History of American Socialisms

by John Humphrey Noyes

The malcontent who gives an account of the Trumbull Phalanx says: "Some came with the idea that they could live in idleness at the expense of the purchasers of the estate, and these ideas they practically carried out; while others came with good hearts for the cause. There were one or two designing persons, who came with no other intent than to push themselves into situations in which they could impose upon their fellow members; and this, to a certain extent, they succeeded in doing." And again: "I think most persons came there for a mere shift. Their poverty and their quarreling about what they called religion (for there were many notions as to which was the right way to heaven), were great drawbacks to success."

There were rival leaders in the Ohio Phalanx, and their respective parties quarreled about constitutions till they got into a lawsuit which broke them up. The member who gave the account of this Association says: "The most important causes of failure were said to be the deficiency of wealth, wisdom and goodness."

The Clermont Phalanx had jealousies among its women that led to a lawsuit; and a difficulty with one of its leading members about land-titles.

The story of the Alphadelphia Phalanx is briefly told thus: "The disagreement with Mr. Tubbs about a mill-race at the commencement of the experiment, threw a damper on it, from which it never recovered. All lived in clover so long as a ton of sugar or any other such luxury lasted. The officers made bad bargains. Laborers became discouraged. In the winter some of the influential members went away temporarily, and thus left the real friends of the Association in the minority; and when they returned after two or three months absence, every thing was turned up-side-down. There was a manifest lack of good management and foresight. The old settlers accused the majority of this, and were themselves elected officers; but they managed no better, and finally broke up the concern."

The Wisconsin Phalanx kept its quarrels below lawsuit point, but the leading member who gives account of it, says that the habit of the members was to "scold and work, and work and scold;" and that "they had among their number a few men of leading intellect who always doubted the success of the experiment, and hence determined to accumulate property individually by any and every means called fair in competitive society. These would occasionally gain some important positions in the society, and representing it in part at home and abroad, caused much trouble. By some they were accounted the principal cause of the final failure."

Mr. Daniels, a gentleman who saw the whole progress of the Wisconsin Phalanx, says that "the cause of its breaking up was speculation, the love of money and the want of love for Association. Their property becoming valuable, they sold it for the purpose of making money out of it."

The North American was evidently shattered by secessions, resulting partly from religious dissensions and partly from differences about business.

Brook Farm alone is reported as harmonious to the end.

It should be observed that the foregoing disclosures of disintegrating infirmities were generally made reluctantly, and are necessarily very imperfect. Large departments of dangerous passion are entirely ignored. For instance, in all the memoirs of the Owen and Fourier Associations, not a word is said on the "Woman Question!" Among all the disagreements and complaints, not a hint occurs of any jealousies and quarrels about love matters. In fact women are rarely mentioned; and the terrible passions connected with distinction of sex, which the Shakers, Rappites, Oneidians, and all the rest of the religious Communities have had so much trouble with, and have taken so much pains to provide for or against, are absolutely left out of sight. Owen, it is true, named marriage as one of the trinity of man's oppressors: and it is generally understood that Owenism and Fourierism both gave considerable latitude to affinities and divorces; but this makes it all the more strange that there was no trouble worth mentioning, in any of these Communities, about crossing love-claims. Can it be, we ask ourselves, that Owen had such conflicts with whiskey-tippling, but never a fight with the love-mania? that all through the Fourier experiments, men and women, young men and maidens, by scores and hundreds were tumbled together into unitary homes, and sometimes into log-cabins seventeen feet by twenty-five, and yet no sexual jostlings of any account disturbed the domestic circle? The only conclusion we can come to is, that some of the most important experiences of the transitory Communities have not been surrendered to history.

Nevertheless the troubles that do come to the surface show, as we have said, that human depravity is the dread "Dweller of the Threshold," that lies in wait at every entrance to the mysteries of Socialism.