FRENCH AND GERMAN
SOCIALISM IN MODERN TIMES

BY
RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY AND DIRECTOR OF THE SCHOOL
OF ECONOMICS, POLITICAL SCIENCE, AND HISTORY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1900

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

All rights reserved.

PREFATORY NOTE.

The publication of this volume is due to the friendly counsel of the Hon. Andrew D. White, president of Cornell University; a gentleman tireless in his efforts to encourage young men, and alive to every opportunity to speak fitting words of hope and cheer. Like many of the younger scholars of our country, I am indebted to him more than I can say.

The present work is based on lectures delivered in Baltimore before the students of the Johns Hopkins University, and in Ithaca before the students of Cornell University. Although these lectures have been thoroughly revised and, in fact, rewritten, traces of this origin will be found in a certain freedom of style and matter, which will, I trust, render the book neither less interesting nor less instructive.

My aim is to give a perfectly fair, impartial presentation of modern communism and socialism in their two strongholds, France and Germany. I believe that, in so doing, I am rendering a service to the friends of law and order.

Richard T. Ely.

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, August 3, 1883.

CONTENTS.

FRENCH AND GERMAN SOCIALISM
IN
MODERN TIMES.

CHAPTER I.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE LABORING CLASSES.

Communism and Socialism represent different and yet allied movements of theory and practice. They aim to improve the common lot of humanity, in particular that of the lower classes, in a radical manner and by the application of thoroughgoing measures. Now, when we utter the word improvement we indicate a desire to change, and consequently dissatisfaction with the state which is to be changed. This brings us at once to the common standing-ground of politico-economic reformers. They are one and all dissatisfied with the present condition of society. We have, therefore, in the first place, to examine the accusations which are brought against the social régime of our time.

Complaints against the methods of producing and distributing wealth are not new; complaints of such a character as we hear at present, however, have originated since the middle of the eighteenth century. Before the French Revolution, dissatisfaction with the then existing order of things had been expressed often enough, and had even led to rebellion; but the economic life of Christendom was then different from what it is now, and consequently the discontent and the proposed measures of reform were not of the same nature. While the study of the condition of the laboring classes in ancient times and the Middle Ages is highly profitable, it is not necessary to go farther back than the latter part of the eighteenth century to obtain a tolerably accurate notion of existing socialism and communism.

A brief examination of the peculiarities of modern socialistic schemes will make this plain. One of these is to be found in the developed self-consciousness and awakened desires of the poor, taking their origin in democratic institutions and increased enlightenment. Another is the greater prominence given to capital in the present system of production. Disputes concerning capital-profit and wages now lead to communistic and socialistic schemes. “Such war-cries,” to use the words of Schäffle’s “Socialism as Presented by Kaufmann,” “as we find Lassalle raising against capital, would not have been even understood among the ancients and the oppressed classes of the Middle Ages. The promises held out by agitators to the masses now are: equal rights for all, no monopolies, liberty and equality for the people. Liberalism itself has paved the way to communism. The right of coalition among laborers for their own interests, liberty of the press, the extension of the suffrage, together with the facility of rapid and cheap inter-communication by post and telegraph, afford laborers the means for united action where their interests are at stake. The working-man of our day has a consciousness of his own power quite unparalleled by any of his compeers in former ages.”

A third peculiarity of modern forms of communism and socialism is their cosmopolitan and practical character. All the plans of reformers, described in this work, were meant to be executed and to inaugurate a new era in the development of humanity. Attempts have been made, or are being made, to realize every one of them. Older socialistic schemes are of two kinds. Those of the first class were applied only to sects or small associations. Such were the communities of Buddhist and Christian monks and the villages of the Essenes in Judea. Those of the second class were dreamy and speculative. No attempt was made by their authors or any group of immediate disciples to regenerate the world by substituting them for existing social and economic organizations. Of this character were the “Republic” of Plato and the “Utopia” of Sir Thomas More. Even the speculations of French writers immediately preceding the Revolution, like Mably, Morelly, Brissot de Warville, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, were of this kind. Jean Brissot, for example, tickled the palates of those craving literary and philosophical sensation by declaring private property theft, and then defended private property in the National Convention of 1792;[1] while Rousseau, only a few months after lamenting that the first man who laid claim to property had not been instantly denounced as the arch foe of the human race, speaks respectfully in his “Political Economy” of property as the basis of the social compact, whose first condition was that every one should be protected in its enjoyment.[2] Morley says of him that he “never thought of the subversion of society or its reorganization on a communistic basis,” and that would hold generally of French socialistic thinkers before 1789. Modern socialists and communists, on the other hand, not only think of a reorganization of society, but work with might and main to accomplish it. This at once draws a broad line between them. This difference finds expression in new designations. A man without property is no longer what he was previous to the French Revolution—viz., a poor man; he is a proletarian, while the class to which he belongs are not called collectively the poor, but the proletariat.

Previous to the French Revolution an attempt had been made to embrace all the inhabitants of a state in some shape in a fixed and definite social organism. There were the ruling classes, consisting of the nobility and the clergy, and the commons. The latter were, to be sure, hewers of wood and carriers of water for the two higher estates, but they were bound to them in a certain manner. The feudal lord usually felt some sort of concern for the welfare of his vassals, looked after their interests, when these interests were attacked by others, and in a general way afforded them protection to be found only in his wealth and power. The greatest of the feudal lords, the sovereign, was the mighty father of all, and his government was often a shield to the weak and helpless. The third estate, the bourgeoisie—those who pursued trades and commerce—were connected together, and with the rest of society, by guilds and corporations. The arrangements of these institutions brought into close personal contact master and laborers. Manufactures were conducted in small shops, where the employer worked side by side with two or three journeymen and apprentices, the latter living in the master’s house. According to the rules of the guilds the apprentice became a journeyman in a few years, and the journeyman rose in time to the rank of master. Thus there were common experiences and common feelings to unite employers and employed. They were not distinct and separate classes, with interests sharply antagonistic to one another.

It is so unusual to hear one speak a good word for the institutions of the Middle Ages, that I fear the reader will be tempted to exclaim, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” But that it may not be necessary to take my ipse dixit for believing that there was a favorable side to feudalism, I will quote the testimony of Thorold Rogers, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Oxford, and one of the most distinguished economists of our time. “It is in vain to rejoice over the aggregate of our prosperity,” says Professor Rogers, in his “History of Agriculture and Prices,”[3] “and to forget that great part of the nation has no share in its benefits. It may be that the wisdom of our forefathers was accidental; it is certain that society was divided by less sharp lines, and was held together by common ties in a far closer manner, in the times which it has been my fortune to study [the Middle Ages], than it is now. The feudal system of the Middle Ages was one of mutual interests; its theory of property involved far more exacting duties than modern rights ever acknowledge, or remember, or perhaps know.”

The war of La Vendée, in the French Revolution, gives striking corroboration of this view of feudalism. In the western part of France, particularly in Anjou, feudal institutions still retained their better characteristics, while in other provinces large landed proprietors intrusted their estates to agents, that they might lead idle and dissipated lives in Paris. The landlords of La Vendée and the surrounding country lived on their manors, and took a paternal interest in the well-being of their peasants and dependents. The relations of Church and people were those of protection and affection. The result was the obstinate adherence of this part of France to the old order of things, and the stubborn resistance of the peasants of Anjou and Poitou to the revolution.[4]

Yes, it is true; much more can be said in favor of the social organization of the Middle Ages than is commonly supposed. Nor were those times so backward as many think. Cities like Nuremberg, in Germany, show remains of the civilization of the Middle Ages which convince one that a considerable grandeur had then been attained, and that the people of those times were by no means in every respect inferior to us. But the framework of this past civilization, not admitting of expansion, broke to pieces. It was not large enough for the modern growth of population and wealth. Its institutions were abused by those in power, and in a time of general corruption and oppression they fell with a terrible crash. The French Revolution swept them away forever. While this revolution formed one of the grandest epochs in history, it left society in a singularly disorganized state. No one appeared to be connected with his fellow-man. Each one stood alone by himself. The individualistic and atomistic condition of modern society had begun. In the reaction which followed upon restraint this was thought to be an unmixed good. Each one was left free to pursue his own interests in his own way. Commerce and industries took a wonderful start, and by the aid of inventions and discoveries expanded in such a rapid and all-embracing manner as to astound the world. It is probable that as we, after more than two thousand years, look back upon the time of Pericles with wonder and astonishment as an epoch great in art and literature, posterity two thousand years hence will regard our era as forming an admirable and unparalleled epoch in the history of industrial invention. During this time of growth and increasing wealth it was at first generally thought that everything was moving along finely. The third estate had been emancipated. Its members had no longer to bear alone the burdens of government. It betook itself to trade and manufactures, grew wealthy, and became the bourgeoisie of modern political economy. But speedily a fourth estate was discovered, whose members consisted of dependents—workers for daily wages. What had been done for them? They had also nominal freedom, but did they enjoy actual freedom? They were in possession of political equality, but had they advanced one single step in the direction of social and economic equality? There were not wanting those who went even further than to answer both of these questions in the negative. They pointed to the fact that the weak and needy had, as never before, lost all connection with the strong and powerful. Hundreds of laborers crowded in a single shop lost all personal feeling with their one employer. Formerly the distance between journeyman and master was slight, and the passage from the one condition to the other could invariably be effected by diligence and ability. This change of condition now became absolutely impossible for the greater number. The majority of those engaged in manufactures must, in the nature of things, remain common laborers. A few, unusually gifted or favored, might hope to rise, but even for them it became ever more difficult to ascend the social ladder. On the one hand, the division of labor was carried so far that the labor performed by each was exceedingly simple. Instead of taxing the ingenuity, and thereby conducing to mental development, the endless repetition and sameness of the labor tended to make one stupid. On the other hand, inventions rendered it necessary not only to employ an ever-increasing number of machines, but to make use of those which were constantly becoming more expensive.[5] The gulf between employer and employed widened unceasingly. The employer, losing personal feeling with his laborers, too often forgot that they were men with natures like his own. Frequently, it must be acknowledged, he looked upon them as mere beasts of burden, and regarded their labor in the same light as any other commodity which was sold in the market-place. They were hired for the cheapest price, worked to the utmost limit of endurance, and, when used-up, thrown aside like any other old and worthless machine. The capitalist grew richer, and among the higher classes of society luxury and extravagance increased. The laborer, noticing all this, asked himself if his lot had in any respect improved. He was inclined to deny that it had. His daily bread was not earned with less toil, nor was he surer of an opportunity to work. His existence was as uncertain and as full of anxiety as ever. Being brought together in large shops with those in like condition, he talked over his wrongs and sufferings with them. A class-feeling was developed. The heartlessness and assumed superiority of those who had become suddenly, and often by mere chance, wealthy were looked upon with frowns and gloomy countenances foreboding no good. The harsh separation in material goods between these parvenus and the lower classes was accompanied by no mitigating circumstances. In the case of the old and wealthy families of a more ancient era the superiority in wealth appeared more just, on account of lapse of time and a certain superiority in intellect and manners. They were, to a considerable extent, superior beings in other respects than mere externals. The new rich looked down upon and despised the orders from which they had so recently escaped, and were, in turn, hated by those beneath them. A division of society into caste-like classes was taking place. The rich were becoming richer; it was thought the poor were becoming poorer. Free competition imposed no restraints upon the powerful. They were at liberty to exploit the poor to their heart’s content. The strength on the one side was so great, and the capability of resistance on the other so insignificant, that there could exist no real freedom of contract. As Sismondi said, the rich man labored to increase his capital, the poor man to satisfy the cravings of his stomach. The one can wait, the demands of the other are imperative. To the laborers their state appeared like “a hell without escape and without end” (Mehring). They were prepared to listen to those who should preach them a gospel of hope, even if it involved violent change. Revolution might help them; it could not render their lot more hopeless. They were ready to examine more critically the evils of society, when bidden to do so by their leaders. Verily, they did not need to search long to discover many sore spots on the social body. The luxurious immorality of the parvenus in European capitals made no attempt to conceal itself. When the laborers were told that their wives and daughters were considered rightful booty by the wealthy, they remembered women of their class who had fallen a prey to the fascination of wealth and the elegance of the higher classes, and were angry. The peace of many of them had been ruthlessly destroyed by some rich voluptuary. Perhaps a poor father, thinking of a fair daughter, whose employer in shop or factory had taken advantage of his position and her need to seduce her, gnashed his teeth in rage, and was ready to swear eternal vengeance against the bourgeoisie.[6]

But these things were noticed by the more thoughtful among the higher classes. They were bitterly disappointed. The doctrines of political and economic liberalism had been expected to usher in the millennium, and instead of that they beheld the same wretched, unhappy, sinful world, which they thought they had left. If there had been progress in the general condition of humanity, it was so slight that it was a matter of dispute. Many, finding things in such a sad condition, one so different from what they had expected, affirmed boldly that we had been going from bad to worse.

In speaking of Lamennais, the distinguished French Christian socialist, the Rev. Mr. Kaufmann, an English clergyman, describes the grief that eminent man experienced, as he observed the economic development of society after the great French Revolution:[7] “It was Lamennais’ fate to see three revolutionary waves pass over his country, and to watch with sorrow and bitterness of heart the disappointments to which they gave rise. He had seen the sore distress of the people whose condition the political changes of the first revolution left to all intents and purposes unimproved. It had, in fact, given rise to new social grievances. In destroying patriarchal relationships and feudal bonds of social union, it had handed over the masses to the tender mercies of free contract and competition. The introduction of machinery, with the rise of modern industry, had a pauperizing effect, and intensified popular discontent. Hence the various socialistic and communistic schemes for the liberation of the working-classes from the ‘tyranny of capital,’ and the attempts to promote the free association of labor by means of voluntary co-operation following in the wake of revolution.

“Every section of society was represented in this revolt against the excessive individualism of the laissez-faire system as the result of the new social contract. Among the saviours of society who rose rapidly one after another—Saint-Simon, on the part of aristocratic crétins impoverished by the revolution; Fourier, as the spokesman of the aggrieved lower middle-class, in danger of being crushed by the superior force of the plutocracy; Babœuf, representing the communistic materialism of the ‘common people’—each in their own way had their theories of social reconstruction; ... whilst a small band of generously minded churchmen, with Lamennais at their head, made it their object to save society by means of spiritual regeneration.”

A reaction against liberalism set in. This was of two kinds. A romantic party, represented by Adam Müller, and a conservative party, represented by the Kreuzzeitung, advocated a return to the social organization of the Middle Ages. They dreamed of a golden age in the past, in which humble simplicity and trustful dependence on the part of the laborer were met by generous benevolence and protecting care on the part of the master. They thought it possible to restore a time in which the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, happy and contented because a kind Providence had granted him salt for his potatoes, filled an ideal position.

The communistic and socialistic parties, on the other hand, urged the necessity of an advance to a totally new form of society. Very unlike in many respects, in others these parties resemble and sympathize with each other. The accusations which they bring against our present condition of society are so similar that one often does not know whether one is reading the production of a social democrat or of an ultra-conservative.

I will quote the indictment of the great socialist, Karl Marx, against liberalism, which, it will be seen, might just as well have been written by a conservative. In fact, if I had been shown the passage and told that it appeared in the Kreuzzeitung, I should not have been in the least surprised. “Although the liberals,” says Marx, “have not carried out their principles in any land as yet completely, still, the attempts which have been made are sufficient to prove the uselessness of their efforts. They endeavored to free labor, but only succeeded in subjecting it more completely under the yoke of capitalism; they aimed at setting at liberty all labor powers, and only riveted the chains of misery which held them bound; they wanted to release the bondman from the clod, and deprived him of the soil on which he stood by buying up the land; they yearned for a happy condition of society, and only created superfluity on one hand and dire want on the other; they desired to secure for merit its own honorable reward, and only made it the slave of wealth; they wanted to abolish all monopolies, and placed in their stead the monster monopoly, capital; they wanted to do away with all wars between nation and nation, and kindled the flames of civil war; they wanted to get rid of the state, and yet have multiplied its burdens; they wanted to make education the common property of all, and made it the privilege of the rich; they aimed at the greatest moral improvement of society, and only left it in a state of rotten immorality; they wanted, to say all in a word, unbounded liberty, and have produced the meanest servitude; they wanted the reverse of all that which they actually obtained, and have thus given a proof that liberalism in all its ramifications is nothing but a perfect Utopia.”[8]

Before considering separately the different varieties of communism and socialism it is necessary to say a few words about the proper method of treating the subject. The movements indicated by the words communism and socialism are designed to aid especially the lower classes. If mankind generally were as happily situated as are what we call the middle and higher classes, these systems would never have been heard of. The members of the upper classes have nothing to hope from communism or socialism, but have much which they might possibly lose—I say possibly, because I wish to express it in the most favorable manner. If wealthy and well-to-do writers and politicians oppose social reform they are consequently often suspected of advocating their own selfish interests exclusively. They are not likely, therefore, to have much success in converting socialists and communists, unless they manifest in word and deed their sincere concern for the welfare of their poorer brethren. I think, therefore, that we ought to strive first of all to understand thoroughly the various systems of social reformers, and then to describe them in such manner that their supporters themselves could not find fault with our representation. A kindly, well-disposed criticism might follow, with hope of doing some good. To understand people, however, we must have some sort of sympathy (σύν-παθος—Mitleiden) with them. We shall not be likely to comprehend a social system, if we approach it with coldness or, still worse, with hatred. The severe Protestant is not likely to appreciate a Madonna of Raphael, unless he is able for a time to forget his Protestantism and enter into the feelings of the devout Roman Catholic. As Carlyle so finely says, “the heart lying dead, the eye cannot see.” So, to obtain an adequate idea of socialism and of the justice of its claims, we must imagine ourselves for the time being laborers, with all their trials and sufferings. We must endeavor to think ourselves into (hineindenken) their condition. Nor let us suppose that there is anything to be feared from a disclosure of the full truth. It is only from the opposite course that danger is to be apprehended. As a distinguished American political economist has well said: “The time has passed for dealing with the masses as children who are to be treated to truth in quantities and on occasions suited to their welfare or the interests of society. The political economist only abandons his ground of vantage and forfeits the confidence of the community when he accepts any responsibility for the use that may be made of the truth he discovers and discloses.”[9]

Bearing this thought in mind, even a hasty examination of the vast majority of books written on socialism and communism shows how utterly worthless they are. Their authors start out with such intense hatred of all socialistic systems, that it is simply impossible for them to understand these systems. But the worst of it is, that they couple their misunderstanding with such hard words and severe epithets as to excite bad blood and drive the various classes of society farther apart than ever. The wealthier classes lose their ardor for reform, and the poorer people become enraged. As I write, I take up the first book on Communism which lies at my hand, and, opening it, find communists spoken of as “a hideous fraternity of conspirators.” I turn over a few pages and read this: “To-day there is not in our language, nor in any language, a more hateful word than communism.” Of a sentence uttered by a socialist, this writer says “more pestilent words were never spoken.” On the next page communism is spoken of as “infecting” the Russian universities. “Now,” continues our author, “it poisons the blood and maddens the brains of artisans and peasants.” Such words do more than excite the anger of socialists. They arouse the indignation of every lover of fair play, and convince no one. I take up another work and find that a very different effect is produced on me as I read it. A kindly tone pervades it, which, if it does not convince error, tends at least to obtain the good-will of those whom it combats. This latter work to which I refer consists of “Lectures on Social Questions,” and was written by the Rev. Dr. J. H. Rylance, of St. Mark’s Church, New York, a large-hearted, fair-minded man.

Once for all, we must rid ourselves of the notion that we can persuade people by misrepresenting them and calling them hard names. Such conduct only reacts against ourselves. The folly of such a course has been demonstrated often enough by the history of socialism. A striking instance is given by Mehring in his “History of Social Democracy in Germany” (pp. 96-98).[10] It appears that a large number of working-men’s unions had formed an alliance (Verband deutscher Arbeitervereine), of which the Party of Progress (Fortschrittspartei) had assumed the leadership. This is a political party which was violently opposed to Lassalle, and had considerable sympathy with the doctrines of the Manchester school. When Lassalle began his agitation, the leaders of this party misrepresented his doctrines in shameful manner. It hardly seems as if their misrepresentation could have been otherwise than wilful. They appeared to believe that the end justified the means in fighting so odious an opponent, and that they were not required to treat him fairly and honestly. Well, their programme worked brilliantly for a time. At the meetings of these working-men’s unions members of the Party of Progress used to explain the doctrines of Lassalle in such manner as to place them in a false light, and then let the laborers reject his plans by unanimous votes. Union after union voted against him, and in the summer of 1863 these unions, at their annual meeting, professed the principles of the Progressists, and selected a newspaper edited by a member of that party as their organ. In 1864, at the general meeting of the unions, some followers of Lassalle contradicted the misstatements of the teachings of their master. This produced an effect, and Friedrich A. Lange, who had been elected a member of one of the committees of the alliance of the unions, warned the Progressists against the course they were pursuing, and advocated the fairer, more honorable, and more manly method of warfare. He told them that a reaction would surely set in against themselves, when the laborers heard an adequate statement of Lassalle’s plans, especially if they were presented in his own fiery, eloquent words. But Lange’s earnest warnings were unheeded. The laborers learned how to reply to a fictitious, non-existent Lassalle, but not to the real, living one. Every annual meeting of the working-men’s unions witnessed, accordingly, an approach to social democracy until 1869, when it was accepted without reserve, and the alliance of working-men’s unions was merged into the Social Democratic Working-men’s Party (Social-demokratische Arbeiterpartei). As Mehring forcibly observes: “It is, indeed, a singular misfortune, and manifests a rare lack of tact, to lead to the enemy as welcome auxiliaries not merely single recruits, but entire army corps” (p. 98). Thousands of laborers might have been saved from social democracy if its opponents, in fighting it, had adhered to the maxim, “Honesty is the best policy.” In fact, Mehring attributes the success and popularity of Lassalle more to his enemies than to his own brilliant talents. Falsehoods respecting his teachings were uttered by his opponents without compunction of conscience, and these, when exposed, only gave the laborers new confidence in Lasalle, and less faith than ever in his enemies. Newspapers abused him personally in such manner as to assist him in playing the rôle of a martyr and hero. They spoke of his unripe spirit and of his mental dependence upon a tailor by the name of Weitling, at a time when the most renowned scholars of Germany could not find words with which to express their almost unbounded admiration for his learning and talent.

As I wish to represent communism and socialism fairly, I will at once correct a few popular errors in regard to them.

First, then, it is supposed that advocates of these systems are poor, worthless fellows, who adopt the arts of a demagogue for the promotion in some way of their own interests, perhaps in order to gain a livelihood by agitating laborers and preying upon them. It is thought that they are moved by envy of the wealthier classes, and, themselves unwilling to work, long for the products of diligence and ability. This view is represented by the following well-known lines:

“What is a communist? One who hath yearnings

For equal division of unequal earnings;

Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing

To fork out his penny and pocket your shilling.”

This is certainly a false and unjust view. The leading communists and socialists from the time of Plato up to the present have been, for the most part, men of character, wealth, talent, and high social standing. Of Plato it is unnecessary to speak, since people are not in the habit of calling him a shallow demagogue. Sir Thomas More, the author of the communistic romance “Utopia,” was lovable, learned, and socially honored. Robert Owen, the English communist, was a wealthy manufacturer and a distinguished philanthropist. Of Rodbertus, Marx, and Lassalle I shall speak presently. If we examine the history of even those who are less known among the German social democrats of to-day, we shall discover that a great number have made sacrifices for their faith. Hunted about and persecuted as they are, it is assuredly no light matter to proclaim one’s self a social democrat. While, of course, among communists and socialists, selfishness, meanness, and enough that is contemptible may be found, I do not believe any movement of modern society is able to exhibit a greater amount of unselfish devotion than that they represent.

A second charge against the communists consists in making them responsible for the doings of the Parisian mob in 1871. The error of this has been explained often enough. It is due largely to an accidental resemblance between the words commune and communism. Many who use the word commune glibly have a very imperfect understanding of its significance, and little imagine that it is as harmless and innocent a word as township, and means pretty much the same thing. The commune, with an emphasis on the article, means simply Paris, or, in a secondary sense, the administrative officers collectively governing Paris. France is divided into departments and communes, the same as our states are divided into counties and townships, and Paris by itself forms one of these communes. The insurrection in Paris, of March 18, 1871, was one in favor of extreme local self-government. The idea was to make each commune at least as independent as one of the states of the United States, and to unite all the communes into a confederation with limited powers.[11] The movement in favor of the autonomy of Paris is an old one, and has been supported by many able and respectable Frenchmen. One in favor of the movement is, however, properly called a communalist, and not a communist, and the movement itself is communalism—not communism. A careful study of the decrees of the commune, of the reports and of the various histories which have described its rebellion in 1871, shows that the movement was political, primarily, and only to a very limited extent economic. Even the economic decrees, like the stay-laws, postponing the time for payment of debts due, might be regarded as war measures. However, out of the seventy and more members of the communal government nine or ten were social democrats and members of the International, and it is probable that concessions may have been made to win them and their adherents. They were effectual in this, since the Internationalists were disposed to favor the movement from the start, and that for two reasons. First, believing that their ends can be attained only by revolution, they are inclined to look favorably upon any revolution whatever, as tending to cultivate a revolutionary spirit in the people. Second, they favor the autonomy of large cities, holding that the masses in the cities might more readily be induced to adopt communistic and socialistic reforms, if not held in check by the more conservative rural population.[12]

But let us ask ourselves this question: If all the members of the communal government had been communists in the ordinary sense of the word, would communism have been necessarily condemned? I think that another question will help us to answer this. All the members of that government were republicans: was republicanism then necessarily condemned? No one but a rabid tory would think of giving an affirmative answer to this second question. It is at once seen that the republican form of government is not responsible for the conduct of every scoundrel who professes republican principles.

It is urged further that communism and socialism would destroy religion and the family institution. The reason of this complaint is evident enough. A number of social reformers have been at the same time atheists and advocates of free love. The questions of atheism and free love are, however, totally different from that of even communism, the most radical of all the reforms proposed. There is no necessary connection whatever between them. If it could once be shown that communism were practicable, it would be easy to give many reasons for supposing that in such a society the love between man and wife and parents and children would be freer from selfish and sordid motives than at present.[13] The clergy are partly to blame for the irreligious attitude of many modern socialists. They have too often made themselves the advocates of conservatism simply as conservatism, regardless of all abuses which it embraced. In countries where Church and State are connected, the clergy have been too often a sort of police, assisting the government to maintain existing institutions, and to oppose change, good or bad. They have favored the higher classes, upon whom their support has depended, and neglected the interests of the poor and down-trodden. I do not write this as an enemy of the Church, but as her friend. Nor do I express myself differently from the best of our clergymen at present. Rev. Dr. Rylance, indeed, has, in his “Lectures on Social Questions,” clothed this same thought in stronger language. In one place he says, “The proper relations of Christianity to the legitimate efforts of socialism to improve the condition of the suffering classes will never be understood, or the minds of those now alienated from the religion of Christ will never be disabused of their antipathy, till the essential claims of that religion be set in fairer and fuller light; all the perversions it has suffered being frankly acknowledged, and the wrongs done in its name, as far as possible, atoned for. Your Church histories are full of such perversions, while your most expert apologists cannot disguise the wrongs ... Ecclesiasticism[14] has often been a fraud and a tyranny in history. As the Church grew in power and wealth, it allied itself to power and wealth in the hands of civil rulers and their creatures, and the fruits of the alliance have often been wicked and infamous.”

Dr. Rylance also declares that Christianity is a sort of socialism, and quotes in proof these texts of Scripture, among others: “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another.” “If ye fulfil the royal law, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well; but if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin.” “This commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God, love his brother also.”[15]

“One way of aspersing the doctrines of communism,” says another writer,[16] “is to call them anti-Christian. It is forgotten that the Christian idea of equality underlies all the reasonings of communism, and communism has succeeded only in so far as it was Christian in principle, having for its fundamental maxim brotherly love. In this, communism is much more Christian than the hankering after privileges of the old aristocracy, or the unbounded avarice of the plutocracy.”

There are other false accusations brought against communism and socialism, which it is not necessary to examine now. A well-disposed person will scarcely experience difficulty in separating them from scientific argument.

It behooves us to disabuse our minds of all prejudice and ill-will. It is only thus that we shall be able to meet and overcome the social dangers which threaten even our own country in a not very distant future. We have never had a permanent laboring class, but with the increase of population one is rapidly developing. If it is now becoming extremely difficult for the laborer to rise, what will the condition of things be when we number two hundred millions? And that time is not so far off. At our present rate of increase, it will come when some of us are still living. It is a laboring class without hope of improvement for themselves or their children which will first test our institutions. But he must be singularly blind or unacquainted with the views of the various social classes who is unable to detect even now, in certain quarters, the formation of habits and modes of thought characteristic of the poorer classes in Europe. The fact of this growth was twice brought home to me forcibly two winters ago. As I was walking by the Union League Club-house, in New York city, at the time of its house-warming, while the people were driving up in their fine carriages, one poor fellow stood on the opposite side of the street watching the ladies enter in their luxurious and extravagant toilets. He was a good-looking, intelligent-appearing man, but wore no overcoat. It was a cold evening, and he seemed to me to be shivering. He was evidently thinking of the difference between his lot and that of the fashionable people he was observing; and I heard him mutter bitterly to himself, “A revolution will yet come and level that fine building to the ground.” A friend of mine, about the same time, passed a couple of laborers as he was walking by Mr. Vanderbilt’s new houses on Fifth Avenue. Some kind of bronze work, I believe, was being carried in, and he heard one of them remark, savagely, “The time will come when that will be melted by fire.”

More significant and more ominous still is the reception accorded in this country to a man like John Most, who has been expelled from the social-democratic party in Germany on account of his extreme views, particularly respecting assassination as a means of progress. He has been travelling about the United States, has been warmly received, and listened to with favor by large bodies of workmen while uttering counsels of war and bloodshed. On the 11th of February, 1883, he lectured in Baltimore. It was a cold, rainy, cheerless day, and the sidewalks were so covered with melting snow as to make it extremely unpleasant to venture out of doors. But Most had a full hall of eager listeners. He told the laborers that he had little hope of their overthrowing their oppressors by the use of the ballot. He believed their emancipation would be brought about by violence, as all great reforms in the past had been. He consequently advised them to buy muskets. He said a musket was a good thing to have. If it was not needed now, it could be placed in the corner, and it occupied but little space. The presiding officer, in closing the meeting, emphasized this part of Most’s address particularly. He told the laborers that a piece of paper would never make them free, that a musket was worth a hundred votes, and closed with the lines—

“Nur Pulver und Blei,

Die machen uns frei”—

“lead and powder alone can make us free.” There can be no doubt that a considerable portion of his hearers sympathized with his views. They listened approvingly, and applauded his fiercest remarks most loudly.

Nor is it without significance that in New York alone at least three social democratic newspapers are published. Two of the three use the German language; one of these is a weekly only; the other appears in a daily, a weekly, and a special Sunday edition. The third paper is an English weekly, but it announces the appearance of a daily edition in the near future. The motto of one of these papers—Most’s Freiheit—is “Gegen die Tyrannen sind alle Mittel gesetzlich”—“All measures are legal against tyrants”—i.e., against our employers, against capitalists, against all classes superior to the laboring class.

It is not, however, necessary to take a pessimistic view of our prospects, for it rests with us to shape the future. If we, as a people, become divided into two great hostile camps—those who possess economic goods and those who do not—the one class devoted to luxury and self-indulgence, the other given up to envy and bitterness—then, indeed, dire evils are in store for us; but we have reason to hope better things. The attitude of clergymen like Dr. Howard Crosby[17] and Dr. Rylance, the generosity of our philanthropists, unparalleled in past history, and the noble efforts of noble women to relieve every kind of suffering and distress, lead us to trust that, as new evils arise, strength and wisdom will be vouchsafed us to conquer them, and that among us the idea of the brotherhood of man will ever become more and more a living reality.

CHAPTER II.
BABŒUF.

Socialism, strictly speaking, denotes simply the social system. It is the opposite of individualism. A socialist[18] is one who looks to society organized in the state for aid in bringing about a more perfect distribution of economic goods and an elevation of humanity. The individualist regards each man not as his brother’s keeper but as his own, and desires every man to work out his own salvation, material and spiritual. His advice to government is expressed in the well-known formula, laissez-faire, laissez-passer, that is, let things take care of themselves, do not interfere in the business affairs of the citizens. While the socialist ascribes to the state numerous functions, the individualist admonishes government to do as little as possible. To the one the state is a necessary good; to the other, a necessary evil.

But socialism is also used in a popular sense which renders it nearly equivalent to communism, although the two ought to be distinguished. The central idea of communism is economic equality. It is desired by communists that all ranks and differences in society should disappear, and one man be as good as another, to use the popular phrase. The distinctive idea of socialism is distributive justice. It goes back of the processes of modern life to the fact that he who does not work, lives on the labor of others. It aims to distribute economic goods according to the services rendered by the recipients. We see thus that the word socialist is most inclusive. Every communist is a socialist, and something more. Not every socialist is a communist. We might call a communist an extreme socialist, and thus include under socialists both socialists and communists, though it is in general best to make the distinction. We could not include socialists under communists.

The socialistic and communistic schemes of modern times may be classified as follows:

A. Communism.

• 1. French and English Communism.
• 2. Social Democracy.
• 3. International Communism.

B. Socialism.

• 1. Pure Socialism.
• 2. State and Professorial Socialism.
• 3. Christian Socialism.
• 4. French Collectivism.
• 5. French Anarchists and Blanquists.
• 6. Social Democracy.
• 7. International Socialism.

The most general division is that into communism and socialism. As subdivisions, social democracy and the International figure under both of the leading divisions, as these parties include socialists and communists. Under French communism are included adherents of the French Collectivists, Anarchists, and Blanquists.

Babœuf and Cabet are perhaps the two leading French representatives of pure communism, Babœuf representing that of the French Revolution.[19]

François Noël Babœuf was born in St. Quentin, in the Department of Aisne, in 1764.[20] He appears to have come of a good family, for his father was a major in the Austrian army. The elder Babœuf devoted much attention to his son’s education, and, in particular, took especial pains to give him a good mathematical training; but he died when the young man was only sixteen years of age, and this obliged Babœuf to leave his studies and seek employment. After having filled various subordinate positions, he became a land-surveyor, and was finally elected an administrator of the Department of the Somme; but did not enjoy this post long, for he was soon arrested on a charge of forgery, condemned, and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment. He escaped to Paris and joined the revolutionary movement. Like Mably and numerous speculative thinkers at that time, he was filled with admiration for the socialistic institutions of the Greeks and Romans. He even called himself Gracchus Babœuf, after the Roman tribune, and founded a paper which he named Tribune of the People, and which was the first socialistic newspaper ever published. He signed his articles Caius Gracchus, and in them he attacked the institutions of civilized society and the party which accomplished the Revolution of Thermidor, executed Robespierre and St. Just, and finally terminated the Reign of Terror. His violent abuse of those in authority and his revolutionary projects led to his imprisonment for a few months in 1795. He improved the opportunity to establish a connection with Darthé, Buonarroti and other Jacobins and Terrorists, of whom there were nearly two thousand in the same prison. Upon their release, they formed a conspiracy, called, after its leader, “the conspiracy of Babœuf.” Its object was to overthrow the Directory and introduce the communistic millennium, which they had begun to evolve in the prison. The members of the band called themselves the Equals. They formed a complex and skilfully contrived organization, whose centre was the secret committee of insurrection. This consisted of the following seven members; Babœuf, Buonarroti, Sylvain Maréchal, Felix Lepelletier, Antonelle, Darthé, and Debon. Most of them were journalists. Maréchal was author of a Dictionary of Atheists (“Dictionnaire des Athées”). Paris was divided into districts, in each of which workers and reporters were engaged in propaganda. They did not, however, even know the names of the seven chiefs of the committee of insurrection, a general agent, Didier, acting as intermediary between the committee and other agents.

The activity of the leaders was remarkable, and met with a considerable success in winning adherents. In April, 1796, seventeen thousand men were prepared to join them in an insurrection against the Directory and for the establishment of a communistic republic. A Manifesto of the Equals, prepared by Maréchal, was published and scattered broadcast among the people. It contained a development of their programme, and an invitation to join in the proposed movement. Tracts were distributed in large numbers, and incendiary broadsides were from time to time affixed to the walls. One of the leaders, however, proved false, turned informer, and procured the arrest of the chief conspirators on the 10th of May, 1796. After a considerable delay and a long trial, two of them, Babœuf and Darthé, were condemned to death in the following year, while Buonarroti and six others were sentenced to deportation. Sixty-five were tried, but fifty-six were discharged on account of lack of evidence. Babœuf and Darthé were guillotined on the 24th of May, 1797, Babœuf’s last words being, “I wrap myself into a virtuous slumber.”[21]

Buonarroti did not suffer deportation, but was instead confined in prison for some time and then allowed to escape to Switzerland, whence he was obliged to flee to Belgium after the Congress of Vienna, because Geneva was unable to tolerate him during the reactionary period which followed. He supported himself by teaching music and other branches of learning, and wrote a remarkable account of the conspiracy in which he had been engaged. It was published in Brussels in 1828, and after the Revolution of July it became a power in France. It revived the memory of Babœuf and his schemes, and rallied a number of followers about the old flag. Babouvism, as Babœuf’s system was called, was thus enabled to play a rôle in French history from 1830 to 1839, when a premature rising of the laborers was easily suppressed.[22] Even to-day, Buonarroti’s work has not ceased to influence the thought of French laborers.

Babœuf’s theoretical development of communism, based largely on Morelly’s “Code de la Nature,” is comparatively simple. Its leading idea is expressed in these words: “The aim of society is the happiness of all, and happiness consists in equality.” The fact is emphasized again and again that this equality must be perfect and absolute. It is officially proclaimed that the harmony of the system would be broken if there was one single man in the world richer or more powerful than his fellows. The adherents of this doctrine were ready to sacrifice everything to their desire for equality. “We are prepared,” cried they, “to consent to everything for it, we are prepared even to make tabula rasa to obtain it. Let all the arts perish if need be, provided we retain real equality.”[23] The first article of the official declaration of rights, as established by the secret committee of insurrection, reads: “Nature has given to every man an equal right to the enjoyment of all goods.” In the “proofs” following, it is maintained that all public and private wrongs, as oppressions, tyrannies, wars, and crimes, take their origin in disobedience to this natural law. At least six of the eleven articles of this “Charter of Equality” do little more than repeat in varying form the idea contained in article 1. Article 7, e.g., reads: “In a true society there ought to be neither poor nor rich.” Article 10, “The end of the revolution is to destroy inequality and to re-establish the common happiness.”

How was equality to be attained? Perhaps it is best to correct at the start a popular error by stating how they did not expect to obtain equality. They were not foolish enough to propose to divide the wealth of society among the various citizens and then allow the production and distribution of economic goods to go on as at present. It is a matter of course that under such circumstances inequalities would again arise within twenty-four hours. This is so perfectly obvious that no communist of note has ever proposed anything so childish and absurd. Yet it is a widely prevalent notion that this is what the communists have desired. One of the Rothschilds of Frankfort-on-the-Main once hearing a poor man complain of his lot, and express a desire for the equality of communism, is said immediately to have put his hand in his pocket, drawn out two or three shillings, and offered them to the poor man as his share of the wealth of a Rothschild, were it equally divided among all the inhabitants of Germany. This is often told as a business man’s concise and practical refutation of communism. It has, however, no significance at all either for or against that economic system. All communists without exception propose that the people as a whole, or some particular division of the people, as a village or commune, should own all the means of production—land, houses, factories, railroads, canals, etc.; that production should be carried on in common; and that officers, selected in one way or another, should distribute among the inhabitants the fruits of their labor. Under such circumstances inequalities could have no opportunity to spring up; nor do we find communistic experiments failing because it is impossible to maintain equality. Where it is really desired, it is not difficult to secure it. As a matter of fact, however, it is not desired by the great masses of any land of Christendom, nor would they for a moment consent to endure it.

But to return from this digression. Babœuf proposed to attain equality by degrees. He desired that a large national and common property should be at once formed out of the property of corporations and public institutions. The property of individuals was to be added to this upon their death, as inheritance was to be abolished. All property would thus become nationalized in the course of fifty years. Production was to be carried on in common under officers chosen by popular vote. These same officers, according to the scheme, decide upon the needs and requirements of the different individuals of the society, and divide the products of their common industry. The earth must belong to all, and its fruits must be common property. Officers receive no more than those under them, and a rapid rotation in office prevents the acquirements of habits and thoughts consequent on superior position. No one becomes accustomed to command; no one becomes accustomed to obey.

The country is divided into “regions,” and the “regions” into “departments.” There is a central and superior administration for the entire country, an intermediate one for each “region,” and a subordinate one for each “department.” Each administration has its own duties—the lowest coming into contact with individuals, the higher supervising the subordinate boards. Government is absolute, notwithstanding the adoption of the watchword “Liberté.” On its orders citizens are sent from commune to commune, as their services may be required; and the “superfluous” products of one region are transferred to another less fortunate one. The supreme administration must store up the surplus of years of plenty as provision for unfruitful years. It also conducts trade with foreign nations, for which purpose great magazines or store-houses are erected on the frontiers and the borders of the sea. No private individual is allowed to trade with foreign countries, and all merchandise used in such trade is confiscated for the benefit of the community. All intercourse with outside countries is carefully watched to prevent the importation of erroneous ideas and disastrous customs. Even within the country only such publications are allowed as teach the unqualified blessings of equality.

Article 3 of the “Organization of the Government of the Community” enumerates the kinds of labor which the law considers useful, and which alone entitle an individual to exercise any political right whatever. They are the following: agriculture, which is especially favored, as being most natural to man; the pastoral life; fishing; navigation; mechanic and manual arts; retail trade; transportation; war; teaching; and the sciences. However, teaching is only then considered useful when it is undertaken by one who has declared his adherence to the principles of the community, and bears a certificate of “civisme.” Literature and the fine arts are not included, being regarded with little favor.

The whole scheme is dreary and monotonous. All differences save those relating to age and sex being abolished, equality is even interpreted to mean uniformity. All must be dressed alike, save that distinctions are made for sex and age; all must eat the same quantity of the same kind of food, and all must be educated alike.[24] As the higher goods of life are lightly esteemed, education is restricted to the acquirement of elementary branches of knowledge, and of those practical in a material sense. Comfortable mediocrity in everything is the openly expressed ideal.

Children are removed from the family at an early age, and brought up together, to train them in principles of communism, and to prevent the growth of differences and inequalities.

All things are contrived to level down and not to level up; to bring the highest down to the plane of stupid, self-satisfied mediocrity, and not to elevate the less fortunate to higher thoughts, feelings, and enjoyments.

This most cheerless of all communistic schemes fitly took its origin among those sunk in the most degraded materialism of the French Revolution.

CHAPTER III.
CABET.

It is a relief to turn one’s attention to the plans of Étienne Cabet. They, at least, have the merit of not robbing life of all poetry, sentiment, and trust in something higher and better than food and drink. One might find life tolerable in one of Cabet’s communes; but every noble soul will acknowledge that if life’s ends and aims are all to centre in a full stomach and a warm cloak, then, indeed, life is not worth the living.

Cabet, son of a cooper, was born in 1788 in Dijon. He received a good education, became a lawyer, and practised first in his native city, then in Paris. He was appointed attorney-general of Corsica in 1830, but lost his place in the following year on account of his opposition to government. He was elected member of the Chamber of Deputies shortly after, and returned to Paris. He devoted the remainder of his life to literature, politics, and communism. One of his principal works was a “Popular History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1830.”[25] In a journal which he published at that time, Le Populaire, he advocated moderate communistic principles, or Icarian principles, as they were afterwards called. He was condemned to two years’ imprisonment for an article in this paper, in which he attacked the king personally, but he was fortunate enough to escape imprisonment by flight to London. It was here he became acquainted with Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia,” from which he drew a large part of his inspiration. He returned to France in 1839, and published his “Voyage to Icaria,”[26] which he himself called a philosophical and social romance—Roman philosophique et social. The title indicates his dreamy character. He describes in this work a previously unknown country, not quite so large as France or England, but as populous and a thousand times more blessed. Peace, wisdom, joy, pleasures, and happiness reign there. Crimes are unknown. It is Icaria; “a second Promised Land, an Eden, an Elysium, a new terrestrial Paradise.”[27]

The writer of the “Voyage to Icaria” represents that he met in London Lord William Carisdall, who found in Icaria the one truly happy people he had discovered in his travels. Lord William kept a journal, in which he described this wonder-land, and this, we are told, has been edited and revised for the public with his consent. The object is to show that communism is practicable and is the solution of all social problems. It contains an account of an ideal society, but one which Cabet thought he was able to establish. He made the attempt, choosing Texas as a place in which his ideals were to be realized. He secured the grant of a large tract of land on the Red River, and sent out several advance-guards of Icarians in 1848, who were, however, attacked by the yellow fever, and had disbanded before he arrived in New Orleans with a later detachment. He learned on his arrival that the Mormons had abandoned their settlement in Nauvoo, Ill., and set out for that place with his followers. While the Icarians were in Nauvoo they numbered, all told, at one time fifteen hundred. As Nordhoff, in his “Communistic Societies in the United States,” justly remarks, Cabet might have done something with such a large band, if he had had anything of a business head. But he lacked firmness and perseverance. They met with some success in cultivating their land, established shops, pursued trades, and set up a printing-office; but instead of rejoicing in his prosperity, and laboring to increase it, Cabet was dreaming what he might do if he had half a million, as is evinced by a publication which appeared about that time, entitled “Wenn ich $500,000 hätte”—“If I only had $500,000.” He described the theatre and the fine houses he would build, the gas-works he would found, the parks he would lay out, and showed, among other things, how he could then introduce hot and cold water in the houses.

To his description of this brochure Nordhoff adds: “Alas for the dreams of a dreamer! I turned over the leaves of his pamphlet while wandering through the present Icaria, on one chilly Sunday in March, with a keen sense of pain at the contrast between the comfort and elegance he so glowingly described and the dreary poverty of the life which a few determined men and women have there chosen to follow, for the sake of principles which they hold both true and valuable.”[28]

It is said that Cabet developed a dictatorial spirit in Nauvoo. This may be doubted. It is possible he only attempted to enforce measures without which he believed the commune must prove a failure. At any rate, a division took place among the Icarians. The colony at Nauvoo was broken up, and the members scattered, save fifty or sixty, who emigrated to Iowa. Cabet and his followers went to St. Louis, where he died in 1856. The emigrants to Iowa founded a settlement near Corning, on the Burlington and Missouri Railroad, which they called Icaria. They began with four thousand acres of land and a debt of $20,000. At first they had a hard struggle, being obliged to content themselves even with log-houses. When Mr. Nordhoff wrote his book, in 1874, the debt was paid, they lived in frame houses, and enjoyed a considerable degree of comfort. The community consisted of eleven families and sixty-five members, comprising twenty children and twenty-three voters. They had a good saw-mill and a grist-mill, and owned one thousand nine hundred and thirty-six acres of land, of which three hundred and fifty were under cultivation. They had one hundred and twenty cattle and five hundred sheep.

A friend[29] has lately spent a week in Icaria, and has kindly written me the following account of the present condition of the community, which has experienced noteworthy changes since Mr. Nordhoff paid it a brief visit a few years ago:

“Grinell, Ia., May 7, 1883.

“——. First, let me say that I think no one has yet done adequate justice to Icarian history.... I was fortunate in being received into the community in the most friendly manner, and spent many hours in talking with the members. Especially, I was fortunate in making the acquaintance of two old men—original members—one of them the leader in the quarrel with Cabet at Nauvoo, and the successor of Cabet as president.... I have never enjoyed a visit more than this, for the Icarians, though poor and necessarily very hampered, are highly courteous and intelligent. To begin with their dissensions.” [For the present purpose it is sufficient to state that the members of the community, not being able to live together peaceably, agreed to separate; the “Young Party” retained the old village, and is now officially known as the “Icarian Community,” and the “Old Party” established a new commune in the vicinity.]

“The reorganization into two groups happened just four years ago.... The court declared the articles of incorporation forfeited, on the technical ground that a commune incorporated as an agricultural society was exceeding its charter in running a grist-mill and manufacturing flour! The arbitrators divided the property on an equitable basis. They ascertained the amount of property each had brought into the society, the number of years each had labored for the society, and on these principles they declared each individual entitled to a certain proportion of the property. The ‘Young Party’ associated themselves and obtained new articles of incorporation.... They assumed the original name. They were the minority in voting numbers, but, counting children, they were more numerous than the ‘Old Folks’ Party.’ The ‘Old Folks’ did not take out articles of incorporation. Instead, they formed themselves into a general partnership based on recorded articles of agreement, which I send you (Contrat de la Nouvelle Com. Icar.). The other party having got possession of the name, the ‘Old Folks’ called their society ‘The New Icarian Community.’

“At the time of the dissolution, the Icarians owned over two thousand acres of land. The ‘Old Party’ were found entitled to somewhat more than half the property. Both parties have at different times made small purchases and sales of land. At the time of the dissolution it was expected that the ‘Old Party’ would remain in the original village, and that the ‘Young Party’ would go to the east side of the estate and build themselves new houses; but finally the ‘Old Folks’ chose to be the emigrants, and they have a new village nearly a mile east of the original village (which is now occupied by the ‘Icarian Community’).

“At present the ‘New Icarian Community’ (i.e., the ‘Old Folks’) have about one thousand and eighty-five acres. About two hundred acres is in timber (which, however, is not valuable except for firewood, posts, etc. There are few trees left which are valuable for lumber. Iowa timber in general is of little value.) About three hundred acres are being cultivated this year. They were planting corn while I was with them, and will put in two hundred acres. One hundred acres will be in wheat, potatoes, etc. They have eighteen horses, and about one hundred cattle—milk about thirty cows. In summer they sell cream to the Creamery in Corning. They will sell this year a dozen or so beef steers. They have about two hundred hogs, and will sell eighty this year. Last year they sold $300 worth of potatoes. They cut from two to three hundred tons of hay annually. They have the old mill, built in 1853 or 1854, but are not doing a great deal with it. They make some flour, and the mill nets them a clear profit of not more than $200 or $300 per year.

“The official inventory of the ‘New Icarian Society,’ made on Jan. 1, 1883, gives the

In the above estimate the land was valued rather too low, and a part of the indebtedness has already been paid. The way is now pretty clear out of all financial difficulties. They pay about $225 annual taxes. They number at the present time thirty-four people. Their village consists of a central two-story frame building (worth about $1500), twenty-two feet by forty feet, perfectly plain; the first story is a common dining-hall and kitchen, and the second story has rooms for a family and several old men. They have also eight frame houses, ‘story-and-a-half,’ about fourteen by twenty-two, built uniformly, and arranged symmetrically about the dining-hall. Each is occupied by a family. The arrangement is as follows:

Each house has a small plot for flowers, etc. The interiors are excessively plain. The living in the common hall is frugal but abundant. Of the thirty-four people twelve are men, of whom six are over sixty; ten are women, of whom two are over sixty, and two are young and unmarried; and twelve are children, ranging in age from three weeks to twelve years. Seven children are in school; the other five are too young. Of course everything looks new and rather bleak about this new village, but the site is admirably chosen. The prospect, as one looks out from the windows of the dining-room, is beautiful, and a dozen years hence, if fortune favors, the New Icaria will be a charming place. In spite of bitter adversities, these New Icarians are a bright, agreeable, vivacious people. They could talk English well enough for my benefit, but their home-talk is entirely French. The children are very pretty and attractive, and all are polite and superior-mannered. They have a promising young vineyard and apple-orchard, and a good large garden for kitchen vegetables. The people are all French except one Spaniard, who came from Cuba many years ago. Their president, A. A. Marchand, was one of the original sixty-nine vanguard who went to Texas in 1848, and he has always been a prominent man. He is a gentleman worthy of the highest regard. Another member, Sauva, who was president the year Hinds’s book (‘American Communities,’ 1878) was written, and whom you find mentioned in Hinds’s account, is still with this society. He was formerly a member of the Cheltenham branch;[30] returned to Europe, took active part in the International and the Paris Commune, and joined the Iowa Icarians two or three years after. He is a man of high intelligence. A number of these members are men of good literary ability. They have a small press, and print a monthly paper, the Revue Icarienne. They have a shoemaker’s shop, but scarcely anything in the industrial line besides their mill. They have a fair supply of good agricultural implements, and conduct their farming about as their neighbors in general do.

“If they maintain harmony, they can readily pay this debt and improve their mode of life. They are somewhat chary of admitting new members, because they already have men enough to farm their land, and they do not feel able to make their settlement an asylum for all who hold communistic ideas. Their school is one of the regular district-schools of the county. It is located between the two communities and patronized by both. The teacher at present is a French lady, educated in Cincinnati—an Icarian in her early days—and the school is well conducted. At the time of the split the library was divided. Each village has a library of more than one thousand volumes, mainly French, and containing the works of the standard old French authors. In both communities newspapers are taken freely, both English and French, and the people seem more conversant with affairs—especially with European affairs—than the average American farmer’s family. Their family-life seems natural and affectionate. Their life is necessarily plain, toilsome, and monotonous, but I think it is fully as agreeable and diversified as that of isolated American farmers. The life in the ‘New Icarian Community’ seems more genial and social than in the ‘Icarian Community.’ At the time of the split a number of individuals withdrew, and did not join either party in reorganizing. Since, also, there have been numerous accessions and withdrawals, the latter preponderating, especially in the ‘Icarian Community.’

“The ‘Icarian Community,’ according to Mr. Peron, now contains thirty souls: seven are men over twenty years; five are women over eighteen years; eighteen are children. One man, Michael Brumme, a German, is about seventy years old. There is one lady over sixty years old. Both these were Nauvoo members. All the other men and women are under forty years of age. All are French except two Germans and one Spaniard. There were several other old members, who have withdrawn within the past two or three years. They have seven hundred and seventy-two acres of land; two hundred acres are timber; three hundred acres are seeded in clover or timothy grass. This year they are planting one hundred and twenty acres of corn—they profess to believe in intensive agriculture. They are turning almost exclusive attention to stock-raising, and all their agriculture is with reference to feeding cattle and hogs. They have now about ready for the market thirty-six steers and seventy-five hogs. Altogether they have about one hundred and thirty head of cattle, one hundred and fifty hogs, twenty horses and colts. They are intending to raise sheep, and are just beginning with a flock of seventy-five, expecting to buy a larger flock soon. They have a productive vineyard of nine or ten acres. Last year they made fifteen barrels of wine; they made twenty barrels the previous year. Last fall they made seven or eight barrels of cider and fifteen barrels of vinegar; also five barrels of sorghum molasses, of which they will make ten barrels this year. They have ten acres of apple orchard. They have a blacksmith shop, wagon shop, and shoemaker shop, for their own work exclusively. They give for their financial report for April, 1883, the following: assets, $30,300; liabilities, $8751.80. They estimate their real estate at two thirds and their stock at one third their assets. They expect that the hogs and steers which they will market in a few days will bring about $3700—about $3000 of which will be applied to the debt. They pay an average interest of seven per cent. on their debt. They have a central hall similar to the one already described. They also have eight frame houses like those in New Icaria. (The houses in New Icaria were moved bodily from old Icaria when the new settlement was formed, except the hall and the outbuildings.) A picturesque feature of old Icaria is the dozen old log cabins, now used as sheds, etc., which were the original homes. They are close by the present habitations. For a year or two this community has been seriously talking of leaving Iowa. If they can make an advantageous sale of their property they say they would go. They have prospected somewhat in the South, but have concluded that California is the place for them. In the spring of 1881 over a dozen persons, in five or six families, withdrew from Icaria and moved to Sonoma Co., California, where they bought eight hundred acres of land and have formed a commune. They are said to be prospering as fruit-growers. Icaria talks of joining them in California with a view to the fusion of the communes. Peron (a prominent member) says they would like the climate better than that of Iowa, and would also find fruit-growing more congenial than general farming. It would give more time for mental culture, and would admit of a more agreeable style of living. The society publishes a monthly paper called the Communiste-Libertaire—which is written and printed by Peron. If there had been harmony, and no division, I think that Icaria would have been prosperous to-day—with perhaps several hundred members. As things now stand it is hard to foretell the fate of either branch. If the one goes to California, the other may have a slow, steady growth in Iowa. A good many young people lack the devotion to the principle of communism necessary to keep them in the society, and they withdraw from time to time. The difficulty of Frenchmen living harmoniously in a commune seems the great source of disaster. Spite of his theory to the contrary, a Frenchman has a great deal of “individualism,” and not a great deal of patience and forbearance.... It just occurs to me to say one thing more. The Icarians are good American citizens. Cabet and all his comrades took out naturalization papers, and were all ardent abolitionists! They voted the first Republican ticket (Fremont) in 1856, and Mr. Marchand tells me that he has voted for every Republican president since. The “old folks” in New Icaria are still solidly Republican in politics; but Mr. Peron and his friends in the other community have been voting the Greenback ticket for a year or two. They say that it seems to them that the Greenback party represents the laboring classes in their struggle against great corporate and moneyed monopolies; and it is in the spirit of agitators that they support the Greenback party, and not so much because they expect anything definite from that party.

“Peron is very brilliant and epigrammatic in conversation.... He is a scientist, a positivist philosopher, an internationalist, somewhat of an avowed anarchist, and a terrible proletarian. In short, he is a character whose acquaintance I enjoyed making—Gérard, Marchand, Peron, Fugier, Sauva, and Bettannier are the sort of men who figure in French history or in Hugo’s novels. Their tremendous individuality seems to me ill at ease in an obscure little commune where, theoretically, no man is more than his fellow-man.”

They are still governed by the essential principles of Cabet’s constitution, the two leading ideas of which are the equality of all and the brotherhood of man. They elect executive officers every year, who are, however, only empowered to execute the orders of their fellow-citizens, and may not so much as buy a bushel of corn without being authorized to do so by the society. They have no servants, and are too poor for the enjoyment of luxuries. The directors buy the goods needed by the Icarians twice a year at wholesale. Each one makes known his wants previous to the semi-annual purchases. Marriage is essential according to Cabet’s scheme,[31] and wives are highly honored. Not only is the strictest fidelity enjoined upon the husbands, but they are required to render special acts of homage to their wives.[32]

Education is valued. All children are sent to school till they are sixteen, and they regret that their poverty does not allow them to give the young a more extended mental training.

As is evident, the community has been by no means an entire failure, although it has been one of the poorest communistic societies in our country. The differences which have sprung up may possibly be beneficial to the cause, as they have led, as has been seen, to three communes instead of one. At present, it is safe to say that the only possible way for communism to succeed is to adopt, as the Icarians have done, the communal or township system. This affords room for a diversity of growth and the development of at least local individuality.

A gentleman, learning that Mr. Nordhoff had visited Icaria, wrote to him as follows: “Please deal gently and cautiously with Icaria. The man who sees only the chaotic village and the wooden shoes, and only chronicles those, will commit a serious error. In that village are buried fortunes, noble hopes, and the aspirations of good and great men like Cabet. Fertilized by these deaths, a great and beneficent growth yet awaits Icaria. It has an eventful and extremely interesting history, but its future is destined to be still more interesting. It, and it alone, represents in America a great idea—rational democratic communism.”

A good notion of Cabet’s teachings may be obtained by studying Icaria and its constitution; but, if more complete information is desired, it can be found in the “Voyage to Icaria”—a really fascinating book. His principles are quite simple, and all centre in the beneficent effects of equality, to which fraternity, as understood by Cabet, necessarily leads. “If we are asked, ‘What is your science?’ we reply, ‘Fraternity.’ ‘What is your principle?’—‘Fraternity.’ ‘What is your doctrine?’—‘Fraternity.’ ‘What is your theory?’—‘Fraternity.’ ‘What is your system?’—‘Fraternity.’”[33] But how were people to be taught to practise communism? how induce the aristocracy to renounce their privileges? This was to be accomplished by peaceful means alone. The apostles of Icarianism should, like Christ, whose principles they were only carrying out, convert the world by teaching, preaching, writing, discussing, persuading, and by setting good examples.[34] The wildness of his dreams is shown by the fact that he allowed fifty years for a peaceful transition from our present economic life to communism. In the interval, various measures were to be introduced by legislation to pave the way to the new system. Among these may be mentioned communistic training for children, a minimum of wages, exemption of the poor from all taxes, and progressive taxation for the rich. But “the system of absolute equality, of community of goods and of labor, will not be obliged to be applied completely, perfectly, universally, and definitely until the expiration of fifty years.”[35] No one who has studied the slow formation of social organizations could possibly hope for a radical change in so short a period. Some are doubtless led to such anticipations by noticing the rapid changes in the commercial and industrial world. This is, it is said, a fast age, and in not a few respects the saying is true. But man’s nature and society are not changing so rapidly. It is the mere externals of our life which change speedily.

Cabet’s political organization consists of a democratic republic.[36] Representatives and executives are allowed, but they derive their power from the people. Those whom the Icarians choose to rule over them prepare laws and regulations which are submitted to the citizens for approval, provide amusements, conduct industries in large establishments, and divide the products of common labor equally among all. Houses, villages, provinces, communes, and farms are as nearly alike as possible. The economies of common production enable all to enjoy every comfort and many luxuries. Elegance and beauty are encouraged.

The only choice allowed in one’s clothes concerns their color; otherwise all are dressed alike, save that distinctions are made for age and sex.

Marriage and family are held sacred, as might perhaps be expected from the high honors accorded by Cabet to the fair sex. Perhaps his views concerning the elevated position due woman were influential in drawing to him the large number of sympathizers he found among the ladies of Paris, who encouraged him with kind words and frequent floral gifts.

As large an amount of liberty was granted by the Icarians as was practicable. Work was common, as has been stated, but young men and young women were allowed to choose their own career. However, if there existed a disproportionate number of applicants for any particular trade or profession, competitive examination decided who should be selected for the said pursuit. The others were obliged to make another choice.

Diligence and thrift were enjoined on all. Men worked till sixty-five years of age and women till fifty. The length of a day’s labor was seven hours in summer and five in winter; for women, however, only four. All labor ceased at 1 P.M. Dirty and disagreeable work was performed by machines.

Science and literature were held in high esteem and encouraged, though publication was not free. Any one might write books, but only those could be printed whose publication had been authorized by law.

CHAPTER IV.
SAINT-SIMON.

When we turn from Babœuf and Cabet to Saint-Simon we discover a man of a new type. He differed from his predecessors in aims, purposes, and character. We find in him one who did not desire the dead and uninteresting level of communism, but placed before him as an ideal a social system which should more nearly render to man the just fruits of his own individual exertions than does our present society.

Count Henry de Saint-Simon[37] was born at Paris in 1760. He belonged to a noble family of France, which traced its origin to Charlemagne. The family attained distinction early in the fifteenth century through the gallant conduct of one of its members at the battle of Agincourt. It divided into five branches in the seventeenth century. The celebrated Duke de Saint-Simon, author of the “Memoirs of the Reign of Louis XIV. and the Regency,” belonged to one branch; Louis François de Saint-Simon, Marquis de Sandricourt, grandfather of the socialist, to another. Among the sons of the marquis were Balthasar Henri, Maximilien Henri, and Charles François Simeon, of whom the two latter became distinguished. Balthasar Henri was the father of the subject of this chapter.

Although not the grandson of the duke, as has been erroneously supposed,[38] Saint-Simon would naturally have inherited his titles and property. They were lost to him, however, through the quarrel of his father with the duke. The titles he lost were those of a grandee of Spain and a duke of France, while the property he would have inherited yielded an annual income of 500,000 francs. “I have lost the titles and the fortune of the Duke of Saint-Simon,” he writes, “but I have inherited his passion for glory.” This was manifested in a singular way when he was only sixteen years of age. That he might not forget the grand destiny in store for him, he ordered his servant to awaken him every morning with the words, “Arise, Monsieur le Comte, you have grand deeds to perform.” Saint-Simon had already entered the army at this time, and the year afterwards went to America and fought in the War of the Revolution under Washington. He took part in the siege of Yorktown and witnessed the surrender of Lord Cornwallis. He distinguished himself for bravery on this occasion, and received honorable recognition of his gallant conduct from the Society of the Cincinnati. Upon his return to France, he was made colonel of the Regiment of Aquitaine at the early age of twenty-three. But he soon resigned his position and abandoned all hopes of a military career, although his prospects were certainly brilliant. In speaking of his sojourn in the United States, he says: “I occupied myself much more with political science than military tactics. The war in itself did not interest me, but the purpose of the war interested me exceedingly, and this interest enabled me to endure its hardships without repugnance. I desire the attainment of the purpose, I was accustomed to say to myself, and I ought not to rebel against the means thereto.... My vocation was not that of a soldier; I was drawn towards a very different, indeed, I may say, diametrically opposite, kind of activity. The life purpose which I set before me was to study the movements of the human mind, in order that I might then labor for the perfection of civilization. From that time forward I devoted myself to this work without reserve; to it I consecrated my entire life.”[39]

Saint-Simon was taken prisoner by the British when returning to France in the Ville de Paris, and carried to Jamaica, where he was detained until the close of the war. In returning to Europe he visited Mexico, and there made an attempt to carry out one of the magnificent plans for the advancement of mankind which he had been revolving in his mind. He endeavored to interest the viceroy in a project for building a canal to unite the Atlantic with the Pacific. While his exertions were unsuccessful, it is interesting to note that one who drew his inspiration largely from Saint-Simon—viz., De Lesseps—may yet execute his plan.

A few years later Saint-Simon formed designs for a canal to connect Madrid with the sea, and might possibly have succeeded in realizing them, had not the French Revolution recalled him to France. He sided with the people, although his family traditions and early training would have led him to connect himself with the royalists, and although in the struggle he lost the property he had inherited from his mother. He was elected president of the commune where his property was situated, in 1789, and in an address to the electors proclaimed his intention to renounce the title of count, since he regarded it as inferior to that of citizen; and he refused another office lest it should be supposed he owed it to his rank. All this, however, did not prevent his imprisonment on account of his nobility, which rendered him in the eyes of the terrorists a dangerous character. He was kept in prison, first at St. Pélagie, afterwards at the Luxembourg, for eleven months, and was released after the Revolution of Thermidor. It was at this time that his ancestor Charlemagne appeared to him and encouraged him with a prophecy of future greatness. He describes the vision in these words: “At the most cruel epoch of the Revolution, and during a night of my detention at the Luxembourg, Charlemagne appeared to me and said: ‘Since the world has existed, no family has enjoyed the honor of producing a hero and a philosopher of the first rank; this honor has been reserved for my house. My son, thy success as a philosopher will equal mine as a warrior and politician.’”

Upon his release from prison Saint-Simon began to speculate in the confiscated national lands, in order to obtain money to enable him to prosecute his plans for the improvement of society. He realized 144,000 francs from his investments, and then retired from business, as he thought he had all the property he needed. He devoted the following seven years to preparatory study, taking up his abode first in the neighborhood of the École Polytechnique, afterwards near the École de Médecine. Physiology and the physical sciences interested him chiefly. What he had in view was a science of the sciences, a science to classify facts derived from all sciences and to unite them into one whole; and it was from him that his scholar, Auguste Comte, derived the idea of founding a universal science, as he attempted in his “Cours de Philosophie Positive.” In fact this work was only a development of his “Système Politique Positive,” which he, as a scholar of Saint-Simon, wrote at the instance of his master.[40]

Saint-Simon thought it necessary to add an experimental training to his theoretical one in order to prepare himself for his mission, and accomplished this by living every kind of life, from that of the wealthy entertainer of savants to one of poverty and dissipation. While this attempt to pass through all the experiences and feelings of a lifetime in a few years was not altogether unsuccessful, it was unfortunate in making him prematurely old.

Saint-Simon began his career as an author and social reformer at the age of forty-three, in 1803, and never abandoned it until his death in 1825.

His life was a sad one. His property was soon gone, and he often worked at his system while suffering the direst want, but he was sustained by the spirit of the martyr. Saint-Simon endeavored to bring to pass the happy future which he believed possible for the human race. “The imagination of poets,” said he, “has placed the golden age at the cradle of the human race, amidst the ignorance and grossness of the earliest times. It had been better to relegate the iron age to that period. The golden age of humanity is not behind us; it is to come, and will be found in the perfection of the social order. Our fathers have not seen it; our children will one day behold it. It is our duty to prepare the way for them.”

Saint-Simon had thus devoted his life to a cause which he held sacred, and he pursued it through fortune and misfortune, through good report and through evil report. For a time he occupied the position of copyist at a salary of $200 per annum; a strange place for a scion of one of the proudest families of France. He copied nine hours a day, and robbed himself of sleep in order to develop his philosophical and social system. His health had begun to fail him, when he was relieved from his deplorable situation by the kindness of a man who had been his valet in brighter days. This servant, one of the few who never lost faith in Saint-Simon, supported him, and assisted him in the publication of his works. The death in 1810 of the former valet, Diard by name, again left Saint-Simon in a wretched state, but he continued his labors, and wrote two works, entitled “Sur la Science de l’Homme” and “Sur la Gravitation Universelle.” As he had no means of printing them, he sent them in manuscript to various scientists and other prominent men, with the following letter:

“Sir,—Be my saviour. I am dying of starvation. For fifteen days I eat only bread and drink water; I work without a fire, and I have sold everything save my garments to cover the expense of the copies. It is a passion for science and the public good, it is the desire of discovering a means of terminating in a peaceable manner the dreadful crisis in which I find the entire European society engaged, that has caused me to fall into this condition of distress; therefore, it is without blushing that I am able to confess my misery and demand assistance to enable me to continue my work.”

This letter met with no very favorable response, though Cuvier made him a small donation and others showed a mild interest in his welfare. His disciples, however, were afterwards proud of it. The following exhortation follows its quotation in the “Doctrine de Saint-Simon:”[41] “Children of Saint-Simon! generations of the future! guard as a religious memorial these lines which your father has left you as a sacred legacy. When his word shall have renewed the face of the earth, when the doctrine of recompense according to works shall have been realized among men, when the last of the living shall obtain from the solicitude of society a guaranteed subsistence, a remuneration in proportion to merits, children of Saint-Simon, you will then love to repeat how, in order to accomplish his mission of regeneration, your father was reduced to begging.”

A small pension was finally granted Saint-Simon by his family, and he worked on quietly till 1823, but he found little sympathy and encouragement, and for once his courage deserted him. He was more than sixty years of age, his strength began to decrease, he was in want of every comfort and convenience and lacked the support and helpful consolations of domestic life. In his state of loneliness he was filled with despair by the thought that his life had been a failure, and he resolved to put an end to his own wretched existence.

Fortunately, however, he only succeeded in inflicting severe but not fatal injuries upon himself. His pitiable condition appears to have moved some kind hearts, for he was cared for tenderly until he recovered, when he regained faith in his mission and worked more diligently than ever. In the same year he finished his “Catéchisme des Industriels,” and in 1825, the year of his death, he completed the “Nouveau Christianisme.” These two works and his “Système Industriel,” published in 1821-22, are his three most important productions.

Perhaps the most celebrated of them all is his last work, the “Nouveau Christianisme,” the New Christianity. It was from this that his disciples chiefly drew their inspiration, and it was in this that his hopes centred as he lay on his death-bed, surrounded by his friends, Auguste Comte, Rodrigues, and others. Reybaud[42] describes the last scene in the following manner: “Saint-Simon, feeling the approach of death, assembled about his bed his confidants and said to them: ‘For twelve days, my friends, I have been occupied with plans designed to assure the success of our enterprise (a projected journal called Le Producteur); for three hours, despite my sufferings, I have been endeavoring to present to you a résumé of my thoughts. You have arrived at a period where by your combined efforts you will achieve a great success; ... The fruit is ripe; you are able to gather it. The last part of my labors, the New Christianity, will not be immediately understood. It has been thought that every religious system ought to disappear because men have succeeded in proving the weakness and insufficiency of Catholicism. People are deceived in this. Religion cannot disappear from the world; it can only be changed. Rodrigues,’ addressing his favorite scholar, ‘do not forget, but remember that to accomplish grand deeds you must be enthusiastic. All my life is comprised in this one thought; to guarantee to all men the freest development of their faculties.’

“He paused for a few moments, then in the final struggle added,

“‘Forty-eight hours after our second publication the party of the laborers will be formed; the future is ours.’

“After having said these words, he raised his hand to his head and died.”

There are certain leading doctrines in Saint-Simon’s writings, which I will endeavor to present briefly, before passing on to a consideration of his followers, the Saint-Simonians. Comparatively unimportant changes of opinion respecting the details of his practical programme, as well as other minor points, will be omitted in this presentation.

We find running through all the writings of Saint-Simon, from his first work, “Lettres d’un Habitant de Genève,” to his last one, the “Nouveau Christianisme,” an aim and purpose which may be considered the leading feature of his system. It is the attempt to discover an authority which shall rule the inner life of man as well as his external acts. There have been powers which were able to do this. The Catholic Church, up to the fifteenth century and the beginnings of the Reformation, was one. Since then, however, it has failed to embody in itself all the advances of science; it has consequently lost its hold on the minds of men, has declined in influence, and ceased to be an organic bond uniting different nations and molding men’s lives. The present age is, therefore, critical: that is to say, the preponderating factors entering into it are disintegrating. This was seen in the French Revolution, the culmination of this period, which was destructive. This critical period was necessary to clear away hinderances and prepare for an organic and constructive period, which ought now to follow, since the time is ripe for a new social system based on universal association.

We are now in a transitional stage which is called a crisis.[43] The problem is to terminate the crisis. This can be accomplished only by an advance in knowledge, accompanied by a passage from the feudal and theological to the industrial and scientific system. War and industry occupied the Middle Ages and must now be replaced by industry alone. Belief, faith, having lost its power, must be replaced by knowledge. Knowledge and industry are to be united and govern the world. They are to furnish to men the guidance and leadership they need and desire.

Carlyle said that the poor laborer “would fain find for himself a superior that should lovingly and wisely govern,” and that the wish and prayer of all human hearts was “give me a leader; a true leader, not a false sham-leader; a true leader, that he may guide me on the true way, that I may be loyal to him, that I may swear fealty to him and follow him, and feel that it is well with me.”[44] So thought Saint-Simon, when he appealed to thinkers and workers to unite and lead. He would gladly have seen England and France join in this movement, believing that they could draw the other powers into it.

What were the specific objects of this leadership? What were the functions of this restored authority?

First, universal peace was to be guaranteed. Formerly, the Catholic Church, in its character of arbiter of nations, imposed a wholesome restraint on kings, and lessened the number of wars. Since the decay of belief it was no longer possible for it to accomplish this. A European parliament composed of true leaders must now arbitrate between nations. This was ever a favorite theme of Saint-Simonism, and modern sentiment and agitation in favor of peace owe more than is generally known to Saint-Simon and his followers.

Second, leadership is to establish universal association, guaranteeing labor to all, and a reward in proportion to services rendered. Equality is to be avoided, as involving greater injustice than our present economic life. Recompense in proportion to merit is the true maxim. But as all are to be guaranteed work, all must work either mentally or physically. In a socially regenerated state there is no room left for idlers. An idler is a parasite; he devours what others produce and makes no return. Wealthy idlers are thieves; another class of idlers consists of beggars, and this last class of do-nothings, we are told by Saint-Simon, is scarcely less contemptible and dangerous than the first.[45] This makes it sufficiently evident that the Saint-Simonians were acting in the spirit of their master in proposing the abolition of inheritance.

Again, this new society would not be ascetic, like the old Christianity—Saint-Simon’s kingdom was of this world. Flesh and spirit both had their rights, and their harmonious union and development alone formed the perfect man. Everything that was good and true and beautiful was to be encouraged. Luther is even accused of heresy because he rejected art as a handmaid of religion. The new society is religious and holy, and its chiefs are its priests.

Revolution is injurious and is not to be looked to as a means of social regeneration. It is destructive, whereas a constructive power is sought.[46] Reform must be brought about by public opinion; and public opinion is to be enlightened by the printed and spoken word. An appeal is made to royalty to assist in this noble work, as its interests are at one with the industrials, and opposed to those of the do-nothings. In the new state the king is to take the title of the “First Industrial of his kingdom.”[47]

While Saint-Simon is not to be made responsible for all the later extravagance of his school, it is true that authority is to be found in his works for the fundamental ideas of his followers, and even for their practical measures before the separation which took place between Enfantin and Bazard. They were acting in accordance with his dying instructions in organizing and in preaching in behalf of labor. I am unable to separate, as some do, Saint-Simon from his disciples. So long as they were united and moderate they were carrying out consistently his teachings. They simply developed his thoughts and expressed precisely notions at which he had only hinted in vague and indefinite language.

The New Christianity was the Bible of the Saint-Simonian religion. Saint-Simon held that God had founded the Christian Church, and that we ought to honor the Fathers of the Church with the deepest reverence. Catholics and Protestants had, however, perverted the only true and valid Christian principle, and it was this he sought to restore. “In the New Christianity,” said he, “all morality will be derived immediately from this principle; men ought to regard each other as brothers. This principle, which belongs to primitive Christianity, will receive a glorification, and in its new form will read: Religion must aid society in its chief purpose, which is the most rapid improvement in the lot of the poor.” It is thus that the social question becomes the essence of religion. This was the starting-point of Saint-Simon’s disciples, and led to the formation of a Saint-Simonian sect with a priesthood.

But let us devote a few moments to a description of the economic and social organization proposed by the Saint-Simonians, before discussing the religious society they founded to do honor to the memory of Saint-Simon, to assist in carrying our their socialistic schemes, and to satisfy the yearnings of hearts which refused to find satisfaction and contentment in the Christian Church.

Saint-Simonism is the first example of pure socialism, by which I understand an economic system in which production is entirely carried on in common, and the fruits of labor distributed according to some ideal standard, which appears to the promoters of the scheme just. This standard will, of course, vary according to the subjective ideas of different socialists. Any plan, to be practicable, must necessarily be a compromise between various views and historical antecedents.

Another writer defines “Socialism Proper”—by which he means about what I understand by Pure Socialism—as follows: “It is that system which recognizes inequality both in the capacity and requirements of individuals, and accordingly allows wages to be proportionate to work done, and admits of private income along with collective property.”[48]

The Saint-Simonians were led to socialism by observing the ill-regulated distribution of economic goods under our present social régime. They found the idle surfeited in luxuries and the diligent without the comforts and often without even the necessaries of life, the former enjoying the right to live as parasites on the fruits of the toil of the busy, the latter enjoying the right to choose between hard and ill-paid labor and death by starvation. They were able to perceive no sufficient connection between merit and recompense. Consequently the world appeared in a state of disharmony and they proposed to restore harmony by a new economic system.

It may be as well to state here that political economists are generally inclined to admit a certain justice in such complaints and only object to socialistic schemes as impracticable or as involving still worse evils. To show how far a man who holds a high rank as an orthodox political economist can go in his objection to the present method of distributing economic goods, it may be well to cite a celebrated passage from John Stuart Mill’s “Political Economy:” “If the bulk of the human race are always to remain as at present, slaves to toil in which they have no interest and therefore feel no interest—drudging from early morning till late at night for bare necessaries and with all the intellectual and moral deficiencies which that implies—without resources either in mind or feeling—untaught, for they cannot be better taught than fed; selfish, for all their thoughts are required for themselves; without interests or sentiments as citizens and members of society, and with a sense of injustice rankling in their minds, equally for what they have not and what others have; I know not what there is which should make a person of any capacity of reason concern himself about the destinies of the human race.”[49] In another place Mill says that if the institution of private property necessarily carried with it all the sufferings and injustices of the present state of society, and a choice had to be made between private property and communism, “all the difficulties, great or small, of communism would be but as dust in the balance.”[50]

Now, the Saint-Simonians believed it possible to remedy these evils of distribution only by the substitution of state property for private property. At the same time, they rejected any equal distribution of labor’s products, which would give the active and energetic no more than the slow and indolent, which would treat alike the stupid clown, who was only a burden and a nuisance, and a great genius whose talents increased the wealth and prosperity of the nation. The Saint-Simonians held that men were by nature unequal, and that it was right to reward superior power, when exerted for the general good. Their idea was that each one should labor according to his capacity and be rewarded according to the services rendered. They wished to organize civil society on the plan of an army. This thought is distinctly expressed by one of their leaders in these words: “In the army gradations in rank and authority are already established, while in civil life that is precisely what is wanting; and in an enterprise conducted upon the principle of association, a central administration is imperiously required.”[51] The officers are the directing authority in this scheme, and they decide on the value of the services rendered to society and reward the citizens accordingly. As society consists of priests, savants, and industrials—the industrials comprising those engaged in manufactures, agriculture, and commerce[52]—so the government consists of the chiefs of the priests, the chiefs of the savants, and the chiefs of the industrials. All property belongs to the church, i.e., to the state, and every profession or trade is a religious exercise and has its rank in the social hierarchy.[53]

It is not clearly stated how the ruling body was to be selected, whether by popular vote or otherwise. The idea of the Saint-Simonians seems to have been, however, that the good and wise, the best, would be voluntarily and without dissension selected as leaders—an idea scarcely warranted by the world’s experience with universal suffrage.

The Saint-Simonians necessarily rejected inheritance from their scheme, as they regarded idlers as thieves, and wished each one to be rewarded only in accordance with his own individual merits. All should start with equal advantages and only avail themselves of nature’s inequalities, i.e., superior talents. Christ’s command was “Away with slavery!” Saint-Simon’s, “Away with inheritance!” Property now inherited would naturally become common property in the new society.

The Saint-Simonians were accused in the Chamber of Deputies of advocating community of goods and community of wives. They defended themselves in a brochure dated October 1, 1830, which it is worth while to quote, as it gives their ideas on these two important subjects:[54]

“Yes, without doubt, the Saint-Simonians profess peculiar views regarding property and the future of women, as well as concerning religion, power, liberty, and, finally, concerning all the great problems which are agitated so violently in Europe to-day. But these are very different from those ascribed to them. The system of community of goods means a division among all the members of society, either of the means of production or of the fruits of the toil of all.

“The Saint-Simonians reject this equal division of property, which would constitute in their eyes a more reprehensible act of violence, a more revolting injustice, than the present unequal division, which was effected in the first place by the force of arms, by conquest.

“For they believe in the natural inequality of men, and regard this inequality as the very basis of association, as the indispensable condition of social order.

“They reject the system of community of goods, for this would be a manifest violation of the first of all the moral laws which it is their mission to teach—viz., that in the future each one should rank according to his capacity and be rewarded according to his works.

“But in virtue of this law they demand the abolition of all privileges of birth, without exception, and consequently the destruction of inheritance, the chief of these privileges, which to-day comprehends all the others, and the effect of which is to leave to chance the distribution of social privileges among a small number, and to condemn the most numerous class to deprivation, to ignorance, to misery.

“They demand that land, capital, and all the instruments of labor should become common property, and be so managed that each one’s portion should correspond to his capacity and his reward to his labors.... Christianity has released woman from servitude but has condemned her to religious, political, and civil inferiority. The Saint-Simonians have announced her emancipation, but they have not abolished the sacred law of marriage, proclaimed by Christianity. On the contrary, they give a new sanctity to this law.

“Like the Christians, they demand that one man should be united to one woman, but they teach that the wife ought to be the equal of the husband, and that, in accordance with the particular grace given to her sex by God, she ought to be associated with him in the triple function of temple, state, and family, in such a manner that the social individual which has hitherto been man alone should hereafter be man and woman.[55]

“The religion of Saint-Simon is to put an end to this legal prostitution which, under the name of marriage, consecrates frequently to-day a monstrous union of devotion and egoism, of intelligence and ignorance, of youth and decrepitude.”

The leaders of the Saint-Simonian religion were Enfantin and Bazard, the Supreme Fathers. Rodrigues had been chosen by Saint-Simon as his successor, but he generously ceded his position to them as his superiors, in accordance with the rule that rank should be the measure of capacity.

The new faith gained a large number of adherents after the Revolution of July, 1830.[56] Some of these became prominent afterwards, some of them were then men of wealth and importance. The best known are perhaps Buchez, who wrote a “Parliamentary History of the Revolution,” and was President of the Constituent Assembly of 1830; Laurent, a distinguished author and professor; Michel Chevalier, a civil engineer, since celebrated as a writer and a political economist; Barrault, professor of literature at the College of Sorèze, a dramatic author of distinction, some of whose plays had been performed at the Théâtre Français, and an orator of remarkable eloquence; Fournel, who had studied at the Polytechnic and afterwards made a name as an engineer; Adolphe Blanqui, who became an orthodox political economist, and wrote a “History of Political Economy,” and Pierre Leroux,[57] who at a later period became the exponent of Humanitarianism, a kind of Saint-Simonism modified and tinctured with Hegelian philosophy, and under whose influence several of Madame Sand’s works, as “Consuelo” and “La Comtesse de Rudolstadt,” were written. Other men of more or less note, bankers, lawyers, merchants, and particularly all kinds of engineers, joined them. The École Polytechnique was ever their stronghold. De Lesseps, an engineer who has disturbed the peace of many Americans, was also for a time connected with them.

Enfantin was, indeed, a strange man. It is scarcely comprehensible what could have given him such power over men of ability, learning, wealth, and shrewd business capacity. In commenting upon this circumstance, Mr. Booth says: “He ruled despotically over their lives and thoughts; he induced them ... to lead an ascetic life; he withdrew them from refined society, and forced them to share in the coarsest toil; he compelled them to undergo the humiliation of public confessions, and he received from them the honors and the reverence accorded to a divine teacher. Yet his intellectual powers were inferior to those possessed by some of his disciples.” ... However, “his views were noble and generous and he advocated them with all the sincerity of genuine enthusiasm and the boldness of matchless self-confidence. It was natural that they should fascinate young men of an ardent temperament, who burned with a chivalrous desire to redress the evils of the world. They were readily charmed by a prophet whose countenance was remarkable for its dignity and repose, and whose affectionate disposition inspired them with boundless confidence and fervor. It must be admitted also that both his religious and political opinions contained a large amount of truth; but his vanity has invested them with an appearance of absurdity, for he delighted in fantastic dresses, in solemn processions, and imposing ceremonies; and he exposed himself to the ridicule of the world by permitting his disciples to speak to him of the majesty of his countenance and the divine brightness of his smile.”[58] An absent follower writes to the father, le Père, as they called him, from Corsica: “The kiss of my father will give me power, and his eloquent voice; I have every confidence in my father, for I am sure that he knows his children better than they know themselves; why do I, nevertheless, tremble in going to him?” Other expressions addressed to the father are too absurd, extravagant, and impious to be quoted. Once, indeed, Enfantin rebuked the homage of his disciples with the words: “No one of us is God: I am only a man.”

The Saint-Simonians in an early stage of their proselytism formed a “Sacred College of Apostles,” consisting of six leaders. These chiefs were Enfantin, Bazard, Buchez, Rodrigues, Laurent, and Rouen. The younger and less influential disciples were organized as a subordinate order. They established missions and bishoprics in Toulouse, Montpellier, Sorèze, Lyons, in fact, in all parts of France, and also carried the new gospel to foreign lands, as Belgium and Algeria. Paris was divided into twelve districts and a male and a female missionary sent into each part. They propagated their faith by numerous lectures and by the press. One of their organs was called the Globe; its mottoes were: “Religion, Science, Industry, Universal Association.

“The purpose of all social institutions ought to be the intellectual, moral, and physical amelioration of the poorest and most numerous class.

“All privileges of birth, without exception, are abolished.

“To each one according to his capacity; to each capacity according to its works.”

These mottoes are a good résumé of their ideas.

The Saint-Simonians considered it necessary first to distinguish themselves in marked manner by wearing a peculiar costume, afterwards to separate themselves from the world by retiring to a sort of monastery.

Their costume consisted of blue cloth. Bazard and Enfantin wore light blue, the other adherents a darker shade, according to rank, the lowest members of the hierarchy being clad in royal blue. At a later period a still more peculiar costume was adopted, which embraced a waistcoat so contrived that no one could either put it on or take it off without assistance; and this symbolized the dependence of man upon his fellow-man.

In 1831 a schism took place in the Saint-Simonian church. Enfantin’s views regarding love and marriage were becoming constantly less and less orthodox. His belief in the substantial correctness of the impulses of the flesh led him to advocate, first, divorce, then views which can fairly be called free-love. In this he departed widely from the doctrines of the earlier and purer Saint-Simonism. A violent controversy followed the announcement of Enfantin’s later opinions. The debates lasted day and night for some time. They were all terribly in earnest. Young men were borne from the room unconscious and some even lost their reason. The matter did not terminate until Bazard and a large number of disciples, including Mde. Bazard, M. Fournel and his wife, and Pierre Leroux, withdrew from the association. To the credit of the women connected with the Saint-Simonians, it should be stated that not one of them remained with Enfantin.

Enfantin and Bazard had been the two fathers, and in their assemblies Bazard had had a seat beside Enfantin. His chair was left vacant, as an appeal to some female Messiah to come forward and occupy it, and form together with Enfantin the couple-prêtre, the true priest man-woman. As man and woman together formed one unit, the supreme priesthood could only be perfect when composed of both. Enfantin’s beauty and wonderful magnetism appear to have attracted numerous candidates, but the right one never appeared. The perfect priest remained an unrealized dream.

After the schism Enfantin and a number of his disciples decided to come out from the world, and for this purpose retired to Ménilmontant, where Enfantin owned a house surrounded by a large garden. Here forty or fifty of the faithful led a most strange life. It was one of severe asceticism. Husbands separated from their wives for the sake of their religion, after they had assumed the monastic dress. Sometimes the wives shared the enthusiasm of the disciples; sometimes they murmured. One of them, who finds the trial a hard one and yet appreciates her husband’s motives, writes to him: “On Wednesday, I shall see you assume the dress of an apostle, and then I can give you but a sisterly kiss. I will endeavor to collect all my strength to hear you renounce me as a wife and your Amelia as child. Such a proceeding requires an energy which I trust I shall possess. Receive the tender farewell of her who will soon no longer be able to subscribe herself—your Amelia.” To a friend she writes: “I am sensible of the aims to which his noble and generous heart leads him, when he separates himself from me. This knowledge is sufficient for me to accept the sacrifice, and, after all, what is my grief, what are my tears, when the enfranchisement of the world is concerned?”

As they held the performance of labor to be a religious act, they employed no servants, and at Ménilmontant you might have been edified by the sight of a man scrubbing the floor, who has since attained a world-wide fame. They were generally cheered in their work by music. Another part of their creed laid stress upon mental development, and we find at the monastery instruction given in astronomy, geology, physical geography, music, and civil engineering. Any one might well be proud to have had such instructors as those who taught. To mention only one, the teacher of music was David, the composer of the operas “Lalla Rookh,” “Désert,” and “Herculanum.”

It is not necessary in this place to describe the strange and fantastic life by which the apostles endeavored to attain a more elevated spiritual state, reverencing Saint-Simon and Enfantin as sacred messengers of God. They were finally dispersed by dissensions, the desire of some to return to their families, financial difficulties, and external persecution. Enfantin and Chevalier were imprisoned for holding illegal assemblies. The faith, however, continued to prosper for a few years, and missionaries were still sent out to teach the New Christianity. One of the latest expeditions was headed by Enfantin himself after his release from prison. Its aim was to connect the Red Sea with the Mediterranean. De Lesseps was associated with them in this, but he finally separated from them, as they could not agree upon the engineering plans. Enfantin and other Saint-Simonians continued to advocate the project and scouted Stephenson’s assertion that it was impossible. This may seem at first like strange missionary work, but it does not, when you remember that to them all labor for the advancement of humanity was sacred. It is owing to Enfantin’s persistent endeavors that the Suez Canal was built. When Enfantin heard that De Lesseps was going on with the canal alone, it was thought that he might feel injured. He exhibited, however, a truly noble spirit, and simply remarked that, “Provided the work which I have brought into notice, and caused to be studied as highly useful to the moral and material interests of humanity, be executed, I will be the first to bless him by whom it is executed. Undoubtedly, it is but just that posterity should know that the initiation of that gigantic enterprise was taken by those whom the Old World could recognize only as Utopists, dreamers, or fools.”[59]

The Saint-Simonians never reunited after the Egyptian expedition. A considerable number were able to make themselves useful in that country on account of their engineering skill. Mehemet Ali, the viceroy, recognized their talents and employed them in numerous ways. One received a commission to found a Polytechnic School at Cairo, another was placed at the head of a school of artillery, two others were appointed professors in the school at Kauka, and several medical men received positions in the hospital. David delighted the Alexandrians with concerts, and Barrault charmed them by his eloquent lectures. An Egyptian paper declared of Barrault that “Alexandria, since the best days of its glory, has never heard within its walls a voice so eloquent or a poetry of language so harmonious.”[60]

The most of these Saint-Simonians returned to France, and, like many of their former associates who had not left their native soil, acquired positions of prominence and influence.

Enfantin himself received a post as director of the Lyons Railway and became wealthy. He never lost faith in Saint-Simonism, but thought that as much had been done for the system as was then possible, since its doctrines had been proclaimed far and near, and were slowly leavening the mass of society.

Many of the principles taught by the Saint-Simonians must receive our hearty approbation. We sympathize with their endeavors to improve the lot of the poor and oppressed, and assent to them when they preach the dignity and sacredness of labor, the reverence due woman, and the duty of maintaining peace between nation and nation. When Chevalier proposes that the armies of Europe, “instead of being applied to the destruction of property and life, should be employed upon works of public utility,”[61] we are reminded that the coming of a time has been prophesied when “nations shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”[62]

Saint-Simon has ceased to be the prophet of a religious school, but he did not sacrifice life and happiness in vain. He still lives in the lives and actions of men, and to-day possesses an historical importance which has been well expressed in these words:

“Saint-Simon first taught us to consider the history of labor and property as an essential element of human development, and consequently to investigate the history of society.

“He first discerned clearly the separation of the two great classes of industrial society, and implanted bitter hatred in the consciousness of the lower classes. Saint-Simon’s word that the party of the laborers would be formed, has been fulfilled. Saint-Simonism is the first expression of the proletariat.

“He first represented social reform as the only true function of government.

“Finally, he first brought forward the question of inheritance, the question upon which the entire future of the social form of Europe will rest during the next two generations.

“Thus through Saint-Simon is society, in its power, its elements, and its contradictions, for the first time half understood, half vaguely conjectured. He is the boundary of a new era in France. He left the beaten track and laid down his life in discovering and opening for society a new path. In it we have as yet taken only a few steps, and no human eye is able to discern the goal whither we are tending.”[63]

CHAPTER V.
FOURIER.

In his “Social Movements in France”[64] Lorenz von Stein uses these words, in comparing Saint-Simon and Fourier: “While Saint-Simon was sacrificing his life in Paris in his efforts to attain an unknown and only vaguely conjectured goal, and while his school was struggling against foes from within and without, there lived in another part of France a man who, without knowing Saint-Simon, was taking an essentially different route towards the same goal. This man was Charles Fourier.... Never has any land at the same time produced two men of such importance in the history of society.”[65]

These two men together constitute one whole. Each was required as a complement of the other. The one started in his career as a man of wealth and social eminence, the other as a man of the people. The one observed society, studied its history, its development, and sought to find therein a clew to guide him in his work of regenerating the world, morally and economically; the other, regarding the past as such a series of blunders as to afford no proper basis for future formations, searched the depths of his own consciousness, and discovered a law which furnished premises, enabling him to construct deductively an ideal and perfect society, and to explain with mathematical accuracy the past, present, and future of the entire universe.

Saint-Simon was a man of impulse and feeling; Fourier was a man of the understanding and logic. The former founded a religion; the latter a science.

Charles Fourier was born in 1772 in Besançon. He came of an ordinary family and represented the middle-class. His father was a cloth-merchant in his native city, and he himself spent the greater part of his life in mercantile pursuits of one kind or another. Fourier seems to have been a bright boy, for when only eleven years of age he took prizes for excellence in French and Latin. He liked the study of geography, spending a considerable part of his pocket-money for maps and globes, and was passionately fond of music and flowers. It is said that he was himself a good musician. His mechanical ability was remarkable enough to attract attention at an early period in his life. As a commercial traveller he visited Germany and Holland, and was thus able to gratify his desire to see the world. Upon the death of his father, he inherited about one hundred thousand francs at an early age, invested the money in foreign trade, and lost it in the siege of Lyons in 1793, during the Reign of Terror, when his bales of cotton were used to form barricades and his provisions to feed the soldiers. But Fourier’s misfortunes did not end here. He was taken prisoner, and kept in confinement for some time, expecting daily to be led forth to execution. Release, however, enabled him to join the army, for which he had some taste. It is, indeed, stated that he was able to make suggestions concerning military operations which were followed to advantage by his superiors. But ill-health obliged him to retire from the army at the expiration of two years, and return to a business life.

Fourier was never greatly prospered, nor did he ever, so far as I know, give evidence of ability to achieve a large amount of worldly success. In this he was unlike almost every other great communist or socialist. However, it must be acknowledged that his mind was from childhood engaged with other thoughts than the means of acquiring wealth, so that we are scarcely in a position to say what he might have done in this direction if he had devoted himself heartily to business. It is certain that to him the words idler and bungler do not apply, and that he had no desire to fork out his penny and pocket another’s shilling. On the contrary, it was to give, and not receive, that he desired. This trait of all large souls was manifested in a touching way when he was a small boy. There came one morning to the door of his father’s house a poor cripple, asking if little Charles was ill. When he was told that Charles was not ill, but had left the city, he burst into tears. Inquiry disclosed the fact that while on his way to school, and without the knowledge of others, the little fellow had every day given half of his lunch to the poor man.

Two events occurring to Fourier in early life led him to a train of thought which ended in his condemnation of the economic organization of society as a disastrous failure.

When he was five years of age he proved himself an enfant terrible by telling the truth in an innocent and childlike manner to some customers, about certain goods in his father’s shop; and for this he was punished. The falsehood which his father or some person connected with the shop was accustomed to tell the customers appears to have been one of the kind common in some parts of the mercantile world, and which many might to-day regard as not very sinful—as not worse, at any rate, than the white lies of society.

The other incident occurred when he was nineteen years of age. He was connected with a business house in Marseilles, and was required to assist in throwing overboard rice, which his employer had kept for speculative purposes and had allowed to remain in the hold of a ship until it was spoiled. Prices were high, owing to a famine, and it was feared they would fall if the rice were thrown on the market. Young Fourier argued that a system which forced children to lie and men to allow food needed by hungry people to rot must be radically defective.

He began to elaborate a social scheme which should promote truth, honesty, economy of resources, and the development of our natural propensities. This became the one aim of his life. He constructed an ideal world, and in this he ever lived. Association with its imaginary creatures was his company; the fancy that he had benefited them was his consolation in adversity, and the unwavering belief that the creations of his brain were good, enabled him to persevere to the end. Yet at times he must have felt the severity of his struggle against self and the world. He had published[66] what he considered a weighty work, “La Théorie des Quatre Mouvements,” containing a prospectus and an outline of his system, five years before he found even one supporter. Think what that means! A reformer presents to mankind plans which he knows will save men from poverty, selfishness, hypocrisy, corruption, intrigue, deceit, crime, and all manner of misfortune and wickedness, and for five years his projects are not so much as noticed. Like Luther of old, he offers to maintain his theses against all comers, and no one thinks it worth while to engage in the controversy. The sufferings of humanity pain his large heart, but year after year slips by and brings not one sympathizer, not one helper, in his endeavors to save the world. It is easy to speak the words “five years,” but such a period has often seemed endless to those who have been obliged to live it.

Fourier’s first supporter was not such a one as he desired to promote his plans. Slowly others came, but he never had a large following. He wrote to Robert Owen, the English communist, but received no encouragement, while the Saint-Simonians treated him with contempt. He did not desire so much the adherence of personal disciples as men of property, who could enable him to make a trial of his scheme; for he thought the practical workings of one experiment would convince the world. He announced publicly that he would be at home every day at noon to meet any one disposed to furnish a million francs for an establishment based on the principles which he had published, and it is said that for twelve years he repaired to his house daily at the appointed hour. The philanthropist whom he awaited never came. Only one experiment was made in his lifetime. In 1832 a member of the Chamber of Deputies offered an estate near Versailles as the basis of an association, and the offer was accepted by a few converts. Fourier was never satisfied with the management, which seems to have been defective, and the experiment soon failed.

Fourier died at the age of sixty-five, without having had the satisfaction of seeing any decided measures taken for the realization of his plans. He had, however, succeeded in gaining the appreciation and friendship of a number of followers, and he passed his last days in the enjoyment of every comfort.

His tombstone bears this characteristic inscription, expressive of his faith and his hope:

“Les attractions sont proportionnelles aux destinées,

La série distribue les harmonies.”

Fourier wrote three works of importance. The first is the one already mentioned, “La Théorie des Quatre Mouvements et des Destinées Générales”—“The Theory of the Four Movements and the General Destinies”—published in 1808. The four movements were social, animal, organic, and material, giving us society, animal life, organic life, and the material world. The object is to show that one law, that of attraction, governs them all. Newton discovered the law of one movement, the material; Fourier, that this same law of attraction pervaded all four movements. This discovery prepared the way for the most astonishing and most fortunate event which could happen to this globe—viz., “the sudden passage from social chaos to universal harmony.”[67] This work was considered incomplete by Fourier himself, and the fantastic notions and ridiculous prophecies contained in it were the subject of so much ridicule and criticism that for a long time he would not mention the book, and was unwilling to hear others speak of it. When he was afterwards urged to republish it he refused, saying that it contained errors, and he should be obliged to rewrite it, to make it satisfactory to himself.[68]

Fourier’s chief work was his “Traité de l’Association Domestique Agricole ou Attraction Industrielle”—“Treatise on Domestic Rural Association or Industrial Attraction”—published subsequently in his complete works under the title of “La Théorie de l’Unité Universelle”[69]—“The Theory of Universal Unity.” The first edition appeared in 1822. The fourteen years between the appearance of the “Théorie des Quatre Mouvements” and the “Traité de l’Association” were passed in meditation, in revolving and evolving plans in his mind.

He worked out a complete philosophy in the “Traité.” His system not only included man and the earth, but the heavens above and the waters under the earth. His scientific notions were crude in the extreme. Nature was composed of eternal and indestructible principles—of God, active and moving principle; of matter, passive principle; and of justice or mathematics, the regulating principle of the universe, to which God himself was subject. One of the most curious features of Fourier’s system is the use he makes of figures. Pythagoras himself did not attach more importance to them. They revealed to him hitherto undisclosed secrets, so that he was able to give a precise answer to any conceivable question. They enabled him to prophesy. He foresaw that the existence of the human race on this earth was to continue until it completed a period of eighty thousand years. This period is divided into four phases, two of them ascending phases of vibration or gradation, and two descending phases of vibration or degradation. The following table gives the four phases:

The life of the race thus resembles the life of man. The earth is just progressing out of its infancy. It will have passed into the second phase when it has adopted Fourier’s plan of association. Its life up to the present time has been weak, childlike, and full of sufferings, but it is to receive reparation for this in seventy thousand happy years, surpassing in good fortune any previously described millennium. Lions will become servitors of man, and draw his carriage from one end of France to another in a single day; while whales will pull his ships across the waters, provided he does not prefer to ride on the back of a seal. Sea-water will become a more delightful beverage than lemonade; while a bright light at the North Pole will not only render that part of the world inhabitable, but will diffuse an exquisite aroma over all the earth. Our bodies are part of the earth, and it suffers with us. When we adopt Fourier’s scheme we shall cease to suffer, and shall release the earth from its ills. Our souls are also parts of the great world-soul, and no part can be in pain without bringing grief to the whole. As St. Paul has it, “The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together.”

Fourier believed, further, in the immortality of the soul, in its existence hereafter, and in its previous existence. He held to the transmigration of the soul, and in its frequent return to this earth to partake in the happy future of the human race. According to him, mind is always joined to matter so that it may ever enjoy material pleasures. When the mind leaves one body it unites itself to another, and always to a higher one. It develops continually. It passes also from world to world, though ever and anon returning to the earth. Our souls will have existed in one hundred and ten different worlds before the end of our planetary system. The planets themselves have immortal souls, which are also subject to transmigration. At the expiration of eighty thousand years the soul of the earth will take up its abode in another and more perfect body.

But it is not necessary to devote more time to these nonsensical speculations. It is not on their account that Fourier is remembered. He himself recognized the fact that his chief merit was the production of his social system. On this point he says:

“But what do these accessories impart to the principal affair, which is the art of organizing combined industry, whence will issue a fourfold product; good morals; the accord of the three classes—rich, middle, and poor; the discontinuance of party quarrels, the cessation of pests, revolutions, and fiscal penury; and universal unity?

“My detractors condemn themselves in attacking me on account of my views touching the new sciences—cosmogony, psychogony, analogy—which lie outside of the domain of the theory of combined industry. Although it should prove true that these new sciences are erroneous and foolish,[71] it does not remain less certain that I am the first and the only one who has presented a plan for associating inequalities and for quadrupling the products of industry in employing such passions, characters, and instincts as nature has given us. This is the only point upon which people ought to fix their attention, and not upon sciences which have only been announced.”

The “Traité de l’Association” is prolix and tedious. It abounds in meaningless combinations of figures, letters, and hieroglyphics. New and strange words, coined without necessity, often render the thoughts difficult to understand. The wheat which it undoubtedly contains is buried beneath such an immense pile of chaff that it is too likely to be overlooked. Fortunately, Fourier has given us a better and more condensed exposition of his doctrine in the “Nouveau Monde Industriel et Sociétaire”—“The New Industrial and Social World”—published in 1829,[72] and the latest of his more important works.

The central idea of Fourier’s social scheme is association. The all-pervading attraction which he discovered draws man to man and reveals the will of God. It is passionate attraction—attraction passionnelle. It urges men to union. This law of attraction is universal and eternal, but men have thrown obstacles in its way so that it has not had free course. Consequently, we have been driven into wrong and abnormal paths. When we return to right ways—when we follow the directions given us by attraction, as indicated in our twelve passions or desires—universal harmony will again reign. Economic goods—an indispensable condition of human development—will be obtained in abundance. Products will be increased many fold, owing, first, to the operation of the passion to labor and to benefit society; secondly, to the economy of associated effort.

Since happiness and misery depend upon the latitude allowed our passions—our propensities—it is necessary to enumerate these. They are divided into three classes—the one class tending to luxe, luxisme, luxury; the second tending to groups; the third to series. By luxe is meant the gratification of the desires of the five senses—hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling—each one constituting a passion. These are sensual in the original sense of the word, or sensitive. Four passions tend to groups—viz., amity or friendship, love, paternity or the family feeling (familism), and ambition. These are affective. The three remaining passions are distributive, and belong to the series. They are the passions called cabaliste, papillonne, and composite. The passion cabaliste is the desire for intrigue, for planning and contriving. It is strong in women and the ambitious. In itself it would tend to destroy the unity of social life, as would also the passion papillonne, or alternante (the love of change). These are, however, harmonized by the passion composite (the desire of union). All twelve passions unite together into the one mighty, all-controlling impulse, called unitéisme, which is the love felt for others united in society, and is a passion unknown in civilization. It is rather difficult for the uninitiated to see how this differs from the passion composite, unless it be in strength. The following table serves to make the relations of the passions clearer:[73]

A social organization must be formed which will allow free play to our passions, so that they may combine harmoniously. Our present society, called civilization,[74] does not, and cannot, do this. It is a system of oppression and repression, and is necessarily a frightful discord. Harmony can only be found in combinations of suitable numbers in communities known as phalanxes, and occupying buildings called phalansteries. Each phalanx is a unit, a great family, and dwells in a single building, a phalanstery. What is it that determines the proper number for a single phalanx? It is again the twelve passions of man. These can be combined in eight hundred and twenty different ways in as many individuals, and no possible combination ought to be unrepresented in the workers of any phalanx, or there will be a lack of perfect harmony. But in every community there will be found old men, infants, and those disabled on account of illness or accident. Provision must also be made for absences. There ought not, then, to be less than fifteen or sixteen hundred members in a phalanx, though four hundred is mentioned as a possible but undesirable minimum. Eighteen hundred to two thousand members are recommended. A larger number would produce discord, and is, therefore, inadmissible. But a further arrangement is necessary. These different characters thrown together helter-skelter would no more produce harmony than it would for one blindfolded to draw from a bag two thousand combinations of notes for the piano and play them in the order in which they were drawn. On the contrary, they must be ordered intelligently in series, the series combined into groups, and the groups united into the phalanx. Those having similar tastes form a series, which must consist of some seven, eight, or nine members. Several series having related tastes and desires unite in a group. A group undertakes some one kind of labor, as the care of fruit-trees, and a series concerns itself with one particular branch of the labor of a group, as the care of apple-trees.

All labor becomes pleasant to man, as nature meant it should be. It is only when he is forced to do a kind which he does not like, or is obliged to over-work, that productive exertion becomes repulsive. This is avoided in the phalanxes, as each one is allowed to follow his own bent, being at perfect liberty to join any group of laborers or to change from group to group as he may see fit. In fact, the desire for change—the passion papillonne, or alternante—is so strong that at the expiration of two hours a change is usually made from one kind of labor to another. Work of this character becomes play, and children like it, while men are as fond of it as of athletic sports. We now discover men undergoing severe physical exertion for the sake of excelling in running, swimming, wrestling, rowing, etc. There will spring up a similar rivalry between groups of cultivators in the phalanxes. One set of laborers will endeavor to obtain more useful products from ten or one hundred acres than another similar group from the same extent of land of like quality. We find such a rivalry at present among cultivators of the soil, and it might undoubtedly be increased in organizations such as Fourier described. Every fall you see it reported in local papers that farmer A has raised, let us say, four hundred bushels of oats from ten acres; this at once provokes B to inform the world that his ten acres yielded five hundred bushels. C may report five hundred and fifty bushels in the coming year. This demonstrates the existence of a rivalry of a valuable kind, of which much might be made. But Fourier pushed things to an extreme when he thought that the productiveness of labor might thereby be increased fourfold, or even fivefold. He held that a man could produce enough under his social régime from his eighteenth to twenty-eighth year, so that he could pass the remainder of his life in elegant leisure. He maintained, too, that if England should introduce his socialistic phalanxes her labor would become so productive that she could pay off her national debt in six months by the sale of hens’ eggs. This is what he says on this point: “It is not by millions, but by billions, that we shall value the product of small objects which are to-day despised. It is now the turn of eggs to play a grand rôle, and resolve a problem before which those learned in European finance have grown pale. They only know how to increase public indebtedness. We are going to extinguish the colossal English debt on a fixed day with half of the eggs produced during a single year. We shall not lay violent hands on a single fowl, and the work of accomplishing our purpose, instead of being burdensome, will be an amusement for the globe.

“Let us make an arithmetical calculation. We wish to pay a debt of twenty-five billions during the year 1835, with hen’s eggs.

“Let us estimate, to begin with, the real value of these eggs. I appraise them at ten sous or half a franc a dozen, when they are guaranteed fresh and of a good size, like those of the hens of Caux....

“Valuing at ten sous a dozen the guaranteed good, large, and fresh eggs of fowls, nourished with all the resources of art, we should have to count upon fifty billions of dozens of eggs in order to extinguish in a single year the English debt.

“The hen, the most precious of fowls, is a truly cosmopolitan bird. With suitable care she becomes acclimated everywhere. She flourishes on the sands of Egypt and among the glaciers of the North.

“I will prove that the hennery of one phalanx ought to contain at least 10,000 hens, not including the pullets, twenty times as numerous.

“Let us estimate that a hen lays 200 eggs a year. She ought not, perhaps, to be expected to do this under our present social régime, but well cared-for in a socialistic phalanx she could do rather more....

“Let us add up, and, after the manner of good housewives, neglect fractions.... Let us suppose that the hennery of each phalanx contains 12,000 hens, instead of 10,000.

“One thousand dozens of eggs at half a franc the dozen would amount to 500 francs. Multiplying this by 200, we would have from each phalanx a product valued at 100,000 francs. We must now multiply this by 600,000, the number of phalanxes, which gives a total product of 60,000,000,000.

“Now, as we have estimated the number of hens at 12,000 for each phalanx, in order to facilitate the calculation, it will be necessary to deduct one sixth from our product, which will leave 50,000,000,000. Divide this by two, and the quotient is 25,000,000,000, precisely the amount of the English debt expressed in round numbers.”—Q. E. D.

Of course, such amusing and ridiculous passages in Fourier’s writings do not give us any sufficient ground for condemning the cardinal principles of Fourierism.

Besides the productivity of labor by a rivalry between producers, the socialistic phalanx will avoid the waste of goods caused by industrial and commercial competition. Twenty men are often employed to do what three or four might accomplish with ease, were the labor properly organized. Think of the enormous loss to society of labor and capital due to a superfluity of retail shops all over a great country like the United States! It may not have occurred to some that whenever capital, consisting of economic goods, like houses, buildings, implements, etc., is not fully employed, or whenever men are waiting for work, economic power is being wasted. This view of the effects of competition ought to influence our legislators more than it does. Let us take the case of two parallel railroads, where one might do all the business. Thousands of acres of land are needlessly and forever removed from agricultural purposes, thousands of tons of iron and steel are diverted from other uses, the labor of hundreds of men is permanently wasted—in short, the millions sunk in the enterprise in the first place, together with the cost of maintaining and working it, are forever lost to the society. Competition thus often makes it cost far more to do a given amount of business than it would otherwise. If Fourierism could rid us of the evils of free competition without depriving us of the benefits we derive from it, it would, indeed, be in so far a great blessing to the world. Fourier felt positive that it could, but he has never succeeded in convincing a large number to put faith in his bright promises.

The economy of associated effort and associated life is one of the leading factors which will increase the wealth of man. Every square league of land has its one phalanstery occupied by a phalanx, consisting of some four hundred families. It costs no more to build a palace for all these families than it would to construct four hundred separate and uncomfortable cottages. While each family has its separate rooms, cooking is carried on in common, and great saving is thereby secured. A fire to cook four hundred dinners may not cost ten times as much as a fire to cook two, while it requires scarcely a greater exertion to watch a large roast than a small one. In the housing of animals, foods, implements, etc., a similar economy is secured. A large number working together afford every opportunity for a fruitful combination and division of labor. Other economies will be effected by the suppression of useless classes. In the new society there will be no soldiers of destruction, no policemen, agents of a discordant social régime, no criminals and lawyers, both products of civilization, of disharmony; finally, no metaphysicians and no political economists. Agriculture is the leading occupation, while commerce and manufacturing industry are reduced to a minimum. Products are conveniently exchanged among members of a commune, while phalanx exchanges superfluities with phalanx and nation with nation in the most economical manner.

Fourier’s socialistic system is not so pure a form of socialism as that of Saint-Simon, inasmuch as he retained private capital and, temporarily at least, inheritance. The division of products takes place in this wise: A certain minimum—a very generous one—is set apart for each member of the commune, and the enormous surplus is divided between labor, capital, and talent—five twelfths going to labor, four twelfths to capital, and three twelfths to talent. The division is made by the phalanxes through the agency of officers whom they elect. The maxim is not labor according to capacity and reward according to services, as with the Saint-Simonians, but labor according to capacity and reward in proportion to exertion, talent, and capital. Labor is divided into three classes—necessary, useful, and agreeable—the highest reward accruing to the first and the smallest to the last division, in accordance with the principles of equity.

Government—for which, however, there seems to be little need—is republican. Officers are elected. The chief of a phalanx is a unarch. The next highest officer is at the head of three or four phalanxes, and is called a duarch. Triarchs, tetrarchs, pentarchs, etc., follow; while the highest officer of the world is the omniarch, who dwells at Constantinople, the capital of the world.

While there are grades in society, the rich and powerful are so animated by the spirit of association—unitéisme—that the differences give no offence. Familism, the love of those nearest and dearest, loses its excluding character. The law of social attraction, “while it conserves the ties and affections of the family, will destroy its exclusive interests. Association will mingle it to such an extent with the great communal or phalansterian family that every narrow affection will disappear, that it will find its own interest in that of all, and will attach it sincerely and passionately to the public concern (chose publique).”[75]

Fourier favored the so-called emancipation of woman, and assigned her a high rank in society. He found the economic, legal, and social position of woman at any given period, or in any country, an exact measure of the true civilization of said period or country. At the same time he was obliged to allow many things which good men generally regard as degrading to woman, as he started from the belief that all natural desires and propensities were good. It is much to be feared that he would practically have abolished marriage and the family, as we now understand these institutions. It is altogether probable that Fourier would have been more successful in his propaganda had his ideas in every respect been more in consonance with the teachings of Christian morality.

Fourier was naturally a man of peace. Holding, as he did, that a single experiment would convince the world that his system of phalanxes was the only correct organization, he could not consistently advocate a violent revolution. He believed that the millennium was to dawn in a few years, even within a shorter period than ten years. Once he advised his followers not to purchase real property, as the progress of Fourierism would soon cause it to depreciate in value. His disciples have been disappointed in their hope that men would speedily accept the principles of their master, but they have ever opposed violence.

Kaufmann, in his “Schäffle’s Socialism,” thus sums up the chief merits of Fourier’s teachings: “There is a good deal of truth in some of his critical remarks. The importance of co-operative production has been recognized chiefly in consequence of his first pointing out the economical benefits of the association. The narrow-minded fear of wholesale trade, and machinery, too, was in a measure dispelled by Fourier’s unqualified recognition of their value. His remarks on the unnecessary hardships of labor and the evil consequences of excessive toil have had their influence on modern factory-laws for the protection of labor and the shortening of the labor hours. Sanitary reforms, and improvements of the laborer’s homestead, which have become the question of the hour, owe not a little of their origin to the spread of Fourier’s ideas.”

Fourier’s first adherent was Just Muiron, who attached himself to the master in 1813, and remained a faithful follower for many years. He wrote two works,[76] in which he exhibited the vices of our existing industrial society and explained the metaphysical principles of Fourierism. Gradually others joined the movement, of whom the most important was Victor Considerant, the author of “La Destinée Sociale, Exposition Élémentaire, Complète de la Théorie Sociétaire”—“Social Destiny, a Complete Elementary Exposition of the Social Theory”—published in the years 1834-38, in three volumes, and in a new edition, in 1851, in two volumes. This is the ablest presentation of the doctrine, and has become, as another writer has said, the text-book of the school. Among other members of note may be mentioned Baudet-Dulary, the deputy who, in 1832, offered an estate for an experimental association; Madame Gatti de Gammond, author of the best short and popular exposition of Fourierism;[77] Madame Clarisse Vigoureux, a wealthy and talented lady;[78] Charles Pellarin, the able biographer of his master;[79] finally, Jules le Chevalier, a former Saint-Simonian, and author of a Fourieristic work of importance.[80] When the Saint-Simonians separated, a considerable number of them passed over to Fourierism. It will be seen that the new doctrine lacked neither wealth nor ability. Its numbers were at first small, but after the death of Fourier the school received large accessions of adherents. The disciples published a paper, which, under various names,[81] and with breaks in its appearance, was published as a weekly, monthly, and daily. The disciples finally formed “The Society for the Propagation and Realization of the Theory of Fourier”—“La Société pour la Propagation et pour la Réalisation de la Théorie de Fourier”—which is probably still alive. At any rate, a writer[82] stated in 1872 that it was then in existence, in possession of a capital of seven hundred thousand francs, and was still determined to labor for the good cause. All the strictly Fourieristic experiments tried in France thus far have failed. Possibly another trial may be more successful. At present the school embraces only a small number of peaceful socialists, living mostly in Paris. Victor Considerant, now seventy-five years old, is among these.

One of the best fruits which Fourier’s teachings have borne may be found in a social community at Guise, in France, where capital and labor are associated much after his plans, although all objectionable and immoral elements appear to have been left out. The founder is Jean Godin, a wealthy manufacturer, and a Fourierist with modified views, who has used his wealth to benefit his own laborers directly and immediately, by providing them with comfortable homes, amusements, instruction, etc., and laborers, as a class, indirectly and remotely, by paving the way for a higher form of social life, a certain kind of co-operation. He himself says of the Familistère at Guise, as the building in which the community lives is called, that it “is the first example of a capital resolutely employed under a single direction, with the view of uniting in one place all the things necessary to the life of a large number of working families; it is the first example of an administration concentrating operations so diverse in order that the results may accrue to the greatest good of the families, removing thus useless intermediaries: all this in preserving, by an economic organization, the capital engaged in the enterprise.”[83]

While the community resembles a phalanx, as described by Fourier, in many respects, it also differs from it in many others. It resembles it in its abode, constructed much like a phalanstery, and with a large share of the elegance and comfort so glowingly pictured by Fourier. It resembles it also in securing economy and increased comfort by associated effort. Further resemblance is found in the care for the children, the sick, the aged, and the disabled, in the provision for education and recreation, and in the attempt to realize a condition of things fitting those who believe in the brotherhood of man. Differences are found in the large share of power which M. Godin has reserved for himself, the removal of obviously ridiculous and fantastic contrivances, and in the absence altogether of agriculture, which Fourier considered the chief occupation of regenerated society. The establishment consists of iron, copper, sugar, and chiccory factories. M. Godin regrets that agriculture has not been included in the pursuits, but it does not seem to have been found practicable.

The social body consists of about fifteen hundred members. The familistère, or social palace in which they live, is thus described: it is “‘an immense brick edifice in the form of three parallelograms,’ each of which encloses an interior court, covered with a glass roof and paved with cement. The building is four stories high. The central parallelogram, or rectangle, is two hundred and eleven feet front and one hundred and thirty feet deep.... The stores of the association ... on the lowest story of the central portion of the building ... contain whatever is necessary for ordinary need and comfort, without reference to luxuries.... ‘In the social palace fifteen hundred persons can see each other go to their daily domestic occupations, reunite in public places, go to market or shopping, under covered galleries, without traversing more than two hundred yards, and, as comfortably in one kind of weather as in another.’”[84] There is also a large nursery, where children are taught “to associate equitably with one another.” They are brought there by the mothers at about ten in the morning, and are taken back to the family apartments between five and six in the afternoon. Many pleasant things are connected with the life in this social palace, as it is called. There are numerous concerts, and a theatre furnishes opportunity for theatricals. Even a billiard-room is provided for the amusement of the members. Two festivals are celebrated yearly—“The Festival of Labor,” in May, and the “Festival of the Children,” in September.[85]

The following are a few extracts from the declaration of principles with which their “laws” open:

“V. It is the essential duty of society and of every individual so to regulate their conduct as to produce the greatest possible benefits to humanity, and to make this the constant object of all their thoughts, words, and actions.

“VI. The perception of this duty has dictated to the sages of all time the following precepts:

“‘To love others as one’s self.’

“‘To act towards others as you would wish that they should act towards you.’

“‘To make our abilities conduce to the perfection of our existence and that of others.’ ...

“‘To unite together and give support to one another.’

“VII.... The laws of universal order, and especially the law of human progress, place at the disposal of men—

“The resources of nature and those of the public property.

“Labor and intelligence.

“Capital or accumulated labor.

“VIII. It is for the good of all humanity that nature vivifies and produces everything useful to human life, and it is, without doubt, for the benefit of all, that each generation should transmit to its successors its acquired knowledge.

“IX. By giving existence to man, God accords to him a right to what is necessary for him in the resources which nature every day affords to humanity, as well as the right to profit by the progress of society.

“XI. (The) perpetual and gratuitous assistance from nature proves that man, by the very fact of his birth, acquires, and should never lose, a certain degree of natural right in the wealth that is produced.

“Hence it follows that the weak have the right to enjoy what nature and the public property place at the disposal of men.

“And that it is the duty of the strong to leave to the weak a just share of the general product.”[86]

The products are divided according to this socialistic—not communistic—scheme between labor and capital. It has existed upwards of twenty years thus far, and has prospered. This may have been due to the talent of M. Godin, its founder. Whether it will be able to maintain its existence after his death remains to be seen.[87]

M. Godin has described his views on social problems and his endeavors to benefit the laborers in a valuable work entitled “Solutions Sociales,” which should be read carefully by those who contemplate founding co-operative or other establishments for the benefit of the masses.

Fourierism was brought to America about 1840, and soon found numerous advocates, including many names of which America is proud. Prominent among the leaders were Albert Brisbane,[88] the head of the movement, Horace Greeley, and Charles A. Dana. In his “History of American Socialisms,” Mr. Noyes mentions thirty-four experiments made by Fourierists in this country, all of which failed for some reason or other. The most remarkable of these experiments was Brook Farm. At first it was not called a phalanx, although from the start it combined many of the features of Fourierism, but it shortly fell in line and became a Fourieristic experiment. When it is mentioned that its leading spirits were George Ripley, Charles A. Dana, Margaret Fuller, and others of like character, it is needless to add that its moral basis was sound. Others, more or less connected with the experiment, were George William Curtis, Horace Greeley, Dr. Channing, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Its exceedingly interesting and pathetic history is to be found in Frothingham’s “George Ripley.”[89]

CHAPTER VI.
LOUIS BLANC.

Saint-Simon and Fourier are first among French socialists. In the history of society no socialistic systems occupy a higher rank than those to which they gave their names. France has, however, produced two other men who have taken positions as leaders in social movements. If Saint-Simon and Fourier take precedence over them in the hierarchy of socialists, there is certainly no Frenchman who can dispute their right to the next highest places. They were chiefs after Saint-Simonism and Fourierism had begun to wane and before German socialism had begun to exist. These two men were Louis Blanc and Proudhon, and it is necessary to devote a few words to them before passing over to a very brief consideration of the latest phases of French socialism.

Saint-Simon and Fourier were social reformers only. They divorced economic reform from politics. They did not seek to use the existing political machinery of society as a means to their ends. They appealed to religious fervor, to brotherly love, to self-interest, and to passionate attraction, and regarded these as quite sufficient moving and organizing forces. Although these men accomplished much, it was very little in proportion to their hopes and expectations. What they did bring to pass did not come precisely in the way they wished it. To all intents and purposes the great social problem seemed as far from solution as ever. The next step in the development of socialism was its connection with politics. A man was needed who should recognize the intimate relation between political and social life, and should take the lead in the attempt to use the power of the one to regenerate the other. Louis Blanc was the one destined to lead socialism into this way. This is his true significance. He was the first state socialist. He was a practical politician of too much influence to make it possible to ignore him, but politics were always a means, never an end. Louis Blanc is thus the connecting link between the older socialism, which was in many respects superstitious, absurd, and fantastical, and the newer, which is sceptical, hard, and practical.

Louis Blanc, journalist, author, politician, socialist, was born in Madrid, Spain, October 28, 1813. His parents were French people, who were living temporarily in Madrid, as his father had been appointed General Inspector of Finance under Joseph Bonaparte. They naturally left Spain soon after this and Louis Blanc passed his early years in Corsica, his mother’s native land. He studied in the College at Rodez, and went to Paris about 1830 to continue his studies. As the revolution had ruined his father, Louis appears for some time to have been obliged to live in cramped circumstances. He assisted himself at first by copying and teaching, but he soon began to make his influence as a writer felt. He became one of the editors of Le Bon Sens in 1834, was made editor-in-chief in 1837, and resigned in 1838, owing to a difference of views between him and the proprietors of the journal, regarding the railway question, they holding to the system of private railways while he favored state railways. He also contributed at the same time to the National, the Revue Républicaine and other papers, all of which were republican or radical periodicals. In 1839 he founded the Revue du Progrès, which became the organ of the most advanced democrats, and it was in this paper that his chief socialistic work, “Organisation du Travail”—“Organization of Labor”—appeared in 1840. It was published afterwards in book-form, and has achieved a world-wide fame. The ninth edition appeared in 1850. The first volume of his most important historical work, the “Histoire de Dix Ans”—“History of the Ten Years” (1830-40)—appeared in 1841. It was completed in sixteen volumes[90] in 1844. A twelfth edition was published in Paris in 1874, in five volumes. This is one of the most remarkable of histories. Few literary works have exercised a greater influence in shaping events. It held up the meanness, littleness, and narrowness of the reign of Louis Philippe to public gaze and contributed not a little to the overthrow of that monarch. It further contains a better account of the development of socialism during that period than can be obtained elsewhere. Louis Blanc was an actor in the events of the ten years described, and understood their import. He saw the separation growing ever wider and wider between the bourgeoisie and the fourth estate, and the political influence which the latter was beginning to acquire, and appreciated the significance of this development as no other writer. His work has consequently become an indispensable source of information regarding the reign of Louis Philippe. Next to the “History of the Ten Years” his leading historical work is the “History of the French Revolution”—“Histoire de la Révolution Française,” published in twelve volumes[91] in the years 1847-62. A second edition bears the date 1864-70. This work treats of a period which he did not understand so well as his own age. Viewing the events described through the eyes of a nineteenth century socialist, he does not always appreciate the underlying spirit. Nevertheless the work is a noteworthy one. “Charles Sumner used to say that the first volume was one of those profoundly philosophical studies which mark an epoch in literature and in the development of human intelligence.”[92] Another writer says of this history: “By many eminent judges this has been considered the most satisfactory history of the revolution yet produced. It gives evidence of careful and ingenious research, abounds in most striking delineations of character, and is written with great energy and brilliancy of style. The portraiture of Robespierre, and the description of events leading to his fall, are among the most satisfactory accounts of the subject ever presented.”[93]

Louis Blanc was prominent in the Revolution of 1848. He was made a member of the Provisional Government in February, 1848, and with his colleagues, Albert, a workman, and Ledru-Rollin, a former member of the assembly, attempted to commit the government to the introduction of a large number of socialistic measures. The majority were, however, opposed to him, and he did not meet with a great measure of success, although the droit au travail was proclaimed. This is the technical term for the right of laborers to demand work from the government if they cannot find it elsewhere.[94] He demanded the creation of a ministry of labor and progress—ministère du travail et du progrès—which should concern itself with the interests of labor. Unable to obtain the consent of the majority of his colleagues, Louis Blanc tendered his resignation, but was finally induced to withdraw it and content himself with the presidency of a powerless commission appointed to meet in the Luxembourg and debate. That was all—debate. But what does debate without authority signify in a revolution? It means the loss of precious time and of all real influence. It is contemptible and ridiculous in the eyes of the masses at such times. Louis Blanc was lost when he consented to the formation of a debating club as a substitute for a ministère du progrès. This was the purpose of the government. They made a pretext of carrying out what was implied in the droit au travail by the erection of national workshops—ateliers nationaux. The real purpose of the ministers was the discredit of Louis Blanc, who had proposed ateliers sociaux in his “Organisation du Travail.” They planned the foundation of sham national workshops, which should fail and demonstrate the impracticability of his scheme, and they carried out the programme to the letter. M. Marie, the Minister of Public Works, intrusted the management of the ateliers to Émile Thomas, one of Louis Blanc’s worst enemies, informing Thomas that “it was the well-formed intention of the government to try this experiment of the commission of government for laborers; that in itself it could not fail to have good results, because it would demonstrate to the laborers the emptiness and falseness of these inapplicable theories and cause them to perceive the disastrous consequences flowing therefrom for themselves, and would so discredit Louis Blanc in their eyes that he should forever cease to be a danger.”[95] The false reports which were continually being circulated concerning the ateliers nationaux, especially their unjust attribution to him, were a constant source of annoyance to Louis Blanc. It is probable, however, that these falsehoods have done more harm to the defenders of law and order than to the socialists. The true state of the case is now generally known, and adds bitterness to the minds of French and German laborers. The continual circulation of the falsehood that Louis Blanc had tried his ateliers sociaux and they had failed, enabled Lassalle to begin an account of them with the startling phrase: “Die Lüge ist eine europäische Macht”—“Lying is one of the great powers of Europe.”[96]

Louis Blanc’s power was of short duration. Although he sacrificed his popularity with the laborers in his endeavors to maintain peace and order, he was accused of participation in their rising of May 15, and fled to Belgium, thence to England, where he lived until the overthrow of Napoleon III., in 1870. Louis Blanc was, on the whole, well received in England, and maintained himself by literary work of various kinds. He wrote an account of the Revolution of 1848, which was published in two volumes, in 1870, in Paris. He was the English correspondent for the great French newspaper Le Temps. His letters, interesting and valuable essays on life in England, were published in four volumes in 1866 and 1867, in Paris, and in an English translation in London in the same years.[97]

The 8th of September, 1870, witnessed his return to France, where he labored for the Government of the National Defence. He was elected to the National Assembly, February 8, 1871, and took his place on the extreme Left. During the rising of the Commune of Paris he again lost popularity with laborers of revolutionary sympathies, by opposing the insurrection and taking the part of the Government of Versailles. The law of March 14, 1872, directed against the International Workingmen’s Association, even found in him a supporter, although its severity is certainly extreme. It was under this law that Prince Krapotkine was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.

After his return to Paris Louis Blanc published a work on questions of the time, entitled “Questions d’Aujourd’hui et de Demain.”[98] He continued to advocate quietly his doctrines in behalf of oppressed humanity, and had so gained in public estimation that upon his death, on the 6th of December, 1882, in Cannes, France, the Chamber of Deputies voted him the honor of a state funeral.[99]

Louis Blanc’s is a character which it is difficult to resist loving, so frank, generous, simple, and whole-souled was he. If he erred, it was largely because he attributed to others that warmth and devotion for common interests which he experienced, and that high point of honor which guided him. His tender solicitude and affection for his wife was beautiful, while his love for his brother Charles, the writer on art, has been celebrated far and wide. It is even said that his diminutive size was due to his sacrifices in behalf of the younger brother, to whom he gave the largest share of the lunch which they carried to school. A sympathetic chord seemed to connect them, for when Charles was ill in the summer of 1882, Louis, to whom the news had not been communicated, said to his friends, “Charles is ill: he is in danger.” So it proved, for Charles soon died. The affliction was a heavy blow to the surviving brother, and probably hastened his own death, which happened only a few months later. “Charles Blanc was a kind of complement to Louis. The delicacy of his (Charles’s) intellectual nature was a source of ever-new delight to the politician and man of the people, whose heart throbbed for all the woes and wants of humanity, and whose life was devoted to action rather than to the contemplation of art.”[100] This intimate affection had been noticed long before, and Alexander Dumas had them in mind when he wrote his “Les Frères Corses”—“The Corsican Brothers.”

Louis’s purity of character and his honesty of purpose were remarked by every acquaintance. Mr. Smalley[101] applies to him what Emerson said of Charles Sumner: “He was the whitest soul I ever knew:” and continues: “If ever a man lived free from stain, it was he who has just died. All his life long the fierce light of passionate political and still more passionate social controversies beat upon him. He made innumerable enemies; he was the object of innumerable calumnies. Not one of his enemies hated the man, not one of the calumnies touched his private worth.” Karl Blind, his friend, thus describes his personal appearance: “A very small, but elegantly formed man; of almost Napoleonic features, as may be common to many Corsicans; entirely beardless, which was rare in the revolutionary days. The glance of his dark, prominent eyes, brilliant, almost sparkling; his thick, dark-brown hair, long and straight; the color of his countenance rather dark. Notwithstanding his short figure—for he was not taller than Thiers—an impressive appearance.”[102]

An examination of Louis Blanc’s social philosophy is best begun by asking the question: what is in his opinion the aim of life? The answer to it is the starting-point from which all his arguments proceed. Louis Blanc finds the purpose of human existence to be happiness and development. Any acceptable, any tolerable organization of society must make both possible for every single human being. While development may come first, “it is repugnant to reason to admit in the theory of progress that humanity ought forever to be a victim of I do not know what strange and terrible combat between the flesh and the spirit.”[103] But what does development imply? It signifies that every one should enjoy precisely those means which are required for his largest mental, moral, and physical growth; or, to express it in a word, for the perfection of his personality. These requirements are for each individual his needs. The next question we have to ask is this: Does our present society guarantee to every member of it his needs? If it does not, it must be condemned. Obviously it does not. It is a war of all against all, a bellum omnium contra omnes. It is a society whose fundamental principle is competition, and competition means universal warfare. Every man’s hand is against his brother. Individualism reigns, the principle of which is that, “taking man outside of society, it renders him the sole and exclusive judge of that which surrounds him, gives him an exalted sentiment of his rights without indicating to him his duties, abandons him to his own powers, and proclaims laissez-faire as the only rule of government.”[104] The result of this is want and misery, rendering the fulfilment of his destiny impossible to man. This must be corrected by a new organization of labor, which, abandoning individualism, private property, and private competition, the fundamentals of existing society, shall adopt fraternity as its controlling principle. “Fraternity means that we are all common members (membres solidaires) of one great family; that society, the work of man, ought to be organized on the model of the human body, the work of God; and found the power of governing upon persuasion, upon the voluntary consent of the hearts of the governed.”[105]

Let it not be objected that our aim, the abolition of misery, is materialistic. “The most exalted spiritualism reposes on the suppression of misery. Who does not know it? Misery restrains the intelligence of man in darkness, in confining education within shameful limits. Misery counsels always the sacrifice of personal dignity and almost always demands it. Misery places him whose character is independent in a position of dependence, so as to conceal a new torment in a virtue and to change into gall what there is of nobility in his blood. If misery creates long-suffering, it engenders also crime.... It makes slaves; it makes the greater part of thieves, assassins and prostitutes.”[106] The work before us is then eminently moral. It is the work which God would have us do. In Louis Blanc’s own words: “In demanding that the right to live should be regulated, should be guaranteed, one does much more than demand that millions of unhappy beings should be rescued from the oppression of force or of chance; one embraces, in its highest generalization and in its most profound signification, the cause of humanity; one greets the Creator in his labor. Whenever the certainty of being able to live by one’s labor does not result from the essence of social institutions, iniquity reigns.” The first step then is the contrivance of means which shall guarantee to every one the certainty of finding work i.e., the droit au travail. This must be accomplished by the erection on the part of the state of social workshops, ateliers sociaux, “destined to replace gradually and without shocks individual ateliers.”[107] Violence of every kind is deprecated as injurious, as productive of ruin.[108] The poor cannot now combine and produce for themselves without the intervention of capitalists, because they lack the instruments of labor. It is the function of the state to furnish these and thus become the banker of the poor. It must found the ateliers sociaux, pass laws for their government, watch over the administration of these laws as of other laws, and do this for the profit of all.[109] For the first year only the state regulates the “hierarchy of functions,” that is to say, assigns to each one his place in accordance with his ability, his faculties. After the expiration of the first year the laborers will soon become acquainted with each other, and will then elect their own chiefs.[110] This all requires funds. Whence are they to come? The state is to grant its credit in aid of the ateliers, and for this credit no interest is to be charged; it is to be gratuitous. The state will repay the loans by general taxation and by the revenues derived from the management of railways, which must become public property, and from other public undertakings, as mines, insurances, and banking.[111]

The absorption of private industry will be gradual. The public ateliers will all be united from the start into a grand federation, and will form a mutual insurance company, so that the losses of one may be made good by the profits of others. One part of all profits will be set aside for this purpose.[112] Capitalists will at once be invited to join these associations, and will be paid interest on whatever capital they put into the ateliers, besides receiving their wages like other laborers. While no one is to be forced by law to join the social workshops, the competition of the ateliers sociaux, working without the payment of interest and with all the advantages of a vast combination, will before long become so severe that all private employers will be glad to fall in line to save themselves from ruin. Then the socialistic state will have been formed. It is for the interest of the rich as well as the poor. They will then enjoy safety, tranquillity and the satisfaction of observing universal happiness, whereas they are now harassed by all sorts of dangers and anxieties, born of individualism and private competition.[113]

We have finally to inquire what is the principle in accordance with which functions (positions, offices) and remuneration are distributed among the workers in the ateliers sociaux? What is the ideal of social justice?

First, as to the social hierarchy, or social rank. Faculties, powers, abilities, are of almost infinite variety in man. They are, however, all talents meant to be used for others. Have I great strength? In giving it to me God measured thereby my obligations to society. The same holds regarding mental acumen, profundity of thought, poetic imagination, a fine voice, etc. We must then be so placed that we can use to the full our capacities. These are the measure of our rank in the ordering of society. “Man has received of nature certain faculties—faculties of loving, of knowing, of acting. But these have by no means been given him in order that he should exercise them solitarily; they are but the supreme indication of that which each one owes to the society of which he is a member; and this indication each one bears written in his organization in letters of fire. If you are twice as strong as your neighbor it is a proof that nature has destined you to bear a double burden.[114] If your intelligence is superior, it is a sign that your mission is to scatter about you more light. Weakness is a creditor of strength; ignorance of learning. The more a man can (peut), the more he ought (doit); and this is the meaning of those beautiful words of the gospel: ‘Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.’ Whence the axiom, From every one according to his faculties; that is one’s duty.”[115]

But this is only one half of the formula of ideal justice. It shows what each is to give. What is each to receive? We saw that the Saint-Simonians constructed their social hierarchy in accordance with capacity. They added, however, that reward must be proportioned to works. “To each one according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its works.” But is that a high moral standard? Ought we to complete our formula in that way? Is it not selfish and hard? Would it not condemn the weak and feeble to extinction? Has not God, in our wants, our needs, given us a different indication? So thought Louis Blanc. Not equality, but needs, are to determine the distribution of products. Each one must have whatever he truly needs, in so far and in proportion as the means of society will admit it. “All men are not equal in physical force, in intelligence; all have not the same tastes, the same inclinations, the same aptitudes, any more than they have the same visage or the same figure; but it is just, it is in the general interest, it is in conformity with the principle of solidarity, established in accordance with the laws of nature, that each one should be placed in a condition to derive the greatest possible advantage from his faculties in so far as this can be done with due regard to others, and to satisfy as completely as possible, without injuring others, the needs which nature has given him. Thus there is no health and vigor in the human body unless each member receives that which is able to preserve it from pain and to enable it to accomplish properly its peculiar function. Equality, then, is only proportionality, and it exists in a true manner only when each one in accordance with the law written in some shape in his organization by God himself, produces according to his faculties and consumes according to his wants.”[116] Here we have the formula of perfect justice complete.

We see, then, that Louis Blanc was not an égalitaire. He opposed equality as unnatural and unjust.[117] He was, however, unwilling to adopt works as a basis of inequality. It would, nevertheless, amount in the end to pretty much the same, although the animating spirit might be different. Who would occupy the superior positions in Louis Blanc’s ideal state? Naturally the ablest, the largest natures. But those are precisely the ones whose needs are greatest. The true wants of the ignorant day laborer are simple and easily satisfied. Books tire him, grand music wearies him, while he turns away uninterested from the greatest painting of an old master. How different are the wants of a sensitive, refined nature like Louis Blanc himself; how much larger, how much more expensive to gratify! It is, indeed, pleasant to think of society as one vast Christian family, in which each would gladly contribute to the common good in proportion to his faculties, and in which all would cheerfully accord to every member whatever he truly needed for his most perfect development. But does the attempt to bring about such a state of society take men as they are or presuppose them as they ought to be? It is truly a glorious ideal! but will it ever become a reality this side of the golden gates of Paradise?