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