Finally, I repeat that one cannot play at communism. It is earnest work, and requires perseverance, patience, and all other manly qualities. But if I compare the life in a contented and prosperous, that is to say a successful commune, with the life of an ordinary farmer or mechanic even in our prosperous country, and more especially with the lives of the working-men and their families in our great cities, I must confess that the communist life is so much freer from care and risk, so much easier, so much better in many ways, and in all material aspects, that I sincerely wish it might have a farther development in the United States.
With this wish I conclude a work which has interested me extremely—the record of an investigation which was certainly the strangest and most remarkable I ever made, and which forced me to take some views of the nature and capacities of the average man which I had not before.
That communistic societies will rapidly increase in this or any other country, I do not believe. The chances are always great against the success of any newly formed society of this kind. But that men and women can, if they will, live pleasantly and prosperously in a communal society is, I think, proved beyond a doubt; and thus we have a right to count this another way by which the dissatisfied laborer may, if he chooses, better his condition. This seems to me a matter of some importance, and justifies, to myself at least, the trouble I have taken in this investigation.
[Relocated Footnote: Here is a list of titles, which I take from Noyes:
The Alphadelphia Phalanx, Hopedale Community, Leroysville Phalanx,
Bloomfield Association, Blue Springs Community, North American Phalanx,
Ohio Phalanx, Brook Farm, Bureau County Phalanx, Raritan Bay Union,
Wisconsin Phalanx; the Clarkson, Clermont, Columbian, Coxsackie,
Skaneateles, Integral, Iowa Pioneer, Jefferson County, La Grange,
Turnbull, Sodus Bay, and Washtenaw Phalanxes; the Forrestville,
Franklin, Garden Grove, Goose Pond, Haverstraw, Kendall, One Mentian,
and Yellow Springs Communities; the Marlborough, McKean County,
Mixville, Northampton, Spring Farm, and Sylvania Associations; the
Moorehouse and the Ontario Unions; the Prairie Home; New Harmony,
Nashoba, New Lanark, the Social Reform Unity, and the Peace Union
Settlement.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
The following list does not pretend to be a complete bibliography of Socialism or Communism. It contains the titles of all the works which have fallen under my own observation relating to the Communistic Societies now existing in the United States, and referred to in this book. Most of these are in my own collection; a few I found in the Congressional Library or in the hands of friends. To a few of the titles I have appended remarks explanatory of their contents.
1. A Brief Account of a Religious Scheme taught and propagated by a number of Europeans who lately lived in a place called Nisqueunia, in the State of New York, but now residing in Harvard, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, commonly called Shaking Quakers. By Valentine Rathbone, Minister of the Gospel. To which is added a Dialogue between George the Third of Great Britain and his Minister, giving an account of the late London mob, and the original of the Sect called Shakers. The whole being a discovery of the wicked machinations of the principal enemies of America. Worcester, 1788.
[This is the earliest printed mention I have found of the Shakers. The pamphlet is in the Congressional Library, and came from the Force Collection. Its intention was to make the Shakers odious as British spies; and in the "Dialogue" between the king and his minister, "Lord Germain" is made to comfort the king with an account of "the persons who were sent to propagate a new religious scheme in America," whose accounts, he says, are "very flattering," and upon whom he depends to mislead the ignorant Americans into opposition to the "rebels." The "Dialogue" pretends to have been "printed London; reprinted Worcester, 1782.">[
2. Testimony of Christ's Second Appearing, exemplified by the Principles and Practice of the Church of Christ. History of the Progressive Work of God, extending from the Creation of Man to the Harvest, comprising the Four Great Dispensations now consummating in the Millennial Church. Antichrist's Kingdom or Churches, contrasted with the Church of Christ's First and Second Appearing, the Kingdom of the God of Heaven. Published by the United Society called Shakers. No date. (The Preface to the first edition is dated "Lebanon, O., 1808." Of the fourth, "Watervliet, N. Y., 1854;" pp. 632.)
3. Autobiography, of a Shaker, and Revelation of the Apocalypse, with an Appendix. By Frederick W. Evans. New York, American News Company, 1869, pp. 162.