. 77. Communities Directory, p. 308. 78. Popenoe, Seeds of Tomorrow, p. 46. 79. Susan Fisher, Commune Project interview, April 17, 1996. 80. Miller, 60s Communes, p. 84; Karol H. Borowski, "From the Tree House to the 2001 Center: The Renaissance Movement in the United States," Communal Societies 4 (1984): pp. 123-24. 81. Popenoe, Seeds of Tomorrow, p. 53; Levi H. Dowling, The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ (London: Cazenove, 1908, and Los Angeles: E. S. Dowling, 1911; reprinted, Brooklyn: A&B Publishing), 2000.

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82. Ibid, p. 55; Miller, 60s Communes, p. 85. 83. Popenoe, Seeds of Tomorrow, pp. 54-55. 84. Ibid, p. 55. 85. Ibid, p. 55. 86. Ibid, p. 58. 87. Miller, 60s Communes, p. 195. 88. McLaughlin and Davidson, Builders of the Dawn, p. 125. 89. Popenoe, Seeds ofTomojTow, pp. 59-60. 90. Ibid, p. 60. For a summary of the community's ideology, see Borowski, "Tree House to the 2001 Center," pp. 127-28. 91. Popenoe, Seeds of Tomorrow, p. 60. 92. Communities Directory, 1995 edition, p. 294. 93. Norman Toy, Commune Project interview, April 14, 1996; Miller, 60s Communes, p. 222. For an analysis of Michael Metelica's charismatic leadership see Borowski, "Tree House to 2001 Center," p. 129. 94. Norman Toy, Commune Project interview, April 14, 1996.

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Selected Bibliography Alyea, Paul E. and Blanche R. Fairhope, 1894-1954: The Story of a Single Tax Colony. University, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1956. Armytage, Walter Harry Green. Heavens Below: Utopian Experiments in England, 15601960. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961. Arnold, Joseph L. The New Deal in the Suburbs: A History of the Greenbelt Town Program 1935-1945. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1971. Barkun, Michael. "Communal Societies: A Cyclical Phenomena," Communal Societies 4 (1984): pp. 35-48. Beecher, Jonathan and Richard Bienvenu. The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier: Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971, and London: Cape, 1972; reprinted, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983. . "Une Utopie Manquee Au Texas: Victor Considerant et Reunion." In Cahiers Charles Fourier 40-79'. Edited by Michel Cordillot. Besancon: La Societe Charles Fourier, 1993. Berger, Bennett M. The Survival of a Counterculture: Ideological Work and Everyday Life Among Rural Communards. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Berry, Brian J. L. Americas Utopian Experiments: Communal Havens from Long-Wave Crises. Hanover, N H : University Press of New England, 1992. Bestor, Arthur. Backwoods Utopias: The Sectarian and Owenite Phases of Communitarian Socialism in America, 1663-1829. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1950; 2nd, enlarged edition, as The Sectarian Origins and the Owenite Phase of Communitarian Socialism in America, 1663-1829, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970. Bouvard, Marguerite. The Intentional Community Movement. Port Washington, N.Y.: National Univ. Publications, Kennikat Press, 1975.

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Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. A Socialist Utopia in the New South: The Ruskin Colonies in Tennessee and Georgia, 1894-1901. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996. Burton, Katherine. Paradise Planters: The Story of Brook Farm. London and New York: Longmans, Green, 1939; reprinted, New York: AMS Press, 1973. Cabet, Etienne. Travels in Icaria. Translated by Robert P. Sutton. Macomb: Western Illinois University, 1985. . Voyage et aventures de Lord William Carisdall en Icarie, traduit de Panglais de Francis Adams (Travels and Adventures of Lord William Carisdall in Icaria, Translated from the English by Francis Adams). Paris: Hippolyte Souverain, 1840. . Voyage en Icarie. Paris: Mallet, 1842; reprinted, Paris: Slatkine, 1979. Calverton, Victor Francis. Where Angels Dared To Tread. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1941. Chmielewski, Wendy E., and Louis J. Kern and Marlyn Klee-Hartzell, eds. Women in Spiritual and Communitarian Societies in the United States. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1993. Cohen, Joseph J. In Quest of Heaven: The Story of the Sunrise Co-operative Farm Community. New York: Sunrise History Publishing Committee, 1957; reprinted, Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1975. Cole, Margaret. Robert Owen of New Lanark. New York: Oxford University Press, and London: Batchworth Press, 1953; reprinted, New York: A. M. Kelley, 1969. Communities Directory: A Guide to Intentional Communities and Cooperative Living. 3rd edition, Rutledge, MO: Fellowship for Intentional Community, 2000. Conkin, Paul K. Tomorrow a New World: The New Deal Community Program. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1959; reprinted, New York: Da Capo, 1976. Crowe, Charles. George Ripley: Transcendentalist and Utopian Socialist. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1967. Curtis, Edith Roelker. A Season in Utopia: The Story of Brook Farm. New York: Thomas Nelson, 1961. Cutler, Phoebe. The Public Landscape of the New Deal. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1985. Elliott, Josephine Mirabella. "Madame Marie Fretageot: Communitarian Educator," Communal Societies 4 (1984): pp. 167-82. Fellman, Michael. The Unbounded Frame: Freedom and Community in Nineteejith Century American Utopianism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973. Francis, Richard. Transcendental Utopias: Individual and Community at Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and Walden. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. Gardner, Hugh. The Children of Prosperity: Thirteen Modern American Communes. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978. Gaskin, Stephen. Amazing Dope Tales. Summertown, TN: Book Publishing Co., 1980; reprinted, Berkeley, CA: Ronin, 1999. . The Caravan. New York: Random House, 1972. . Hey Beatnik! This is the Farm Book. Summertown, T N : Book Publishing Co., 1974. . Mind at Play. Summertown, T N : Book Publishing Co., 1979. Gaston, Paul M. Man and Mission: E. B. Gaston and the Origins of the Fairhope Single Tax Colony. Montgomery, AL: Black Belt Press, 1993.

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. Women of Fair Hope. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984. Gauthier, Paul S. "Quest for Utopia": The Icarians of Adams County: With Colonies in Denton County, Texas, Nauvoo, Illinois, Cheltenham, Missouri, and Cloverdale, California. Corning, Iowa: Gauthier Publishing, 1992. Grant, H. Roger. "Utopias That Failed: The Antebellum Years," Western Illinois Regional Studies 2/1 (Spring 1979): pp. 38-51. Guarneri, Carl J. The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991; reprinted, 1994. Harrison, John E C. Quest for the New Moral World: Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America. New York: Scribner, and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969; reprinted, Aldershot, Hampshire: Gregg Revivals, 1994. Harvey, Rowland Hill. Roben Owen: Social Idealist. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949. Hayden, Dolores. Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1190-1915. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1976; reprinted, 1979. Hinds, William Alfred. American Communities and Cooperative Colonies. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1908; reprinted, Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1975. Hine, Robert V. California's Utopian Colonies. San Marino, CA: Huntington Libarary, 1953; reprinted, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. . "California's Socialists Utopias." In Americas Communal Utopias, edited by Donald E. Pitzer. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Johnson, Christopher H. Utopian Communism in France: Cabet and the Icarians, 18391851. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974. Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in Sociological Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972. Kinkade, Kathleen. Is It Utopia Yet?: An Insiders View of Twin Oaks Community in its Twenty-Sixth Year. Louisa, VA: Twin Oaks Publishing, 1994. Lemieux, Christina M. "The Sunrise Cooperative Farm Community: A Collectivist Utopian Experiment," Communal Societies 10 (1990): pp. 39-67. LeWarne, Charles Pierce. Utopias on Puget Sound, 1885-1915. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975; reprinted, 1995. Lockwood, George B. The New Harmony Movement. New York: Appleton, 1905; reprinted, New York: Dover, 1971. McLaughlin, Corinne, and Gordon Davidson. Builders of the Dawn: Community Lifestyles in a Changing World. Walpole, NH: Stillpoint, 1985; reprinted, Summertown, T N : Book Publishing C o , 1990. Miller, Timothy. The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999. . The Quest for Utopia in Twentieth-Century America, vol. 1:1900-1960. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998. Morris Eckhardt, Celia. "Fanny Wright: Rebel & Communitarian Reformer," Communal Societies 4 (1984): pp. 182-93. Oved, Yaacov. Two Hundred Years of American Communes. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1988. Owen, Robert. Life of Robert Owen, Written By Himself, With Selections From His Writings and Correspondence. 2 vols. London: Effingham Wilson, 1857-58; reprinted,

162

Selected Bibliography

New York: Augustus M. Kelley, and London: Frank Cass, 1967; facsimile of original edition reprinted, London: C. Knight, 1971. Piotrowski, Sylvester A. Etienne Cabet and the Voyage en Icarie: A Study in the History of Social Thought. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1935; reprinted, Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1975. Pitzer, Donald E. "The New Moral World of Robert Owen and New Harmony." In his America's Communal Utopias. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. . ed. Robert Owen's American Legacy (Proceedings of the 1971 Robert Owen Bicentennial Conference). Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1972. Popenoe, Oliver and Cris. Seeds of Tomorrow: New Age Communities That Work. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984. Prudhommeaux, Jules. Icarie et son fondateur Etienne Cabet. Paris: Edouard Cornely, 1907. Ranciere, Jacques. La Nuit des proletaires. Paris: Fayard: 1981; reprinted, Paris: Hachette, 1997. Rude, Fernand, ed. Voyage en Icarie: deux ouvriers viennois aux Etats-Unis en 1855. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1952; reprinted as aAllons en Icarie": deux ouvriers viennois aux Etats-Unis en 1855. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1980. Shaw, Albert. Icaria: A Chapter in the History of Communism. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1884; reprinted, New York: AMS Press, 1973. Shor, Francis. "The Utopian Project in a Communal Experiment of the 1930s: The Sunrise Colony in Historical and Comparative Perspective," Communal Societies 1 (1987): pp. 82-94. Sternsher, Bernard. Rexford Tugwell and the New Deal. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1964. Stiller, Richard. Commune on the Frontier: The Story of Frances Wright. New York: Crowell, 1972. Sundancer, Elaine. Celery Wine: The Story ofa Country Commune. Yellow Springs, OH: Community Publications Cooperative, 1973. Sutton, Robert P. Communal Utopias and the American Experience: Religious Communities, 1132-2000. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. . Les Icariens: The Utopian Dream in Europe and America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994. Taylor, Anne. Visions of Harmony: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Millenarianism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Tyler, Alice Felt. Freedom's Ferment: Phases of American Social History from the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War. Reprinted, New York: Harper and Row, 1962 (original edition, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1944). Verlet, Bruno. "Les Fourieristes au Texas, du reve a la realite." In Cahiers Charles Fourier 4 (1993): pp. 80-101. Veysey, Laurence. The Communal Experience: Anarchists and Mystical Counter-Cultures in America. New York: Harper and Row, 1973; reprinted, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Selected Bibliography

163

Whisenhut, Donald W. "Utopians, Communalism, and the Great Depression," Communal Societies 3 (1983): pp. 101-9. Zablocki, Benjamin. Alienation and Charisma: A Study of Contemporary American Communes. New York: Free Press, 1980. Zicklin, Gilbert. Counter cultural Com?nunes: A Sociological Perspective. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983.

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Index

Aberdeen Gardens, 119 Abolitionism, 46 Acorn, 144 Adams, John Quincy, 5 Alcott, Amos Bronson, 41 Alexander, Will, 121 Allen, John, 46 Allen, Thomas, 66-67 American Friends Service Committee, 115 Amri (Twin Oaks), 143 Anarchists, 87, 111, 124-26 Anderson, Gilbert, 100 Andover Theological Seminary (Iowa), 30 Antioch College, 17 The Aquarian Gospel ofJesus the Christ (1907), 152 Arminge, H. H. Van, 29 Arthurdale, 115-16 Athenaeum, 5 Ault, Harry, 87 Augur, Tracy B., 121 Austin, Alice Constance, 105 Babbitt, Ellwood, 151-52 Bakewell, Benjamin, 16

Baldwin, Peter, 43 Bancroft, George, 39 Baruch, Bernard, 116 Beecher, Catharine, 25 Beinofsky, Gene and Jo Ann, 135 Bellamy, Edward, 77-78, 80, 88, 91,97 Beluze, Jean Pierre, 61, 65 Bellangee, James, 99 Biddle, Nicholas, 25 Birkbeck, Morris, 5 Blatchly, Cornelius Camden, 4 "Bloomers," 39 Boeck, George, 100 Bohlman, S. H , 89 Bond County Fourier Association, 29 Borsodi, Ralph, 111-12 Bourg, Pierre, 57 Bradford, George, 38 Brisbane, Albert, 1, 23-26, 33, 40, 42, 44, 47, 78 Bronson, Orestes, 39 Brooke, Dr., 29 Brook Farm, 37-44, 122 Brotherhood of the Cooperative Commonwealth (BCC), 83-84

166

Index

Brotherhood of the Spirit/Renaissance Community, 134, 151-54 Brown, Benjamin, 116 Brown, L. C , 94 Brown, Paul, 11-12, 14, 16-17 Bruce, Georgiana, 40 Bruce, M. E, 89-90 Bucklin, John, 37 Bureau County Phalanx, 29 Burley, 88-90 Burton, Warren, 38 Cabet, Etienne, 48, 53-65 Cantagrel, Francois, 46 Canton Phalanx, 29 Carisdall, William (fictional), 54-55 Casa Grande Farms, 117-18 Casson, Herbert N., 95 Celibacy, 59. See also Sexual intercourse Channing, William Henry, 25-26, 34, 36,37,39,40-41,77 Chase, Warren, 31 Cheever, John, 43 Cherry Lake Farm, 116-17 Child of Icaria (1939), 68, 70, 72 Children, 2-3, 13, 18, 32, 34-35, 42, 59-60, 61, 64, 69-70, 80-82, 85-86, 89,94, 101-2, 106, 116, 120-21, 123, 137-38, 141, 142, 147, 152. See also Education Clarkson Association, 2 8 Clinton, De Witt, 5 Cohen, Allen, 138 Cohen, Joseph, 122-27 Commander, Lydia Kingsmill, 94-95 Communia (Kommunia), 30 Considerant, Victor, 24, 44-48 Cooperating Society of Allegheny County, 16 Co-operative Commonwealth (1884), 79, 91,97 Copeland, William E , 89 Coughlin, Father, 114 Cours icarien, 60, 66, 69 Cultural life, 8, 16, 35-36, 38, 41-42, 60, 65, 66, 69, 80, 80, 82, 82, 86, 89, 91,93, 102-3, 125 Curtis, George William, 39

Daily life, 3, 32, 34-36, 38-39, 41-42, 47, 59-62, 65, 66, 67-70, 80, 84, 85-86,89,92,93,97, 105-6, 113, 116, 118-19, 122-23, 124, 135-36, 137-38, 139-41, 147, 149, 153-54 Dale, Caroline (Owen), 2 Dale, David, 2 Dana, Charles, 25-26, 34, 35, 39, 43 d'Arusmont, Phiquepal, 13 DeArmond, Jerome, 88 Debs, Eugene V, 88 A Declaration of Metal Independence (Robert Owen), 14 Declaration of Rights of the Icarians (1856), 64 Deweyjohn, 102, 116 Dietsch, Andreas, 30 Diga (Agricultural and Industrial Democracy), 111, 113 Division of Rural Rehabilitation and Stranded Populations (DRRSP), 112 Division of Subsistence Homesteads (DSH), 112, 114-17 Drinkwater, Peter, 2 Drop City, 131, 134-36 Dubisson (Icarian), 57, 61 Duke Colony, 96-97 Durant, Thomas, 46 Dwight, John Sullivan, 25, 41, 44 Dwight, Marianne, 43 Dyess Colony, 116-17 East Wind, 144 Ecole Societaire, 44-45 Economic life, 5-6, 7-8, 10-11, 27-28, 30-38, 41, 47, 59, 65-67, 80, 82-89, 91,93, 101-2, 105, 123-26, 134, 136, 139-42, 146-48, 152-53 Education, 3, 6, 8, 11-12, 18, 35, 39-40, 42, 59-60, 65, 80, 82, 85-86, 89,94-95, 101-2, 116-20, 123, 137-38, 142, 147, 150. See also Children Edwards, Alfred S, 95 Ellis, Arthur B , 89 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 25, 35, 38-39, 41

Index Equality, 83-88, 89 Estes, Caroline, 143 Fairfield, Richard, 139 Fairhope, 97-104 Farewell Address (Owen), 15 The Farm, 134, 144-48 Farm Security Administration (FSA), 121 Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), 114, 116-17, 121 Federal Subsistence Homesteads Corporative Plan, 115 Fels, Joseph, 102 First Advance Guard (Icarians), 55-56 Fischer, Susan, 149, 151 Fisher, James, 24 Flight From the City (1933), 112. See also Borsodi, Ralph Flower, George, 5, 17 Flower, Richard, 5-6 Forestville Community, 17 Fourier, Charles, 23-25, 31, 36, 40, 42-45, 94, 47, 53, 78 Franklin Community, 16 Franklin Institute, 5, 7 Freiland (1891), 87 Fretageot, Madame Marie Duclos, 13 Friendly Association for Mutual Interests (Ohio), 16 Friendly Association for Mutual Interests (Pennsylvania), 33 From Texas: First Report to My Friends (1856), 47-48 Fuller, Margaret, 36, 38-39, 41 Gaskin, Ina May, 147 Gaskin, Stephen, 147-48 Gaston, Ernest B., 97-104 Gaston, Paul, 104 Gay, Dr. S, 80 George, Henry, 77-79, 97, 100 Gerard, Jean Baptiste, 62-63, 67 Goodwin, Parker, 25 Gouhenant, Adolphe, 56 Government, 6-7, 9-13, 28, 30-31, 33-34, 36-38, 40-41, 45-47, 58-62,

167

70-71, 80, 81-84, 88-89, 92, 96, 98-99, 103, 113, 114, 118-26, 134, 135-37, 139-42, 147, 149-51, 153-54 Grant, Elijah P., 26 The Great West (1854), 45 Greeley, Horace, 25-27, 33, 37, 39, 44, 46,77 Greenbelt, 120-21 Greendale, 120-21 Greenhills, 120-21 Grimke, Angelina, 37 Gronlund, Laurence, 79, 91, 97 Grounds for Which the Minority Demands the Dissolution of the Icarian Community (1856), 63 Haight-Ashbury, 131, 135, 151 The Harbinger, 41-42, 43-44 Harriman, Job, 104-6 Hart, Charles E, 88 Haskell, Burnette G., 79,81 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 38-39 Haymarket Riot, 105 Heggi, Theophile, 64 Heinlein, Robert, 139 Hertzka, Theodore, 87 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 39 High Ridge Farm, 131, 139-41 Highstown homestead, 116 Hopewell Colony, 31 Hopkins, Harry, 116, 119 Horr, Alexander, 87-88 Houston, George, 16 Howard, Ebenezer, 114 Humble Oil company, 113 Icaria (Corning), 67-72 Icaria (Nauvoo), 45, 57-64 Icaria (St. Louis/Cheltenham), 64-67 Icaria (Texas), 55-57 Icaria Speranza, 71 Ickes, Harold, 112, 115 Integral Phalanx, 29 Iowa Pioneer Phalanx, 30 Jackson, Andrew, 5 James, Henry, 25, 34

168

Index

Jefferson, Thomas, 6 Jennings, Robert, 10 Johnson, Marietta, 102 Jolly, Ida, 86 Kaweah Co-operative Commonwealth, 78-81 Kieninger, Richard (Eklah Dueshana), 148-49 Kinkade, Kat, 143-44 Kleinstrapp, Louise, 43 Knott, John, 82 Know Nothing Party, 46 Lacour, Francois Marie, 60 Lake Dick, 117-18 Lamb, Hiram, 631 Lermond, Norman Wallace, 83-84 Liberty Homesteads, 112 Lippman, Morris, 123 Llano del Rio and Newllano, 104-6 Lloyd, J.William, 122 Long, Huey, 114 Longley, Alcander, 36 Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1881), 78. See also Bellamy, Edward Louis Philippe (the "Citizen King"), 53-55 Macdaniel, Osborne, 25 Macdonald, A. J., 34 Macdonald, Donald, 5-6, 9 Maclure, William, 4-5, 7-8, 11-13, 15, 17 McCowen, Henry, 111-13 McCoy, Lizzie, 97 McGuffog, James, 2 Madison, James, 1 Mann, T. E., 100 Marchand, Alexis Armel, 62, 63, 67-72 Marlborough Association, 28-29 Marriage, 9, 14, 59, 145-47 Maverick, Maury, 111, 113 Mead, Elwood, 114 Mercadier, Benjamin, 65-67 Metelica, Michael, 151, 153 Monroe, James, 5

More, Thomas, 54 Mormons, 57 Napoleon, Louis, 44 Nashoba, 17-18 National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), 114-15 Nationalist Clubs, 78, 88 Nativism, 46 New England Antislavery Society, 36 New Harmony, 115-16, 122, 126, 132 New Lanark, 2-5 New View of Society (Owen), 3 North American Phalanx, 33-37, 44 Ohio Phalanx, 29 Olmstead, Frederick Law, 46 Oneida, 122-23 Ontario Union, 28 Orvis, John, 44 Otis, Harrison Gray, 105-6 Owen, Robert, 1-17, 34, 55 Owen, Robert Dale, 9, 16, 18 Owen, William, 1, 7, 9 Panic of 1837, 24, 26 Panic of 1857, 67 Paris, Robin, 153 Patricia (Table Mountain Ranch), 138 Peabody, Eliza, 38 Peabody, Sophia, 38-39 Pears, Thomas, 10-11 Pelton, Ed, 83-84, 87 Peron, Emile, 70 "Peter Rabbit" (Drop City), 135 Phalanx, 26, 41 Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, 4 Pickett, Clarence, 115 Pine Mountain Valley, 116-17 Pollay, George, 100 Populist Party, 88, 100 Prairie Albion, 17. See also Flower, Richard Prairie Home Community, 29 Pratt, Minot, 38,43 The Present, 40 Production Credit Association, 125

Index Progress and Poverty (1879), 77, 99. See also Henry George Prudent, Jules, 57, 61 Puget Sound Co-operative Colony, 81-83 Public Housing Authority, 121 Racism, 33, 60, 97, 104, 118-19 Rapp, Frederick, 5 Rapp, Johann Georg ("Father Rapp"), 5 Raritan Bay Union, 36-37 Raynaud, Madame, 63 Read, A. R , 97 Religious practices, 5, 7, 8-10, 14, 29-31,35-36,54,80,86,89,92, 116, 144-45, 151-52 Report to the County of Lanark (Owen), 4 Resettlement Administration (RA), 114, 117, 125 Reunion, 44-48 Revolution of 1830, 54 Richert, Clark, 135 Rimmer, Robert H., 139 Ripley, George, 25, 34, 37-44 Roe, Daniel, 317 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 116 Roosevelt, Franklin E., 114-15, 121 Ross, Marie Marchand, 68-72 Roveira, D., 57 Rural Rehabilitation and Land Utilization Division (RRLUD), 117 Rural Rehabilitation Corporation, 125 Rural Resettlement Cooperatives, 114-19 Rush, Dr. Benjamin, 5 Rush, James, 5 Ruskin, 90-97 Ruskin, John, 91 Ryckman, Lewis, 25 Saint Simon, 24 Salarnier (Icarian), 67 Sangamon County Phalanx, 29 Sauva, Arsena, 67 Savard, Augustine, 47 School of the Living, 111-12 Sears, Charles, 33 Sears, Gertrude, 35

169

Sequoia National Park, 91 Sexual intercourse, 59, 87, 131, 137-38, 143, 146-47 Simonin, Amedee, 47 Skinner, B. F, 139, 141-43 Slavery, 33,48 Smith, George, 81 Smith, Gerald L. K., 114 Smith, Judge J., 210 Smolnikar, Andreas Berhnardus, 27-28 Social Democracy of America (SDA), 88 The Social Destiny of Man (Brisbane), 25 Society of the Chabonnerie, 53-54 Sodus Bay, 28 Spaulding, Benjamin, 30 Spear, Robert, 2 Spiritual Midwifery (1978), 147 Spring, Marcus, 36-37 Stelle, Robert, 149 Stelle Community, 134, 148-51 Stelle Woodworking Corporation, 149 Suffern, 112 Sully, Charles, 56 Sundancer, Elaine, 139-41 Sunrise, 122-27 Sunrise Colony, 105 Sunrise Co-operative Farm Community, 111 Sylvania Association, 2 7 Table Mountain Ranch, 131, 136-37 Terrebonne Parish, 117-18 Texas Emigration Union, 46 Townsend, Dr. Francis, 114 Toy, Normon, 153-54 Transcendentalists, 37-38, 40 Travels in Icaria (1839), 53-55 True Co-operative Individualism (1894), 97-98. See also Gaston, Ernest B. Trumbull Phalanx, 29 Tugwell, Rexford G , 117-21, 125 Tuttle, Arthur J., 126 Twin Oaks, 134, 141-44 The Ultimate Frontier (1963), 148-49 Vogel (Icarian), 66-67

170

Index

Walden Two (1948), 139, 141-42 Walker, E. C , 86 Wallace, George, 104 Wardall, Alonso, 89-90 Warden, Allen, 33 Watervliet, 5 Wayland, Julius A , 90-93 Weitling, William, 30 Weld, Theodore Dwight, 37 Westbrook, Lawrence, 116 Willard, Cyrus Field, 88-89 Williams, David, 116 Williams, JohnS., 29

Wilson, Milburn L., 115-17, 119 Wisconsin Phalanx, 31-33, 36 Women, 9, 28, 31-32,34-35, 39, 42, 59, 61, 68-69, 85, 93-95, 145-47, 149-50 Woodlake, 116 Wooster, Alfred, 99 Wright, Frances, 17-18 Wright, Merton L., 118 Yellow Springs, 17 Yiddishists, 124

About the Author ROBERT P. S U T T O N is Professor of History at Western Illinois University and a specialist in American communal Utopias. He is the author of nine books and has contributed seven chapters in books on the Icarians and other Utopian communities. In 1998, he received the Donald E. Pitzer Distinguished Service Award from the Communal Studies Association. He is married with six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. In 2002 Greenwood Press published his book Federalism as part of its Major Issues in American History series.