History of American Socialisms

by John Humphrey Noyes

"This experiment was a total failure. I have been unable to gather many particulars concerning its last days, and those I have obtained are of a very unfavorable character.

"The chief cause of failure was religious difference. Persons of various religious creeds could not agree. There were some among them who thought it no sin to labor on the Sabbath, and others who looked upon it as an outrage, which the Phalanx should take action to prevent. A committee was appointed to settle such differences, but in this they failed. Sickness was another of their troubles. They were severely afflicted with typhoid erysipelas, and at one time forty-nine of their members were upon the sick list.

"After laboring a year or two under these difficulties, there was a hasty and disorderly retreat. It is said that each individual helped himself to the movable property, and that some decamped in the night, leaving the remains of the Phalanx to be disposed of in any way which the last men might choose. The fact that mankind do not like to have their faults and failings made public, will probably account for the difficulty in obtaining particulars of such experiments as the Sodus Bay Phalanx."

Allen and Orvis, the lecturing missionaries of Brook Farm, in that same letter from which we quoted some time since a maledictory paragraph on the memory of the Skaneateles Community, mention also the bad odor of the defunct confederated Phalanxes of Western New York, in the following disrespectful terms. Their letter is dated at Rochester, September 1847:

"The prospect for meetings in this city is less favorable than that of any place where we have previously visited. It is the nest wherein was hatched that anomalous brood of birds, called the 'Sodus Bay Phalanx,' 'The Clarkson Phalanx,' the 'Bloomfield Phalanx,' and the 'Ontario Union.' The very name of Association is odious with the public, and the unfortunate people who went into these movements in such mad haste, have been ridiculed till endurance is no longer possible, and they have slunk away from the sight and knowledge of their neighbors."

The experience of the Sodus Bay Phalanx in regard to religion, suggests reflections. Let us improve the opportunity to study some of the practical relations of religion to Association.

The object and end of Association in all its forms, as we have frequently said, is to gather men, women and children into larger and more permanent HOMES than those established by marriage. The advantages of partnership, incorporation and coöperation have become so manifest in modern affairs, that an unspeakable longing has arisen in the very heart of civilization for the extension of those advantages to the dearest of all human interests—family affairs—the business of home. The charm that drew the western New Yorkers together in such rushing multitudes, was simply the prospect of home on the large scale, which indeed is heaven.

Now if we consider the laws which govern the formation of homes on the small scale, we shall be likely to get some wisdom in regard to their formation on the large scale.

And in the first place, it is evident that homes formed by the conjunction of pairs in the usual way, are not all harmonious—perhaps we might say, are not generally harmonious. Families quarrel and break up, as well as Associations; and if husbands and wives were as free to separate as the members of Association are, possibly marriage would not make much better show than Socialism has made. Human nature, as we have seen it in the Communities and Phalanxes—discordant, centrifugal—is the same in marriage. Now, as experience has developed something like a code of rules that govern prudent people in venturing on marriage, our true way is to study that code, and apply it as far as possible to the vastly greater venture of Association.

Fourier's dream that two or three thousand discordant centrifugal individuals in one great home, would fall, by natural gravitation, into a balance of passions, and realize a harmony unattainable on the small scale of familism, has not been confirmed by experience, and seems to us the wildest opposite of truth. We should expect, a priori, that with discordant materials, the greater the formation, the worse would be the hell: and this is just what has been proved by all the experiments. Let us go back, then, and study the rules of harmony in the formation of common families.