Under these general regulations a great number, as I have said, enrolled themselves, and they may be considered therefore to constitute, as it were, a Knight Templar commandery within a Fellowcraft lodge. All are "brethren;" these are illustrious brethren. All are pashas; these are "of many tails." All are mandarins of heaven; these wear the supreme button.
But the temporal object of the Order was not served by such transfers of moral obligations; by the hypothecation of personal piety; by the investment of spiritual principles in a common fund. You cannot get much working capital out of mortgages on a man's soul. Calchas complained bitterly when the Athenian public paid their vows to the goddess in squashes. The collector, he said, would not take them in payment of the water-rates. So it has fared with the Order of Enoch. It is wealthy in good intentions, and if promises were dollars could draw large checks.
Here and there, however, local fervour took practical shape. The Kings of Kingston planted their family flag on the wind-swept Circleville plain. At Sunset another communistic colony was established, and in Long Valley, in the canyons of the Rio Virgin, was inaugurated the "United Order of Orderville."
Situated in a beautiful valley that needs nothing more added to it to make its inhabitants entirely self-supporting; directed and controlled with as much business shrewdness as fervent piety; supported by its members with a sensible regard for mutual interests—this Orderville experiment bids fair to be a signal success. In their Articles Of Association the members call themselves a Corporation which is "to continue in existence for a period of twenty-five years," and of which the objects are every sort of "rightful" enterprise and industry that may render the Order independent of outside produce and manufactures, "consistent with the Constitution of the United States and the laws of this Territory." Its capital is fixed at $100,000, in 10,000 shares of $10 each, and the entire control of its affairs is vested in a board of nine directors, who are elected by a ballot of the whole community. Article 13 "the individual or private property of the states that stockholders shall not be liable for the debts or obligations of the company." Article 15 is as follows: "The directors shall have the right and power to declare dividends on said stock whenever, in their judgment, there are funds for that purpose due and payable."
Now, in these two last articles lie the saving principles of the Orderville scheme, Hitherto, from the beginning of the world, experiments in communism have always split upon this rock, namely, that individuality was completely crushed out. No man was permitted to possess "private" property—he was l'enfant de la République, body and soul—and no man, therefore, had sufficient personal identity to make it possible for individual profits to accrue to him. And so the best of the young men—let the experiment be at any date in history you like—became dissatisfied with the level at which they were kept, and they seceded. They insisted on having names of their own, and refused to be merely, like the members of a jail republic, known by numbers. Individuality and identity are the original data of human consciousness. They are the first solid facts which a baby masters and communicates; they are the last that old age surrenders to infirmity and death. But in Orderville, it will be seen, the notion of "private" property exists. It is admitted that there is such a thing as "individual" ownership. Moreover, it is within the power of the board to pay every man a dividend. This being the case, this particular experiment in communism has the possibility of great success, for its members are not utterly deprived of all individuality. They have some shreds of it left to them.
To become a member of the Order there is no qualification of property necessary. The aged and infirm are accepted in charity. Indeed, at one time they threatened to swamp the family altogether, for the brethren seemed to have set out with a dead-weight upon them heavier than they could bear. But this has righted itself. The working members have got the ship round again, and in one way or another a place and a use has been found for every one. Speaking generally, however, membership meant the holding of stock in the corporation. If a man wished to join the Order, he gave in to the Bishop a statement of his effects. It was left to his conscience that this statement should be complete and exhaustive; that there should be no private reservations. These effects—whatever they might be, from a farm in another part of the Territory to the clothes in his trunk—were appraised by the regular staff, and the equivalent amount in stock, at $10 a share, was issued to them. From that time his ownership in his property ceased. His books would perhaps go into the school-house library, his extra blankets next door, his horse into a neighbour's team. According to his capacities, also, he himself fell at once into his place among the workers, going to the woollen factory or the carpenter's shop, the blacksmith's forge or the dairy, the saw-mills or the garden, the grist-mill or the farm, according as his particular abilities gave promise of his being most useful. His work here would result, as far as he was personally concerned, in no profits. But he was assured of a comfortable house, abundant food, good clothes. The main responsibilities of life were therefore taken off his shoulders. The wolf could never come to his door. He and his were secured against hunger and cold. But beyond this? There was only the approbation of his companions, the reward of his conscience. With the proceeds of his labour, or by the actual work of his own hands, he saw new buildings going up, new acres coming under cultivation. But none of them belonged to him. He never became a proprietor, an owner, a master. While therefore he was spared the worst responsibilities of life, he was deprived of its noblest ambitions. He lived without apprehensions, but without hopes too. If his wife was ill or his children sickly, there were plenty of kind neighbours to advise and nurse and look after them. No anxieties on such matters need trouble him. But if he had any particular taste—music, botany, anything—he was unable to gratify it, unless these same kindly neighbours agreed to spend from the common fund in order to buy him a violin or a flower-press—and they could hardly be expected to do so. Quite apart from the fact that a man learning to play a new instrument is an enemy of his kind, you could not expect a community of graziers, farmers, and artisans to be unanimously enthusiastic about the musical whims of one of their number, still less for his "crank" in collecting "weeds"—as everything that is not eatable (or is not a rose) is called in most places of the West. Tastes, therefore, could not be cultivated for the want of means, and any special faculties which members might individually possess were of necessity kept in abeyance. Amid scenery that might distract an artist, and fossil and insect treasures enough to send men of science crazy, the community can do nothing in the direction of Art or of Natural History, unless they all do it together. For the Order cannot spare a man who may be a good ploughman, to go and sit about in the canyons painting pictures of pine-trees and waterfalls. Nor can it spare the money that may be needed for shingles in buying microscopes for a "bug-hunter." The common prosperity, therefore, can only be gained at a sacrifice of all individual tastes. This alone is a very serious obstacle to success of the highest kind. But in combination with this is of course the more general and formidable fact that even in the staple industries of the community individual excellence brings with it no individual benefits. A moral trades-unionism planes all down to a level. It does not, of course, prevent the enthusiast working his very hardest and best in the interests of his neighbours. But such enthusiasm is hardly human. Men will insist, to the end of all time, on enjoying the reward of their own labours, the triumphs of their own brains. Some may go so far as nominally to divide their honours with all their friends. But where shall we look for the man who will go on all his life toiling successfully for the good of idler folks, and checking his own free stride to keep pace with their feebler steps? And this is the rock on which all such communities inevitably strike.
Security from the ordinary apprehensions of life; a general protection against misfortune and "bad seasons;" the certainty of having all the necessaries of existence, are sufficient temptations for unambitious men. But the stronger class of mind, though attracted to it by piety, and retained for a while by a sincere desire to promote the common good, must from their very nature revolt against a permanent alienation of their own earnings, and a permanent subordination of their own merits. At Orderville, therefore, we find the young men already complaining of a system which does not let them see the fruits of their work. Their fathers' enthusiasm brought them there as children. Seven years later they are grown up into independent-minded young men. They have not had experience of family anxieties yet. All they know is, that beyond Orderville there are larger spheres of work, and more brilliant opportunities for both hand and head.
Fortunately, however, for Orderville, the articles of incorporation give the directors the very powers that are necessary, and if these are exercised the ship may miss the rock that has wrecked all its predecessors. If they can declare dividends, open private accounts, and realize the idea of personal property, the difference in possibilities between the outer world and Orderville will be very greatly reduced, while the advantage of certainties in Orderville will be even further increased. Young men would then think twice about going away, and any one if he chose could indulge his wife with a piano or himself with a box of water-colours. Herein then lies the hopefulness of the experiment; and fortunately Mr. Howard Spencer, the President of the community, has all the generosity to recognize the necessity for concession to younger ambition, and all the courage to institute and carry out a modification of communism which shall introduce more individuality. I anticipate, therefore, that this very remarkable and interesting colony will survive the "twenty-five years" period for which it was established, and will encourage the foundation of many other similar "Family Orders."
Seven years have passed since Mr. Spencer pitched his camp in the beautiful wilderness of the Rio Virgin canyons. He found the hills of fine building-stone, their sides thickly grown with splendid pine timber, and down the valley between them flowing a bright and ample stream. The vegetation by its variety and luxuriance gave promise of a fertile soil; some of the canyons formed excellent natural meadows, while just over the ridge, a mile or two from the settlement, lay a bed of coal. Finally, the climate was delightfully temperate! Every condition of success, therefore, was found together, and prosperity has of course responded to the voice of industry. Acre by acre the wild gardens have disappeared, and in their place stand broad fields of corn; the tangled brakes of wild-berry plants have yielded their place to orchards of finer fruits; cattle and sheep now graze in numbers where the antelope used to feed; and from slope to slope you can hear among the pines, above the idle crooning of answering doves and the tinkling responses of wandering kine, the glad antiphony of the whirring saw-mill and the busy loom.
The settlement itself is grievously disappointing in appearance. For as you approach it, past the charming little hamlet of Glendale, past such a sunny wealth of orchard and meadow and corn-land, past such beautiful glimpses of landscape, you cannot help expecting a scene of rural prettiness in sympathy with such surroundings. But Orderville at first sight looks like a factory. The wooden shed-like buildings built in continuous rows, the adjacent mills, the bare, ugly patch of hillside behind it, give the actual settlement an uninviting aspect. But once within the settlement, the scene changes wonderfully for the better. The houses are found, the most of them, built facing inwards upon an open square, with a broad side-walk, edged with tamarisk and mulberry, box-elder and maple-trees, in front of them. Outside the dwelling-house square are scattered about the school-house, meeting-house, blacksmith and carpenters' shops, tannery, woollen-mill, and so forth, while a broad roadway separates the whole from the orchards, gardens, and farm-lands generally. Specially noteworthy here are the mulberry orchard—laid out for the support of the silk-worms, which the community are now rearing with much success—and the forcing-ground and experimental garden, in which wild flowers as well as "tame" are being cultivated. Among the buildings the more interesting to me were the school-houses, well fitted up, and very fairly provided with educational apparatus; and the rudimentary museum, where the commencement of a collection of the natural curiosities of the neighbourhood is displayed. What this may some day grow into, when science has had the chance of exploring the surrounding hills and canyons, it is difficult to say; for Nature has favoured Orderville profusely with fossil strata and mineral eccentricities, a rich variety of bird and insect life, and a prodigious botanical luxuriance. Almost for the first time in my travels, too, I found here a very intelligent interest taken in the natural history of the locality; but the absence of books and of necessary apparatus, as yet of course prevents the brethren from carrying on their studies and experiments to any standard of scientific value.