[542] The kinds of labour which Fourier selects as examples are always connected with fruit-growing—cherry orchards, pear orchards, etc. Fruit and flowers have a very important place in his writings. He seems to have anticipated the fruit-growing rancher of California.
Without stopping to examine some of the more solid reasons—which unfortunately are buried beneath a great deal of rubbish—why fruit-growing should take the place of agriculture, we must just recall the curious fact that he was always emphasising the superiority of sugar and preserves over bread, and pointed to the “divine instinct” by which children are enabled to discover this. The suggestion was ridiculed at the time, but is to-day confirmed by some of the most eminent doctors and teachers of hygiene.
[543] It is interesting to contrast this view with Bücher’s, who thinks that the evolution of industry simply increases its irksomeness. A conception of regressive or spiral evolution might reconcile the two views.
[544] Let us not forget his Petites Hordes, which consisted of groups of boys who undertook the sweeping of public paths, the surveillance of public gardens, and the protection of animals. The idea was very much ridiculed at the time, but a number of similar organisations, each with its badge and banner, were recently instituted by Colonel Waring in the city of New York.
[545] “My theory is that every passion given by nature should be allowed the fullest scope. That is the key to my whole system. Society requires the full exercise of all the faculties given us by God.”
[546] Quatre Mouvements, p. 194.
[547] See, for example, such works as Zola’s Travail, and Barrè’s L’Ennemi des Lois; and as an example of the general change in the tone of the economists we may refer to Paul Leroy-Beaulieu’s latest writings, in which he speaks of Fourier as a “genial thinker.”
[548] It is no part of our task to relate the story of the several colonies founded either by disciples of Fourier or of Owen. Experiments of this kind were fairly general in the United States between 1841 and 1844, when no less than forty colonies were founded. Brook Farm, which is the best known of these, included among its members some of the most eminent Americans—Channing and Hawthorne, for example—but none of the settlements lasted very long.
Similar attempts have been made in France at a still more recent period. The one at Condé-sur-Vesgres, near Rambouillet, where a few faithful disciples of Fourier have come together, is still flourishing.
[549] Founded in 1859, it only became a co-partnership in 1888, the year of Godin’s death.