"The society has admitted some members to labor, and others as boarders from whom no labor was required; and in this they confess their error, and now propose to admit those only who possess the funds for their support.
"The trustees go on to say that 'they desire to express distinctly that they have deferred, for the present, the attempt to have a society of co-operative labor; and they claim for the association only the title of a Preliminary Social Community.'
"After describing the moral qualifications of members, who may be admitted without regard to color, they propose that each one shall yearly throw $100 into the common fund for board alone, to be paid quarterly in advance. Each one was also to build for himself or herself a small brick house, with piazza, according to a regular plan, and upon a spot of ground selected for the purpose, near the center or the lands of Nashoba."
This communication is signed by Frances Wright, Richardson Whitby, Camilla Wright Whitby, and Robert Dale Owen, as resident trustee, and is dated Feb. 1, 1828.
"It is probable that success did not further attend the experiment, for Francis Wright abandoned it soon after, and in June following removed to New Harmony, where, in conjunction with William Owen, she assumed for a short time the management of the New Harmony Gazette, which then had its name altered to the New Harmony and Nashoba Gazette or Free Enquirer.
"Her biographer says that she abandoned, though not without a struggle, the peaceful shades of Nashoba, leaving the property in the charge of an individual, who was to hold the negroes ready for removal to Hayti the year following. In relinquishing her experiment in favor of the race, she held herself equally pledged to the colored families under her charge, to the southern state in which she had been a resident citizen, and to the American community at large, to remove her dependents to a country free to their color. This she executed a year after."
This Communistic experiment and failure was nearly simultaneous with that of New Harmony, and was the immediate antecedent of Frances Wright's famous lecturing-tour. In December 1828 she was raising whirlwinds of excitement by her eloquence in Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York; and soon after the New Harmony Gazette, under the title of The Free Enquirer, was removed to the latter city, where it was ably edited several years by Frances Wright and Robert Dale Owen.