[Communication in the Harbinger.]
Springfield, June, 14, 1846.
"We hope our humble effort here to establish a Phalanx, will in due time be crowned with success. Our prospects since we got our charter have been very cheering, notwithstanding the difficulties attendant upon so weak an attempt to form a nucleus, around which we expect to see truth and happiness assembled in perpetual union, and that too at no very distant period. Our numbers have lately been increased by some members from the Alphadelphia Association, whose faith has outlived that of others in the attempt to establish an Association at that place.
"Agriculture has been our main and almost only employment since we came together. We have ten hundred and forty-five acres of excellent land, four hundred and ninety-two acres of which are improved, and two hundred and fifty acres of it are natural meadow. We are preparing this fall to sow three hundred acres of wheat. Our domain is as yet destitute of water-power except on a very limited scale. Our location in other respects is all that could be wished. We have a very fine orchard of peach-and apple-trees, set out mostly a year ago last spring, and many of the trees will soon bear, they having been moved from orchards which were set out for the use of families on different points of what we now call our domain. We shall have this season a considerable quantity of apples and peaches from old trees which have not been moved. The wheat crop promises to be very abundant in this part of the country. Oats and corn are rather backward on account of the late dry weather. We have at present on the ground one hundred and forty acres of wheat, fifty-two acres of oats, thirty-eight acres of corn, besides buckwheat, potatoes, beans, squashes, pumpkins, melons and what not.
"William Anderson, Secretary."
Macdonald gives the following meager account of the decease of this Phalanx:
"A person named Jones owned nearly one-half of the stock, and it appears that his influence was such that he managed trading and money matters all in his own way, whether he was an officer or not. This gave great dissatisfaction to the members, and has been assigned as the chief cause of their failure. They possessed about one thousand acres of land, with plenty of buildings of all kinds. The members were mostly farmers, tolerably moral, but lacking in enterprise and science. They maintained schools and preaching in abundance, and lived as well as western farmers commonly do. But they fully proved that, though hard labor is important in such experiments, yet without the right kind of genius to guide, mere labor is vain."