History of American Socialisms

by John Humphrey Noyes

"The Brook Farm Association not only was, but is near Boston, and the Harbinger is still published from its press. But, having been started without capital, experience or industrial capacity, without reference to or knowledge of Fourier's or any other systematic plan of Association, on a most unfavorable locality, bought at a high price, and constantly under mortgage, this Association is about to dissolve, when the paper will be removed to this city, with the master-spirits of Brook Farm as editors. The Observer will have ample opportunity to judge how far experience has modified their convictions or impaired their energies."

[From a report of a Boston Convention of Associationists, in the Harbinger, October 23, 1847.]

"The breaking up of the life at Brook Farm was frequently alluded to, especially by Mr. Ripley, who, on the eve of entering a new sphere of labor for the same great cause, appeared in all his indomitable strength and cheerfulness, triumphant amid outward failure. The owls and bats and other birds of ill omen which utter their oracles in leading political and sectarian religious journals, and which are busily croaking and screeching of the downfall of Association, had they been present at this meeting, could their weak eyes have borne so much light, would never again have coupled failure with the thought of such men, nor entertained a feeling other than of envy of experience like theirs."

The next number of the Harbinger (October 30, 1847) announced that that paper would in future be published in New York under the editorial charge of Parke Godwin, assisted by George Ripley and Charles A. Dana in New York, and William H. Channing and John S. Dwight in Boston. This of course implied the dispersion of the Brook Farmers, and the dissolution of the Association; and this is all we know about it.

The years 1846 and 1847 were fatal to most of the Fourier experiments. Horace Greeley, under date of July 1847, wrote to the People's Journal the following account of what may be called,

Fourierism reduced to a Forlorn Hope.

"As to the Associationists (by their adversaries termed 'Fourierites'), with whom I am proud to be numbered, their beginnings are yet too recent to justify me in asking for their history any considerable space in your columns. Briefly, however, the first that was heard in this country of Fourier and his views (beyond a little circle of perhaps a hundred persons in two or three of our large cities, who had picked up some notion of them in France or from French writings), was in 1840, when Albert Brisbane published his first synopsis of Fourier's theory of industrial and household Association. Since then, the subject has been considerably discussed, and several attempts of some sort have been made to actualize Fourier's ideas, generally by men destitute alike of capacity, public confidence, energy and means. In only one instance that I have heard of was the land paid for on which the enterprise commenced; not one of these vaunted 'Fourier Associations' ever had the means of erecting a proper dwelling for so many as three hundred people, even if the land had been given them. Of course, the time for paying the first installment on the mortgage covering their land has generally witnessed the dissipation of their sanguine dreams. Yet there are at least three of these embryo Associations still in existence; and, as each of these is in its third or fourth year, they may be supposed to give some promise of vitality. They are the North American Phalanx, near Leedsville, New Jersey; the Trumbull Phalanx, near Braceville, Ohio; and the Wisconsin Phalanx, Ceresco, Wisconsin. Each of these has a considerable domain nearly or wholly paid for, is improving the soil, increasing its annual products, and establishing some branches of manufactures. Each, though far enough from being a perfect Association, is animated with the hope of becoming one, as rapidly as experience, time and means will allow."

Of the three Phalanxes thus mentioned as the rear-guard of Fourierism, one—the Trumbull—disappeared about four months afterward (very nearly at the time of the dispersion of Brook Farm), and another—the Wisconsin—lasted only a year longer, leaving the North American alone for the last four years of its existence.

Brook Farm in its function of propagandist (which is always expensive and exhausting at the best), must have been sadly depressed by the failures that crowded upon it in its last days; and it is not to be wondered that it died with its children and kindred.

If we might suggest a transcendental reason for the failure of Brook Farm, we should say that it had naturally a delicate constitution, that was liable to be shattered by disasters and sympathies; and the causes of this weakness must be sought for in the character of the afflatus that organized it. The transcendental afflatus, like that of Pentecost, had in it two elements, viz., Communism, and "the gift of tongues;" or in other words, the tendency to religious and social unity, represented by Channing and Ripley; and the tendency to literature, represented by Emerson and Margaret Fuller. But the proportion of these elements was different from that of Pentecost. The tendency to utterance was the strongest. Emerson prevailed over Channing even in Brook Farm; nay, in Channing himself, and in Ripley, Dana and all the rest of the Brook Farm leaders. In fact they went over from practical Communism to literary utterance when they assumed the propagandism of Fourierism; and utterance has been their vocation ever since. A similar phenomenon occurred in the history of the great literary trio of England, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Southey. Their original afflatus carried them to the verge of Communism; but "their gift of tongues" prevailed and spoiled them. And the tendency to literature, as represented by Emerson, is the farthest opposite of Communism, finding its summum bonum in individualism and incoherent instead of organic inspiration.