Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs

by John Thomas Codman

Yes! O devil, the kingdoms and the glory of them are there before us. But know this—they do not belong unto thee to give. Thou poor devil, always mocked and always mocking. Have not six thousand years taught thee yet, that self-love is always a suicide? Thou wilt give the kingdoms of the world as thou always hast, first by stealing them for thy slaves, and then stealing them from thy slaves? No! thou forlorn devil, thy rule is ended, thy sceptre snapped into shivers; henceforth thou art so wholly accursed, that God and man will heartily forgive thee, whenever thou canst forgive thyself.

"Duty of Associationists to the Cause," by Horace Greeley. From the Harbinger of Oct. 25, 1845.

Through the last four or five years, the doctrine of Association has been widely disseminated through the country. The labors of its ardent advocates, few but faithful, have been ably seconded by some portion of the press, and both have been immensely aided by the course of events. The great themes of political discussion in our day—the tariff and the currency—lead directly to a consideration of the conditions of labor, of the relations between producers and products, of mutual rights and respective interests of employers and employed. The existence of extreme destitution and consequent misery in the midst of general prosperity and plenty, of willing hands vainly seeking employment amid unsurpassed industrial activity and thrift, cannot have escaped attention. The disasters resulting from industrial anarchy, from "strikes" of operatives for higher wages or fewer hours of labor, the stoppage of work by combinations if not by outright violence, arrest general attention.

Truly the remedy for these errors and evils has yet been perceived and embraced by comparatively few, but the conviction that the present organization of industry cannot be advantageously maintained, and some radical change is at hand, must have already forced itself upon very many intelligent and candid minds. The readjustment of the relations of capital and labor on a basis of harmony and mutual advantage, is manifestly the great problem of the age. But that a change is at hand is evident: the practical question regards not its probability or certainty, but its character.

The more intelligent and wealthy class have it in their power so to mould this change as to render it peaceful, gradual and universally beneficent; or they can turn a deaf ear to the calls of humanity, and let the demagogue, the envious, the selfishly discontented, pervert it into an engine of convulsion, destruction and desolation. As in the days of King John, the barons laid the foundations of English political liberty, so in our day the intellectual and philanthropic may guide the car of progress, and in establishing industrial harmony may secure to all but the stubbornly vicious or incurably afflicted, true independence and ample means of subsistence and development; or they can indolently leave all to the benighted and malignant, and see reproduced a war of classes, different indeed in its weapons and its physical aspects, but not different in its essential character from the ravages of France by the Jacquerie or the butcheries of the reign of terror.

In this crisis of events, with an industrial war plainly threatened and partially commenced, the doctrine of Association appears as a mediator and reconciler. Its bow of promise shines broadly in the lurid sky; it irradiates the murky visage of the gathering, muttering tempest. It awakens a hope, and the only well grounded hope, of averting the miseries of an insane struggle between those who ought to be the closest allies, to see which can the more injure the other. Need I urge that in this crisis the friends of Association ought to be most earnest and untiring in the promulgation and advocacy of their faith; that they ought to improve the opportunities which are daily presented of commending the truth to others whose minds are but newly prepared to receive it? What Associationist so dull that he cannot improve every "strike," every collision respecting the hours or the wages of labor, to the advancement of the good cause?

To do this with effect, we must be, in the true sense of an abused term, catholic. We must not suffer Association to be merged in mere partisanship for any class or calling, or blind hostility to any abuse or oppression. We are not the champions of the slave or the hired servant, the factory girl or the housemaid, the seamstress or the washerwoman. We are not the advocates merely of labor against capital, of the employers as opposed to the employed. Ours is the cause of all classes and vocations, and our success is the triumph of all. We are in danger of becoming partial and one-sided; let us take special care to overcome it.

But it is not enough that we give our testimony in behalf of this benign truth; it behooves us to be doers of the work as well as hearers and commenders. Friends of Association! scattered over the face of our wide country! do you realize this? Do you feel that your works ought to justify and fortify your words? We are surrounded by a world full of want, vice and misery, which Association realized would greatly modify and ultimately cure. But those who know nothing of this truth will never cause it to be realized; it would be absurd to expect anything of the kind. The work must be accomplished by us, and by those whom our acts rather than words shall win over to a knowledge of the truth. Is not the work of sufficient importance to incite you to embark heartily in its furtherance?

But, says one, how can I engage practically in realizing Association? My family and friends are vehemently adverse to it; I am engrossed by responsibilities and duties of various kinds which I cannot uprightly escape, and which confine me where I am. I am not yet prepared, if I ever should be, to embark in Association.

Very well, you are not required to embark in it in the way your objection contemplates. You are urged only to contribute to the great work according to your ability and in a mode not inconsistent with the proper discharge of all your duties. But many who cannot personally enlist in the pioneer groups who for the next ten years will be engaged in preparing the ground on which Associations are ultimately to arise, are yet able to contribute something of their time and means to the cause of humanity's emancipation from brutal drudgery.