The system of administration thus prescribed appears to have worked satisfactorily for more than forty years.
"Do you favor marriage?" I asked some of the older members, trustees, and managers. They answered "No;" but they exact no penalty nor inflict any disability upon those who choose to marry. "Marriage," I was told, "is on the whole unfavorable to community life. It is better to observe the celibate life. But it is not, in our experience, fatally adverse. It only makes more trouble; and in either case, whether a community permit or forbid marriage, it may lose members."
About half of their young people, who have grown up in the society, become permanent members, and as many young men as girls. They do not permit members to marry outside of the society; and require those who do to leave the place. "Men and women need to be trained to live peaceably and contentedly in a community. Those who have been brought up outside do not find matters to their taste here."
Baumeler taught that God did not look with pleasure on marriage, but that he only tolerated it; that in the kingdom of heaven "husband, wife, and children will not know each other;" "there will be no distinction of sex there." Nevertheless he married, and had a family of children.
When a young couple wish to marry, they consult the trustees, whose consent is required in this as in the other emergencies of the community life; and the more so as they must provide lodgings or a dwelling for the newly married, and furniture for their housekeeping. Weddings, however, are economically managed, and the parents of the parties usually contribute of their superfluities for the young couple's accommodation.
When marriages began among them, a rule was adopted that the children should remain in the care of their parents until they were three years old; at which time they were placed in large houses, the girls in one, boys in another, where they were brought up under the care of persons especially appointed for that purpose; nor did they ever again come under the exclusive control of their parents. This singular custom, which is practiced also by the Oneida communists, lasted at Zoar until the year 1845, when it was found inconvenient.
[Illustration: CHURCH AT ZOAR]
[Illustration: SCHOOL HOUSE AT ZOAR]
The sixty or seventy young persons under twenty-one now in the community live with their parents. Until the age of fifteen they are sent to school, and a school is maintained all the year round. Usually the instruction has been in German; but when I visited Zoar they had an American teacher.
On the blackboard, when I visited the school, a pupil had just completed an example in proportion, concerning the division of property among heirs; and I thought how remarkable it is that the community life ever lasts, in any experiment, beyond the first generation, when even the examples by which children of a community are taught arithmetic refer to division of property and individual ownership, and every piece of literature they read tends to inculcate the love of "me" and "mine." I do not wonder that general literary studies are not encouraged in many communities. As for the Zoar people, they are not great readers, except of the Bible and the few pious books which they brought over from Germany, or have imported since.