"Their factories and workshops are warmed during the winter by means of pipes connected with the steam-engine. All the workmen, and especially the females, had very healthy complexions, and moved me deeply by the warm-hearted friendliness with which they saluted the elder Rapp. I was also much gratified to see vessels containing fresh sweet-scented flowers standing on all the machines. The neatness which universally reigns is in every respect worthy of praise." [Footnote: "Travels through North America, during the years 1825-26, by His Highness, Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach." Philadelphia, 1828.]
This account shows the remarkable rapidity with which they had built up the new town.
But perfect happiness is not for this world. In 1831 came to Economy a German adventurer, Bernhard Müller by right name, who had assumed the title Graf or Count Maximilian de Leon, and had gathered a following of visionary Germans, whom he imposed, with himself, upon the Harmonists, on the pretense that he was a believer with them in religious matters. He proved to be a wretched intriguer, who brought ruin on all who connected themselves with him; and who began at once to make trouble in Economy. Having secured a lodgment, he began to announce strange doctrines, marriage, a livelier life, and other temptations to worldliness; and he finally succeeded in effecting a serious division, which, if it had not been prudently managed, might have destroyed the community. After bitter disputes, in which at last affairs came to such a pass that a vote had to be taken, in order to decide who were faithful to the old order and to Rapp, and who were for Count Leon, an agreement was come to. "We knew not even who was for and who against us," said Mr. Henrici to me; "and I was in the utmost anxiety as I made out the two lists; at last they were complete; all the names had been called; we counted, and found that five hundred were for Father Rapp, and two hundred and fifty for Count Leon. Father Rapp, when I told him the numbers, with his usual ready wit, quoted from the book of Revelation, 'And the tail of the serpent drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth.'"
The end of the dispute was an agreement, under which the society bound itself to pay to those who adhered to Count Leon one hundred and five thousand dollars, in three installments, all payable within twelve months; the other side agreeing, on their part, to leave Economy within three months, taking with them only their clothing and household furniture, and relinquishing all claims upon the property of the society. This agreement was made in March, 1832; and Leon and his followers withdrew to Phillipsburg, a village ten miles below Economy, on the other side of the river, which they bought, with eight hundred acres of land.
Here they set up a society on communistic principles, but permitting marriage; and here they very quickly wasted the large sum of money they received from the Harmonists; and after a desperate and lawless attempt to extort more money from the Economy people, which was happily defeated, Count Leon absconded with a few of his people in a boat to Alexandria on the Red River, where this singular adventurer perished of cholera in 1833. Those he had deluded meantime divided the Phillipsburg property among themselves, and set up each for himself, and a number afterward joined Keil in forming the Bethel Community in Missouri, of which an account will be found in another place.
In 1832, seven years only after the removal to Economy, the society was able, it thus appears, to pay out in a single year one hundred and five thousand dollars in cash—a very great sum of money in those days. This shows that they had largely increased their capital by their thrift and industry at New Harmony in Indiana, and at Economy. They had then existed as a community twenty-seven years; had built three towns; and had during the whole time lived a life of comfort and social order, such as few individual settlers in our Western States at that time could command.
III.—DOCTRINES AND PRACTICAL LIFE IN ECONOMY; WITH SOME PARTICULARS OF "FATHER RAPP."
The Agreement or Articles of Association under which the "Harmony Society" was formed in 1805, and which was signed by all the members thenceforward, read as follows:
"ARTICLES OF ASSOCIATION.
"Whereas, by the favor of divine Providence, an association or community has been formed by George Rapp and many others upon the basis of Christian fellowship, the principles of which, being faithfully derived from the sacred Scriptures, include the government of the patriarchal age, united to the community of property adopted in the days of the apostles, and wherein the simple object sought is to approximate, so far as human imperfections may allow, to the fulfillment of the will of God, by the exercise of those affections and the practice of those virtues which are essential to the happiness of man in time and throughout eternity: