Allen and Orvis, the lecturing missionaries of Fourierism sent out by Brook Farm in 1847, passed through Central New York in the course of their tour, and in their reports of their experiences to the Harbinger, thus bewailed the disastrous effects of Collins's experiment:
"In Syracuse our meetings were almost a failure. Collins's Skaneateles 'Hunt of Harmony,' or fight to conquer a peace, his infidelity, his disastrous failure after making such an outcry in behalf of a better order of society, and the ignorance of the people, who have not intelligence enough to discriminate between a true Constructive Reform, and the No-God, No-Government, No-Marriage, No-Money, No-Meat, No-Salt, No-Pepper system of Community, but think that Collins was a 'Furyite' just like ourselves, has closed the ears of the people in this neighborhood against our words."
CHAPTER XVI.
SOCIAL ARCHITECTS.[ToC]
Thus far we have been disposing of the preludes of Fourierism. Before commencing the memoirs of the regular Phalanxes (which is the proper name of the Fourier Associations), we will devote a chapter or two to general views of Fourierism, as compared with other forms of Socialism, and as it was practically developed in this country.
Parke Godwin was one of the earliest and ablest of the American expositors of Fourierism; second only, perhaps, to Albert Brisbane. In his "Popular View of the Doctrines of Charles Fourier" (an octavo pamphlet of 120 pages published in 1844), he has a chapter on "Social Architects," in which he proposes the following classification: