History of American Socialisms

by John Humphrey Noyes

"Thus observing this general formula in our classification of labor, viz.: the necessary, the useful, and the agreeable; and also awarding to the individual, first, for his labor, secondly, for the talent displayed in the use of means, or in adaptation of means to ends, wise administration, etc., and thirdly, for the use of his capital; it will be perceived that we make our award upon a widely different basis from the current method. We have a theory of awards, a scientific reason for our classification of labor and our awards to individuals; and one of the consequences is that women earn more, relatively, among us than in existing society.

"In matters of education we have hitherto done little else than keep, as we might, the common district school, introducing, however, improved methods of instruction. Other interests have pressed upon us; other questions clamored for solution. We were to determine whether or not we could associate in all the labors of life; and if yea, then whether we could sufficiently command the material means of life, until we should have established institutions that would supersede the necessity of strenuous personal effort. It will be understood that this work has been sufficiently arduous, and consequently that our children, being too feeble in point of numbers to assert their rights, have been pushed aside."

Here follows a labored disquisition on the possibilities of serial education, which we omit, as the substance of it can be found in the standard expositions of Fourierism.

"If now we are asked, what questions we have determined, what results we may fairly claim to have accomplished through our nine years of associated life and efforts at organization, we may answer in brief, that so far as the members of this body are concerned, we meet the universal demand of this day with institutions which guarantee the rights of labor and the products thereof, of education, and a home, and social culture. This is not a mere declaration of abstract rights that we claim to make, but we establish our members in the possession and enjoyment of these rights; and we venture to claim that, so far as the comforts of home, private rights and social privileges are concerned, our actual life is greatly in advance of that of any mixed population under the institutions of existing civilization, either in town or country. We claim, so far as with our small number we could do, to have organized labor through voluntary Association, upon the principle of unity of interests; so reconciling the hitherto hostile parties of laborer and capitalist; so settling the world-old, world-wide quarrel, growing out of antagonistic interests among men; that is, we have organized the production and distribution of wealth in agricultural and domestic labor, and in some branches of mechanics and manufactures, and thus have abolished the servile character of labor, and the servile relation of employer and employed. And it is precisely in the point where failure was most confidently predicted, viz., in domestic labor, that we have most fully succeeded, because mainly, as we suppose, in the larger numbers attached to this industry we had the conditions of carrying out more fully the serial method of organization.

"In distributing the profits of industry we have adopted a law of equitable proportion, so that when the facts are presented, we have initiated the measure of attaining to practical justice, or in the formula of Fourier, 'equitable distribution of profits.' We claim also that we guarantee the sale of the products of industry; that is, we secure the means of converting any and every form of product or fruit of labor at the cost thereof, into any other form also at cost. For all our labor is paid for in a domestic currency. In other words, when value is produced, a representative of that value is issued to the producer; and only so far as there is the production of value, is there any issue of the representative of value; so that property and currency are always equal, and thus we solve the problem of banking and currency; thus we have in practical operation, what Proudhon vainly attempted to introduce into France; what Kellogg proposed to introduce under governmental sanction in this country; what Warren proposes to accomplish by his labor notes and exchanges at cost.

"We might state other facts, but let this suffice for the present; and we will only say in conclusion, that when the organization of our educational series shall be completed, as we hope to see it, we shall thus have established as a body a measurably complete circle of fraternal institutions, in which social and private rights are guaranteed; we shall then fairly have closed the first cycle of our societary life and efforts, fairly have laid the germs of living institutions, of the corporations which have perpetual life, which gather all knowledges, which husband all experiences, and into the keeping of which we commit all material interests, and which only need a healthy development to change without injustice, to absorb without violence, the discords of existing society, and to unfold, as naturally as the chrysalis unfolds into a form of beauty, a new and higher order of human society.

"To carry on this work we need additional means to endow our agricultural, our educational, our milling and other interests, and to build additional tenements; and above all we need additional numbers of people who are willing to work for an idea; men and women who are competent to establish or conduct successfully some branch of profitable industry; who understand the social movement; who will come among us with worthy motives, and with settled purpose of fraternal co-operation; who can appreciate the labor, the conditions of life, the worth of the institutions we have and propose to have, in contrast with the chances of private gain accompanied by the prevailing disorder, the denial of right, and the ever-increasing oppressions of existing civilization.

"The views of members and applicants upon the foregoing statement are expressed by the position of their signatures affixed below:

Aye.

H.T. Stone,	Eugenia Thomson,	E.L. Holmes,
Lucius Eaton,	Leemon Stockwell,	Gertrude Sears,
Alcander Longley,	R.N. Stockwell,	E.A. Angell,
Herman Schetter,	A.P. French,	J. Bucklin,
W.A. French,	Nathaniel H. Colson,	L.E. Bucklin,
John Ash, Jr.,	John French,	Edwin D. Sayre,
John H. Steel,	Mary E.F. Grey,	O.S. Holmes,
Phebe T. Drew,	Althea Sears,	John V. Sears,
John Gray,	H. Bell Munday,	P. French,
Robert J. Smith,	Caroline M. Hathaway,	M.A. Martin,
J.R. Vanderburgh,	Anna E. Hathaway,	L. French,
James Renshaw,	Anne Guillauden,	Z. King, Jr.,
J.G. Drew,	L. Munday,	D.H. King,
S. Martin,	Chloe Sears,	A.J. Lanotte,
Joseph T. French,	James Renshaw, Jr.,	W.K. Prentice,
N.H. Stockwell,	Emile Guillauden, Jr.,	Julia Bucklin,
Chas. G. French,	Ellen M. Stockwell,	—— Maynet.